Dance Justice Biography
A different set of red flags, as well as distinctly positioned optimism, about the potential of applied research are raised in Manu Aluli Meyer's challenging essay, “Hawaiian Hermeneutics and the Triangulation of Meaning.” Writing from the perspective of an indigenous Hawaiian educator and researcher, she uses hermeneutics, “the art and science of interpretation,” to challenge the sort of empiricism that characterizes much of Anglo-American approaches to knowledge, research, and education. She uses the example of “knowing what type of limu, seaweed, washes on Ha*ma*kua shores during winter swells” to illustrate the epistemological assertions that “place educates, beauty develops our thinking, and time is not simply linear.” With regard to established notions of what constitute “objective” research practices, Mayer insists, “We are not ‘dumbing down' methodology when we wish to sit and listen --for years.” She questions the academy's assumptions about proper etiquette for maintaining the anonymity of her dissertation research informants: “It was absolutely vital that people knew who was talking. That matters because in our community, knowledge that endures happens when you know where it came from.” And Meyer challenges the emphasis in current educational policies on standardized tests by insisting that we look at “the larger triangulation of meaning --Body, Mind, Spirit.” “The languaging of Anglo-American intelligence,” she observes, “comes with specific vocabulary, a speedy disposition, and with very prescribed ways of seeing the world.” Meyer's optimism stems from what she sees as the efforts of indigenous Hawaiian researchers to “articulate a new/ ancient consciousness” and to redefine “the things of value with regard to knowledge and how we wish to live out our lives.”Theresa A. Rosner-Salazar highlights the potential of community-university partnerships in transforming both the academy and the community. Specifically, she focuses on the potential of multicultural service-learning and community-based research to develop a sense of “critical consciousness” among future human service practitioners, while meeting identified community needs. She argues that such instructional and research approaches “are aimed at preparing professionals to meet the needs of a growing multicultural population while promoting social justice and systemic change in educational institutions and communities.” Examples of how one might incorporate these curricula-based, active-learning and research strategies into specific courses to enhance learning and empower disenfranchised communities are provided. She concludes her essay with recommendations designed to inform the work of others interested in using such instructional approaches to promote cultural competence among students while promoting social justice within diverse communities.Randolph Haluza-DeLay offers a case study of a community-initiated research project on racism in Thunder Bay, Ontario, a city in which aboriginal peoples make up roughly 12% of the population. His assessment is that the project was successful in that the public release of the research study, which documented racial incidents and racializing social practices in the community, contributed to “effectively promoting social change.” Yet Haluza-DeLay also describes many of the thorny issues involved in such a project, including “practical issues in the research process regarding research questions and methods, the intersection of theory with practical knowledge, research as disguised activism, research criticized as divisive to the community, and research as knowledge production.” He warns that academic research aimed at promoting social justice “will have to be creative in communicating with marginalized community groups that have seen the ivory tower well-gated and academia often serving to reproduce conditions of marginality.”
The next article, by Charles Tolbert, Forrest Deseran, and Troy Blanchard, recounts their efforts, on behalf of the Clinton Justice Department, to conduct research and serve as expert witnesses in litigation (Hays v. Louisiana) over congressional redistricting. The case centered on an attempt to create a majority African American electoral district in Louisiana. The authors cite the late federal judge, A. Leon Higginbotham, to explain why they believe that the creation of “majority-minority” electoral districts is fundamental to the promotion of social justice: “In the context of American history and contemporary reality, minority-majority districting is often the only way of fully achieving the pluralist aspirations of American politics and remedying the longstanding exclusion of African Americans from full participation in government.” Their article focuses on their analytical approach and the statistical results of their social demographic research on the fourth congressional district in Louisiana, as well their interactions with the Department of Justice legal team and their experiences in depositions in federal court.
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