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The Earth Sustains Us: Feminist Collaboration in Action
- 1. THE EARTH SUSTAINS US: FEMINIST COLLABORATION IN ACTION R e s u l t s f r om R e s e a r c h ( C o n d u c t e d C o l l a b o r a t i v e l y ! ) b y Ma r n a Ha u k a n d Aimé e d e C h amb e a u 2 0 1 0 - 2 0 1 1 ( a n d c o n t i n u a l l y … ) A d a p t e d f r o m “ T h e E a r t h S u s t a i n s U s : F e m i n i s t C o l l a b o r a t i o n i n A c t i o n . ” P a p e r p r e s e n t e d a t t h e 3 2 n d An n u a l B e r g amo C o n f e r e n c e o n C u r r i c u l um T h e o r y a n d C l a s s r o om P r a c t i c e , Oc t o b e r 2 0 1 1 . D a y t o n , OH.
- 2. Overview • Research Question, Context, Literature Review • Methods • Including Researchers, Interviews, Panelists, Joint Workshop • Findings • Solidarity of Common Ground • Diversity Webs • Mutualism & Coalition • Conclusions & Further Research • Gratitude & Contact Information
- 4. Research Question What makes for effective feminist collaboration? Within a larger study of feminist pedagogy we decided to focus on an area that would help our own passion for effective collaboration • Marna and Aimée are in a cohort-based doctoral program in Sustainability Education • Marna is designing supportive, radical educational contexts for adult women and queers • Aimée researches mentorship, online group learning, and effective communities of practice which require intensive collaboration
- 5. Context & Literature • Reviewed over 100 journal articles and books on the topic of feminist collaboration • Overwhelming amount of literature on feminist pedagogy and feminist collaboration • Very fortifying, challenging, and empowering bodies of literature • Our focus was on finding the problematics, avoiding monolithic second wave approaches, learning across difference, surfacing connections with sustainability and social justice • Experienced consciousness-raising through interacting with the literature, each other, our graduate mentor, and our co-researchers
- 6. Sustainability & Regeneration Context Sustainability Across Dimensions • Both feminism and complexity theory identify that diversity is a source of strength, and that rather than something to be managed diversity is a vital resource to the vibrancy of the feminist collaborative learning experience. • For feminist and solidarity scholar Joan Clingan (2008), sustainability offers a unifying and complex construct, a "commitment to sustaining diversity, as well as health, within each of ... three types of systems” (p. 128): • ecological/biological diversity • social/cultural diversity • economic diversity
- 7. Methods
- 8. Research Methods • Conducted extensive literature review • Collaborated with each other and doctoral mentor on Course Inquiry, including topic webs on Feminism 101, Ethic of Care, Global Feminisms, Feminist Pedagogy, and IRB Tools & Research Methods • Collaborated with eight feminist scholar-practitioners on a joint panel and images for a group arts-based inquiry regarding Feminist Collaboration and Earth Regeneration (30 participants) • Conducted qualitative interviews with three contemporary feminist scholar-practitioners
- 9. Feminist Collaborative Lens Intentionality in collaboration is key • Designed Research as a Collaboration • Slowed down, used connected knowing and connected dialogue, listening closely and actively • Used tools such as Buzzword and Basecamp to facilitate collaborative writing (online collaboration tools) • Spent a great deal of time working together (deep/eternal time) • Engaged in intentional practice, especially when “negotiating difficult terrain” (Mary Ann Lieby & Leslie Henson, 1998)
- 10. Research Collaboration Itself as Research Intentionality in collaboration is key • Conducted the research collaboratively, including research design and IRB development • Designed workshops collaboratively • Conducted interviews collaboratively • Studied data collaboratively • Wrote and edited collaboratively • Presented collaboratively
- 11. Research Interviews Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs • Research Fields: Black & Gender Queer Feminisms, Feminist Ancestors • Developed Ecological Models for Polyphonic Feminisms Dr. Denise Mitten • Research Fields: Sustainability, Adventure Ed • Leads Research in Women Outdoor Experiential Education Dr. Alecia Youngblood Jackson • Rural Education and Qualitative Inquiry • Developed Rhizovocality Model
- 13. Synthesis of Findings Mutualism Diversity Solidarity
- 14. Findings Overview Chart Common Ground Webs of Diversity Mutualism Metaphors Common Ground, Shared Space, Earth, Shared Goals Webs of Webs New Forests of Sisterhood Themes Rootedness, Earthing, Sharing, Process, Power-Shifting, Self- Leadership, Solidarity Differential Consciousness, Diversity as Strength, Cultures of Dissent, Decolonization Political Love and Sisterhood, Coalition, Alliances of Alliances Skills, Strategies • Staying Rooted • Connect with Ancestors • Collaborate Across Generations • Ground with the Earth • Embodiment • Differential Consciousness and Critical Consciousness • Increase Inclusiveness rather than Domination and Opposition • Detoxification/ Decolonization • Celebratory and Robust • Using connected knowing and connected dialogue • Pro-active Connection Weaving • Political love • Caring for each other’s souls • Ecological interdependence • Love as the practice of freedom • An infinitely strong force
