Marginal Voices Research Articles

The personal is political in the struggle for equity in global medical education research and scholarship

Medical education research is rooted in a long tradition of objectivity, evidence-based methods, and clinical surety. However, the inexorable confidence, health professions research education, and scholarship have in the manifest supremacy of western science as the foundational epistemology is questionable. Is this bravado legitimate and if so by what authority? How does this dominance of western epistemic frames determine how we are seen and how we see ourselves as health professions educators scholars and researchers? In what ways does western epistemic dominance influence how and why we conduct research? What do we consider as important to research in health professions education (HPE)? The answers are different depending on where we position ourselves or are placed in a hierarchy of scholarly privilege. I pose that the supremacy of Western scientific epistemology in modern medical education, research, and practice blurs differently colored scientific lenses and silences marginalized voices from legitimate contribution to HPE.

A process for assessing the reliability and validity of questions for use in online surveys: Exploring how communication technology is used between Lead Maternity Carer midwives and pregnant people in Aotearoa New Zealand

There is growing use of communication technology in Aotearoa New Zealand. How it is used between midwives and pregnant people is unknown. Surveys are ideal for gathering information when there is little known of a phenomenon. Aligning questions to a midwifery informed framework provides an innovate approach to explore this issue. To assess reliability and validity of questions for two online surveys using a tool created for an expert advisory group of midwives with experience in survey design and midwifery practice. An innovative approach is taken to validate questions for two online surveys using an expert advisory group of seven midwifery academic researchers with experience in both quantitative and qualitative research designs, and midwifery practice. The group were asked to rate items using a 4-point rating scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Analysis of the scoring was undertaken using Content Validity Index, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and review of comments by the group. Quantitative scoring of both survey instruments were valid and reliable. The overall Content Validity Index score was 0.92 (midwives) and 0.93 (pregnant people). The overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient score was .78 (midwives) and .83 (pregnant people). Qualitative comments reinforced the validity and reliability of survey questions. An innovative approach was taken in assessing the reliability and validity of two online surveys using a midwifery expert advisory group and a midwifery framework to situate the surveys within a midwifery body of expertise and knowledge. The comments made by midwifery experts provided an extra layer in the validation of survey instruments using Content Validity Index and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient scoring. Creating a tool for validating questions developed by midwives for an expert group of midwives recognises the potential patriarchal roots of knowledge production and dissemination and enables marginalised voices to be heard.

THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE AS PART OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE COURSE

This paper focuses on the challenges of including Native American literature in the course on nineteenth century American literature. Survey literature courses often feature canonical works and exclude minority or contrarian voices. My literature survey course includes the creation stories of four Native American tribes originating from different parts of the U.S., together with the works of contemporary Native American writers reflecting on the pre-colonisation and colonisation periods of American history. The process of teaching the course foregrounded the tensions between the dominant white settler mentality and the political and social marginality of Native Americans, making my students aware of the importance of multivalent analyses of literary and historical texts. Throughout the course, we discussed prevalent stereotypes about Native Americans in American literature. The experience of teaching this course leads me to the conclusion that it is important to discuss various marginalised voices in the survey courses on nineteenth century American literature. These texts reflect themes related to race, gender, religion, and ownership of land that go beyond literature to include social, political and historical issues, helping our students develop a better understanding of American culture.

Vernacular Radio and the Practice of Resistance: Community Radio as a Cultural Tool to Engage on Health and Social Identities among Marginalized Communities in Ghana

ABSTRACT This article explores how local values and social identities can be integrated into Ghana’s formal COVID-19 public health communication interventions using community radio. The study adopted a qualitative approach using focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and reflexive thematic analysis. The ten-step participatory planning and action model to involve the community in the social change process is employed as the theoretical framework for this article. The study found that Radio Peace’s COVID-19 communication intervention is participatory due to the involvement of listeners in its programming. Also, local narratives and values were considered in designing locally relevant COVID-19 interventions through the audience’s access to the station’s activities. We suggest that dominant narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic be adapted to local realities by recognizing marginalized voices through listener involvement and access to local community radio stations.

