“Reflections in anti-racist research”: A workshop report with Prof. Annita Kalpaka
“Reflections in anti-racist research”: A workshop report with Prof. Annita Kalpaka
On July 22 and 23, the research project team participated in the workshop “Reflections in Critical Race Theory research” together with other members of Working Group 10. The workshop was led by Prof. Annita Kalpaka and was intended to provide a space to reflect on one's own role as a researcher, to give space to thoughts and feelings that otherwise receive little attention, and to offer a framework in which uncertainties and ambiguities can also be addressed.
The workshop provided a break from everyday research life. Topics such as logic and regimes of usability, the difference between reflection and analysis, and, in particular, tensions in racism research were discussed in the workshop. The workshop offered us the opportunity to deal with feelings, difficulties, and challenges in research away from the stressful everyday life of research and to give them space. This enabled us to reflect on individual research situations on the basis of case studies and to use these to highlight general tensions and dilemmas in research.
Various things became possible within this framework: Not only was reflection discussed, but it was also practiced and tested in concrete terms within the context of case work. This allowed us to approach what critical reflexivity in research can mean. This reflection was based, among other things, on exploring the actions of the researchers as well as the actors participating in the research. As Kalpaka emphasized in the workshop, it is important to distinguish between reasons for action (which are not (always) clear to oneself) and intentions. The former can be explored, while the latter can only be speculated upon. Case studies were the method that helped us to do this in a rule-based manner. This enabled us to address the questions: What do we mean by ‘reflection’? Practicing reflection in a collaborative sense with colleagues from other research projects helped us to explore the questions of which boundaries are (in)acceptable and how we can deconstruct the normativities that we (presuppose) in our actions.
The general tensions involved, for example, the level of different power asymmetries in research, preconceptions and prior knowledge, the role as a researcher, and the various levels (e.g., in the survey situations, in the agreements with the interview partners, i.e., at the methodological, methodical, and interpersonal levels) in research. In addition to these tensions, we addressed the paradoxical question of what we had omitted in the context of the case study and how. The paradox lies in the fact that what was omitted (which was omitted in the context of the case study) must be reflexively retrieved and made tangible.