Epistemic Violence, Child and Family Wellbeing, and International Research: Innovative Methods Highlighting Diverse Epistemologies

Responding to SSWR's 2024 theme of "Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science", this proposed roundtable draws from critical social theory to examine how research methods can advance or challenge epistemic violence. Focusing on international research with children and families within complex, volatile contexts, we offer three distinct case studies that illustrate the development and use of locally generated, engaged knowledge building. In so doing, we promote epistemic justice, support a sense of agency and honor the dynamic nature of communal response, while carrying out effective, replicable, and actionable research (Hill Collins, 2019).

We will discuss ways to go beyond witnessing suffering that aim for collaborative narration and healing, rather than reductionist approaches that obfuscate the complexity of contexts and the multiple ways people, individually and collectively, express cultural resilience and resistance in the face of adversity. Drawing on decades of practical research experience, we offer a menu of options for methodologies that are reputable, reproducible, and sound, and that honor and uplift diverse epistemologies.

Much of the knowledge about suffering, its effects, and subsequent social work intervention rests on epidemiological methods, which operate within specific medicalized frameworks that by their nature are unidimensional and fixed. The resulting methods are static rather than dynamic, individual rather than collective, and devoid of context. Because the frameworks upon which these methods rest capture the specific experiences of people at one point in time, they also limit the constructs they aim to develop. Furthermore, an overreliance on manualized mental health diagnoses and pre-created indices to measure and catalogue suffering, present survivors as mere "victims" thereby precluding more nuanced investigations that allow people to articulate their own realities and definitions of wellbeing. Thus, these methods leave little room for variation and culturally-specific forms of resilience, and resistance. They also further a myopic focus on victimization alone. Finally, these methods tend to be highly individualized and objectifying, leaving out collective and historical contexts and systems of meaning, relationship, and survival.

To counter these tendencies, we use three case studies to explore ways to move beyond the traditional research methods used to study the survival of violence among global populations. Presenter 1 will focus on a method that engages communities to develop community participatory standards of child wellbeing, using a tool that can move from the use of participatory learning to action that allows community members to design, create, monitor and evaluate social work programs for their children's benefit. Presenter 2 will share her experiences facilitating inter-generational collaborative interviews used with war-affected and displaced children and families. Presenter 3 will present her methodological approach that uses prolonged field work and focus groups to understanding the everyday realities of women and children within contexts of political violence. The audience will be invited to share their research experiences and ask questions to delve deeply into ways of knowing that model epistemic justice, thereby advancing social work research, practice, and policy.