- 15. Common Ground Webs of Diversity Mutualism Metaphors Common Ground, Shared Space, Earth, Shared Goals Webs of Webs New Forests of Sisterhood Themes Rootedness, Earthing, Sharing, Process, Power- Shifting, Self-Leadership, Solidarity Differential Consciousness, Diversity as Strength, Cultures of Dissent, Decolonization Political Love and Sisterhood, Coalition, Alliances of Alliances Skills, Strategies • Sourcing energy • Focus on Shared Purpose • Self-Connection and Self-Care Allows Focus on Shared Purpose • Share Agreements around Process • Process and Content Congruent • Power Shifting • Honoring Needs & Self-Leadership • Presence &Access • Solidarity • Divergent thinking supported • Welcome cultures of dissent • Difference is strength building, not just tolerable • Share credit in shared work • Zigzag between polyvocality • Don’t erase your partner • Positionality • Build strength- based relational leadership • Care as if related • Political sisterhood (must also confront differences) • Connect through difference • Know and name conflict • Use narrative to connect via vulnerability • Build group experience • Writing increases intimacy without enforcing agreement • Coalition • Communities of Meaning • Alliances of alliances Findings Overview Chart
- 16. Collaborate Across Diversity Coalition Coalition Mutualism Diversity Webs Solidarity Common Ground Solidarity Differentials Connected Knowing Detoxify/ Decolonize Support Cultures of Dissent Rootedness Shared Process Self-Leadership Access & Presence Love & Political Sisterhood Vulnerability & Willingness to be Uncomfortable Shared Writing Strength Focus
- 17. Three-Aspect Model Connection Common Web Ground Creation Mutualism Support Amplifying Feedback Loops Networks Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (butterfly effect) Metaphors Collaborative Qualities Complexity Concepts Diversity Connected Knowing & Dialogue Differential Consciousness Welcoming Dissent Don’t Erase Your Partner Detoxification Decolonization Divergent Thinking Solidarity Self-Leadership & Self-Care Rootedness Grounding Shared Purpose Process & Content Congruence Feminist Collaboration Practices Coalition & Alliance Love as Freedom Mutual Sisterhoods CR’d Ethic of Care Shared Experience Communities of Meaning
- 18. Solidarity of Common Ground In Common Ground we find rootedness as an ecologically inspired form of connectedness and grounding that facilitates feminist collaboration. Common ground can be found in both the project and the process of feminist collaboration and activism. Elements: • Rootedness & Recharge • Shared Process • Presence & Access • Self Leaders & Power Shifting
- 19. Diversity Webs The web of diversity strengthens collaboration, creating robust connections that hold and support feminist teaching, learning, and activism. This, our second metaphor, is the space in which all three metaphors combine as warp and weft on the loom, or circular and radial threads in the web. Elements: • Detoxify/Decolonize/Differential Consciousness • Connected Knowing/Connected Dialogue/Divergent Thinking • Collaborating Across Differentials • Cultures of Dissent
- 20. Mutualism & New Kinship We find mutualism as practice can take a political care and political love approach to create mutually enhancing collaborations and alliances. Critical examination and meta-awareness of our own ignorance, privilege, and blind spots tempered by a love ethic, is essential to be able to confront differences in such as way as to develop authentic sisterhood. Mutualism, and a commitment as Sisters, helps facilitate successful navigation and negotiation of the rougher terrain, especially when working across difference, of feminist collaboration. Elements: • Love/Political Sisterhood • Vulnerability • Axes of power, credit sharing, and collaborative writing • Strength-based Focus
- 21. Conclusions and new directions
- 22. Recap: Common Ground • Solidarity, sharing a common ground of sourcing, intention, and work, rather than only a shared identity or oppression, supports effective feminist collaboration. • Staying rooted in ancestral, shared, and community time and space, receiving nurture from embodiment and Earth grounding, and staying clear to purpose through self-care are all important. • Honoring and developing common process guidelines and staying flexible with power shifting as well as knowing needs and self-leadership help feminists stay and deepen in common ground. • Strategies and tactics for supporting presence and access, releasing privilege, and enhancing solidarity help feminists show up and share collaborative common ground. • Developing a shared common ground for growing collaborations allows our incredibly deep roots to receive nurture for the arm-wide work of collaboration.
