Unsettling Research
Using Critical Praxis and Activism to Create Uncomfortable Spaces
Series:
Sherilyn Lennon
Chapter 8: Blurring Boundaries, Reconceptualizing Research, and Self-Discoveries
Extract
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BLURRING BOUNDARIES, RECONCEPTUALIZING RESEARCH, AND SELF-DISCOVERIES
This chapter, the final chapter, explores what can be learned from the journey of an insider activist researcher seeking social transformations around issues of gender. In doing so it makes a contribution to meta-theory (Giroux, 2001) by blurring the boundaries between critically reflecting on a personal journey of discovery and discussing the implications of that study for the broader field of critical qualitative research. Such a balancing act is complicated, creating a multifocused chapter. In Chapter 8 I examine how I was able to impact on others through my research, where I was positioned at the official end point of the study, and how my learnings might be useful to others wanting to construct and conduct activist research.
Throughout the chapter I switch from the impersonal voice to the highly personal and back again as a means of sharing personal, methodological, and conceptual insights. This changing modality reinforces my ongoing commitment to multiple ways of knowing and highlights my struggle to balance goodness (S. Jones, Arminio, & Torres, 2006) and authenticity (Guba & Lincoln, 2008) with research that is partial, political, personal, and complex. Whilst not multivoiced, my approach in this final chapter is multiregistered as I alternate between the first and third persons, and critically reflective moments and a more academic prose. This chapter continues to generate more questions ← 203 | 204 → than it answers, reinforcing the never-ending journey of discovery that is so fundamenatal to bricolage...
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