Positionality

One of the things that I have been taught while in grad school is to be transparent about my positionality, or the reflection of who I am in relation to my research. This is particularly important for the type of qualitative research that I do, and so when I write, I typically write about either my position as a critical researcher, or how I am connected to the research and any bias I might have. In some instances, I am explicit about my race and gender. For instance, I have written about women in academia, thus, I write about who I am, and how I experience the world as a woman in academia. I can't block my experiences, that's not how I do research. Even more so, this is not what the type of research I do calls for.

Where I am positioned in the world is also a reminder of why I am where I am. My economic class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, privilege, etc contribute to my being here at MSU, getting a PhD. And one of the reasons I am here, pursuing a faculty position, is because there are too few women and too few people of color in faculty positions. For this reason, coupled with my passion to be in the classroom and performing research, I feel compelled, maybe called to be in academe, because there might be someone who, like me, yearns to see a professor who looks like her. I have had this experience, and know the overjoyed feeling of having a faculty member who looks like me mentor me and teach me.

Over the summer, I wrote an epistemology statement for one of my professors, which is below. It's a little wonky, I know, but I think the gist is there. A version of this will go into my dissertation, because it is a necessary component of both my dissertation and the type of research I perform. It is also a reminder for me to stay where I am, despite the discouraging political climate, and also closer to home, the discouraging academic climate of today and some of the discrimination I have already encountered.

Researcher Epistemological Orientation
Lather (2006) suggests an appealing strategy for teaching research paradigms. In her view, it is essential doctoral students not only gain grounding in the elements of research paradigms but situate their learning within the irresolvable contradictions of such paradigms. One such contradiction is present in the ontological and epistemological congruence of a critical theory paradigm. As Guba and Lincoln (1994) note “the posture of [critical theory/critical ideology] effectively challenges the traditional distinction between ontology and epistemology” (p. 110). Sipe and Constable (1996) explain the ontological perspective of critical theorists is a reality “out there” and “found” (p. 158). 

Assuming reality is “out there” and “found” positions critical theorists in an objective post-positivist ontology. What complicates this position, however, is a reality constructed on the basis of power, thus a  “false consciousness.” Therefore, a true consciousness can be attained (Guba, 1990; Sipe & Constable, 1996). Guba and Lincoln (1994) describe this reality best by stating critical theorists claim reality has been “shaped by a congeries of social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender factors and then crystallized into a series of structures that are now (inappropriately) taken as ‘real,’…for all practical purposes the[se] structures are ‘real’” (p. 110). It is in part due to the internal contradiction between the ontology of critical theorists (as Guba and Lincoln describe) and the epistemology of critical theorists, that I subscribe to a critical theory/critical ideology perspective. It is also due to my own identity as a biracial woman that I find a natural “fit” with a critical perspective. 

I was raised Hapa, a word used by those like me who are "part" or "half". More literally, Hapa means “part Hawaiian.” (Although I am not Hawaiian). The word Hapa, its Hawaiian origin, Asian appropriation, meaning, and context today are embedded in how I understand the nature of reality and my relationship to what is known. As a biracial Asian-Caucasian person I understand the feeling of incongruence, of being of two distinct races. As a biracial woman, I have learned the world is constructed on social hierarchies. However, my Hapa or dual identity defines my biracial-ness as distinctly singular, and enables me as a researcher to move beyond, to “liv[e] in a hybrid space” (Lather, 2006, p. 41). Lather’s (2006) argument that research paradigms exist out beyond intelligibility despite our need for ordered epistemologies leads her to pontificate “what academic work will look like as it begins to juxtapose the discursive resources of different social formations…” (p. 42). This is where Hapa resides for me: first as an identity that is racially marked, making my relationship to what is known subjective; second as an identity beyond the “tired binaries of the monolithic West” (Lather, 2006, p. 42), giving me the privilege to objectively assume a true reality out beyond this constructed reality shaped by power, politics, and social hierarchies. Put plainly, my relationship with the world is one that is critical, that seeks to not just understand it, nor to only complicate it, but to change it. 

References
Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

Guba, E. G. (Ed.). (1990). The Paradigm dialog. Newbury Park, Calif: Sage Publications.

Lather, P. (2006). Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching research in education as a wild profusion. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(1), 35–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390500450144

Sipe, L., & Constable, S. (1996). A chart of four contemporary research paradigms: metaphors for the modes of inquiry. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 1(Spring), 153–163.