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.
Leigh Patel is a writer, educator, and cultural worker. Her work is based in the knowledge that as long as oppression has existed so have freedom struggles. She is a community-based researcher as well as an eldercare provider. Prior to being employed as a professor, she was a middle school language arts teacher, a journalist, and a state-level policymaker. She is also a proud national board member of Education for Liberation, a nonprofit that focuses on supporting low-income people, particularly youth of color, to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face. Professor Patel’s writing ranges from short essays for public outlets, such as Beacon Broadside, NPR, The Conversation and The Feminist Wire, and the Chronicle for Higher Education. Her latest book, There is No Study Without Struggle: Confronting Settler Colonialism in Higher Education, from Beacon Press connects the distinct yet deeply connected forms of oppression while also shedding light on the crucial nature of political education for social transformation. Her walk-on song is “Can I Kick It” by ATCQ. You can follow her on twitter @lipatel. K. Wayne Yang writes about decolonization and everyday epic organizing, particularly from underneath ghetto colonialism, often with his frequent collaborator, Eve Tuck, and sometimes for an avatar called La Paperson. Currently, they are convening The Land Relationships Super Collective with several Indigenous and non-Indigenous community organizations engaged in land-based projects. Dr. Yang’s work transgresses the line between scholarship and community, as evidenced by his involvement in urban education and community organizing. Before his academic career, he was a public school teacher in Lisjan Ohlone territory, now called Oakland, California, where he co-founded the Avenues Project, a youth development non-profit organization, as well as East Oakland Community High School, which were inspired by the Survival Programs of the Black Panther P
