Identify your standpoint: Exercise in reflexivity for Case to Cause Positionality
Write a brief positionality statement, articulating and exploring your personal auto-biography (socially constructed, gendered with cultural community lenses). You, as social policy researcher, are the primary instrument in participatory policy research. All policy analysis is mediated through you, as a human instrument, complete with your assumptions, biases, and filters (which inevitably obscure what is hiding in plain sight; everyday life is sociologically problematic). What autobiographical factors cause researchers to fail in their data collection? This assignment requires serious reflection and self-observation, as in “Notes to Self.” Identify and describe your values, worldview, perspectives, and biases. Bring to light your own cultural systems of coming to know, knowing, and experiencing the world.
1. Self?
What is your cultural heritage? How do you know? In what ways do you think your background influences how you experience the world; how you evaluate and interpret others and their experiences? What economics/race/gender and other cultural experiences have shaped your decisions and aspirations.
(I am a Latina Female, bilingual immigrant from the country side of the Dominican Republic. I was poor and have a lot of family values. At the moment I am living in NYC. My passion is social Justice and equality for all & Imigration. I am a Social Work Major.)
2. Self in Relation to Others?
What are the cultural heritages and the historical landscapes of your peers? How do you know? How do you negotiate and balance your own interests with others? How do you manage perspectives which may be inconsistent with or diverge from your own?
3. From Self to System?
What is the contextual nature of race, class, economics, and gender in your agency/organization? How do you know? What is known socially, institutionally, and historically about the communities and peoples with whom you interact? What systemic and organizational barriers and structures shape your professional social work learning experiences, locally and globally?
I interact with people from all types of backgrounds and genders. My organization is a community college. I am in the counseling dept. the college is in a county that is very diverse. There are a lot of Latinos, Jewish, white, black, asians and so on.
In preparation consider the following sources as guidance:
Crenshaw, K. (2016). The urgency of intersectionality. https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en
DeJesus, A. (2018). Critical Care, Cultural Humility and the Reflective Practitioner. Ethics in Education
Hyde, C. (2012). Challenging ourselves: Critical self-reflection on power and privilege. In
Minkler, M. Community organizing and community building for health and welfare. Rutgers. Also reprinted in Appendix 1: Wallerstein, N. et al (2018). Community-Based Participatory Research for Health: Advancing Social and Health Equity, Third Edition. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.
Pease, B. (2006). Encouraging critical reflections on privilege in social work and the human
services, Practice reflexions, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 15-26. http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30003826
