Reflections on Conducting Community-Engaged Research During COVID-19

As an emerging scholar committed to social justice and anti-oppressive praxis, I entered my master’s program in Geography at York University, Toronto, with the goal of contributing to new theoretical insights and meaningful outcomes for research participants in Thailand. While initially the concept of communityengaged research appeared to alleviate the tensions between these two goals, the realities of the university’s constraints on graduate student research coupled with those of the COVID-19 pandemic have made it clear that this endeavor would not be straightforward. The inherent messiness of balancing academic matters (e.g., contributing to new theory and demonstrating an adequate level of rigor) with social justice concerns (e.g., eliminating epistemological violence and contributing meaningful outcomes for research participants) in community-engaged research has only intensified as COVID-19 has reconfigured our social relations, exacerbating existing inequities and restricting our social mobility, particularly across international borders. In this reflection, I consider how remotely collaborating with local research assistants in my own graduate research project typifies these tensions. More specifically, I posit that the COVID-19 pandemic has further underscored the importance of researchers, particularly white men researchers such as myself, to be willing to consistently re-evaluate our projects, and embrace flexibility, accountability, and the removal of ego from our work.

Theoretical proposal for the relationship between epistemology and ethics in psychology

The concept of epistemological violence and recommendations on how to avoid it have been extensively developed by Thomas Teo. The objective of this article is to elaborate a conceptual proposal to investigate the relationship between ethics and the epistemology of empirical research in psychology. It is contended that some concepts of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition strengthen the ethical scope of the concept of epistemological violence. This article presents the concept of epistemological violence and shows how the production of psychological knowledge can have negative consequences for groups and individuals. The relevance of broadening the ethical dimension of the concept, theorizing the negative consequences of knowledge as probabilities of misrecognition, is discussed. To this end, central aspects of the theory of recognition are developed that will allow the consideration of epistemological violence as an accomplice in the practice of social injustices.

Culture-Sensitive Communication in Applied Developmental Research

Communication about child development between persons with different cultural preoccupations requires that author and audience agree without coercion on how to connect their perspectives. Western cultural hegemony persists in many international fora under the guise of “globalization,” giving rise to systematically distorted communication in ways that do epistemological violence to indigenous cultural models in Africa. The dominant paradigm of public basic schooling is sustained by institutionalized path dependency and construes educational success as extracting the learner from her community of origin. Consensus-building within a framework of mutually respectful communication involves bridging, coordination or fusion. Societal progress is a different kind of “development” than ontogenesis. A given cultural group’s developmental niche for its children is part of a chronosystem that changes over the course of history. An individual’s transactions with significant others are embedded in a complex and dynamic sociocultural system, to which programming of early childhood education should respond.

The Social and Epistemological Violence of Inclusive Education for Deaf Learners

This paper begins by describing several recent human rights complaints brought by Canadian parents of deaf children who have not been able to access an education in sign language in provinces where a deaf school has been closed. The paper outlines some ways in which so-called inclusive educational systems perpetuate social and epistemological violence by depriving deaf children of direct instruction in sign language and access to a community of signing deaf peers. Inclusive educational systems have disrupted intergenerational sign language transmission and resulted in deaf children’s loss of identity. The paper calls for sign language policies and sign language-medium educational practices to ensure the viability of deaf futures.

Epistemological violence, essentialization dan tantangan etik dalam penelitian psikologi sosial

Tulisan ini hendak membahas persoalan etik dalam penelitian psikologi sosial di Indonesia, yang sejauh ini masih jarang dikaji. Secara khusus, tulisan ini dibangun dengan mengacu pada konsep epistemological violence. Merujuk pada konsep tersebut, penulis berargumen bahwa penelitian psikologi sosial di Indonesia memiliki risiko etis untuk mereproduksi kekerasan epistemologis melalui penggunaan cara pandang yang bersifat essentializing. Mengacu pada argumen ini, penulis mengajukan dua rekomendasi. Pertama, pada tataran personal, penulis memandang pentingnya mengembangkan refleksivitas sebagai sarana untuk mengasah kepekaan etis peneliti. Kedua, terkait dengan peran asosisasi psikologi sosial, penulis berpendapat tentang perlunya asosiasi untuk mendorong diskursus yang lebih kritis tentang etik penelitian dalam studi-studi psikologi sosial di Indonesia.

Beyond the subject–object binary: Towards cosmopolitan knowledge

Rather than distinguishing, as Held’s (2020) article does, between “subjective” and “objective” forms of knowledge, this commentary makes the counter argument that the subject–object relation is an integral feature of all forms of knowledge, which can be more usefully distinguished according to differences in the form of the subject–object relation. I specifically differentiate the subject–object relation of Western social science from those of everyday knowledge and non-Western forms of knowledge. Western social science’s epistemological violence to other(ed) forms of knowledge is enabled, this commentary argues, by the false assumption that it is a subject-less objectivity while other forms of knowledge are subjective. The alternative epistemological subject position introduced here contrasts the epistemic imperialism of Western social science with a cosmopolitan vision of a dynamic global knowledge driven by the constructive articulation of differently limited knowledge forms. I then discuss this paper’s epistemological subject position in relation to class and intersectionality theory.

Mistaking the subject of violence in scientific psychology

Barbara Held (2020) claims that critical and Indigenous psychologists are right to point out how scientific psychology has contributed to findings that do undue harm to racial groups, but are wrong to suggest that, due to epistemological violence, scientific psychology cannot provide psychological truths that may inform progressive public policies. She rightly questions the relevance to violence of “for” and “about” findings in being linked to metaphors of “below” and “above” as discussed in Thomas Teo’s work, but then pivots to offer a violent corrective, asserting the importance of objectivity for capturing the situated subjectivity of individuals engaged in the oppressive practice of othering. Despite its promise for socially just consequences, Held offers a psychological science that remains in itself a subject of violence.

The danger of “the truth”

This commentary applauds Held’s (2020) argument for the importance of considering the risk of epistemological violence implicit in psychology. In addition, this commentary suggests the argument can be furthered by looking to the ontological turn within anthropology and considering not only the risk of epistemic, but of ontological violence in psychological research as well as in therapeutic practice. Lastly, this commentary questions whether academics, in their often privileged positions will ever be able to go beyond the structural violence of hegemonic structures or if change should come from below.