Doing Participatory
Action Research
in a Racist World
Western Journal of
Nursing Research
Volume 28 Number 5
August 2006 525-540
© 2006 Sage Publications
10.1177/0193945906287706
http://wjn.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
Colleen Varcoe
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
This exploration of the racial power dynamics in a participatory action research
project with women who had experienced intimate partner violence discusses the
challenges inherent in doing participatory action with antiracist intent and offers
suggestions for overcoming these challenges. To engage in this type of research,
explicit commitment to the goals of an antiracist intent needs to be shared as
widely as possible. Fostering such shared commitment demands that the social
locations of all involved be interrogated continuously. Such interrogation, however, needs to be prefaced with understanding that individuals are not representative of particular power positions or social identities or locations and with critical
attention to how language and social structures shape racism and other forms of
dominance. Being inclusive must be understood as complex and the influence of
diverse agendas and perspectives acknowledged and taken into account. In the
face of such complexity, “success” in research may need redefinition.
Keywords: racism; participatory research; violence; women; nursing research;
Canada
C
urrently engaged in a large participatory action research (PAR) project,
my fourth as a principal investigator, I continuously reflect on what
I have learned. In particular, I continue to be challenged by doing nursing
research with diverse women in a society imbued with, and often structured
by, racism. In this article, I recount some of the processes involved in one
PAR project to share my evolving ideas regarding doing such research.
I conclude with a discussion of recommendations for other nurse researchers
who aim to engage in participatory research within an antiracist paradigm.
Author’s Note: The author gratefully acknowledges the participation of all the women in this
project, including those who left in anger. Also appreciated are the reviews of earlier drafts of
this article by two of the participants (not named for reasons of confidentiality), two anonymous reviewers, and Dr. Annette Browne, University of British Columbia. Finally, the research
referred to in this study was generously supported by the BC Health Research Foundation.
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Background
Participatory research has become an increasingly popular approach in
nursing research (Henderson, 1995; Holter & Schwartz, 1993; Lindsey &
McGuinness, 1998). In part, this popularity is because of the congruence
between the concern of nursing with people who are marginalized and the
goals of PAR. These goals are to place the less powerful at the center of
knowledge creation, shift peoples’ lived experience of marginalization to the
center (Hall, 1992), and place the tools of research “in the hands of deprived
and disenfranchised people so that they can transform their lives for themselves” (Park, 1993, p. 1). Both the moral commitments of nursing in working with people who are marginalized and the commitments of PAR oblige
researchers to continually work to readdress hierarchies, power, and privilege (McIntyre & Lykes, 1998, 2004).
Race is a central axis of power and privilege in the Western world, and
proponents of PAR have repeatedly emphasized the importance of attending
to race, particularly as it intersects with gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
and physical and mental abilities (Hall, 1992; Metzler et al., 2003; Rivera,
1999; Spigner, 1999; Stanfield & Dennis, 1993; Sullivan et al., 2003). Indeed,
some argue that PAR has potential as a tool of resistance against the interlocking oppression of race, gender, culture, and class. As Spigner (1999) has
noted in the health field, however, the research establishment is overwhelmed
by well-meaning nonminority researchers who, although they recognize racism
and its consequences on health, cannot reconcile the contradiction of nonminority researchers doing research with people marginalized by their minority
status in the name of empowerment. Recognition of this contradiction has led
to emphasis on the importance of researchers from minority groups (DionStout, Kipling, & Stout, 2001; Douglas, 1998; Spigner, 1999; Washington,
Napoles-Springer, Forte, Alexander, & Perez-Stable, 2002) as well as calls to
engage explicitly with issues of race.
Although race has no validity as a biological construct, race and racism
shape social experience, having profound effects on peoples’ lives. Nurse
researchers are paying increasing critical attention to the use and construction
of race in nursing research (e.g., Anderson, 2000; Phillips & Drevdahl, 2003).
Drevdahl, Taylor, and Phillips (2001, in press) analyzed the use of race and
ethnicity in nursing research literature, finding significant inconsistency in
their use and their meanings. Despite the importance of attending to race and
racism within both nursing research and participatory research, however, nurse
researchers have paid little attention to the power dynamics of race and racism
in participatory research. Thus, this article reports on the research processes in
a PAR study as those processes relate to such dynamics.