Delving into a translator’s journey of translating marginalised voices of Bengal: An insightful discussion with V. Ramaswamy

This interview discussion is the outcome of a virtual meeting partially along with email correspondence. In this interview discussion with Bidisha Pal and Md. Mojibur Rahman, translator V. Ramaswamy focuses on the journey of his translation and tryst with the marginalised Dalit voice(s) in Bengal. He speaks about the writings that propel him to choose translating and to carry voice(s) beyond the Bengal arena, thus dissolving language barriers. The deliberate choice to translate various pieces representing various time periods acts as a witness to his existence as an independent translator. According to him, translation is also a source of healing to deal with a tragic past and the complicacies that life often presents to him. He shares his experience translating Subimal Mishra, the powerful poet who speaks for marginalised people. Ramaswamy, as he states in the interview, makes a vow to translate Mishra’s whole writing career. He talks about translating Manoranjan Byapari, a Bengali Dalit prize-winning author and political persona who has also championed the Dalit cause in Bengal, Adhir Biswas, the story-writer and publisher of a publishing house in Kolkata Gangchil that publishes writings by those literary personas who do not fall, as such, into the category of the mainstream, Bangladeshi writer Shahidul Zahir whose revolutionary voice and zeal reverberate in the literary world of Bangladesh, as well as Ansaruddin, a writer and farmer by profession whose works Ramaswamy is currently translating. Despite not being a part of the literary world as such, Ramaswamy has built an intense connection with literature and has gradually become part of the world. For him, translation is something that has to remain faithful to the source text especially if people are doing literary translation.

Language and Power in Sharankumar Limbale’s Akkarmashi: A Foucauldian Reading

This paper explores the relationship between language and power in the autobiographical novel Akkarmashi by Sharankumar Limbale through a Foucauldian analysis. The study investigates how language functions as a tool of power to control and manipulate individuals and communities in the context of caste-based discrimination in India. The study is guided by Michel Foucault’s theories on power and discourse, which emphasize the ways in which language is used to exert control over individuals and shape societal norms. The paper examines the use of language in the novel to reinforce caste-based power dynamics and perpetuate social hierarchies. Through a close analysis of the text, the study uncovers the ways in which language is used to marginalize and stigmatize individuals belonging to lower castes. It also explores how language is used as a means of resistance by the marginalized communities in the book. The paper argues that the novel exposes the power imbalances embedded in language use, and highlights the need to challenge dominant discourses that perpetuate social inequalities. It also underscores the significance of empowering marginalized voices to contest hegemonic power structures.

Understanding Indo-Fijian girls’ experiences in sport, physical activity and physical education: an intersectional study

ABSTRACT Whilst other sporting narratives of girls and women from the Global North have been well explored, there is limited research about girls from a Fijian background. Furthermore, within this ethnic/cultural group, their diverse voices are not well understood. Indo-Fijian girls who are of a South Asian background, and were born and reside in Fiji, are marginalised to a triple degree in the country’s sporting platforms: they face gender inequalities emanating from a patriarchal society; secondly, they are marginalised in terms of race and ethnicity, thus not having access to the same sporting opportunities that their iTaukei (Fijian natives) counterparts do, especially in mixed-race team sports. Finally, Indo-Fijian girls are economically disenfranchised, living in the peripheries of the Global South, where they struggle with a lack of funding, inequitable policies and an unstable political climate. This triple layer of marginalisation deprives Indo-Fijian girls/young women of real opportunities and rights in the sporting fields to play sports for better health and fitness as equal Fijian citizens. This study reports on a one-year ethnographic research and presents sporting narratives of young Indo-Fijian women aged between 16 and 25 years from the capital city of Fiji. The data was collected employing photo-elicitation interviews aiming to illuminate the experiences and trajectories within formal and recreational sport and physical activity of Indo-Fijian girls. The paper draws upon critical, intersectional and poststructuralist theories to thematically analyse the data. The young women’s narratives reveal that many times their athletic pursuits and passion disrupt the Fijian gender, racial and class orders as they consistently exercise their daily and sporting agency; sometimes these girls also find themselves complying with the hegemonic gender/racial order. This study amplifies local and marginalised voices of Indo-Fijian girls and emphasises the urgent need for inclusive and innovative educational pathways for Indo-Fijian girls in Fiji’s schools, thus fulfilling the country’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

