Abstract
There are many unspoken norms in the culture of academia that are subtly communicated and integrated into academic socialization, from the doctoral training process into advanced professional development. The predominance of white, Western, masculine, heteronormative, and (post)positivist norms of academia historically and contemporarily can create challenges for women of color who engage in scholarship that reflects feminist and cultural values. In this article, we briefly explore the complexities affecting feminist of color scholars negotiating such values within the context of academia and particularly in navigating collaborative scholarship. We respond to these obstacles and complexities by providing a treaty of concrete strategies for creating allied, cooperative working relationships across diverse positionalities that honor these values.
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Acknowledgments
We wish to extend our deepest gratitude to the ancestral lineage of family, community, colleagues, and mentors who have provided unconditional ongoing support to us, as we strive to realize our feminist and cultural values in our work. The voices within this article are echoes of their voices. Although we recognize that there are more people than we can name here, who have influenced our work and our thinking, in this piece, we particularly wish to acknowledge (in alphabetical order) Consuela Beltran, Elizabeth Circo, Bonnie Duran, Tessa Evans-Campbell, Walter LaMendola, Mary Larimer, Tony Ishisaka, Indra Mehrotra, Chandra Mehrotra, Debora Ortega, Stéphanie Wahab, and Karina Walters. We also want to acknowledge and honor the land and the original people of the land on which these relationships and ideas were born and cultivated; the Yaqui River of Northern Mexico; Uttar Pradesh, India; the Bay Area of California; the lakes of Minnesota; the coastal Pacific Northwest; the desert of the Southwest; and the Rocky Mountain region of the United States.
In many Native American communities, when a woman introduces herself, she also includes the names of her parents, grandparents, community or clan, and tribe as a way of acknowledging her ancestral lineage and the responsibilities she carries as a result of that lineage. In many (East) Indian communities, it is common to touch the feet of your elders and spiritual and intellectual teachers as a demonstration of respect and subservience to them. Culturally speaking, acknowledging our ancestors and elders is not only a form of honoring their lives but also a demonstration of humility recognizing that no matter our location, we are sitting upon the laps of those who have gone before us and simultaneously contributing to the well-being of those who will follow us. By expressing our lineage, we illuminate and pay respect to the path paved by those who led us to the present moment and we express gratitude for their efforts. In traditions such as these, we explain that while we are individuals, we exist (permanently and continuously) within a collective history laid out in all directions around us; this honors our individual contributions while also placing us within a dynamic genealogy of experience, place, collectivity, community, and knowledge. It is these values, along with a commitment to gender justice, that undergird our feminist commitments to collaborative and liberatory social work scholarship. In the article that follows, we aim to explore what it means to be feminist of color scholars negotiating such values within the context of academia and to provide concrete strategies for creating collaborative working relationships that honor these values.
As women of color 1 in academia, we have been shaped by our diverse experiences and intersectional identities. Gita is a second-generation/U.S. born, South Asian (Indian) queer, cisgender woman who grew up middle class in the Midwest. Ramona is a multiracial Chicana of Yaqui tribal descent, currently in a heterosexual marriage, who grew up in a low-income, single-parent household in the Northwest. Our own positionalities and experiences, combined with our political and scholarly commitments, have influenced our relationships to social work academic spaces in divergent and overlapping ways. These convergences and differences contribute to the thinking in this article and shape the treaty agreements we outline. We purposely describe the strategies outlined as a treaty in an effort to politically repatriate the process of assumed binding obligations from its connection to European colonization, where colonizers created contracts that they then upheld, altered, disregarded, or violated based on their own interests. We are not implying that our suggestions become a part of formal law or disciplinary standards, but rather that the spirit of mutually beneficial scholarly agreements between sovereign bodies in a process of relational accountability is collaboratively constructed and sustained. In this work, we are acknowledging that treaties in many communities have been historically associated with examples of gross misconduct, human rights violations, and broken trust. We use the term metaphorically in an attempt to affect that history in the direction of healing from legacies of that broken trust through relationships we create and sustain today.
Navigating the Academy: Mythical Norms
As women of color who are junior scholars in social work, we have found ourselves navigating a system that often functions in contradiction to centering the cultural and feminist values of community and collectivism. There are many unspoken norms in the culture of academia that are subtly communicated and integrated into academic socialization, from the doctoral training process into advanced professional development. Most notably, the shaping of knowledge has predominantly been “white, male, heterosexual, and classed in ways that represent the social status quo of power and dominance in our society” (Trotman & Green, 2013, p. 289). This remains true, even in social work, despite our professional value of social justice. Although the “old gentleman’s club” norms remain persistent, they are most often inconsistent with the way our scholarship actually occurs. The neoliberal context of academia most often fosters the glorification of individuals through an emphasis on “productivity” (in regard to grant funding, publications, etc.), competition with colleagues based on scarcity of ideas and resources, and pressure to develop and generate products based on individual “original thinking” to advance one’s career. The reality, however, is that the majority of scholarship is collaborative in process and product. Relatedly, feminist scholars have brought attention to not only the collaborative nature of research but the political stakes of our academic work as well.
