What and How We See Matters: Critical Theories for Anti-Racist Adolescent Research

The second installment of the Special Issue “Critical Approaches to Adolescent Development: Reflections on theories and methods for pursuing anti-racist developmental science” focuses primarily on theory and the theoretical lenses that shape how we “see” adolescents. Such a focus is necessary for moving forward anti-racist adolescent research. Theories serve as starting points, establishing our assumptions about what we know, the place where we move from. We cannot “do” better research if we do not take stock of what we “know” and more critically “how” we know it. The authors in this issue do this with candor, clarity, and intentionality, offering us theoretical frames that identify, name, and destabilize the status quo. They offer us anti-racist lenses and language to (re)define what adolescence and adolescent development is and does—and what it ought to be. They present theories that embed action and activism, that move us—across disciplines, outside of academic spaces, and into spaces that are often silenced and invisible. They shift our vision from objective, white-centric knowledge to multiple ways of knowing. It is our hope that the contributions in this double Special Issue will change how we see and do research with adolescents, and also change us as scholars and humans.

Through the Eyes of Another: Using a Narrative Lens to Navigate Complex Social-Ecological Systems and to Embrace Multiple Ways of Knowing

Many social-ecological issues are characterised by a multiplicity of stakeholder voices with often fundamentally divergent values, beliefs or worldviews. Those differences in perspective can be also viewed as different narratives on individual, community and cultural scales that both express and reinforce people’s identity, value system and manifested behaviours. Navigating between those narratives requires approaches that facilitate the co-existence of multiple ways of knowing. The currently dominant knowledge production system of Western scientific knowledge often fails to meet those challenges due to its positivist and reductionist tendencies. However, embracing a co-existence of knowledges isn’t just necessary from a pragmatic perspective to adequately engage in those situations, but also represents an ethical imperative that includes acknowledging the colonial and oppressive history of Western scientific knowledge toward other knowledges, especially regarding Indigenous knowledge production systems. We propose adopting a narrative lens as a metaphor for embracing multiple ways of knowing and being as narratives play a key role for human cognition, communication and in shaping and expressing fundamental values at different levels. Using an example of contested narratives from a fisheries management conflict, we illustrate how narratives can help to develop a richer understanding of social-ecological conflicts. We also reflect on some narrative discourses commonly used in marine science that stem from the binary nature-culture divide prominent in Western scientific knowledge and discuss their implication for hindering sustainable ocean governance. Furthermore, we demonstrate how storytelling methods can be used to surface and share those narratives and to unravel the underlying values and fundamental beliefs and to re-shape them. The narrative lens we propose is suitable under multiple simultaneous disciplinary homes including Indigenous methodologies and systems thinking. They share the key features of having a holistic and relational approach that recognises the co-existence of multiple ways of knowing and being and use self-reflection as key for critical engagement with the situation and to surface and acknowledge one’s own internal narratives. This represents no exhaustive review of narrative inquiry, but a reflective journey illustrating how engaging with narratives can facilitate knowledge co-existence including different ways of relating to human and non-human beings.

Threshold concepts and sustainability: features of a contested paradigm

Threshold concepts describe the core concepts that people must master if they are to effectively think from within a new discipline or paradigm. Here, I discuss threshold concepts relevant to the science and practice of sustainability, unpacking the persistent challenges and critiques that sustainability has faced over the decades. Sustainability is immensely popular, but also endlessly critiqued as being naïve, vague, and easy to co-opt. I argue that these challenges can be traced to sustainability’s status as a robust, alternative world view to the industrial, neoliberal paradigm. The threshold concepts discussed below are troublesome, and new learners face significant challenges when trying to learn them and move into the paradigm. Here, I review five threshold concepts that are widely discussed as important to sustainability: complexity, collaborative institutions, multiple ways of knowing, no panaceas, and adaptability. This list is not intended as comprehensive but exemplary of sustainability as a pluralistic paradigm. Recognizing the special status of these and other threshold concepts within sustainability, and the linkages and dependencies among them, is an important advance for sustainability education and practice. I also offer some suggestions on classroom activities that have proved effective in helping people through the process of learning these concepts.

Research, action, activism: Critical solidarities & multi-scalar powers

In this essay, I draw upon my work with the Urban Research Based Action Network (URBAN) to argue for several key principles in research for social justice: reflexivity, especially regarding our work in fraught academic institutions, and engaging multiple ways of knowing. These principles are essential to forming critical solidarities across constituencies, to recognizing and addressing issues of power at multiple scales—local, national, global, and to imagining ourselves as protagonists in our collective futures.