An exploration of strength-based consultation; The Tree of Change

AimsThis paper presents and evaluates the consultation model Tree of Change (ToC) which offers an alternative approach to traditional problem-solving consultation frameworks for practice in educational psychology. ToC aims to resolve many of the issues associated with the traditional deficit models by enhancing the positive developmental pathways of pupils through augmenting their strengths, as opposed to focusing solely on reducing or eliminating the stated issue of concern (Donovan & Nickerson, 2007; Nickerson & Fishman, 2013; Resiliency Initiatives, 2011).MethodThis study was set within diverse ethnic and socio-economic communities based in north and east London. The researcher used a qualitative case study design. For the purpose of this study, case studies have been defined as a strategy for carrying out an investigation of a particular occurrence within the context of ‘the real world’ (Robson, 2011). The present study fits within Robson’s notion of a ‘set of individual case studies’ because it involves the study of a common set of features (e.g. exploring the implementation of ToC) across eleven consultations: nine Educational Psychologist (EP)and two EP-Teacher-Parent-pupil consultations. In total four EPs participated in the study all of whom were female. Eleven case studies were generated as a result of this: EP A submitting one case study, EP B submitting five cases, EP C submitting three cases and EP D providing two cases. The ethnicity of the EPs were black British, white British and Italian. The ethnicity of the consultees is reported in appendix 3. Consultation meetings were facilitated by EPs using the ToC model, please refer to appendix 1.FindingsEvaluation data revealed the ToC approach generated pupils’ strengths at different levels of ecology which influenced action plans by affecting the choice of strategy and/or target of interventions for young people.LimitationsData purported that information about the ToC should be shared in advance of consultation meetings so that consultees can better prepare and familiarise themselves with the process. Using the ToC virtually reportedly reduced relational connections when compared to engaging in this process face-to-face.ConclusionsThe ToC is a collaborative consultation framework which creates positive developmental pathways for pupils through augmenting their strengths and reducing the emphasis placed on their deficits. The process promotes shared understanding of pupil’s narratives and empowers marginalised voices.

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

The Production of the Book of Mormon in Light of a Tibetan Buddhist Parallel

Yindyamarra: Value Co-creation with Aboriginal Australians

Bringing together individuals of diverse perspectives in a research team can be challenging, especially when one perspective has been largely unacknowledged. The phrase ‘Value co-creation’ is used in marketing to include the voice of the consumer in the development of offerings so as to create value for both the organisation and the consumer. This study examines how well value co-creation model captures a process of research collaboration that privileges marginalised voices in a culturally sensitive and safe way. We examine a project that brought together three different, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, groups of people: Aboriginal community members; health care practitioners, policymakers and marketing experts. It is revealed that the value co-creation model exemplifies many of the elements needed to weave together different methodological perspectives and manage the dynamics of a research team. However, some adaptations were required, particularly: the inclusion of a ‘cultural broker’; a means of ‘cultural governance’; and the addition of a sixth pillar to the model – ‘evaluation’.

Rohingya diaspora online: Mapping the spaces of visibility, resistance and transnational identity on social media

This article examines how the Rohingya diaspora employs social media platforms to reclaim their identity narratives through visibility and resistance in the context of genocide and subsequent prolonged displacement. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 displaced Rohingya members and activists in Brisbane, Australia, this article demonstrates how transnational digital engagements foreground the construction of the Rohingya diaspora, and subsequently how the transnational identities are negotiated and mediated online. The findings show that the social media platforms facilitated the Rohingya diaspora development and identity construction through building an ‘imagined community’ of resistance, transnational advocacy networks and diasporic media production. At the same time, this article explores how online activism evolved and marginal voices emerged in cyberspace longing for home(land), justice and citizenship rights. This study brings unique insights to understand voices from the margins and shows how new media allow ethnic minorities and marginalised groups to construct diasporic identity through online mediation in transnational spaces.

