Embracing a Metic Lens for Community-based Participatory Research in Technical Communication

ABSTRACT

This article responds to recent calls for social justice-oriented work in Technical and professional communication, detailing moments from a participatory photovoice project with community organizers working toward a more just regional economy. By juxtaposing participatory action research methods and the rhetorical concept of metis, or embodied, rhetorical cunning, this article highlights how reversals of power might transform research projects for all parties involved; and how disenfranchised groups might challenge extractive practices draining their communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Photovoice
• action research
• research methods
• rhetorical theory
• social justice; rural organizing; Appalachia

Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the participants in this project for welcoming me into their lives with kindness and trust, and to the larger organizations that made this work possible.

Thank you also to: the editorial staff and reviewers of TCQ for all of their encouragement and thoughtful feedback on this piece; my dissertation committee members that supported me as I developed the project described in this piece; Cath Gouge, Brian Ballentine, and Doug Phillips, who enhanced my understanding of this project in a Skype interview long before I became their colleague at WVU; and especially to Rachel Atherton and Dustin Edwards, who both selflessly reviewed drafts of this piece and kept pushing me to the finish line.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this aritcle can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1. Program and participant names have been changed to protect their work.

2. While I believe that metis is a fruitful lens that can bolster our understandings of research dynamics and projects, it is undeniable that metis is a concept steeped in the Western rhetorical tradition, bringing along with it legacies of Western colonization and domination. Keeping this history in mind, I offer it as an imperfect frame for understanding certain elements of participatory research, in the hopes that its presence can highlight power in spaces often ignored, and assign increased agency to participants.

3. While our project lasted an entire year, this article reports results from only the first six months, including photos, narratives, and our first two focus groups.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Association for Business Communication; Purdue College of Liberal Arts; Purdue Research Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Erin Brock Carlson

Erin Brock Carlson is an assistant professor in the Department of English at West Virginia University, where she teaches courses in the Professional Writing and Editing program. Her research engages relationships between community action, technology, and place via digital, participatory research methods.