“Advancing our Collective Awareness in Doing Social Justice Research”: A Book Review of Anna CohenMiller and Nettie Boivin’s Questions in Qualitative Social Justice Research in Multicultural Contexts

Abstract

In the book, Questions in Qualitative Social Justice Research in Multicultural Contexts, the authors, Anna CohenMiller and Nettie Boivin, ask provocative questions meant to stimulate us as qualitative researchers to strengthen options for conducting “better” research which is likely to advance inclusion and equity for communities who have been historically marginalized, colonized and/or oppressed. The book is adeptly structured so to invite us to (re)consider possible answers to their questions posed. As part of explicating the diversity of approaches to questions that can and should be asked regarding the doing of inclusive qualitative research, they include vignettes of a range of additional contributors who thoughtfully present/narrate their “reflections from the field” towards the end of each chapter. The book re-opens discussion on topics such as: owning our power (and rebalancing power relations), developing trust through building relationships, reconsidering the “insider/outsider” divide, activating transformative research, working with cross-disciplinarity in a research team, undertaking ethical online research, and credentializing different ways of “knowing,” including arts-based productions. Readers of this book should surely be inspired to consider new possibilities for practicing social justice research. The book is about social justice research and as such does not directly address ecological justice from a non-anthropocentric perspective, but some of the reflections from the field refer to caring for non-sentient beings and other “being,” thus paving a way for us to include this in our considerations when pursuing a justice agenda in the research process.