Combining Collective Memory Work and Critical Participatory Action Research with Women’s Counselors in Vienna
Nora Ruck, Barbara Rothmüller, Sigrid Awart, Andrea Kaiser-Horvath & Bettina Zehetner
In our session, we want to discuss the uses of combining collective memory-work (CMW) and critical participatory action research (CPAR) with and for women’s counselors who work in autonomously organized counseling centers in Austria. In a previous CPAR project, we analyzed how women’s counselors experience and navigate the emotional ambivalences of their work. Collectively we decided for the practitioner researchers (Sigrid Awart & Andrea Kaiser-Horvath from Peregrina, and Bettina Zehetner from Frauen* beraten Frauen*) to research themselves and, partly, their colleagues at their respective counseling centers. We also chose to employ qualitative methods that would allow for a “hermeneutic of suspicion” (Josselson), that is, to address the implicit or unconscious layers of experience of women’ counselors as they encounter ambivalent emotions in their work. Put in most general terms, hermeneutic of suspicion relates to an interpretative stances that does not take the meaning voiced by research participants at face value but provides analyses that go beyond the manifest layer of what is explicitly stated. Practitioner researchers were eager for this interpretative approach because as psychosocial counselors with a fair amount of experience in supervision and intervision, they were both curious about and familiar with critical self-reflexivity. We addressed this objective by facilitating a group discussion among the three practitioner researchers that was interpreted by the university researchers using the documentary method of interpretation. Furthermore, the practitioner researchers conducted collective memory-work on a moment in which they felt uneasy at work. The written stories were then interpreted collectively. We are now at the point where we are considering distribution and action and could use a shared discussion on how to best accomplish this.
Some methodological questions we are considering are the following:
What are the advantages but also the risks in combining critical participatory action research with a hermeneutics of suspicion?
What is needed by both university researchers and co-researchers in order to ethically and successfully combine CPAR and a hermeneutics of suspicion?
How are CMW dynamics affected by CPAR dynamics where university researchers are part of the collective interpretation process but do not join in the writing of memories themselves?
Some more action-related questions we have:
We are considering developing a guide for CMW based intervisions in women’s counseling centers. Do you have any ideas, experiences or suggestions on how this could work?