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Project Violence Free
During a 5-year period (1999 to 2003), I, along with a group of women who
had experienced intimate partner abuse, obtained funding and conducted a
study of formal system responses to violence against women. For our study, we
used ethnographic methods within a PAR framework. The project took place
in two suburban communities in western Canada. The impetus for the project
arose from recognition by both service providers and the women they served
that the responses by health care, social welfare, and legal systems required
analysis and improvement. Early meetings between myself, service providers,
and the women they served led to the women deciding to direct the project and
partner with me. The purpose of the project was to develop a process through
which women who experience violence could collaborate with service
providers to diminish barriers to living violence-free and improve the way
services are offered. The project also was intended to facilitate the empowerment of women who experienced violence by recognizing the importance of
their experiences and providing opportunities for them to talk, listen, learn,
and advocate on their own behalf toward changing practices and policies.
During the 3 years of data collection, the research team, composed of
myself, a number of the women (some served as paid researchers), and several
community researchers and hired research assistants interviewed a total
of 46 women who experienced partner abuse and 38 service providers.
Documentary data from the women and service providers were collected.
Following completion of the study, we contracted an independent researcher
to conduct postparticipation interviews with 6 active participants regarding
their experience of involvement in the study. The women participated in the
design of the study, the writing of two successful funding proposals, analysis
of the data, and a range of specific actions and dissemination strategies,
including publications. Participation varied depending on each woman’s interests. The women were interested in writing lay publications but had little interest in academic publications; thus, only 2 women made comments on earlier
drafts of this article.
Challenges of “Doing” PAR in Complex Contexts
In general, the research team encountered a gulf between the rhetoric of
PAR and the reality of conducting participatory research with participants who
have survived often-unspeakable abuse. The literature on PAR provided little
guidance regarding how to do research with women whose lives are continually disrupted by abuse, who have serious mental illnesses, who have drug or
alcohol problems, or who just want to stop talking about violence and get on
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with their lives. There was little direction regarding how to work across quite
different political commitments and philosophical orientations. Most taxing,
however, was the absence of discussion regarding how to work with racism.
The members of the research team identified themselves in relation to
ethnicity and race in varied ways. Although my father is aboriginal, I have
not lived within aboriginal culture, but I have experienced racism occasioned by my appearance or by revealing my ancestry. Two members of the
research team identified as members of particular racialized groups and as
“women of color.” All other members of the research team identified as
White, Caucasian, or European Canadian. All of us shared a commitment
to ending violence against women, and some were declared feminists.
Some of us had a commitment to inclusion and some, a commitment to
active antiracism. As the principal researcher, I used my power to involve
immigrant women, aboriginal women, and other racialized women in the
project, although I thought doing so was at odds with my intention to power
share. One of the other women was explicitly committed to such inclusivity. These moves, particularly in the context of global events following the
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, provided a catalyst for
power dynamics that erupted frequently and forcefully. What follows is an
analysis of those experiences that may provide ideas for working with race
and power in participatory research and a basis for further discussion.
The Politics of Participation
The women’s experiences and relative disadvantages shaped their participation. All of the women had direct experience of intimate partner violence to
the extent that it became a central feature of their lives. Their participation was
both a testimony to the centrality of their experiences of violence and, according to the women, was a meaningful way of dealing with those experiences.
Dealing with the aftermath of violence, however, shaped and limited participation in some ways. For women who had income, child care, transportation
(particularly personal vehicles), and facility in English, it was relatively easy to
participate. Not surprisingly then, the women who were most active in directing the research were predominantly White, middle-aged, English-speaking
women with some employment income. Women with little or no income, no
private transportation, limited English, or membership in racialized groups
found it more challenging to participate. If a few of us had not been committed to including racialized and immigrant women, the project might have proceeded with less conflict and possibly without racial conflict. Given the varied
commitments and identities within the group, and given world events, we
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struggled continuously. The conflicts and challenges began with decisions
regarding hiring staff, continued through decisions regarding how to use the
budget, and have not yet ended, extending to the question of how to write an
article such as this in a respectful manner. The conflicts and controversies
around the politics of participation point to the complexity of the ideal of inclusion, the influence of diverse agendas and perspectives, the limitations of
naming social locations in certain ways, and the power of ideological frames.
