Abstract
This article explores a social work doctoral student’s self-reflexive journey in search of a suitable epistemology for her qualitative social work doctoral research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth in child welfare. It will highlight the deep influence that colonialism and imperialism can have on embodied knowledge and the importance of pushing against these paradigms to help bring forward the voices from the margins.
I enter a forest of familiar looking trees but I’ve never been here before. I am anxious and uncertain of what awaits me here in this forest.
After 13 years of social work practice in child welfare, I return to Academia to pursue my doctorate part-time. I walk into a course on epistemology and social work knowledge. It feels like entering a forest of knowledge with many big trees, each with different leaves and colors and each with a characteristic paradigm. I am excited. I am inspired. I have no idea of what lies ahead: the epistemological wrestling and disruptions that will change me from inside out. I understand epistemology to be a way of knowing how I know what I know. I am naïve. I believe that I am firmly entrenched in an identity that opposes the dominant colonial paradigms: an identity firmly rooted in struggles for social justice and anti-oppressive ideals. Through this epistemological wrestling, however, I come to realize that this identity is constructed through the lens of colonization and that I am merely perpetuating the paradigms from which I thought I bristled away. When I use these paradigms to frame myself, I tie myself to them and, even though in opposition, I am still perpetuating them (Ahmed, 2000; Scott, 1992). This framing informs not only my practice, but also my experience of the world around me.
In this article, I take you on an epistemological journey that I as a colonized, racialized, lesbian social worker experience in thinking through my qualitative social work research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) youth in child welfare. Through this journey I come to recognize and reclaim my own voice and agency through deconstructing the dichotomy between privileging the colonizing ideologies of the West and ignoring the beauty and voices of my own identity and ancestry. I walk along the path lined with huge trees that surround me. I name the trees, recognizing them from the stories I heard as a child. They are large, tall and strong oak and willow trees rooted in the colonial discourses I deeply embody.
Cracks start to appear in my epistemological foundation as I think back to my childhood and the creation of this foundation. As a brown-skinned female growing up in lands that still face the effects of colonization in the Middle East, I learned to adapt to the systems of oppression in order to survive. My community and society conditioned me to acquiesce and I learned to frame my worldview and understand my experiences based on a colonial construction of knowledge (Scott, 1992). Never quite seeing the depth of my colonization before this epistemological journey, I am shocked and dismayed after reading various works that challenge my thinking. Through Smith’s (1999) material on the colonized self, I begin to realize the depths of the colonizer(s) conditioning that I have unwittingly internally adapted and perpetuated (Fanon, 1967). I reflect on my childhood and realize that although I lived in the Middle East, having the opportunity to go to a British Catholic school set me up with the ability to navigate a Western education system. I was taught languages, customs and norms that were reflective of Western ways, which further privileged the colonizers’ ways long after they had left the land. I imagine what my education would have been like if I was taught in the indigenous ways of my ancestors. What would I have learned? I reluctantly realize that I cannot come up with an answer to this question which confirms how deeply rooted I continue to be in Western ways of knowing and recognize the privileges that are inherent with this knowledge. Even more startling to recognize is that everything that I know about my ancestors and their lands is constructed through the colonizer’s eyes and I have lost my own ‘cultural history’ (Absolon, 2011: 19). I stumble over myself to find an epistemological tree that resonates and is reflective of me. The sun shines through the oak and willow trees, forming patches of dappling light on the path. These beautiful trees evoke memories, but they are unfamiliar to my touch. I do not know the feel of these foreign trees, but instead long for the palm trees that lined the landscapes of my childhood.
Through this journey of epistemological wrestling, I think deeply about the reasons behind my research topic and my own conditioning. My lived experience has created my worldview bringing me to this place and this topic area. Growing up in another country, experiencing childhood trauma, leaving my family for another country when my homeland was under the threat of the first Gulf War, coming out as a lesbian, entering child welfare, and all the other significant moments in my life created my embodied knowledge and brought me to my research topic. No! I’m not a disinterested neutral researcher. This topic resonates with and relates to me as deeply as it does to the potential participants. I empathize with the painful experiences that these youth face of being marginalized within multiple communities (including the various youth and LGBTQ communities) due to their intersecting identities.
