Resu l ts f rom Research (Conduc ted Co l laborat ive ly ! )

by Marna Hauk and A imée deChambeau2010-2011 (and cont inua l ly…)

Adapted f rom “The Ear th Sus ta ins Us : Femin is t Co l laborat ion in Ac t ion .” Paper p resented a t the 32nd Annua l Bergamo Con ference on Cur r i cu lum Theory and C lass room Prac t ice , Oc tober 2011 . Dayton , OH.

THE EARTH SUSTAINS US: FEMINIST COLLABORATION

IN ACTION

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

Question and context

Research QuestionWhat 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

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

Sustainability & Regeneration ContextSustainability 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

Methods

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

Feminist Collaborative LensIntentionality 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)

Research Collaboration Itself as ResearchIntentionality 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

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

Findings and synthesis

Synthesis of Findings

Mutualism

Solidarity

Diversity

Findin

gs

Overv

iew

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

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

Findin

gs

Overv

iew

Chart

Coalition

Solidarity

Diversity

Coalition

Mutualism

SolidarityCommon Ground

Diversity

WebsDetoxify/

Decolonize

Connected Knowing

Collaborate Across

Differentials

Support Cultures of

Dissent

Rootedness

Shared Process

Access & Presence

Self-Leadership

Love & Political Sisterhood

Vulnerability &Willingness to

be Uncomfortable

Shared Writing

Strength Focus

Three-Aspect Model

WebCommonGround

Creation

Connection

Mutualism

Support

AmplifyingFeedbackLoops

Networks

Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (butterfly effect)

Metaphors

CollaborativeQualities

ComplexityConcepts

DiversityConnected Knowing & Dialogue

Differential ConsciousnessWelcoming Dissent

Don’t Erase Your PartnerDetoxification

DecolonizationDivergent Thinking

SolidaritySelf-Leadership & Self-Care

RootednessGrounding

Shared PurposeProcess & Content Congruence

Feminist Collaboration

Practices

Coalition & AllianceLove as FreedomMutual SisterhoodsCR’d Ethic of CareShared ExperienceCommunities of Meaning

Solidarity of Common Ground

Elements: • Rootedness & Recharge• Shared Process• Presence & Access• Self Leaders & Power Shifting

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.

Diversity Webs

Elements: • Detoxify/Decolonize/Differential Consciousness• Connected Knowing/Connected Dialogue/Divergent Thinking• Collaborating Across Differentials• Cultures of Dissent

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.

Mutualism & New Kinship

Elements:• Love/Political Sisterhood• Vulnerability• Axes of power, credit sharing, and collaborative writing• Strength-based Focus

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.

Conclusions and new directions

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.

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.

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.

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.

Future Research Directions

How are these concepts connected to each other?

Complexity and Feminism

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!

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