Moving with Touch: Entanglements of a Child, Valentine’s Day Cards, and Research–Activism against Sexual Harassment in Pre-Teen Peer Cultures

In this paper, we respond to feminist new materialist scholars’ calls to explore what research in the field of gendered and sexual violence can be, do, and become. This paper explores the microprocesses of change within the more-than-human child–card entanglements as part of our research–activist campaign addressing sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures. Drawing on one of our creative workshops, we generate three analytical readings that map touch. We focus, first, on the intra-action of bodies, objects, and abstractions that reconfigures painful experiences of harassment for recognition; second, on the affective charge in moments and movements of response and resistance; and third, on what else touch can become when it travels across time–space domains as part of our research–activism. Re-engaging with our research–activism, we propose that different kinds of touch converge into a sensing-feeling, inherently ethico-political, matter-realizing apparatus that reconfigures painful experiences of gendered and sexual harassment for recognition, response, and resistance. Connecting to feminist new materialist endeavors to envision and enact response-able research, we propose that ‘moving with touch’ helps us shed light on the microprocesses of change in generative ways—that is, in ways that recraft response-abilities and invite movement

Touchable matters:reconfiguring sustainable change through participatory design, education, and everyday engagement for non-violence

Abstract Sustainability is a catchword for contemporary concerns of environmental and societal vulnerability. Scholars, policymakers, designers, and educators alike find themselves knotted increasingly within fabrics of sustainability, approached as an object of concern in education and technoscientific projects. In relation, scholars drawing from posthuman and new materialist thinking have begun to re-imagine sustainability. Considering human subjectivity as part of the world in its ongoing, reiterative becoming has introduced new possibilities to rethink responsibility in and for sustainable change. This research is rooted in my engaged practices of participatory design and education on violence, violence prevention, and non-violence, which form the empirical research terrain of this study. This dissertation includes four articles that inquire into the practices in question by exploring possibilities for nurturing non-violence—and by scrutinising responsible participatory practices in design. This synopsis re-engages with the results presented in the articles mentioned and participates in calls to rethink sustainability. In order to reconsider sustainability in and for practices of sustainable change, I develop theoretical thinking based on response-ability and touch, as discussed by Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. Through a diffractive, affirmative engagement with sustainability in the engaged practices of change-making, I aim to unfold the affordances of feminist (new) materialist renegotiations of ethics and responsibility, in order to inform responsible participatory practices of change-making and, in particular, change towards non-violence. This research offers insight into the intricate ways sustainability reconfigures in and through practices of change-making in participatory design, education, and everyday engagements for non-violence. I begin by proposing a thinking and practice of response-able engagement. Then, through the idea of touchable matters, I foreground how the co-constituted conditions of ethically sustainable response become reconfigured in the designerly, the researcherly, the pedagogical, and other everyday practices, challenging for a shift to a new mode of entangled response-ability for sustainable change and towards non-violence.Tiivistelmä Kestävyys on aikaamme läpileikkaava, sosiaalisiin ja ekologisiin epäkohtiin tarttuva haaste, joka yhdistää tutkijoita ja muita toimijoita moninaisina jaetun huolen ja interventioiden kohteina myös koulutuksellisissa ja teknotieteellisissä projekteissa. Posthumanistinen ja uusmaterialistinen ajattelu on haastanut ymmärryksiä kestävyydestä asettamalla inhimillisen toimijuuden erottamattomaksi osaksi maailman jatkuvia tulemisen ja tuottumisen prosesseja. Painopiste kestävyyden, muutoksen ja niihin liittyvien vastuullisuuksien tarkastelussa on siirtynyt arkisten käytänteiden moniulotteisiin kietoutuneisuuksiin. Väitöstutkimukseni sisältää neljä artikkelia, jotka perustuvat kahteen empiiriseen kokonaisuuteen. Työni aineisto on tuotettu tutkimalla työpaikkakiusaamiseen liittyvän osallistuvan suunnittelun vastuullisia käytänteitä sekä väkivaltaa, väkivallan ehkäisemistä ja väkivallattomuutta käsittelevää akateemista koulutusta. Väitöskirjaan sisältyvissä artikkeleissa olen tarkastellut pyrkimyksiä kohti väkivallattomuutta sekä muutokseen sitoutuneita ja siihen moninaisesti kietoutuvia käytänteitä. Työni yhteenveto-osassa työstän artikkeleissa esitettyjä osallistumista, refleksiivisyyttä, välittämistä ja väkivallattomuutta käsitteleviä tuloksia diffraktiivisesti. Työstämisen teoreettis-käsitteellisenä kumppanina toimivat Karen Baradin ja Donna Harawayn kosketusta ja vastuullisuutta käsittelevät keskustelut. Yhteenvedon tavoitteena on tarkastella feministisen (uus)materialistisen ajattelun mahdollisuuksia tuottaa uutta ymmärrystä kestävyydestä osana vastuullisia osallistuvia toimintatapoja muutoksen – ja erityisesti väkivallattomuuteen pyrkivän muutoksen – jokapäiväisissä käytänteissä. Kestävän muutoksen ja väkivallattomuuden mahdollisuudet tuottuvat osallistuvan suunnittelun, koulutuksen ja arjen käytänteissä moninaisin tavoin. Vastuullisuutta tarkastellessani esitän ajatuksen ”koskettavista kudelmista”, mikä kutsuu tunnistamaan, kuinka eettisen kestävyyden ja suhteisuuden mahdollisuudet ”kanssatuottuvat” arkisissa kohtaamisissa. Samalla se haastaa rakentamaan uudenlaista, tähän eettis-ontologiseen kietoutuneisuuteen sitoutunutta vastuullisuutta jokapäiväisissä suunnittelun, tutkimuksen, koulutuksen ja arjen pyrkimyksissä kohti kestävää muutosta ja väkivallattomuutta

