Description
Social scientists have a “tendency to focus on what is wrong rather than search for what is right, to describe pathology rather than health” (Lawrence-Lightfoot 1983, 10). When the field of International Studies encounters communities experiencing marginalization in the Global South, this tendency towards pathology often translates into a search for stories of oppression, victimization, and tragedy. As Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang observe, “much of the work of the academy is to reproduce stories of oppression in its own voice” (2014, 227). Their work warns researchers to avoid narratives which depict “communities in need of salvation” by researchers (Tuck and Yang 2014, 245) as well as work which simply seeks to “elicit[] pain stories” (Tuck and Yang 2014, 227).
Taking this call from Indigenous academics to “suspend[] damage” (Tuck 2009) in research seriously, I will reflect on my experience conducting doctoral research in partnership with a community of Indigenous women activists in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Shan State Burma. This research, which occurred during the pandemic and 2021 military coup in Burma, seeks to highlight strategies and stories of resistance from this community despite ongoing conditions of authoritarianism and state violence. In my presentation, I will share my experience conducting this research utilising strengths-based methods, including the portraiture method (Lawrence-Lightfoot 1983) as well as community-engaged methods. Finally, I will consider the ethics, challenges and advantages of using the portraiture and other strengths-based methods in order to challenge how marginalized communities are represented in International Studies, including questions of voice, representation, and identity, particularly for non-Indigenous researchers.
Works Cited
Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. 1983. The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture. New York: Basic Books.
Tuck, Eve. 2009. “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities.” Harvard Educational Review 79, no. 3: 409–28.
Tuck, Eve and K. Wayne Yang. 2014. “R-Words: Refusing Research.” In Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Inquiry with Youth and Communities, edited by Django Paris and Maisha T. Winn, 223–47. Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage Publications.