The Complexity of Inclusion
Critiques of racism in science (Harding, 1993); critiques of exclusion from
research because of race, class, or gender (e.g., Cannon, Higginbotham, &
Leung, 1988); and critiques of feminism’s failure to grapple with more than
gender in countering such exclusion (hooks, 1992) have led to greater awareness of the need for inclusivity in research. In response to these critiques,
associated calls for anti-Eurocentric and anticolonialist approaches, and more
generalized calls for attention to the relationship among research ethics,
empowerment, and voice, participatory approaches have grown in popularity.
Thus, I began this research with explicit concern for inclusivity.
In particular, I began this research with an express concern about racialization that arose from several interrelated sources. First, my earlier research
(Varcoe, 1996, 2001) heightened my awareness of the dynamics among
racism, classism, and the health and health care of women who experience violence. Second, I was aware of the lack of research on racialized women in general and in particular on racialized women who experience violence. When
beginning this research, there were few studies of the particular challenges
faced by racialized women, immigrant women, and aboriginal women, and
I was committed to addressing this deficit. Finally, my analysis of my own
experiences of violence was that my relative “success” as a survivor of various
forms of violence was facilitated by the advantages I had in speaking English
as my first language, having access to good education, having enjoyed a progressively better standard of living from rural poverty to my current middleclass status, and “passing” as White unless I revealed my aboriginal ancestry.
Thus, we included in the research proposal explicit plans to include as diverse
a group of women as possible. Although the women who were involved in
these initial stages supported inclusivity, in retrospect, none of us adequately
anticipated the challenges we would face. During the 3 years, we expanded
beyond the initial group, eventually involving a wide range of women.
The literature on cross-cultural and feminist thinking and research prepared
me to be acutely aware of my power and privilege as a researcher. Such literature, however, tends to dichotomize the researcher and the researched as
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though each is a homogenous group characterized by its difference from the
other. For instance, Selby (1998) spoke of the importance of research relations
when “there are ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’” (p. 13). The prototype for discussing
power relations appears to be situations in which a lone White researcher studies “others.” For example, Patricia Hill Collins (1993), from whom I took considerable guidance regarding the intersections of race, class, and gender,
described a pattern of relationships she calls voyeurism: “From the perspective of the privileged, the lives of people of color, of the poor, and of women
are interesting for their entertainment value” (p. 37). Although these warnings
are important, they offered little guidance as we entered the messy power relations that arose in trying to do research with women whose education ranged
from elementary school to graduate school, whose income ranged from
single-income social assistance to $80,000 a year and whose ethnicity and
immigration status reflected the diversity of Canada itself (with, in the end, a
relative overrepresentation of immigrant and aboriginal women). The “haves”
and “have-nots” dissolved into an infinite range of “have mores,” “have much
mores,” “have much less,” and so on, and “the privileged” was rendered an
unstable category. The attempt to be inclusive added complexity to the diverse
and sometimes competing perspectives and agendas operating in this project.
Different Perspectives: Different Agendas
Although all members of the research team and all participants appeared
united by the goals of the study and by concern for violence against women,
we each brought different understandings and reasons for participating. My
reasons for doing this research were not entirely altruistic. I was a “new” academic with a research program to develop, albeit delighted that the research
permitted me to harness my passionate anger about violence, the position of
women in society, racism, and the inadequacies of nursing and health care system responses to violence against women (Morrow & Varcoe, 2000; Varcoe,
1997). And, my perspective—explicitly feminist and antiracist—was only one
perspective that, despite my efforts and power, failed to dominate. I had only
a rudimentary notion of what it meant to do research in an antiracist manner.
Each other person also had her own reasons for participating. In general,
all of the women expressed a desire to “do something.” The women talked
about wanting to “make a difference,” “change things,” and “try to help other
women who have gone through this or could be going through it.” The women
who were initially involved were united both by their concern for violence
and their own difficulties trying to get support within formal systems. They
did not express any particular commitment to my agenda of inclusion but
seemed supportive or at least did not challenge my agenda.