For example, for us as feminist scholars who most often center our work in minoritized communities, first and foremost, the aims of our scholarship include promoting social justice and addressing social problems in a way that benefits the lived experiences of our communities. This can also often mean that we are working within our own communities, which positions us in unique ways as researchers. Although we also find ourselves in the very real position of needing to leverage our own careers so that we can continue our work as academic scholars, we actively prioritize scholarship that aims to improve the conditions of people for whom our relationship is not that of outsider looking in but rather of a historical and personal connection. Our academic work, then, is often driven by having been deeply affected by the circumstances impacting the conditions of our daily lives, circumstances we wish to change in the direction of justice and equality. Finally, it is also important to note that the epistemological stance of (post)positivism that permeates a great deal of social work scholarship also centers an ideal of objectivity and a view of knowledge as scientifically based, which may or may not always be resonant with our own positionalities, cultural stances, feminist approaches, or commitments to social and community change. Thus, it is our positionalities, combined with our personal and political relationship to our communities, and our feminist and culturally grounded epistemologies that can be in tension with mainstream academic values and norms in social work.
Given who we are and our approaches to scholarship, the values of academia are often antithetical to who we are as cultural beings and feminists, which gives rise to tensions around success and general well-being for many women of color in academic settings. One of the biggest challenges to remaining rooted in our cultural traditions and feminist values while negotiating contextual dissonance comes from the active socialization into and participation in dominant academic social norms. One common aspect of this has been the way that mentees, peers, and colleagues, though benevolent and well-intentioned, may unintentionally and unconsciously appropriate scholarly ideas without thoughtful acknowledgment of the genealogy of their intellectual development. To offer an intervention to this appropriation and contextual dissonance, we posit the importance of building intellectual communities with collaborative, culturally sensitive feminist scholars who are truly responsive to issues of invisible power and privilege associated with success in academia. We believe this has the potential to encourage more reflective and allied collaboration across all aspects of our work. The discussion here is a beginning to work toward building such relationships to support the well-being and success of all scholars, particularly women of color and other marginalized people, who may be engaging in collaborative projects across positions of power and identity.
Challenges for Women of Color in Academia
Over time, many women of color and transnational feminists have documented the intersectional dynamics of social identity that characterize the lived experiences and structural inequality of women of color (see e.g., Crenshaw,1991; Hill-Collins, 2000; Mehrotra, 2010). It is our view that these interconnected dynamics of oppression, power, and privilege can also be seen in the politics of academia, including in research, teaching, and service. Despite the fact that women of color professors may have access to new forms of social power and privilege, such as improvement in socioeconomic and/or professional status, the influence of race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and other intersecting identities remain salient and continue to impact other lived experiences such as physical, mental, and social health and professional power in the hierarchy of the university setting. 2 For example, numerous studies have shown that women of color struggle with internalized oppressions and feelings of inadequacy, experience high levels of overt and covert discrimination, are often overextended due to high student and community demands, and are less likely to receive mentorship and achieve tenure (Gutierrez y Muhs, Niemann Flores, Gonzalez, & Harris, 2012; Niemann, 1999; Smith, 1999; Trotman, 2009; Trotman & Green, 2013). Trotman and Green (2013) write that the research concludes that “women faculty of color are the most stressed, the least satisfied, the least represented, possibly the least supported, and the most overworked of all faculty in academe” (p. 294). Given this reality for women of color within the academy, we want to elucidate the complexities of collaborative scholarship for us from our positionalities as feminist social work academics and specifically offer concrete suggestions for building intellectual and political collaboration that honors cultural and feminist values.
Because we are currently in faculty positions within academic institutions, we also understand that we are part of the economy of academia and cannot exist completely outside of the context in which we are embedded. However, as we continue to attenuate and shape the ways we share and participate in academic culture, and navigate the complex relationships between cultural and feminist values and academic norms, we offer the following “feminist treaty” to serve as some beginning guidelines for graduate students, mentees, colleagues, and mentors as a gentle request for conscious, respectful, and allied intellectual collaboration within and across our diverse positionalities. This is not meant to be a comprehensive or prescriptive set of ideas, but rather, it is our hope that our recommendations will begin a discussion that will contribute to realistic and responsive strategies for ongoing social work scholarship that is not only theorizing about but also practicing social justice in processes of collaborative knowledge production.
