**5. Navigating Privilege in Research**

When I proposed the study of CaC in México, my dissertation committee was skeptical. Even after I explained that I had traveled, lived, and worked in México for several months at a time between 2005 and 2008, they were not convinced. I understood why when I read through the long list of papers and books they gave me to read that told the story of the historical harms of research in Indigenous communities. This gave me pause. In selecting this topic of research, I had to ask myself, how could I avoid perpetuating inequalities while conducting research as a privileged white woman in a cross-cultural setting with people who have fewer material resources. In my case, both economic and racial privilege needed to be recognized and reckoned with. After the first meeting with agroecology promoter guides in México I wrote the following in my reflexive journal:

Today, Maria asked if I had traveled on an airplane and how long it took me to get there and how much it had cost. I answered honestly, adding the fact that my university had funded my trip to be there. This made me keenly aware of the economic mobility I experience. I also recognized that my ability to fly cheaply depends on those who have more economic means than myself, who fill up flights to Cancun from Canada and the USA, making my flights cheaper. As these vacationers fill up resorts in Cancun, they lure Campesinos/as out of the countryside all over the peninsula toward Cancun in search of jobs, and economic mobility. They make up the bulk of the low wage labor, grounds keepers, room cleaners, that keep resort owner's profit margins high. The fact that my currency has a favorable exchange when paying for hotels, transportation and meals depends on global histories of colonial power. This positions me at an advantage, with more means to access what I need and want [37].

In this reflexive note, I recognize my complicity in systems of global colonial power, and the privilege they afford me. My presence there was a manifestation of my middleclass white privilege. This presence was not neutral but was complicit in systems that pull Campesinos/as away from their substance livelihoods toward resorts, which contribute to the exploitation of their labor and loss of their Indigenous cultures.

As Daphne Patai explains, "it is the very existence of privilege that allows the research to be undertaken" [38] (p. 137). Patai claims that the existence of inequality between researcher and participant makes research inevitably unethical. This inherent inequality is partly due to the split between subject and object on which all research depends " ... imply[ing] that objectification, the utilization of others for one's own purposes (which may or may not coincide with their own end), and the possibility of exploitation, are built into almost all research projects with living human beings" [38] (p. 139). Ethically, researchers must question "the quality and consequences of their own curiosity, the extent to which their ways and means of knowing and understanding less respected than exploited other human beings" [39]. In other words, if there is little or no benefit to research participants and possible harm, does the researcher's interest in knowing or understanding outweigh the rights of the participants? In research, we do not just learn for learning's sake, "It is not done 'for nothing' in a totally disinterested way. It is for something, often it is to help us understand something" [40] (p. 133), and learning through research can be extractive and predatory. We extract understanding and report it to the academic world for the purposes of our own career advancement [38]. My heart sank.

The reading list given to me by my committee was important in understanding the legacy of the purposes and historical harms of research. Between the 1920s and 1950s, the so-called 'Golden Years' of anthropology, researchers voyaged, or were sent off to 'exotic' countries to do fieldwork [39,41] among the 'savages' of other 'backward' cultures [42]. Their reports, often racist, were consumed with fascination and filed away for the grand purpose of contributing to the knowledge of the diversity of human cultures [43]. However, whose interests was this research serving? This knowledge was often used in the service of the colonial project of maintaining power by controlling the 'troublesome groups' [44]. Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith identifies research as "a significant site of struggle ¯ between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other" [45] (p. 2). Matua and Blue Swadener add how the act of research itself can be a colonial act [46]. The act of representation is colonial when "the individuals have been stripped of their power for self-definition and self-expression by being cast in the role of the marginalized Other" [46] (p. 12).

My heart sank even further when I read on page one of Smith's book on Decolonizing Methodologies that research is a powerful and dirty word in Indigenous peoples' vocabulary that still "offends the deepest sense of our humanity" [45] (p. 1). It offends in several ways, including that "Western researchers and intellectuals can assume to know all that it is possible to know of us, on the basis of their brief encounters with some of us" [45] (p. 1). Experiences of Indigenous peoples with research have included lies, empty promises, coverups, betrayals, and inaccurate/fictional ethnographies [47]. The assumption of the authority of privileged 'Western' researchers to represent other cultures is called out as a

perpetuation of colonialism. The inherent questions are, whose interests does the research serve? Who stands to benefit/be harmed by the methods and products of the study?

Taking seriously these ethical concerns, I paused to consider my own motivations and role in pursuing this research. Daphne Patai challenges those considering doing research across race, class, and culture to not be overwhelmed into inaction by the difficulties we face but to act if the study is worth doing [38]. In choosing to act, my motivations were, first, to use my relative privilege to give voice to perspectives that had been marginalized and may not have otherwise been considered in academic discourses around sustainability. As Fine et al., explain, my goal was to "transform public consciousness and 'common sense' about the poor and working classes, write in ways that attach lives to racial structures and economies, and construct stories and analyses that interrupt and reframe the victimblaming mantras . . . " [47] (p. 169). Rosaldo offers that, "dismantling objectivity creates a space for ethical concerns ... enabling social analyst to become a social critic" [48] (p. 181). The purpose of ethnography becomes the communication of interests and aims of marginalized peoples, making ethnography a political act [48]. Second, I was motivated to find ways to work in partnership and reciprocity with research participants, so as to develop relationships of solidarity.

