Notes From:
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUES 2009/2010 – WHAT IS RESEARCH?

Session II
Research, Ethics, Politics
February 12, 2010, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m., LB 646 Library Building, 1400 De Maisonneuve Ouest

Presentations by:

Josh Schwebel: Escaping ‘What’ and ‘Is’: research beyond subject(s)

Ioana Radu: Doing research with aboriginal people: the role of knowledge mobilization, engaged scholarship and sharing authority

Eric Ronis: Every Story Needs a Villain (or Does It?): Framing Social Protest Research in 2010

Devora Neumark: Art and Ethics Within and Outside of the Academy

Discussant: Joel McKim (Concordia, Communication Studies)

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Ioana Radu

Research and Aboriginal People.

Doing research with aboriginal people: the role of knowledge mobilization, engaged scholarship and sharing authority

Radu spend 8 years living in a community of the Cree Nation of Nemaska in James Bay.  She works on concepts of development and self governance.  She conducts research through oral history and interviews.

She takes approach that: Research -> Contributing to the social capital of the communities.

RESEARCH

Ruling ideas of the discipline: Authority, Objectivity, Distance, Objective Neutrality

Another approach: Multiplicity, Difference, Social & Political endeavor as much as an Academic one

ETHICS

Interpertatory, Dissemination, Personal, Civil and Political

POLITIC AND ABORIGINAL PEOPLE

• -Acknowledge agency
• -Imagined social struggle
• -Multivocal – There are many voice is a community to be heard
• -Multilateral – There are many parties to consider
• -Respect of justice, equality and inclusiveness

KNOWLEDGE MOBLIZATION

• Connection between research and practice
• Co-creation of knowledge
• A way of thinking and doing research.
• Knowledge mediated through social /political processes
• Acknowledge difference/multiplicity

ENGAGED SCHOLARSHIP

• Building Relationships
• Working with living, not building a memorial to the past, looking to the future.
• Long-term commitment

SHARING AUTHORITY
(This notion originates from the Oral History field)

• Knowing from ->controlled narrative.
• Knowing with -> mutual creation/dialogue (Greenspan)
• Less chronologically structured
• Subjectivity
• Self-reflexivity

Resistance and contesting narrative within Aboriginal communities.

Radu then showed a video of complied interviews with people from Nemaska about Aboriginal notions of development. Video called “Reflections on Development”