Women of Color and Feminist Values: Nurturing Mentorship and Collaboration
As feminists of color who are deeply dedicated to scholarship that informs social change, we imagine a world for future social work scholars, where a range of ideas are met with enthusiasm and encouragement rather than confusion and dissuasion from activist agendas. We also see the critical importance of relationships and mentorship and hold these as sacred. Consistent with the perspective of Ortega and Busch-Armendariz (2014), we see mentoring of doctoral students as a feminist concern and critical to growing scholarship that challenges structural inequalities and supports the development of scholars from marginalized/traditionally underrepresented groups. Relatedly, as radical women attempting to legitimate voices from outside the mythical norm, we often give of our ideas and selves freely, in hopes of adding critical and diverse voices to knowledge production. All of these values inform how we want to think about collaboration, building of intellectual community, and mentorship.
Upon reflection about our own training as social work scholars, we realize that our value of collaborative research and collective generation of ideas is linked directly to our respective cultural traditions and feminist values, and we continue to learn by trial and error about what this kind of work entails. We recognize that neither of us was directly trained on the nuances of respectful coauthorship or the tenets of collaboration. Although we have disciplinary guidelines from professional academic bodies, such as American Psychological Association (APA), Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), and the National Association of Social Work (NASW), we have also come up against the limitations of these guidelines. Although they are useful in many regards, they often fail to recognize relationality (both a feminist and culturally based value/approach), the influence of social positionality, and power that can have important impacts on the dynamics of collaboration. As we review published guidelines for ethical conduct of research and authorship (American Sociological Association, 1999; APA, 2002; CSWE, 2006), we are also reminded that most disciplinary bodies consider these guidelines for studies or projects that have been developed or implemented with concrete material data. For example, according to the APA: Authorship credit should be the individual's contribution to the study. An author is considered anyone involved with initial research design, data collection and analysis, manuscript drafting, and final approval. However, the following do not necessarily qualify for authorship: providing funding or resources, mentorship, or contributing research but not helping with the publication itself. (http://www.apa.org/research/responsible/publication/index.aspx)
When we introduce new feminist scholars to this nebulous culture of academia, it is our responsibility to convey values and expectations that reflect mutually beneficial and socially just processes. It is our aim to expand the mandates of professionalized guidelines to incorporate understandings of power, historical and contemporary relationships, culture, and respect into our approach to collaborative scholarship. Further, we wish to infuse the importance of considering respectful collaboration at all stages of the knowledge development process, from early conceptualizing of ideas through dissemination.
Beyond the APA Guidelines: A Feminist Treaty for Allied Collaboration
We are encouraged by current discussion regarding the importance of responsible conduct of publication in social work research (Bowen, 2013a, 2013b; Thyer, 2013). In a recent editorial, for example, Bowen (2013a) proposes a set of authorship guidelines for social work scholars, which articulates consideration of ideas and conceptualization in the authorship process 3 and also encourages clarifying responsibilities of coauthors to one another (pp. 10–11). As we appreciate the growing discussion of guideline development related to authorship, we hope to add suggestions about framing not only products but also the complex processes of knowledge production. At the heart of our treaty is the notion that power dynamics are ever present in collaborations with colleagues of varying identities in all aspects of our work. As women of color who are also negotiating other dynamics of social positionality (such as sexual orientation, class history, ability, etc.), we are always aware of our status in the hierarchy of prestige in the academy. Although many of the published ethical guidelines work to ensure safety for the intellectual property of graduate students, given a history of exploitation from faculty members, we believe that it is also important to consider how the intersection of whiteness, male gender, and/or other forms of privilege based on social positionality in graduate students working with women of color faculty complicate dynamics of power and potential exploitation. This means we must have the courage to engage in difficult conversations; those that actively make transparent the influences of power, privilege, oppression, and the disparate effects of the economy of academia. We must have honest conversations about our personal identities in relation to our work and how these interact with institutional power. In essence, we must build a culture of communication over time and across varied relationships. This work is not easy, particularly given that the neoliberal, Western, masculinist culture of academia does not often encourage a culture of transparency or open communication. However, it is our view that working toward this with a vision of culturally relevant, feminist, collaborative work across diverse social positionalities is important to feminist and critical scholarship within our field. The following treaty is a beginning guide to building this culture within collaborations across difference.