I attempt to locate myself and critically focus on what shapes my worldview on LGBTQ children and youth in child welfare. This worldview is shaped by my embodied knowledge, which in turn shapes how I approach any research topic and the qualitative methodology that I use. Without this critically reflexive journeying, I run the risk of unintentionally reproducing oppression and injustice in my quest to do the opposite. Entering child welfare as a racialized lesbian immigrant was a surreal experience as I was either exoticized or seen as assimilated. Even through a lens of assimilation, and because of its relative privilege, I was able to navigate through the system and push against the boundaries and advocate with LGBTQ youth and children. I have seen and continue to see the gaps in theory and praxis that impact these children and youth as the field is mandated to protect the safety and well-being of all children. However, these youth struggle to receive basic services and supports that are specifically geared to their needs and social identities. In my own career, I have seen the need for improvement on the continuum of services offered from the initial contact with a child welfare worker to foster care placement and permanency planning. Utilizing a narrative approach, I hope to gain an understanding of how the participants experience and construct their reality through their stories (Spector-Mersel, 2010) of involvement with child welfare.
The painful task of trying to decolonize my epistemology also involves examining my own internal conflicts and peeling apart the layers of my knowledge and how I acquired them. Exploring my ‘internalized inferiority’ (Abolson, 2011: 19) is a painful task as I recognize how deeply my culture, my ancestry and my very being as a person has been impacted by the power of colonization. I ache even more viscerally at the realization that I unwittingly use these very oppressive eyes and words to construct my life and knowledge around the same systems that I seek to push against (Scott, 1992; Young, 1990). I perpetuate further oppression on myself through my own censorship of parts of my identity, which allow me to benefit from colonialism. I realize that this perpetuation of oppression also flows into my professional and academic lives, including my research. In the field, daily decisions are made based on oppressive structures and systems that are dictated by neo-liberal agendas (Baines, 2011). These agendas position child welfare practitioners with the unachievable task of trying to work with families with limited resources under the frameworks of colonialism and capitalism. I think about my personal, professional and academic decisions that could have unintentionally oppressed others and how I have to be very cognizant of this when designing my thesis research.
Leaning into the discomfort of acknowledging that colonialism allows me to navigate through the Canadian world with some ease is prickly. I soon start to recognize that I have unknowingly bowed down, internalized and perpetuated the larger discourses of dominance in my attempts to differentiate myself from them (Ahmed, 2000; Scott, 1992; Young, 1990). As much as I condemn or situate myself on the opposite of those I see as colonial oppressors, I have also further perpetuated their voices through this dichotomization.
This critical self-reflective process moves me away from the dichotomies of oppressor/oppressed, master/slave, colonizer/colonized as these binaries are not static but more woven into each other. We are each more than the static identities that have been created and perpetuated onto us through Orientalism; we are also agents internalizing these discourses and making them our own (Said, 1978; Young, 1990). Through this realization, I discover that I could be more than a silenced voice on the outskirts of academia. My research can be more than a replication of perpetually oppressive paradigms. Instead of perpetuating the ways of oppression, this journey leads me to a place of realization that I need to liberate my own being from colonization in order to change the discursive landscapes around me personally, professionally and academically. Changing these discourses can be a tall task as I strive to push against the grain while still having to work within colonial systems, trying to dismantle the oppressive structures while I’m still privileged and deeply complicit in these very structures (Rossiter, 2005). Wrestling with these oppositional epistemologies offers me a foretaste of the challenges I will encounter in conducting my research. I long for the trees that gave me shelter from the heat as a child. I need to find my palm tree. Under the shade of palm trees, time seemed to stop for a moment and life slowed down. I look for that quiet shade that feeds transformation.
I attempt to reorient myself by finding my own roots and stories but this proves to be a lesson in futility. The people, identities, norms and cultures of those who went before me, before the colonizers arrived, are lost. I cannot find my palm tree. Regardless, I seek to find something that speaks uniquely to the identities located within and upon my body. Some of these identities I have accepted and claimed, while others have been ascribed to me. I cannot retrace too much of my pre-colonized history to help inform how I have gained and internalized knowledge and so, like others before me, I begin a different journey in search of a new tree that resonates with me. As I walk through the forest looking for my palm tree, I do not find one. Instead I find some sand and a sprinkling of seeds. Everything I need, to grow a tree of my own. But what tree will it be?
