Provost--Cotera and Smith

            

Women of Color Methodologies

              In this week’s exploration of Women of Color Methodologies, Both Cotera and Smith walk us through understanding where current methodologies do not adequately support or understand the complexities of power and oppression. Smith frames this by outlining white supremacy in three frameworks, “slavery/capitalism”, “genocide/colonialism”, and “Orientialism/War”. These frameworks allow for an explanation that pushes the boundaries of “oppression Olympics” and what these different understandings of racial dynamics and oppression means, especially in terms of organizing.

            Smith discusses organizing by pointing out that often movements and organizing tactics rely on an inclusive model, where the group tries to include people from many different minority groups in hopes of being inclusive and diverse. What Smith warns us of is ““if we just include more people, then our practice will be less racist. Not true. This model does not address the nuanced structure of white supremacy, such as through these distinct logics of slavery, genocide and Orientalism” (Smith, 2006, 70). Smith means this to acknowledge that the oppression of one group relies on another in these interactions. What needs to be recognized is the simultaneous benefit and oppression of different social groups within white supremacy.

            Cotera discusses methodology in a similar way, however her approach addresses colonialism in a deeper way.  Cotera says “methodological norms of comparativist practice, in particular the deeply ingrained assumption that comparison must necessarily involve a search for sameness” (Cotera, 2008, 7).  In Cotera’s analysis we get an understanding of how comparativist methodologies can be  utilized to find something outside of sameness or outside of the need for common ground and generalizability. This was particularly useful for me in thinking about how to approach evaluation work, especially evaluation work that has community members and young people as stakeholders.  In this work program evaluations are used for generalizability or transfer of programs to multiple settings, and by acknowledging that comparatavist methodologies can be employed without looking for a commonality or general sameness it gave me a framework to think about the work that can be done in partnership through storytelling.

1) In evaluation or research how can we effectively incorporate lived experiences in our results? What does this mean for power in interview/evaluation?

2) What does being accountable to our storytellers look like? What does calling our participants storytellers or stakeholders incorporate, if anything?