Article 1: Acknowledge intellectual ancestors
From an indigenous perspective, the concept of ancestors transcends biological and socially constructed family. Ancestors are all things that support and sustain life including physical, geographical, spiritual, emotional, and social realms (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000; Walters, Beltrán, Chae, & Evans-Campbell, 2011). This way of understanding the world provides a more holistic lens through which to see the interconnectedness, importance, and depth of all relationships. As such, we can begin to imagine more intimate connections with those with whom we engage in working relationships. Together with our feminist commitments, we can see their successes and struggles as our own and work toward mutually beneficial processes. We encourage thoughtful and deliberate consideration of the influences of others (mentors, colleagues, peers, community members, etc.) on one’s work and thinking. This goes beyond including citations of previously published research, which can act as another manifestation of (post)positivist, Western, masculine processes of academic legibility, an incremental reproduction of similar knowledge. Although it is absolutely necessary to use traditional citation protocols to acknowledge the development of one’s scholarly trajectory, we believe there are other ways of honoring the influences of our ancestors. For example: Place acknowledgements in sections that are visible early on in the publication (e.g., on title pages or in initial footnotes). If the publication source does not allow this, try to position an acknowledgment section where it will not be lost. Extend invitations for coauthorship. Although this may impact the prized goal of single author publications, it supports mentorship as well as the growth and sustaining of positive nurturing collaborations, which prioritize relationships over products of individualism. For example, if colleagues have been coauthors on early generations of publication development such as conference or other presentations, it is a good protocol to ask whether they wish to continue participating and/or to be acknowledged for contributions on subsequent developments. Be clear and up front when discussing collaboration expectations. For faculty members working with doctoral or graduate students, this means articulating and sharing concrete guidelines or parameters early in relationships for assuring acknowledgment of student contributions and original work as well as that of the faculty member. Part of this means having difficult discussions about the dynamics of power in intersectional identities as well as honestly describing the necessary markers for student and faculty success. For example, second author role for faculty on student first authored papers demonstrates mentorship and record of publication, both necessary for tenure. Students need to develop a portfolio that will ensure future employment as well as writing and publishing skills, so they should be given opportunities to be lead or sole author from a faculty member’s established project.
Article 2: Practice humility
The practice of humility goes against the socialization process of mainstream academic training and many Western and patriarchal ideals wherein individuals are taught to promote themselves as singular experts on a given subject or practice. In an editorial discussing the importance of cultural humility versus cultural competence for physician training, Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998) describe humility practices as an ongoing engagement in “self-reflection and self-critique as lifelong learners” (p. 118) including active reflection on power imbalances in relationships. They describe self-reflection as “realistic and ongoing self appraisal” (p. 119) and further describe humility as a process in which one is able to “let go of a false sense of security” of assumed knowledge and stereotypes as well as clearly articulating when one does not have an answer (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). Building on Tervalon and Murray Garcia’s ideas, DasGupta (2008) describes narrative humility as an active reflective relationship with stories of the “Other.” She writes that narrative humility understands: … stories are not objects that we can comprehend or master, but rather dynamic entities that we can approach and engage with, while simultaneously remaining open to their ambiguity and contradiction, and engaging in constant self-evaluation and self-critique about issues such as our own role in the story, our expectations of the story, our responsibilities to the story, and our identifications with the story—how the story attracts or repels us because it reminds us of any number of personal stories. (p. 981)
Practicing transparency, surrendering some of the power we wield as social work scholars across our varying positionalities, and acknowledging the absolute interconnectedness of all things, we might be able to buffer the impacts of historical legacies and contemporary realities of sociostructural and interpersonal inequality in our scholarship and practice. Although DasGupta (2008) writes specifically about physicians, her conceptualization of narrative humility applies to the field of social work and social work scholarship. We believe that engaging in an ongoing practice of profound humility is central to the work of collaborative, culturally based, eminist social work scholarship, as we engage in teaching and research that decisively tackles social justice issues. Although we cannot immediately change the historically oppressive structures embedded in academia, by responding to each other as humble students, we can create new dynamics that honor our feminist and cultural values to lift each other up and out of the margins.
