Collaboration across difference: a joint autoethnographic examination of power and whiteness in the higher education anti-cuts movement

Abstract

We outline structures of whiteness and analyze how forms of dominance embedded and enacted in higher education structures have been made salient, through a self-reflexive account of the authors’ anti-cuts organizing. The authors implicate themselves, reflexively incorporating positions as a white, female, working class-raised doctoral student and a white, female, working class-raised professor situated in the cultures of California, University of California (UC) at Santa Cruz, and organizational cultures of groups within the movement. The authors explore organizing activities, intersectionality, positionality, privilege, collaboration, solidarity and links to literatures regarding whiteness within this context. We raise questions about how the anti-cuts movement is unfolding, how individuals and groups work with each other, and how we negotiate privilege.