- 23. Recap: Diversity • Diversity and difference are central values for solidarity and are strength building. • Decolonization is a strategy for detoxifying internal and external binaries of opposition. • Differential consciousness is an opportunity for crosscutting intersections and sharing comprehension. • Connected knowing and divergent thinking as well as connected dialogue and collaborating across differences helps establish and nurture contexts for learning and collaboration that proactively weave strong, diverse webs of feminist collaboration. • Feminist learners and the teachers/mentors/co-learners who support them will fare better when having both connected knowing strategies, as well as divergent thinking approaches in their wellspring of tools to invite, affirm, and empower adult women learners. • Creating difference-positive cultures of dissent in order can help access diversity as strength.
- 24. Recap: Mutualism • Critical examination and meta-awareness of our own ignorance, privilege, and blind spots tempered by a love ethic, is essential to be able to confront differences in such as way as to develop authentic sisterhood. • Have a willingness to engage in uncomfortable conversations with the intention of understanding rather than reaching some cozy congruence. • Reclaiming sisterhood through solidarity strongly links our mutualism metaphor--via the web of diversity--back to a common ground. • Teaching from a vulnerable place, as through personal narrative, has potential for making deeper connections and potentially transformative experiences. • In academic collaboration, credit sharing, honoring multiple voices, providing scholarly and moral support, etc. are supportive ways to facilitate work in a feminist, non-linear model while adhering to the restrictions of the hierarchical merit systems within higher education. • Work, learn, and play from positions of strength rather than focusing on corrections of perceived or stereotypical weakness.
- 25. Conclusions Strands of feminist teaching and collaboration, sustainability, and ecology pulled together for us the metaphors of the grounding of solidarity, the web of life strengthened by diversity, and new mutualisms of feminism as we interrogated the literature, asked questions of feminist scholars and activists, and reflected on our own collaborative work together. These metaphors surface from stories illustrating blends of alignment and tension, similarities and differences, constructive critique, and reflexivity combined with a meta-awareness of our own subjectivities, all of which help us become more effective feminist collaborators and inspirers of feminist educational experiences.
- 26. Future Research Directions How are these concepts connected to each other? Complexity and Feminism
- 27. With Thanks • Special thanks to Marna Hauk, my co-researcher, collaborator, peer mentor, and friend • Special thanks to Dr. Noël Cox Caniglia, our doctoral mentor for Advanced Feminist Pedagogy (a.k.a. Gynagogy) • Special thanks to interview participants Drs. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Alicia Youngblood Jackson, and Denise Mitten • Special thanks to you!