Mahasweta Devi: The Voice of Dalits and Tribal People

Writing is a mirror that reflects social recorded, financial and political occasions refracted through nonexistent or anecdotal domains of public sayings. Strangely, in such accounts, writing additionally mirrors the irregular characteristics or complexities that exist in social as well as individual connections. Like many other European writers, Indians also have launched a war against such political, social and economic exploitations of the oppressors. As people know that women are more kind enough by heart, that’s why they have explored the various social evils and maladies that are continuously ruining the lives of the marginalized people in the form of caste, creed and religion. Apart from writing about feminism and gender discrimination, they have also dealt with the other grave issues that destroy the lives of these marginalized outcastes. Their works reveal the true picture of the contemporary society where innocence is exploited through the corrupted ideas of human beings in this man-made society. The present research paper has tried to explore the plight of Dalits and Tribals in the works of Mahasweta Devi, one of the great marginal voices in Indian English Literature.

Combatting Health Information Injustices for Community-based Health Promotion: A Curricular Outline

This paper addresses limitations of LIS education at the intersection of consumer health, community engagement, and amplifying marginalized voices. The authors propose a curricular outline for an MLIS course on community-based health promotion taught by community health workers (CHWs) who are LGBTQIA+. Queer theory and participatory learning inform this outline, serving as lenses for understanding health information injustices and leveraging community-based strengths to address them. The proposed curriculum utilizes existing research, training, and partnerships between the authors, CHW training specialists, and LGBTQIA+ CHWs. The latter received training using elements of the proposed curriculum and substantiated its offerings with their embodied knowledge and lived experiences. We plan on implementing this curricular outline in Spring 2023.

The role of stakeholder engagement in sustainable water resource management in South Africa

AbstractThe effort to promote participation in decision and policy making, as well as programmes in water management is designed to give everyone who has a stake an opportunity to express an opinion or a preference. Although stakeholder engagements are welcomed initiatives, which lead to public participation, they are often embraced in ideological strife and political propaganda. Nevertheless, stakeholder engagement and participation are prerequisites for any innovative sustainable system of water resource management in post‐independence South Africa. Additionally, stakeholder engagement is an essential component of reforms and a bedrock in developing comprehensive pieces of legislation and policies for sustainable water resource management. It has been a legal requirement for adopting environmental legislation, such as the National Environmental Management Act of 1998, the 1996 Constitution, the National Water Act and the legal instrument for its implementation— the National Water Resource Strategy. In spite of these legislative requirements, the country is yet to realize an inclusive and practical way to engage stakeholders in the water management at the local level. This paper explores the structural and systematic constraints that hinder effective participation of stakeholders in water management. A purposive sampling technique to survey 60 participants from the water sector is used in the study. The findings identified lack of community empowerment and capacity building, inconsistencies in regard to roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, and apathy towards public engagements as fundamental barriers to their effective participation. It is observed that unless efforts are made to enable marginal voices to be raised and heard, claims to inclusiveness and transformation in the water sector will remain only a theory.

Becoming Culturally Proficient Qualitative Researchers by Crossing Geographic and Methodological Borders

This article explores how novice researchers develop a scholarly identity as they cross geographic, cultural, institutional, identity, and methodological borders throughout their studies, experiencing insider, outsider, and in-betweener positions. It hypothesizes that researchers become more culturally proficient through their fieldwork and self-study. The autoethnographic narratives address the social justice issues encountered by two early career researchers who increased their cultural proficiency and self-awareness as they moved across multiple cultural contexts. By shifting back and forth between insider, outsider, and in-betweener, the researchers became more culturally proficient, developed their voices as researchers, and practiced inclusivity by amplifying marginalized voices. Their self-reflective analysis of autoethnographic writing speaks to early career and graduate qualitative researchers who must recognize their positionality and their placement on the cultural proficiency continuum to be effective scholars in cross-cultural research.

Watching National Treasure, creating danmei tongren: stories of power and the power of stories

ABSTRACT Discussing danmei tongren (the Chinese term for slash fan creations) fandom of the mainland Chinese variety television programme National Treasure, this article examines how the meanings of Chinese television are perceived, contested, extended, and transformed by female fan audiences. By undertaking close reading of both danmei tongren fiction and music videos, we investigate how Chinese female fans creatively rework, extend, transgress, and subvert their favourite popular media texts to speak to their shared interests and fantasies, working-in stories of romance, sex, and intimacy between men and removing sexist, heteronormative, and nationalist discourses. Our examination shows that National Treasure danmei tongren fandom concerns both stories of power relationships across genders, sexualities, classes, ages, and these stories’ power over women. It offers a communal space for amateur and alternative female cultural production in which marginalised voices can speak back to mainstream media culture in China.

