s.malz
Artifact One
Artifact one is an article and reflective process that I summarized to moderate a group discussion. The insight from this class discussion supported my identity development as an interdisciplinary professional and reinforced my critical thinking patterns. The article itself gave me a tangible framework to apply in the workplace. I brought this model to the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging committee at work as we reworked our organizations land acknowledgement.
MAIS 601 Making Sense of Theory in the Humanities and Social Science
Week 2 Discussion Moderation – Thursday, May 11, 2023
Hirsch and Brosius (2013) discuss the trade-off between conservation efforts and development initiatives using an Integrative Framework. The authors argue that a win-win situation is unlikely as different perspectives assign different values to each course of action. Though a truly integrated decision is unachievable, the decision-making process can be an integrative one where different features are thoroughly considered whether they are factored into the final course of action or not. Within the proposed framework, the authors provide a three-lens analysis: values and valuation, process and governance and, power and equality.
The values and valuation lens takes into account the values of the parties involved and how they are "subject to being traded off" (Hirsch and Brosius, 2013). This perspective can be applied with the assumption that there is one underlying value. For instance, it can be assumed that all members equally value safety so a particular course of action trade-offs can be weighed and latterly compared. However, with a multiplicity of views and values, a pluralistic approach allows for multiple criteria to be evaluated, resisting the urge to narrow down to a singular metric.
The process and governance lens involves engaging stakeholders across varying groups and contexts. This lens focuses on outlining procedures that encourage communication and mutual learning while moving toward a decision. This can be summarized as accounting for all those impacted and determining processes that include their voice in the decision-making process. And if that can not happen, this process and governance trade-off be explicated.
Finally, the power and inequality lens explicates who has the power and how that power is implicitly manifest in the decision-making process. This lens considered knowledge as intrinsically political and works to expose where the status quo power configurations are reinforced. An example of this is how certain forms of knowledge are seen as credible and others are not. This lens is argued as the most challenging as it considers complex issues that are not immediately resolvable within the context of a topic-specific dialogue like the one of conservation and development.
To that point, we would like to put the following question to the class:
With complex issues of power and inequality that are laden within individual disciplines, does interdisciplinarity muddle and compound these issues further? On the other hand, how might an interdisciplinary approach allow us to engage with problems of power and inequality where individual disciplines may leave us short?
The following response from a peer summarized the classes general response to my question.
“With an interdisciplinary approach, one can recognize bias, think critically, tolerate ambiguity, and acknowledge and appreciate ethical concerns. Additionally, it allows for a creative perspective and the opportunity to think beyond the traditional sense of that specific discipline. I think initially, one might think that the interdisciplinary approach to solving problems might muddy the waters because there are now too many hands in the pot, or the perspectives and opinions are too far vast that they couldn't possibly come to an agreeable conclusion. But, with appropriate organization and structure, I believe the holistic, interdisciplinary approach ensures bias is managed, crafts a common language, and reconciles radically different meanings of a topic or word.”
References
Hirsch, P.D. and Brosius J. Peter (2013, No. 31 ) Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies. Navigating Complex Trade-Offs in Conservation and Development: An Integrative Framework pp. 99-1223) The link is Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies . Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Reflection
I agree with the perspective shared by my peers. Throughout the MAIS program, one thing that we have practiced over and over is recognizing and mitigating bias. I remember as an undergraduate student, being questioned on my social and political location often left me feeling overwhelmed. I didn’t want to be perceived as an oppressor. I didn’t want to be contributing to the problem. My feeling as a younger person was that if I was any of these things, this meant something wrong about me. What I’ve gained through ongoing education is that most of us will occupy a position of privilege and have the potential to reinforce problematic patterns. Learning to own this helped me step into asking difficult questions of myself. It also helped me receive the same line of questioning from others. Another thing my peer mentions about interdisciplinarity is the ability to tolerate ambiguity. I’ve seen myself grow immensely in this way as well. There are rarely neat answers. Again, that doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me or the world and that I should stop asking questions and challenging the status quo.