Häkeltyminen ja feministinen vastuullisuus (tutkimus)kohtaamisissa lasten taidetekojen kanssa

Artikkelimme osallistuu keskusteluihin uusmaterialistisen taidelähtöisen tutkimuksen eettispolitiittisista mahdollisuuksista. Aineiston muodostavat tutkijoiden ja taiteilijan autoetnografiset havainnot prosessista, jossa lasten vertaissuhteita käsitteleviätaidetekoja kuratoitiin näyttelyiksi. Uusmaterialistisista teorioista ammentaen kehitämme artikkelissa häkeltymisen käsitteen, jonka avulla tarkastelemme affektiivisia kohtaamisia lasten taidetekojen kanssa prosessin eri vaiheissa. Artikkelissa avaamme käsitteellisiä ja käytännöllisiä näköaloja uusmaterialistisen taidelähtöisen tutkimuksen muutosvoimaan ja siihen kietoutuvaan vastuullisuuteen, joiden merkitystä pohdimme erityisesti lasten vertaissuhteiden ja sukupuolen tutkimuksen kontekstissa

Constructing a pedagogical approach for an e-learning programme on gender and sexual violence

Godkänd; 2008; 20090110 (ysko

Towards response-able PD:putting feminist new materialisms to work in the practices of participatory design

Abstract This paper contributes to recent discussions in the field of Participatory Design (PD) that have considered relationality, becoming, non-human and more-than-human to invent alternative, more expansive, responsible, and accountable ways of understanding and doing PD. To add to these PD discussions of sociomaterial relationality and emergence, our aim is to bring PD practices into generative dialogue with feminist new materialist praxis. For this, we consider our past and ongoing participatory research and design engagements related to collaboration with union professionals and creative research-activism with children. Drawing methodological insights from the ways in which sociomaterial relationality and becoming informed these processes, we explore how feminist new materialism can inform PD 1) when setting up participatory practices, 2) when engaging during design events, and 3) when re-thinking designer-researchers’ responsibilities and accountabilities as unfolding from multiplicitous, multiscalar engagements. We tentatively propose the notion of response-able PD to bring these insights together

Safe and enabling:composing ethically sustainable crafty-activist research on gender and power in young peer cultures

Abstract New materialisms have informed an array of creative methodologies, inviting scholars to rethink ethics in the practices of research with children. Participating in this rethinking, this study elaborates on ethical practices in creative research where new materialist and arts-based methodologies intra-act with children and the sensitivities of gender and power in young peer cultures. Drawing on experiences from the authors’ creative workshops, this paper investigates how new materialist creative practice allows children to explore and communicate their experiences of gender and power in safe and enabling ways. The authors suggest expanding their ethical practice by composing ethically sustainable encounters for children to engage with experiences of and visions for their peer cultures. They close by discussing practices for responding to the inherent un/safety of addressing gender and sexual abuses of power and for enabling microprocesses of change to — as a matter of sustainability — transform oppressive peer cultures towards social justice

How a hashtag matters:crafting response(-abilities) through research-activism on sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures

Abstract This paper examines what research with children can do and become when it intra-acts with a MeToo hashtag, creative methods, experiences of sexual harassment and the making and travelling of Valentine’s Day cards. The paper is grounded within a creative research-activist project, #MeToo Postscriptum, which aimed to address sexual harassment in pre-teen peer cultures. Analyzing the project, the paper explores how the idea of response-ability manifested in three space-times of the project, and how the material-discursive practices of the project reiteratively reconfigured the conditions of possibilities to respond, react, and act against abusive gendered and sexual child peer cultures. Mapping response-ability through our research endeavours helps theorize the contingent, complex, and entangled ways research-activist methodologies can activate change, enables us to envision response-able practices to counter sexual harassment in young peer cultures, and sensitizes us as scholars and educators to our responsibilities and accountabilities that become recrafted in response

Mundane matters:mapping the becomings of heterosexual girlhood in the emerging sexual cultures of elementary school children

Abstract This article explores the vital roles of matter in the emerging sexual cultures of elementary school children. Based on a case study of a seven-year-old girl, it draws from ethnographic research on the gendered and sexual power relations of students in Northern Finland. Inspired by feminist, new materialist theories, the analysis indicates how everyday objects may be seen as co-constituting heterosexual femininity by attaching even young girls to teenage cultures and emphasizing femininity and distancing them from childhood and masculinity. This article shows, furthermore, how materiality acts in generating “cross-pulls” that may evoke popularity and admiration, but also cause restrictions to the agency of girls in the ambiguous entanglements of child sexual cultures