“The Graphic Proximity of Intimate Loss”: the Role of Narrative Medicine in Articulating Marginalised and Excluded Voices

Academics apply value judgments on the legitimacy of Narrative Medicine and whether it actually evokes an untapped empathy in medical professionals. However, by adopting a purely educational perspective, academics exclude the voices of the sick/dying who exist beyond institutional walls. In Section I, this paper unpacks the opposing views surrounding the successes and limitations of Narrative Medicine but ultimately moves to understand the ways in which it seeks to reach the otherwise excluded voices of the sick/dying. This paper then adopts Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s White Glasses (1991) as a case study, in Section II, to further probe the ways in which Narrative Medicine can embrace diversity and interrogate the subjectivity of Narrative. However, whilst an individual narrative such as Kosofsky Sedgwick’s offers insight into a singular lived experience of suffering, Narrative Medicine as a genre excludes many voices when it disregards those with an inability to describe their lives narratologically. So, in Section III, this paper explores the potentiality for a more all-encompassing interpretation of Narrative Medicine which holds space for more diverse representations of suffering. Through the analysis of Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me (1938) this paper argues that by embracing pictorial representations of human experience, Narrative Medicine can evolve into more inclusive space. The role of Narrative Medicine in the Medical Humanities remains mobile but, despite its limitations, a personalised approach to pathography articulates the marginalised voices of the sick/dying.

Transformative Justice in Ethics Consultation.

Clinical ethics consultants bear witness to the direct harms of intersecting axes of oppression-such as racism and classism-as they impinge on elucidating and resolving ethical dilemmas in health care. Health Care Ethics Consultation (HCEC) professional guidance supports recognizing and analyzing power dynamics and social-structural obstacles to good care. However, the most relied upon bioethical principles in clinical ethics have been criticized for insufficiency in this regard. While individual ethics consultants have found ways to expand their approaches, they do so in an ad hoc way without frameworks to guide consistency. Motivated by the practical expertise of clinical ethicists, this essay offers a new framework to support openness to analyzing power imbalances and respecting marginalized voices and values. This framework is grounded in transformative justice, where the aim is to take responsibility for oppression by centering and responding to moral perspectives and value systems that are all too often silenced.

Breaking the Silence: Therapeutic Uses of Music and the Wellbeing of Adolescents

The author of this review paper critically discusses the Handbook of Music, Adoles­cents, and Wellbeing, edited by Katrina McFerran, Philippa Derrington, and Suvi Saarikallio (2019). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the strengths and limi­tations of the volume, which, drawing upon empirical, practical, theoretical, and personal perspectives from the fields of music therapy, music psychology, music cognition, and music sociology, explores the therapeutic role of music in the lives of adolescents. Moreover, an attempt is made to highlight the most valuable obser­vations and learnings which a non-clinician might glean from the book in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The author hopes that future collections on music, ado­lescence, and wellbeing will rebalance their research towards more cultural, socio-economic, and musical diversity to ensure that marginalised voices are heard.

Horizontal methodologies in community interpreting studies: Conducting research with Latin American service users in Aotearoa New Zealand

Community interpreting norms and research have been heavily influenced by a Western-centric community of practitioners and an individualist, positivist philosophy. This has resulted not only in an entrenched emphasis on professional interpreters’ detachment, neutrality, and invisibility but also in research which often ignores interpreting service users from culturally and linguistically diverse communities. This article addresses the complexity of operationalising horizontal methodologies during interpreting research in an effort to centre marginalised voices and epistemologies. The study involved a research project conducted with the Latin American community in Aotearoa New Zealand, employing horizontal one-on-one and group dialogues to assess interpreting service users’ views on allyship and social justice in spoken-language community interpreting. In this article, horizontal methodologies are presented as a culturally affirming way for Latin American service users to co-produce knowledge, and for Latin American researchers to engage with their own identity, recognise their impact on society, and challenge colonial research practices and interpreting norms.