- 28. Effective Feminist Collaboration Contact Us, Collaborate With Us! Aimée deChambeau • Head of Electronic Services at The University Libraries at The University of Akron (Associate Professor of Bibliography, tenured) • Doctoral Student, Sustainability Education at Prescott College • aimee@uakron.edu Marna Hauk • Director, Institute for Earth Regenerative Studies • Doctoral Student, Sustainability Education at Prescott College • www.earthregenerative.org • earthregenerative@gmail.com
Editor's Notes
- APGumbs Image from http://brokenbeautiful.wordpress.com/files/2007/03/572418159_gda24-m-1.jpg Denise Mitten Image: http://www.aee.org/images/en/user/cms/mitten1.jpg [I think we need to find a better picture!] Ayoungblood Jackson image from http://www.news.appstate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/AleciaJackson.jpg
- … solidarity, sharing a common ground of sourcing, intention, and work, rather than only a shared identity or oppression, supports effective feminist collaboration. Staying rooted in ancestral, shared, and community time and space, receiving nurture from embodiment and Earth grounding, and staying clear to purpose through self-care are all important. Honoring and developing common process guidelines and staying flexible with power shifting as well as knowing needs and self-leadership help feminists stay and deepen in common ground. Strategies and tactics for supporting presence and access, releasing privilege, and enhancing solidarity help feminists show up and share collaborative common ground. Developing a shared common ground for growing collaborations allows … our incredibly deep roots to receive nurture for the arm-wide work of collaboration, which we will see invites us to broaden in webs of diversity and support each other in mutually enhancing coalitions and new forms of effective collaboration. In Common Ground, our first metaphor, we find rootedness as an ecologically inspired form of connectedness and grounding that facilitates feminist collaboration. Common ground can be found in both the project and the process of feminist collaboration and activism. Agreement-seeking and power-shifting and -sharing are productive ways to establish common ground in collaborative activities, as are strategies for ensuring access to and cultivating presence in the experience. Differences in individual needs within the group can be met, and self-care and self-leadership by participants in caring for their own needs uplifts individuals as well as the group. Building on similar interests and passions when encouraging the self-creation of groups or collaborative partnerships helps participants come together based on common ground they discover in one another. And finally, solidarity is defined as the common ground upon which diverse individuals and communities can unite without subsuming or marginalizing one another's subjectivities, worldviews, or experiences (Clingan, 2008; Mohanty, 2003; Mallory, 2009): the focus is on the shared goals, beliefs, and projects rather than limited to shared experience or identity.
- Nurtured by this common ground, we explore extensively the web of diversity which strengthens collaboration, creating robust connections that hold and support feminist teaching, learning , and activism. This, our second metaphor, is the space in which all three metaphors combine as warp and weft on the loom, or circular and radial threads in the web. Decolonization is presented as a strategy for detoxifying internal and external binaries of opposition, embracing instead an ongoing healing such that feminists can move away from internalized cultures of domination devoted to opposition and war. U.S. Third World feminism's differential consciousness and a new differential mode of consciousness is presented as an opportunity for crosscutting intersections and shared comprehension. We turn (in)to social spiders as model of differential consciousness and an example of multigenerational collaboration. Bipoles of opposition are contrasted with ways in which webs of diversity strengthen and empower feminist collaboration and learning. Complexity science is woven in to the conversation to confirm diversity as a strengthening component of complex systems and networks, and honor it as a resource and not a problem. We present connected knowing, connected dialogue, and the cultivation of divergent thinking as tools to invite, affirm, and empower women learners. Of utmost importance to strengthening the web of diversity is the capacity to collaborate across differentials such as power and roles and we use the example of care within classroom work to illustrate ways in which this can develop. The creation of difference-positive cultures of dissent is presented as one way to access diversity as strength, as is working through the conflict involved in navigating the difficult terrain and head-on collisions encountered in feminist collaboration. We affirm that it is essential to make space for polyvocal and suppressed feminisms, feminisms of difference, differential consciousness, and cultures of dissent in order to foster dynamic feminist collaborations.
- Our third metaphor looks at mutualism as a new take on Sisterhood. We find mutualism as practice can take a political care and political love approach to create mutually enhancing collaborations and alliances. Critical examination and meta-awareness of our own ignorance, privilege, and blind spots tempered by a love ethic, is essential to be able to confront differences in such as way as to develop authentic sisterhood. Solidarity is a way to reclaim sisterhood, and strongly links our mutualism metaphor, via the web of diversity, back to a common ground. Mutualism, and a commitment as Sisters, helps facilitate successful navigation and negotiation of the rougher terrain, especially when working across difference, of feminist collaboration. Teaching from a vulnerable place, as through personal narrative, is explored as a way to make deeper connections and potentially transformative experiences for both speaker and listener, teacher and student. Self-leadership, collaborative models of research, multiple voices, and learning within a context that is bigger than oneself are all discussed as forms of mutualism that help collaborators "nurture each other's becoming," as Jackson (Research Interview, May 27, 2011) describes the relationship.