From Red Flags to Research Justice: Mobilizing PAR in Collective Defense

Background: With escalating political attacks on trans lives, trans people and trans-led community organizations face enduring dilemmas about whether and when to engage with acadmic researchers. Hardwon demands for recognition have accelerated the research environment. Yet, concerns over meaning-making and abuses of power remain central as trans futures are publicly debated in the register of “scientific evidence.” Calls for more inclusive and participatory research designs have ushered in community advisory boards as standard practice, but the model tends to reinforce knowledge and power hierarchies between “researchers'' and “the community.” We ask if and how distinguishing participatory action research (PAR) praxis as an anti-hegemonic project (Jordan & Kapoor, 2015) can fortify collective action for community-driven research agendas and justice-centered research ethics?

Methods: This conceptual paper is based on the authors’ work leading an university-community research partnership on research ethics with trans-led and intersex-led community organizing groups in California. We start with a formative qualitative content analysis of organizational documents (e.g, self-published research reports, organizational statements and documents, ephemera), then draw on our experience bringing together leaders of trans-led and intersex-led organizations as part of a broader PAR praxis.

Findings: We trace an emergent trans research justice politics as articulated in and against “red flags” in institutional research practices. We analyze four distinct and overlapping strategies used to shift power in relation to historical and ongoing exploitation: 1) gatekeeping access to community spaces; 2) political education for prospective research participants; 3) guidance for institutional researchers; and 4) community ethics for research engagement. PAR praxis is situated within this broader repertoire of collective defense strategies and distinguished in its intention to democratize and re-center knowledge production.

Conclusion/Implications: Using the case of social movements for trangender justice, we conceptualize a PAR praxis of collective protection with the potential to expand visions for research justice beyond a single study.