Where am I? Locating Myself and its Implications for Collaborative Research
- 7 June 2006
- journal article
- Published by Wiley in American Journal of Community Psychology
- Vol. 37 (3-4), 283-291
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-006-9052-5
Abstract
This paper examines how a younger white female graduate student and an African American female undergraduate viewed the relationship between the graduate student and older African American working class women. This relationship was formed around a community garden project. The graduate student understood the relationship to be based on gender and class background similarities; the undergraduate viewed it based on race differences and unexamined white privilege. Both interpretations are challenged as unidimensional. Through this re-telling, questions are raised about why situating ourselves via our identities is not practiced more frequently. Possible explanations of this lack of attention to situativity include a Cartesian philosophy of science that separates objectivity and subjectivity, a general unawareness of privilege by those who have it, and a dominant scientific discourse that neglects the role of the researcher. This paper illustrates why reflexivity is crucial for the work of community psychology.Keywords
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