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As we were committed to making the project as participatory as possible
(a shared agenda, I believe), the women and I collaborated on every phase,
beginning with the development of the proposal and the hiring of staff. The
hiring process was when I first became aware of the fallacy of the assumption
that I (the highly educated, articulate researcher) was the one wielding power.
The women were clear that they wanted to hire a woman who had helped
many of them in their own healing process; my input in this decision was irrelevant. She knew the community well and had been instrumental in starting the
project. The women accepted my argument, however, that given that this
woman was White, if we wanted to involve women of color, immigrant women,
and aboriginal women, we needed to hire a woman from one or more of these
communities. Thus, we hired a woman with explicit political commitments to
women of color and immigrant women who was strengthened by her own
identity as a woman of color and an immigrant.
During the next 3 years, the project evolved with a core group of women
participating actively in every element of the study and taking on other
initiatives that stemmed from, but were separate from, the research project. For
example, the women developed a local anti-violence media campaign, consulted with the provincial justice department on a stalking brochure, and held
fund-raising events for nonresearch activities. The group grew and shrank as
new women joined and others dropped away, but the ethnicity of the group
remained predominantly European Canadian. Paid staff actively pursued
the involvement of aboriginal and immigrant women, with the result that the
research involved an incredibly diverse group of women, but none joined the
core group despite invitations to do so. Thus, there were three “layers” of participation: (a) the research team composed of myself, the paid staff, and those
“participants” who were active in all phases of the research (the research grant
paid interested women $15 an hour for research work and the women determined what work qualified as “volunteer” versus “paid”); (b) women who
guided the research to a lesser degree and participated actively in selected
actions, such as a youth forum; and (c) the aboriginal and immigrant women
who were interviewed and participated in data analysis but who remained separate from the overall guidance of the project and related social activities. Each
participated for her own reasons—some of which were made explicit (e.g., my
desire to develop my research program, employment for others), some of which
were shared (e.g., the desire to change the system responses to abuse), some of
which were not shared (e.g., the desire to tell one’s story), some of which were
hinted at (e.g., the support for self-development, available through media and
other workshops funded by the project), and some of which were unknown.
These various perspectives and agendas often collided. For example, earlier
I claimed that it was “relatively easy” for more privileged women to participate.
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All the women did not see it this way. Even though some women had
employment, postsecondary education, income well above poverty levels,
and English-language fluency, their participation occurred in the context of
struggles to put their lives together in the aftermath of interpersonal violence,
and many were still being harassed by ex-partners, frequently through their
children (Varcoe & Irwin, 2004). The women often talked about the challenges
of participating and some women emphasized that they wanted these challenges recognized and not diminished through comparison with other women
who may face different challenges. Some objected to extra effort being made
to include women who did not speak English (e.g., paying for interpreters and
multilingual support workers) or new immigrants (e.g., holding meetings in a
location familiar to the women). As well as the hourly wage for research work,
the research grant provided child care and transportation for all participation, including “actions” (e.g., videotaping, workshops) and related social
activities (e.g., lunches). Because a number of women wanted the extra
income, there was some conflict and competition regarding who should get the
paid work, even though there was more money and work than the women
could do. These tensions revealed deep divisions among us and the inadequacy
of the ways we dealt with our own social locations in relation to one another.
Beyond Naming Social Locations
Naming one’s social location has become a common feature of much qualitative research. In 1994, Visweswaran called locating oneself an “increasingly sterile” maneuver (p. 49). In response to essays by Lather (1994) and
Fine (1994), Daphne Patai (1994) protested that “this tiresome reflexivity” has
become a “mental game” (p. 66), arguing against “the pretence that the world’s
ills are set right by mere acknowledgement of one’s own position” (p. 67). We
lived the complexity behind these critiques. In this project, the fiction of the
powerful researcher and the less powerful yet homogenous “researched”
unraveled. The romantic emancipatory possibilities of PAR were exposed as
dreams in the light of the realities of our racist and inequitable world. Rather
than having overengaged in tiresome reflexivity, however, our failure seems to
me to have been the failure to explicitly take into account the complex ways in
which power and privilege were continuously operating and shaping our work.
