Session: Ethics Against Extractivism: Reconsidering Our Ethical Commitments and Research Praxis in Participatory Action Research (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Participatory action research (PAR), an approach for democratizing research processes and using research tools to mobilize action for social change, aims to transform inequities in the production of social work science. Researchers invested in PAR and academia face an enduring challenge of meeting institutional expectations and maintaining accountable relationships in communities of practice. Without acknowledging the historical exploitation of university research (Evans-Agnew & Rosemberg, 2016), PAR risks advancing the needs of the university and university researchers (uni-researchers) rather than who and what it was intended for, the community and community researchers (co-researchers). Schools of social work must remain vigilant within university spaces by continuously reflecting on our ethical commitments and working to advance an anti-oppressive research praxis.

To that end, this symposium brings together four papers that contemplate the risks of perpetuating harm in PAR projects and explore the production of community ethics through PAR praxis. The first paper uses a reflective vignette analysis, generated from a multi-site abolitionist research collective, to propose a dynamic ethical framework grounded in a Black liberatory epistemology. The paper builds from Sylvia Wynter (2006), Katherine McKittrick (2006; 2015; 2021), and Patricia Hill Collins (2000) to disrupt the dichotomy between academia and what academics call “community.� In doing so, the paper provides key insight into how we can revise and shift ethical commitments within academia. The second paper examines the power dynamics internal and external to five Youth Participatory Projects, investigating when these dynamics emerge throughout the planning and implementation processes, and developing phase-based recommendations for more accessible and equitable youth engagement efforts. The third paper situates PAR praxis in the context of exigent political attacks on transgender people and communities. The paper conceptualizes and distinguishes PAR praxis within a repertoire of collective defense strategies of an emergent research justice politics. The final paper will then provide an anti-oppressive research praxis for PAR work. This praxis was co-created by community and university researchers from two projects. Centering Critical Race Theory in Education, this paper presents three key principles in conducting an anti-oppressive research praxis that highlights practices to identify, interrupt, and transform harmful power structures inherent within the academy. Implications are grounded in community engagement strategies that highlight the necessity of active involvement of communities as they determine the direction of their lives (Ohmer et al., 2022).

Without contending with the paternalistic nature of research within the university, researchers can continue reproducing harm (Tuck, 2009), even when using a well-intended method like PAR. This symposium offers ethical considerations when conducting PAR in response to anti-Blackness, racism, transphobia, and other intersecting forms of oppression that pervade institutions of higher education. Each presenter will consider the use of PAR as a praxis of democratizing knowledge and achieving social change while also holding the tensions of university based research as extractive. These tensions may be heightened when PAR directly challenges power dynamics, institutional racism, gender binarism, and other forms of oppression operating in areas where social work, as a profession, is deeply invested in maintaining scientific authority.