Through this doctoral journey, Smith’s (1999) words resonate with me when she says: ‘the need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance’ (p.35). I come to see the benefit of using my agency and voice to resist and not perpetuate oppressive ways of being in the research I do. Reclaiming a voice is liberating, yet terrifying. As I think about my research, it can sometimes be overwhelming to stand in front of those large trees of dominance. As Ortega and Busch-Armendariz (2014) outlined, social work scholarship is predominantly controlled and shaped by knowledge that is not reflective of diverse racial voices and that the current paradigms are deeply entrenched in the ‘reproduction of white racial privilege’ (p.5). I want to push against this privilege both personally and academically through this area of qualitative study. Instead of focusing on fear, I stand in the hope and light of those who journeyed before me in questioning the systems of dominance such as Absolon (2011), Ahmed (2000), Fanon (1967), Said (1978), and Smith (1999).
As I think about reclaiming my voice, I recognize that my change process also influences my research, as it will now be constructed through a different epistemological frame. This disruption to the dominant discourse will challenge those in power. I expect that there will be push back by those who try to discredit my work as they have done to others (Staller, 2012) by pointing to my work as an exercise in self-indulgence or author subjectivity.
Self-indulgence implies that racialized and “othered” voices have overstayed their welcome in the spaces that they occupy. However, this is not possible as historically, these voices have struggled to claim spaces to occupy in academia in the first place. Additionally, author subjectivity is a key component of epistemological journeying as our subjectivity frames our knowing and being. My identity is inextricably linked to my work through the intertwining of self and other. There is a mutual relationship between myself (as the researcher), the research participants and the resulting discourses from the process. I am also in the dual roles of “insider” and “outsider” (Smith, 1999: 5) in both the LGBT and child welfare communities and therefore my research will be positioned as what Patricia Hill Collins refers to as “the outsider within” (Smith, 1999: 5). Therefore it would be foolhardy to claim that this type of research is not subjective to some degree as I do have a vested interest in this work as it is not external to me, it runs deep within the veins of my many identities. It is equally foolhardy to assume that subjective knowledge is any less valid than objective knowledge because such dichotomization of knowing also perpetuates dominant ways of knowing and oppressive structures.
Additionally, I recognize that the purpose of my epistemological journey is to create space for LGBTQ youth to find their own trees and voices within the current forest of large trees that try to squelch them. This journey of self-reflection and awakening informs my research and my desire that other marginalized voices also share their own knowledge gained through their own lived experiences. I recognize that the qualitative research that I propose “is not a distant academic exercise but … occurs in a set of political and social conditions’ (Smith, 1999: 5) and am keenly aware of the need to consistently question my beliefs and ideologies through the research process. I strive to share spaces with the participants in the project as we write the stories of their experiences and lives so that it is not only my lens and worldview that shapes the story of their lives in the research (Ahmed, 2000).
How does one find agency against such large structures while not falling prey to the singling out that will happen due to the pushback against the dominant discourses? Perhaps one finds agency by just trying it and taking a step against the dominant discourses in whatever way it presents itself. Although it feels large and sometimes dangerous, it might just be worth it. I want to say that it is easy taking that risk, but I daresay that it makes one feel vulnerable, as prior history has shown us that most of the voices that were raised for change were quickly silenced. However, I am heartened by the few success stories of change and I forge ahead. I feel and believe that this process has to be worth it, no matter how it unfolds. Each time that a person speaks out, disruptions to the status quo occur. The forest of oak and willow trees is large and daunting in its expanse, but within this forest are places of possibilities, of light. Places where I plant my seeds and nurture them so they grow into a beautiful tree. A tree that is tall and full of long leaves, which provide a canopy of shade from whence I will emerge into the light and embrace the strength of the same sun that shone down on my ancestors who remind me to never forget where I came from as I journey ahead.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge and thank Kerry Turcotte and Leigh Savage for their support and assistance through the editing process of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.