Race was particularly problematic. One of the women who self-identified
as a woman of color continually put the issue of race “on the table,” as I did
(but less often). Other team members expressed no interest in discussing race.
Our interest in race seemed to be directly proportional to the hue of our skin
color. Everyone engaged in analysis of my position as the powerful researcher,
initially at my instigation, and gradually as part of the project culture. There
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was little or no interest, however, in engaging in reflection regarding how the
social positions of other participants might be operating. From the beginning
of my engagement with the women, I had continually expressed concern that
I not dominate and sought to “take a back seat.” In fact, I probably overdid it.
For example, when discussing our methodology, one woman became frustrated with my desire for them to make decisions. “You’re the researcher,
Colleen. Just tell us!” The women wanted to “get on with it,” were interested
in action, and often expressed impatience with the seemingly slow research
process. Several commented in postparticipation interviews that the research
was “more involved than I thought” and that the “actions” were less immediate than they had expected. Thus, among the research team members, there
was a sense of impatience, an orientation toward “action,” and little interest in
“navel gazing,” particularly when issues such as race seemed irrelevant to their
interests. So the insidious rhetoric of equality found purchase.
The idea of all women who experience violence being on an “even playing
field” surfaced repeatedly in analysis sessions when issues of race were raised.
With one early exception, the women decided not to participate in analyzing
their own interviews, leaving the women free to compare their own experiences to those of the women whose interviews were being analyzed. “I hope
she doesn’t think that she had problems because she was an immigrant!” Thus
began the analysis of our first interview with a woman of color and thus began
one of many sessions laden with racial conflict. The speaker went on to say
that her reaction to the interview story (which related to horrendous physical
and emotional abuse compounded by grave difficulty getting formal support)
was that the interviewee “didn’t have it that bad” in comparison to herself and
that she hoped that the woman realized that the system was “that bad”
regardless of “being an immigrant” (by “immigrant,” she was referring to
the woman’s membership in a racialized group, not referring to her status as a
newcomer to Canada). Responses dissolved into two camps: Some defended
the initial speaker, whereas those committed to antiracism pointed to the particular barriers that the woman encountered and emphasized the invisible
“race privileges” that others enjoy (including most in the room at the time).
Everyone seemed angry. One woman said that others were being “attacked
because they are White” and left, never to return to analysis.
Those of us who remained buried the conflict as quickly as possible, perhaps partly because we had all experienced so much conflict and violence in
our lives. We all conspired to treat the conflict as a problem of process—we
agreed that people ought to be able to react with their biases and hold them up
for scrutiny without being “attacked.” I tried to reframe the exchange as “intellectual” discussion. A seemingly important difference between the “office
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staff” (myself and the paid researchers) and the rest of the women was that we
had both significantly more formal education (two of us with graduate degrees)
and experience in community leadership positions and meetings. We were
familiar with debates and presenting and defending arguments. The women
had previously called the lively and impassioned theoretical debates among
the staff and myself “fights,” and at this point I tried to reframe this “fight” as
a theoretical debate that the women were now joining. In doing so, I helped to
gloss over the deeper differences that were to plague our project.
In this context, explicit naming of social locations became a liability in
the absence of commitment to critical reflexivity by all. Others increasingly
saw each person as representative of her particular social location. So, for
example, some dismissed concerns about race as the “personal problems”
of those raising such concerns. Increasingly, my concern about my positional power was raised to curtail my influence, and some women saw me
as “taking sides” with the women of color when issues of race arose. Most
poignantly, one woman claimed that women of color were not joining the
project because articulate women of color (such as one member of our
research team) were intimidating, and my reaction to this was dismissed as
“taking sides.” The day after the attacks on the World Trade Center, our
analysis meeting erupted in anger as one of the women interpreted another’s
concern for backlash against Muslims as a defense of the attacks and stormed
out of the meeting. Although these dynamics played out in ways that were
disturbing and challenging, they are not particular to this project but rather
reflect much wider ideological and discursive frames.
