Weaving an Otherwise: In-Relations Methodological Practice

Who (and what) are you bearing witness to (and for) through your research? When you witness, what claims are you making about who and what matters? What does your research forget, and does it do it on purpose?

This book reconceptualizes qualitative research as an in-relations process, one that is centered on, fully concerned with, and lifts up those who have been and continue to be dispossessed, harmed, dehumanized, and erased because of white supremacy, settler colonialism, or other hegemonic world views.

It prompts scholars to make connections between themselves as “researchers” and affect, ancestors, community, family and kinship, space and place, and the more than human beings with whom they are always already in community.

What are the modes and ways of knowing through which we approach our research? How can the practice of research bring us closer to the peoples, places, more than human beings, histories, presents, and futures in which we are embedded and connected to? If we are the instruments of our research, then how must we be attentive to all of the affects and relations that make us who we are and what will become? These questions animate Weaving an Otherwise, providing a wellspring from which we think about our interconnections to the past, present, and future possibilities of research.

After an opening chapter by the editors that explores the consequences and liberating opportunities of rejecting dominant qualitative methodologies that erase the voices of the subordinated and disdained, the contributors of nine chapters explore and enact approaches that uncover hidden connections and reveal unconscious value systems.

Dr.Amanda R. Tachine is Navajo from Ganado, Arizona. She is Náneesht’ézhí Táchii’nii(Zuni Red Running into Water clan) born for Tl’izilani (Many Goats clan). Sheis an Assistant Professor in Educational Leadership & Innovation at ArizonaState University. Amanda’s research explores the relationship between systemicand structural histories of settler colonialism and the ongoing erasure ofIndigenous presence and belonging in college settings using qualitativeIndigenous methodologies. Her dissertation titled, Monsters and Weapons:Navajo students’ stories on their journeys to college was awarded the 2016American Educational Research Association Division J Dissertation of the Year.She has published in the Journal of Higher Education, QualitativeInquiry, International Review of Qualitative Research, InternationalJournal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and other scholarly outlets.

Dr.Z Nicolazzo is an associate professor of Trans* Studies in Education in theCenter for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. Z’sresearch explores how discourses of gender pervade and mediate collegeenvironments, with particular attention paid to trans people. Additionally, herlatest scholarship focuses on how trans people cultivate future possible selvesthrough digital/online platforms, as well as how higher education invests inthe logics of transmisogyny. Her first book, Trans* in college: Transgenderstudents’ strategies for navigating campus life and the institutional politicsof inclusion, was awarded the 2017 American Educational ResearchAssociation Division J Publication of the Year Award, and was published byStylus in 2017.

Leigh Patel is a writer, educator, and cultural worker. Her work is based in theknowledge that as long as oppression has existed so have freedom struggles. Sheis a community-based researcher as well as an eldercare provider. Prior tobeing employed as a professor, she was a middle school language arts teacher, ajournalist, and a state-level policymaker. She is also a proud national boardmember of Education for Liberation, a nonprofit that focuses on supportinglow-income people, particularly youth of color, to understand and challenge theinjustices their communities face. 

Professor Patel’swriting ranges from short essays for public outlets, such as Beacon Broadside,NPR, The Conversation and The Feminist Wire, and the Chronicle for HigherEducation. Her latest book, There is NoStudy Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education, fromBeacon Press connects the distinct yet deeply connected forms of oppressionwhile also shedding light on the crucial nature of political education forsocial transformation. Her walk-on song is “Can I Kick It” by ATCQ. You canfollow her on twitter @lipatel.

K. Wayne Yang writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing, particularlyfrom underneath ghetto colonialism, often with his frequent collaborator, EveTuck, and sometimes for an avatar called La Paperson. Currently, they areconvening The Land Relationships Super Collective with several Indigenous andnon-Indigenous community organizations engaged in land-based projects. Dr.Yang’s work transgresses the line between scholarship and community, asevidenced by his involvement in urban education and community organizing.Before his academic career, he was a public school teacher in Lisjan Ohloneterritory, now called Oakland, California, where he co-founded the AvenuesProject, a youth development non-profit organization, as well as East OaklandCommunity High School, which were inspired by the Survival Programs of theBlack Panther Party. He is provost of Muir College and professor in ethnicstudies at UC San Diego.