Day 1- Radical Participatory Research: Decolonizing Participatory Processes
-
So let’s begin with a land acknowledgement of where I am are in Washington DC
-
Land acknowledgements don’t change allocation of resources, but provide an alternative past
-
Mythologies can be living or dead, so let’s take the time to think through decolonizing participatory research
-
In West Africa, let’s go back to village raids where slaves were taken across The Atlantic to the americas, and women would braid seeds in their hair and brought it with them to the Americas. They were the original asset mappers
-
Consider midwives in Ancient Greece speaking with animal herders, to leverage contraceptive information into their midwife practices
-
Shamans who took plant knowledge through apprenticeships
— All of this constitutes research, and has happened all the way to today, since Participatory Research is an ancient practice
— Instead of an investigation it can be a pluriverse of definitions for research
— And the pluriverse of purposes can be beyond establishing facts and reaching a conclusion
-
Methods like videography
-
Ways of doing methods like community involvement
-
Methodology: Set of principles to choose methods in a process
-
By empowering others, we reinforce hierarchy. We should be giving up power
-
And facilitation is a power on its own— as researchers we can set the terms of the research goals and agenda
-
Interpretation happens without community members present
-
In-between spaces is where power is wielded most greatly
-
-
Community meetings are always present
-
They outnumber professional researchers
-
Community members own artifacts and narratives
-
Who participate
-
Who initiates
-
Who leads
— In community driven design, the community is always participating and leading
— Typical participatory research is colonial, regardless of who initiates, as UXRs are always participating, but there is co-leadership with the community
-
It’s hard for a medical doctor to resolve medical issues, by relying on just textbooks, without having your knowledge of how your body works and how it hurts
-
You can solve health problems without certain institutional knowledge like dehydration, hunger, etc.
— First, there is the example of digital literacy project in India, which had many components
— Next, I have a failed example of failed research for international summer learning program, where DC high school students are present
-
Trust is built and the community builds on that
-
In the case of a drinking water challenge, “Ensuring a safe, sustainable, equitable, and affordable drinking water future” is a life-centered challenge for animals
-
Rarely do we have an emotional empathetic responses, and compassionate empathy to move to act
-
Compassionate empathy is hard to reach due to financial arrangement, and applying research pro-bono to make a design decision
-
RPR just says embed empathy on team with community members
— Trauma responsive design is embedded with RPR, and components are more easily embedded
— We also blur the lines between research through design, and non-linearity comes from direction of community’s, which doesn’t have pre-conceived notions of what works
— Systems research is easier to do, as people get implicit and explicitly barriers, and have greater understanding of systems
-
i.e. Imagine world where development happens without McDonalds in every country
- Renumeration and equality. Where community members are paid as same as researchers
- Equity, people giving up time they could spend doing something else
-
Error not to pay students, as professionals not being paid were less impacted than the students were
-
The compensation choice is theirs
-
The key question to ask is: Have majority received sustained and sustainable shift in power?
-
Example of how RPR can flip to another colonial style research
-
One person became researcher, project manager, engineer, and received promotion
-
People experienced shift in power
-
Three people from multi-national team brought in to diversify the team
-
For-profit organization push back
-
I invite you to give up power and practice RPR
-
How do you make make sure best practices implemented?
-
Lived experience are more up-to-date than institutional knowledge, so we emphasize that
-
Can we square RPR with profit motive?
-
ROI is greater based on bond with community
-
You can try RPR out with low-stakes projects, and build from there
-
How can we move orgs to RPR with legal and compliance research?
-
Don’t jump to RPR in one step. Create maturity ladder for next step to move things in the next direction
-
Ways to minimize extra burden for participants?
-
Hidden components deal with pace of work , which moves at the pace of availability, trust, and relationships
-
Be comfortable moving at slower pace
-
Tell us more about failed participatory research. What did you learn?
-
I should have done more education on what process means
-
People didn’t care about giving up power and let RPR work
-
Once there was success, more investment happened
-
How is a RPR community constructed or defined?
-
Find qualitatively representative sample for community
-
Attempt to get a more qualitatively representative sample, and go through bias awareness training to manage tensions within the community