Ideological Frames
Of course, this work was not done in a vacuum. Rather, this research was
done in Canada, where liberal racism (Henry, Tator, Mattis, & Rees, 2000)
is masked by the ideology of multiculturalism (Ng, 1995). In this ideological frame, “multiculturalism provides a way of managing a society with
multi-ethnic and multi-racial groupings” (Ng, 1995, p. 6), and state policy
dictates that all groups should be treated equally and obfuscates any need
to redress entrenched inequalities. These notions of multiculturalism and
equality are linked to the strategy of “cultural sensitivity,” an approach in
which those with privilege ought to be “sensitive” to difference but are not
obligated to challenge the marginalization and stigma that generally accompany difference from the dominant group.
These ideological frames undergirded our research. Living in Canada
within the rhetoric of multiculturalism, all of us were well schooled in
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multiculturalism that defines “cultural” problems as mismatches between
“minority” and dominant cultures, overlooks political and economic forces,
makes the “different” culture the problem, and assumes a “level playing field”
that overlooks the historical impact of colonization, immigration, and racism
(Henry et al., 2000). We had limited experience in antiracist work; I had begun
to take an actively antiracist stance in my work as a teacher and one of the staff
had years of experience as an antiracist political activist, but none of us had
tried a project of this complexity or scope. We failed to adequately account for
the operations of our own social locations and to adequately account for the
racist context and the broader racializing discourses. Although we were explicitly aware of the need for particular strategies to involve women of color,
immigrant women, and aboriginal women in the project, we were unprepared
for the scope of the challenge. Not surprisingly perhaps, then, most did not see
a need to go beyond inviting participation. There was no question whether
garage sales, formal meetings, and barbecues with White women would be
inviting to a more diverse group. Indeed, some expressed resentment when
women of color were offered paid work or when “more” was done to facilitate participation (i.e., driving to give someone a ride).
But Did We Fail?
In the end, the women produced a powerful video that included a wide
range of women. They dominated a conference attended by hundreds of
service providers from the justice and social service systems. A number of
nursing students completed community health and research placements with
the group. Diverse women presented at conferences, did “speaks” to various
aboriginal groups, consulted with policy makers, contributed to publications
(e.g., Varcoe & Irwin, 2004; Varcoe, Jaffer, & Earhardt, 2002; Varcoe, Jaffer,
& Kelln, 2002), and even had fun. Everyone learned something; many learned
a lot. I learned that I would do some things exactly the same and some things
differently.
Having a colleague with similar philosophical commitments worked
effectively for me. My role as “employer,” however, conflicted with the role
of colleague. Several women quit the project in anger—I suspect at least
partly because they saw me as “taking sides.” I could not freely discuss
these dynamics with paid staff because such discussion would involve talking about one employee with another, and group discussions reinforced the
view that I was taking sides. I now prefer to have a co-investigator who is
not an employee, with whom I can problem solve and debrief.
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Having a funding agency that was committed to community-based research
facilitated our work. The funding body was supportive of the kinds of strategies (child care, transportation, an accessible “storefront” research office, and
interpreters) necessary to do participatory research with women and with
people whose first languages are not the “official” languages of the country.
This degree of support for the study (when other funding bodies are known to
have greater restrictions on what are considered “eligible” research expenses)
were critical to mounting and sustaining this study.
Being clear about the goals of the project in the beginning was very useful. In the future, however, I will negotiate commitment to goals in more
detail. I now know that it is important to surface as many “hidden” agendas
as possible and then to negotiate commitment not only to my own goals but
also to those of the participants. It became increasingly clear that the group
could not meet all the participants’ goals, and unfulfilled expectations caused
bitterness that could have been avoided.
Being aware of power differences and positionality, or “location,” and
bringing my own privilege to the attention of the other participants were,
I believe, important and useful. I think that “location” or exploring one’s
subjectivity must be done, however, in a much more complex way. Having
one member of the research team (albeit the “most” powerful) engage in
reflexive analysis of her own social location is not adequate to set the ills
of a research project to rights. Rather, all participants should be required
to explore their positionality in a manner that is relative, relational, contextual, and continuous. That is, it would have been useful to explore in an
ongoing manner how each member’s power operated differently in relation
to other participants and in different contexts. For example, because of her
extensive network and history with the community of local service providers,
one of the women was in a powerful position to facilitate or limit relationships
between service providers and the research team. Indeed, her less-thancongenial withdrawal from the project coincided with an abrupt cessation
of participation by many local service providers. Since then, however,
I have found it useful to preface such discussions of social location with
strategies to pre-empt “White defensiveness” (Aveling, 2002; Roman,
1993) or indeed defensiveness regarding other positions of dominance.