The MAIS class discussions reinforced my learning in that they helped me develop a social and relational voice that reflected the concepts we were learning. Talking about bias and ambiguity and the simultaneously enduring benefit of an interdisciplinary approach reinforced my identity as an interdisciplinary student and professional. It strengthened my ability to course correct because I recognized that as a part of the process, not a failure on my part. In the real-life experience below, I found myself discussing the focus on community in our workplace programs synonymous with the notion of community in Indigenous worldviews. When in fact, the way community is enacted in our programs, doesn’t take an Indigenous perspective into account at all. The value – or the language – just happens to be similar. Catching myself positioning our mainstream, often colonially structured offerings as inclusive of Indigenous perspectives, just because the language happened to be similar was a direct result of conversations that took place in Artifact One. Even though I wasn’t reconciling a different meaning, I was made blatantly aware of the distinction.
In addition to this personal and professional growth, the real-life application below demonstrates how I have taken models learned in the classroom and applied them in the workplace. The model that Hirsch and Brosius (2013) share supported me and my colleagues in explicating social/political location and biases in several ways.
Real-Life Application
My colleagues and I have been keenly working on rewriting our organization's land acknowledgement. The review processes our team undertook went beyond restructuring the acknowledgement but understanding the history of land acknowledgements within Indigenous communities, a reflection on why we as settlers should participate in a land acknowledgement, and the inherent contentions of crafting and delivering a land acknowledgement while working within legal and governance structures that are inherently colonial.
Indigenous Nations have used Land Acknowledgments to identify themselves, the purpose of visiting a territory, whose territory they are on, and if permission to be there has been granted. Land Acknowledgements have also been used to summarize one's connections to the place and to identify kinship ties. Offering a Land Acknowledgment is a way to honour the land, language, and people of the place folks gather (Cardinal, 2023).
Based on this explanation of a land acknowledgment the tension as settlers deliver this statement is already apparent. Settlers were never invited. Thinking of the land acknowledgment crafting process, Hirsch and Brosius’s (2013) consideration of trade-offs when it comes to values, processes and power helped illuminate other limitations of our work, while still endeavouring to move forward rather than give up because of incompatibilities.
From the values and valuation lens, some of us struggled to make a genuine statement about the connection to and honouring of the land. Though not each team member struggled equally in identifying this connection, this evaluation of values did bring to light that whether we participated in acknowledging the land itself or not – the perspectives we were raised with may be inherently different – rendering the acknowledgement – when not initiated by an Indigenous person – performative regardless of our efforts to move beyond that.
From the process and governance lens, our processes included Indigenous resources, including attending an Indigenous-hosted seminar on writing land acknowledgements. However, we have yet to engage an Indigenous person in providing feedback on our final statement. As of now, this stands as an explicit trade-off in our process.
Finally, from the power and inequality lens. This limitation was the first that became aware of our group. A conversation our group had about why we do land acknowledgments revealed that some of us thought it was a part of the 94 Calls to Action (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, n.d.). Turns out, land acknowledgements were not on that list. Rather, it seems that the rise in organizations delivering land acknowledgements was a very small step, akin to doing the bare minimum when it comes to the actual calls to action made by the community. Thus, our focus on this matter reinforces what the dominant discourse deems important and worthy of attention as opposed to the clear outcomes the Indigenous community has called for.
As Hirsch and Brosius (2013) argue, arriving at an outcome that fully honours the Indigenous perspective within endeavours undertaken by organizations whose operational structure is colonial is unlikely. Still, the integrative framework offered here explicates these contentions in a way that accounts for their problematic reality. This creates space for more open discussion and reworking our approaches, when working amongst ourselves and the Indigenous communities we are hoping to honour. Messy and uncomfortable is far better than ignorant and blissful. Undertaking a process like this one keeps the tension front and center.
References
Cardinal, Joel. (2023, September 20). Live webinar: Creating your own land acknowledgement [Webinar outline]. Gord Downie and Chanie Wenjack Fund. https://downiewenjack.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Land-Acknowledgments-Webinar-Outline.pdf
Hirsch, P.D. and Brosius J. Peter (2013, No. 31) Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies. Navigating Complex Trade-Offs in Conservation and Development: An Integrative Framework pp. 99-1223) The link is Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies. Association for Interdisciplinary Studies.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (n.d.). Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action. Government of British Columbia. Retrieved December 6, 2023, from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf