Auto-Ethnography, Action Research and Reflections on Home, Resistance and Survival

Abstract

ABSTRACT Marginalised, minoritised, sexualised and racialised individuals often find themselves in positions where they are victimised, brutalised, demoralised and expected to justify their very existence. Global scholars have employed qualitative, ethnographic, anti-racist and feminist research approaches that focus on acknowledging and removing, not rearranging, unequal and violently oppressive social norms and cultural traditions. Many, whose works are shared here, have demonstrated that it is possible to debunk oppressive stereotypes in opposition to various forms of repression and oppression. This debunking makes space for addressing (through policy and law) the everyday brutal, supremacist, patriarchal, misogynistic practices (such as the accounts of gender based violence and femicide that I share). The aim here is to present auto-ethnography, action research and reflection as part of a body of work that embraces the need, and right, to make public the oftentimes demeaning and violent personal and professional experiences that have been accommodated and normalised within institutions claiming to be nurturing, democratic and adhering to principles of social justice and equity at local, national and global levels.