Following others such as Gillespie, Ashbaugh, and DeFiore (2002), emphasizing that it is racism, social inequities, dominance and uncritical acceptance of privilege that is problematic (not White-ness or other positions
per se). To optimize the engagement of everyone regardless of their particular
identities, I also focus on how racism is institutionalized and embedded
in language. Stressing that individuals are not representative of particular
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power positions, social identities, or locations can open up the possibility
of a wider range of critical analyses rather than simple dichotomization into
powerful or oppressed. Such strategies might have lessened the entrenchment of individuals into positions shaped by their claimed social location.
In addition, we might have fostered critical analysis when some women
who were members of racialized groups expressed class and “caste” bias
towards others.
Dealing with the power and privilege conferred by various positions of
power ought to have been an explicit focus for everyone. In the absence of
attention to the dynamics of an inherently racist social context, commitment to an antiracist agenda by a few participants was not sufficient to
achieving that agenda. In the future, I will include an antiracist agenda in
my negotiation of project goals and be more explicit regarding the possible
consequences of such an agenda. It was unreasonable, and perhaps naïve,
to expect that a group of community participant–researchers without prior
experience in either research or antiracism could take on a project of this
nature without support in confronting racism. We had workshops on interviewing, research methods, group process, and ethics. At a minimum, a
workshop on racism and working within diversity should have been our
starting point.
We found many ways to value diversity. We attempted to identify and
value each woman’s individual skills and help her match those to her contribution in the project. We valued and sought the diversity of women’s
experiences. We knew the importance of employing women from the participant’s communities, and we used an advisory committee with representatives from various sectors. We did not go far enough, however, to support the
inclusion of racialized women or to foster an antiracist agenda. I now try
to ensure that there is meaningful commitment to an antiracist stance at the
outset of any project. I attempt to ensure diversity in both hired staff and the
“reference group” (such as an advisory committee). Selby (1998) urged
researchers to ensure that there is a reference group composed of members
of the “culture” being studied. However, as this project illustrates, the “culture being studied” is bound to be diverse in itself; thus, such a reference
group needs to be diverse. In our case, greater diversity in ethnicity, class,
and education would have been warranted. I now make the value of “cultural brokerage” explicit—by making such skill a component of job descriptions and foregrounding the importance of such work on a daily basis. If
I had done so, it would have been clear that facilitating the development of
trust and communication with various immigrant and aboriginal communities, groups, and individuals was work that deserved time and attention, and
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complaints by some that one of the staff was “not doing her job” when
doing such work might have been forestalled. I also make explicit how
different needs for participation might require different resources. So, for
example, in some projects an honorarium for very poor women might be
larger than for those who have an income well above the poverty line. Or
twice as much time might be allocated for research assistants to recruit nonEnglish-speaking participants.
Finally, I have learned to redefine success and failure in such research.
There were many intangible successes in this project that included increased
skills and confidence among the participants, new relationships and connections, new awareness of issues in various communities, and so on. We
initially expected the same level of academic success (e.g., presentations,
publications) as with nonparticipatory, noninclusive studies. I now endeavor
to set expectations (for myself and funding bodies) in ways that accommodate the unique requirements of PAR. Disagreement and loudly expressed
anger marked the exercise of power. Continued participation in the project
despite conflict suggested some degree of resolution of conflict, coupled
with commitment. Thus, I count conflict, tenacity, and survival of the project as markers of success. If nurse researchers (and those from other disciplines) want to engage in empowering research, they ought to expect to get
overpowered once in a while.
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Colleen Varcoe, PhD, RN, is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia
School of Nursing. Her research focuses on women’s health with an emphasis on violence and
inequity, and the culture of health care with an emphasis on ethical practice. She is currently
undertaking a longitudinal study of the health and economic effects of violence and a participatory project examining rural maternity care for aboriginal women.