In Eve Ewing’s introduction to Ghosts in the Schoolyard, she describes her process for research, the importance of reciprocity, and perhaps most significantly, how her research depicted institutional mourning. Meanwhile, Eve Tuck’s letter, addressed to communities (Native and/or urban communities in particular), calls for an end to what she has termed “damage research.” The pieces by Eve Ewing and Eve Tuck seem to directly contrast one another, prompting me to consider how I can frame my own future work to create thoughtful and useful research.
Having recently completed the research training myself, it was interesting to consider how Ewing’s research followed IRB guidelines. Several of her procedures and practices were ones which can be kept in mind for our own community research. Firstly, she makes it clear that her research creates a story, but it is not the only story. She describes herself and researchers like her as “boundary sitters” who use their voice as witnesses.
Her insights into how one’s body informs people’s perceptions was also important. Speaking directly with various stakeholders requires a sense of self-awareness and a recognition of how we present ourselves. As a mid-20s white girl in a graduate program, I may stand out or even be unsafe in certain areas—considerations which are important when planning when or where to conduct research.
Her description of reciprocity was also important. She would offer to driver her interviewees home. Take them out for coffee. Share a meal. All of this seems like a normal way to “repay” someone willing to speak with her, but beyond this, it creates a closer tie and likely makes individuals more likely to speak openly.
Ewing’s research was also a form of therapy, allowing her to process her own feelings of loss. This sadness and the feelings of loss are healthy and normal; they’re important. But ultimately, Tuck suggests that final research products must go beyond documenting these feelings to also show not only how the community copes, but how it overcomes. As Tuck notes, there is a call for research that highlights not just survival, but survivance. Survivance requires “moving beyond our basic survival in the face of overwhelming cultural genocide to create spaces of synthesis and renewal” (Tuck, 422).
Although we did not read further in Ewing’s book, her intro suggests that her work would fall into Tuck’s understanding of “damage research,” which focuses more on the pain of the community and may then reinforce the notion that the community is broken. She also makes an important note on how research adds another level of surveillance. Many vulnerable communities may not receive attention until researchers study them and share their findings. This is a type surveillance that requires researchers to think in advance, what will my research produce and what will be its effects both in and on the community it centers on?
Tuck’s piece, though it is a call for a moratorium, is inspiring. It is a call for researchers to consider how to shape the stories that they uncover to create communities that are not simply victims. They may have experienced great oppressions, but they also have a future. Both works are important reminders that research is not just studying a subject: it affects communities and both the process and its outcomes must be carefully thought through from the project’s first conception, to its potential effects 100 years from now.
Rebecca Amato says
We talked a bit in class about how I think these pieces are more complementary than contrasting, but I do see your point! So, I guess another question might be: is there a way to research and/or write about damaging social and economic structures or institutions without doing “damage-centered research”? And, if so, is that perhaps what Ewing does? What would make Ewing’s research “successful” or “useful”? How might you measure “success” or “usability” in your own research given your recognition that it could have an impact on communities beyond your own engagement with it?