I looked for methodologies that would guide me in making my research useful to communities and give them power in defining how they would be represented. I came to use Critical Educational Ethnography as outlined by Howard and Ali, because its goal was the "uncovering of useful and productive knowledge that will help address a concern of the local community" [21] (p. 158). Community members take the role of identifying the concern to be addressed. In this way, CEE addresses the question, "whose interests does the research serve?" posed by the movement to decolonize research methodologies. Howard and Ali argue that critical educational ethnographers must, "approach local communities not simply as subjects of researchers, but as full partners in the research itself" [21] (p. 151). In practice, this decentering of researcher authority should come in the form of involvement of research participants in every stage of the research from design to analysis [21]. When I reflect back on my attempts at involving participants in research goals and design, I admit that they were only partially successful.

I used a reciprocal research agreement with the community organization FPP as one way to align my study with their priorities and to reciprocate their energy in supporting my study by contributing to their work. In my conversations with FPP staff, I asked if there was a particular product or form of labor that I could offer in return for their participation in my research. They identified what is called a *sistematización,* which I learned was a document outlining an approach or system. In this case, FPP's approach to building CaC networks with communities. Including this as a product of research changed and enriched my research in several ways. I added several questions to my interview guide for staff and participants to help build my understanding of how this program had developed over time and I held several interviews and meetings with staff to collaborate on the development of the *sistematización*. Thus, co-developing the *sistematización* with FPP served the interests of the community organization and also guided the direction of my research.

About a year after we made the reciprocal research agreement, I met with FPP staff to present a draft of the *sistematización* and ask for feedback and changes. When I listen back to the recording of this meeting, I laughed at the exclamation of relief I made when the coordinator said the work I had done would be very useful to her team. I share this for two reasons. First to demonstrate how a reciprocal approach to research makes the success of the research contingent on its usefulness to the partners in research. My success depended on my collaborative relationship with community partners and the relative contribution of my work to theirs. Second, as evidence of the time and trust that FPP staff had given me before they knew if my work would be useful, or not. In later communications, I was told that this document had helped FPP secure funding to expand the program and train new staff. This was when I felt that the research agreement had been reciprocal.

My second attempt to be guided by local concerns and involve participants in research came in the form of member reflections [24] where initial analysis was shared with research participants, and they were asked for feedback. In this way, my analysis evolved in conversation with participants. Member reflections in this case took the form of short narratives I wrote based on interviews and observations, which I read out loud to each group. Throughout the reading of the narratives, I paused and asked questions about what I felt were gaps in my understanding and questions about the accuracy of my representation of their reality. By engaging in member reflections, I gave authority to participants, if partially, in how they were represented. There were very interesting and important changes made as a result of member reflection sessions. Even though not all groups were equally engaged in the process of member reflections, all of the participants expressed that they were happy with how they were being represented and wished to have their names on their quotes and photographs. Some even expressed that they felt honored that I had come from far away to learn from them and share their perspectives.

As an interesting unintended benefit of the member reflections process, FPP staff expressed that the short narratives I created for member reflections, would be useful in their fundraising campaigns to support CaC. They also shared that the narratives gave them a view of participants' perspectives of their work that they rarely got an insight into, as they mostly communicated with the promoter guides in each community. In this way, I felt that my efforts served the purpose of making participant perspectives and priorities clearer to the facilitating organization. Up to this point, my work had been useful to Campesinos/as through their relationship with FPP, not directly to Campesinos/as themselves.

The limitations of this study came in many forms. Within my Ph.D. program, students begin with a research proposal and then the ethics review process before beginning any fieldwork, thus the purposes of research are necessarily defined ahead of time. Additionally, given the timeline of a Ph.D. program in Canada (4 years), there is not sufficient time for authentic relationship building necessary for communities to truly define the purposes of the study. It is my hope that the relationships I have formed thus far will facilitate this process in the future. Given these limitations, even though I had hoped to find a way for participants to define the direction of my research, it proved unrealistic and even problematic.

In my experience, Campesinos/as are very busy with the work needed to feed their family. For example, near the end of one member reflections session, when I asked a participant if she had more time to discuss what I had written based on interviews with her and her fellow community members, she said she hadn't yet made the tortillas and it was getting late. I felt that asking more of Campesinos/as time would have been disrespectful. There were more immediate needs to be taken care of. I wrote in my reflexive journal "If you can't have a garden because your chickens will eat the seeds you plant, you don't need a discussion: you need fencing" [49]. Those with privilege and the means to buy fencing may have time for discussions. At the time, I felt that asking them to define the direction of research would have been pushing an assumption that research *in itself* has inherent benefits to participants. This is not to say that working with participants to develop a research project is not possible, but that I failed to do so. I acknowledge that cultural differences, institutional processes, and power differentials prevented this research from being truly participant-directed. Thus, despite my efforts to the contrary, my research remained colonial in nature. Systems of white privilege afforded me the opportunity to continue this research, despite its limitations. Learning from this experience, I continue to challenge myself as a researcher to work in ways that engage participants of research in the goals and design of research from the initial stages so that they hold the power to decide its direction.
