Deconstructing and Reconstructing Identity: How Queer Liberation Organizations Deploy Collective Identities

The mainstream gay rights movement has made significant strides toward its agenda, at least in part due to the movement’s claim that it represents all the interests of all LGBTQ communities. However, a queer liberation movement (QLM) led by queer people of color and other marginalized LGBTQ people has existed alongside the mainstream movement since its inception. This movement pursues a radically different agenda and employs organizing strategies distinct from those of the mainstream movement, centering the interests of those LGBTQ people most often left behind by the mainstream agenda. This paper examines how the QLM negotiates and deploys collective identity in and through its work. Collective identity is explored in the context of existing LGBTQ social movement theory and points to how the QLM challenges and extends social movement theorizing regarding collective identity and use of identity as a site for organizing

South Asian Women and Marriage: Experiences of a Cultural Script

Although the South Asian community is one of the largest and fastest growing immigrant populations in the country, there is a paucity of social science research about these communities. A number of authors have assumed the importance of gender, marriage, and family within South Asian diasporic culture; however, relatively little research has explored South Asian women’s lived experiences from their own perspectives or across generations. This study sought to understand how first and second generation South Asian women in the US understand their experiences of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and diaspora. Through qualitative analysis of interviews with 30 South Asian women living in the US, I show that across generations, messages about (heterosexual) marriage emerged as central to how women understood their gendered experience and, as such, marriage and being marriageable function as a “cultural script” for middle-class South Asian womanhood. Women’s narratives elucidate some of the specific messages of this “cultural script” and everyday ways this script is indirectly and directly communicated to women within family and community interactions

Centering a Pedagogy of Care in the Pandemic

This essay is a reflexive account of my experience of teaching a social justice course during the pandemic. Specifically, I reflect on how centering a pedagogy of care within the course provided a framework for me to be responsive to student needs while also disrupting dominant culture and neoliberal forces in academia. In particular, I highlight sharing power and co-creating meaning, community care, and use of creativity and mindfulness as disruptions to dominant paradigms that I employed in my class that were impactful in the context of the pandemic. I also reflect on how this pedagogical praxis of care has been an instructive and anchoring experience for me as an educator and will impact my teaching going forward

How We Do the Work is the Work: Building an Intersectional Queer Praxis for Critical Feminist Scholarship

In this reflection (which is a revised version of a recent keynote address), I invite feminist social work scholars to consider what it might look like to build our scholarship through an intersectional queer praxis. I posit that as critical feminist scholars, it is important that we consider not only the topics we study but also how we do our work. Specifically, I propose an intersectional queer praxis that brings together key tenets of Slow scholarship with queer lived experiences and critical theoretical lens(es) that assert that queer is destabilizing of dominant ideologies and a challenge to normative ways of being. I discuss four interrelated dimensions of intersectional queer praxis that draw upon Slow scholarship and elements of queer life: (1) reimagining time; (2) centering relationships, community care, and collaboration; (3) embracing complexity and disrupting binaries; and (4) attention to embodiment and emotion. I argue that employing this kind of intersectional queer praxis challenges dominant approaches to academic knowledge production and carries with it new possibilities and creative imaginings for how we do our work. This talk is an invitation to think collectively, to reflect, and to raise questions for us as social work scholars as we continue to build a more robust practice of critical feminist scholarship

What Contributes to Meaningful Experiences in Social Work Field Education?: Perspectives of Students of Color

Despite the importance of field in social work education, little is known about the specific experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students in field placements. In this qualitative study with 42 social work students, we explored what factors contribute to meaningful experiences in field. Findings include: (a) connection to the practice area or community being served, (b) the importance of relationships with field instructors, including BIPOC field instructors; and (c) supportive agency context. Implications of this study support the recruitment and retention of BIPOC field instructors, continuing to build field instructors’ capacity to engage with issues of race, identity, and oppression, ongoing attention to agency context, and building more robust research regarding racial equity in field

The Braid That Binds Us: The Impact of Neoliberalism, Criminalization, and Professionalization on Domestic Violence Work

The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare recently released its Grand Challenges for Social Work. ‘‘Ending gender-based violence’’ (also referenced as domestic violence [DV] or intimate partner violence) constitutes one of two streams for the Grand Challenge #3, Stop Family Violence (Edleson, Lindhorst, & Kanuha, 2015). The authors of the white paper for this challenge map some of the history and current landscape of gender-based violence (GBV) in the United States while also providing some insight into social work’s role in research, practice, and policy in addressing this important issue. We agree with the authors that ending GBV requires interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. We also agree that, as a field, ‘‘social work has not gone far enough’’. Although Edleson, Lindhorst, and Kanuha’s (2015) working paper suggests hope that the United States ‘‘has the resources, tools, and knowledge to move more quickly toward not only healthier nonviolent relationships but also families, neighborhoods, and communities that value safety, empowerment and respect for girls and women’’, little attention is paid to the political and economic conditions that create and shape antiviolence work (research, practice, policy) and how these conditions impact efforts that social workers might/ should/could enact to meet this Grand Challenge. We hope to expand this conversation and inspire social work’s engagement and capacity for addressing domestic violence (DV) by calling attention to the ways neoliberalism, criminalization, and professionalization are braided together to shape the kind of work made im/possible when it comes to ending DV. In this editorial, we will argue ‘‘the braid’’ of these three forces significantly influences and constrains DV work and research in the United States as demonstrated by Edleson et al.’s (2015) paper. Although we support the need for social work to take a proactive and thoughtful position in addressing DV across our communities, the dominance of positivist paradigms for research and practice at present fails to address the structural and systemic issues we believe are most critical to ending DV. We would, in fact, argue that the analysis and approach mapped by Edleson et al.’s paper is shaped by and contributes to the braid’s ongoing hold on DV work. To discuss each of these issues—neoliberalism, criminalization, and professionalization—in isolation creates a sense of discreteness and disconnectedness that we believe is inaccurate, as each strand relies on and reinforces the others to constitute the braid. That said, for the purposes of our discussion herein, we briefly highlight some key elements of each ‘‘strand’’ to orient the reader to prominent macro forces shaping the braid. We then move into our discussion, highlighting some of the key impacts of the braid on DV work and implications for future directions. Our reflections here are deeply informed by our diverse social identities, life experiences, and connection to DV research, practice, and activism over many decades. In addition, our ideas rest heavily upon the analyses and work of critical DV scholar Mimi Kim, and INCITE! women, gender nonconforming, and trans people against violence