Article 3: Develop a practice of self-reflection and reflexivity
Feminist scholarship has a long tradition of attention to reflexivity and the ways that a scholar’s social positionality and relationship to the research are an integral part of the research process. Many feminist scholars importantly assert that reflexivity is a central part of subverting neoliberal, positivist stances regarding objectivity in research (see e.g., England, 1994, Hesse-Biber & Piatelli, 2007). For instance, England (1994) defines reflexivity as being a “self-critical sympathetic introspection and the self-conscious analytical scrutiny of self as researcher” (p. 82). Fundamentally, across varied definitions of the concept, reflexivity insists that the social positionality of the researcher, and their critical reflection regarding their identities and biases, is central to how knowledge is seen, understood, and produced. It is our view that reflexivity is not only a stance but an active practice that acknowledges that all knowing is dynamic, evolving, and connected to the social location and power held by researchers and participants. In addition, the idea of reflective practice has been an important perspective in professional social work and has emphasized reflexivity and self-reflection throughout any given process (Yip, 2006). For example, Mattson (2014) specifically points out that critical reflection, when used with particular attention to the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, has the potential to challenge one’s unconscious assumptions and actions that may be reinforcing systems of oppression.
Developing practices of reflexivity and self-reflection, including in relationship building and throughout all stages of the research process, is a critical component to building constructive, healthy, allied collaboration across diverse social positionalities. When we think about reflexivity as central to acknowledging the impacts of power differentials in research, it is important to remember that power is at play throughout the research process and related relationships, not solely between the researcher and the research participants. In her discussion of reflexivity in feminist research, England (1994) raises significant questions about what it means to do ethical research as she asks: In our rush to be more inclusive and conceptualize difference and diversity, might we be guilty of appropriating the voices of “others”? How do we deal with this when planning and conducting our research? And can we incorporate the voices of “others” without colonizing them in a manner that reinforces patterns of domination? Can these types of dilemmas be resolved, and if so, how? (p. 81) Know your own social and institutional positionalities: Who are you? What are your primary identities? What are the areas in your life where you have power/privilege? Where are you in marginalized or target positions? What kind of institutional roles/power do you have? How might this impact collaboration and/or stakes of your work? Understand your own epistemology: How do your social identities impact your ways of knowing? Your potential blind spots or biases? What is your own social, political, and intellectual biography and how does this impact your research at all stages of the process? What are some concrete ways to build reflexivity and self-reflection into the process of developing collaboration and implementing projects? How can this be both a personal and a collective process?
Article 4: Develop an ally agenda
Across movements for social justice, there is a great deal of discourse regarding the importance of allyship.
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Nieto, Boyer, Goodwin, Johnson, and Collier Smith (2012), in their definition of allyship, write: allyship is awareness plus action…allyship skills allow us to use the privileges that accompany our agent rank on behalf of justice and liberation for everyone. We find we can make effective use of empathy, changing our own frame of reference to understand and be understood across differences. With allyship skills, a member of an agent group can be sensitive to targets' experiences, acknowledge internalized dominance, and own privilege and entitlement to use them for social change. An ally will challenge others who carry the same agent rank, will call to task agent institutions and will expose agent norms (p. 127).
In addition to considering allyship across positionalities, an important consideration is also to commit to collaboration and cooperation among women of color. Because of the academic norms outlined earlier, playing out of internalized oppression, and the culture of scarcity and competition that such norms can foster, to work collaboratively requires intention and can be a truly radical choice.
Discussion
Although this treaty is not exhaustive, it provides a foundation for beginning to think about what it means to create and sustain allied, feminist, and culturally grounded collaboration across difference. As scholars of power, privilege, and oppression can attest, the complex interplays of these experiences are unending, and we are up against many systematic and institutional challenges. Achieving equality within academic spaces and building models of constructive, egalitarian models of collaboration is lifelong work that will continue to shift form, as we both alter and adjust to the changing context of academia. As all knowledge is evolving, dynamic, culturally and contextually based, we do not see this as a complete list of expectations but rather as a starting point for application and expansion that may be useful in diverse scholarly settings and relationships. We suggest that this treaty would be well suited for discussion as part of doctoral training and research methods courses, faculty seminars as well as junior and senior faculty mentorship programs. It might also be a helpful tool to use when creating collaborative and interdisciplinary research teams and to review throughout different phases of the research process.
As feminist women of color, we believe it is an absolute imperative to live by our own agreements and values. As we attempt to repatriate the idea of an equitable and mutually beneficial treaty process, we aim to do so by honoring our end of the obligations and responsibilities we assume. We believe that the process of allyship and reflexivity are dynamic processes, not fixed states and that we must continue to be engaged as such. As bell hooks (1994) asserts: Until we are all able to accept the interlocking, interdependent nature of systems of domination and recognize specific ways each system is maintained, we will continue to act in ways that undermine our individual quest for freedom and our collective liberation struggle. (p. 244)
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research reported by Ramona Beltrán in this publication was supported indirectly by the following: National Institute On Minority Health And Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P60MD006909; National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R25MH084565; National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number K24DA031613. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.