The Influence of Family on Justice-Oriented Young Women of Colors' Understandings of Oppression and Imaginings of Liberation
Year: 2020
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The current study grounds itself in the voices of self-identified, justice-oriented, YWOC (N = 7) who participated in a community leadership program. In concert with their peers, these YWOC received training on how to design and implement a social change project in their communities. I explore these young womens’ perceptions of how their experiences with and within families influence their understandings of social oppression, their commitments to social change, and their imaginings of liberation. Empirical investigations of the influence of family on sociopolitical understandings has tended to examine family influence in conjunction with other relational contexts (e.g., community, peers). Relatively few empirical investigations exclusively examine how family as a context informs YWOC’s social analysis (Diemer et al., 2006; Gordon, 2008; O’Connor, 1997). Furthermore, family context is usually studied in ways that under consider the realities that families and young women of color possess multiple identities (e.g., class, race, immigration status) that have implications for how power is experienced and understood within and outside of the family. To address my research question, I use a within group (i.e., emic) exploratory qualitative approach to examine how justice-oriented YWOC (N = 7) describe the ways their families inform their understandings and imaginings of oppression and liberation. This study revealed that macro-level sociopolitical dynamics (e.g., oppression, liberation) play out through family relations. When oppression plays out in sites of love/care (e.g., family) we are reminded of the contradictions/dualities of power. Within family, power can be used to both maintain oppression and foster liberation. The study’s sample describes various instances in which they describe the ability of their family members to do both.
Author: Casta Guillaume
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3103229356