Managing Diversity: Analyzing Individualism, Awareness, and Difference in Field Instructors’ Discourse

Diversity and social justice are central values in social work practice and education; however, there is paucity of research examining the ways these issues are infused into students’ field education. In this article, we analyze field instructors’ discourses about diversity and social justice through their discussion of how they understand and integrate diversity issues into their students’ social work practice. Consistent with existing research on diversity and social justice in social work education, and impacts of neoliberalism on the field, findings illustrate the pervasiveness of cultural competency discourses in how field instructors discuss diversity issues including individualism, emphasis on awareness as a central approach to addressing oppression and difference, and powerblind/colorblind ideologies. We discuss implications and directions for future research

Navigating an Institution That Wasn’t Created By or For Us

We came together as 3 women of color with diverse social and institutional positionalities to have a dialogue about our experiences within higher education. Collectively, we represent a range of identities, including: Vietnamese, South Asian, African American, cisgender women, queer, working class, middle class, able-bodied, diverse geographic backgrounds, and more. One of us is an assistant professor on a tenure-track, another is a fixed-term faculty member, and the third is a research associate and doctoral student. It is our belief that sharing stories, connecting and building community, and asserting our voices are radical acts that are counter to the mainstream values of white, patriarchal, corporatized university structures. Inspired by dialogues and interviews we have read by Barbara Smith, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others, we approached this dialogue with a spirit of resistance and a desire to speak our truths in the hopes that doing so would contribute to individual and collective healing and knowledge. We centered our collective dialogue on a few key questions: 1) What is your relationship to the institution? What are some challenges within that relationship? 2) How does the institutional context impact how you view yourself, your work, and the possibilities of what you can achieve? 3) In terms of navigating and negotiating the institutional context, what is the emotional labor involved? Can you speak to this in the domains of the classroom, scholarship and research, with colleagues? 4) Reimagining the institutional context and our personal and political relationship to the institution: What are the pieces we would hold onto and what would we need/want to be different? We recorded our 2 hour conversation and then edited and organized our dialogue based on confidentiality/anonymity of information, length, and highlighting of key themes. The excerpts that follow are partial, but represent some of the thoughts and reflections of our experiences as women of color in one institution of higher education -as shaped by our diverse social and institutional positionalities. Key themes in our discussion included: navigating our relationship to the institution, managing challenges of academic knowledge production, importance of mentorship, emotional labor, and staying centered in the midst of institutional challenges. We organized elements of our dialogue by these themes, however we recognize that in some cases, parts of our conversation could fit within multiple themes. Given limitations of time and space, we made decisions to connect certain pieces of text to particular themes for the purpose of the discussion presented here, recognizing that this did require us to edit down and sometimes decontextualize parts of our dialogue

Slow Scholarship for Social Work: A Praxis of Resistance and Creativity

Expediency, efficiency, and rapid production within compressed time frames represent markers for research and scholarship within the neoliberal academe. Scholars who wish to resist these practices of knowledge production have articulated the need for Slow scholarship—a slower pace to make room for thinking, creativity, and useful knowledge. While these calls are important for drawing attention to the costs and problems of the neoliberal academy, many scholars have moved beyond “slow” as being uniquely referencing pace and duration, by calling for the different conceptualizations of time, space, and knowing. Guided by post-structural feminisms, we engaged in a research project that moved at the pace of trust in the integrity of our ideas and relationships. Our case study aimed to better understand the ways macro forces such as neoliberalism, criminalization and professionalization shape domestic violence work. This article discusses our praxis of Slow scholarship by showcasing four specific key markers of Slow scholarship in our research; time reimagined, a relational ontology, moving inside and towards complexity, and embodiment. We discuss how Slow scholarship complicates how we understand constructs of productivity and knowledge production, as well as map the ways Slow scholarship offers a praxis of resistance for generating power from the epistemic margins within social work and the neoliberal academy

We Experience What They Experience : Black Nurses\u27 and Community Health Workers\u27 Reflections on Providing Culturally Specific Perinatal Health Care

Black perinatal health workers are part of a tradition of Black people fighting for the well-being of Black communities. The purpose of this article is to better understand the unique experiences of these professionals. Method: Descriptive qualitative research was used to understand Black providers’ experiences in a culturally specific perinatal public health program. A focus group was conducted with seven nurses and community health workers, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results: Three themes emerged: (a) shared lived experience and parallel process between staff and clients; (b) navigating multiple shifting gazes between clients, public health department, and medical systems; and (c) reproductive justice and community care characterize a culturally informed approach. Discussion: Findings revealed strengths and complexities facing Black nurses and community health workers in their roles. More work is needed in education, practice, and research to better prepare and support nurses and community health workers in culturally specific settings