Transnationalism and Diaspora Provost

Randi Provost

3/15/2017

Transnationalism and Diaspora

Richa Nagar’s introduction to Muddying the Waters:Coauthoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism has articulated many of the methodological challenges that I’ve struggled with throughout this course and in my own academic journey. Nagar does so by inviting the reader to do as she is doing and “turn the gaze” on themselves. This is particularly useful for thinking through the various methodologies in participatory research, which is my focus.

Furthermore, Nagar pushes the reader to conceptualize their own use of language, politics, and intellectual power and idea on knowledge production. These concepts allow her to discuss many of the concepts that we have discussed and thought through in class this semester. For example, Nagar gives examples of citizenship, borders and border crossings (Nager, 10). This excerpts are useful in providing examples of why language and word-choice are important in both communicating the nuances of the work that is being done, but also recognizing the importance of the shifting contexts and locations. For example, this is noted in Nagar’s example of continuously complicating the “inside” and “outside” binaries (Nagar, 12).

These examples, as she points out, are a way in which we continue to stay vulnerable within the work, and continue to interrogate our theories, methodologies and methods as we work with our participants and/or in activist work, on the ground.

The reading for this week has been very useful for thinking through many of the questions

that I come to within my work as a practitioner and what my place in a room of young people means. Nagar offered a methodology that pushes us to constantly be asking ourselves “what is the work we are doing?” and “how am I doing the work?”. These are important and central questions to me as someone who works directly with young people because oftentimes or evaluation methodologies do not anticipate that young people are stakeholders in the research. The practices do not account for a non-hierarchical approach, nor do they account for the necessity of calling and involving participants, as participants and not subjects to be researched on. Rather, our participants are the primary producers of knowledge and we are facilitators. For this idea, Nagar’s conceptualization of coauthorship is particularly useful.

In describing coauthorship is useful to imagine the ways in which researchers/evaluators can be accountable for their work, and what that means for engaging in the academy. Is it possible to engage in the academy and practice this work? What does it mean to practice coauthorship in the academy? In what ways does Nagar’s methodology be used as a resistance to the current academy?