In Guba and Lincoln’s chapter “Competing Paradigms in Qualitative Research,” (Guba, 1994) the authors establish a series of questions that can be used to place a research study in one of four paradigms: positivism, post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism. These questions can also serve to analyze and evaluate the inquiry. In this essay I will use a sample of these questions to examine the article “Theorizing Hyphenated Selves,” by Michelle Fine and Selcuk Sirin (Fine, 2007) and specifically to look at the theories, methods, and ultimately the importance of their work as it relates to issues of youth identity in today’s ever tumultuous geopolitical world. I have chosen the questions based mainly on what I see is their relevance to the Hyphenated Selves study and its applications.
It must first be established that this study falls squarely into the “Constructivist” paradigm, which I will demonstrate within the answer to each question. In exploring the article with these questions in mind, I found that notions of values and ethics were woven throughout discussions of aim, method and quality, which serves to reinforce the constructivist framing of this study. These are, therefore, the issues I have chosen through which to examine the article.
- What is the aim or purpose of inquiry?
Fine and Sirin began with the assertion that immediately following the events of 9/11, the experience of being a young person of Muslim faith living in the United States was radically altered and intensified. Suddenly, these more or less ‘normal’ kids (Fine, 2007, p. 17) were forced to assume an identity that was defined for them by the larger society in which they lived, an identity that put them in the crosshairs of surveillance, suspicion, otherness and outright discrimination. Now as ‘Muslim-Americans,’ they are neither wholly one or the other; thus they are “living on the hyphen,” as one young woman puts it (Fine, 2007, p. 19)
The study had three general goals: to examine the experiences of youth newly labeled as “Muslim-American;” to unpack the differences and variations in this heterogeneous group; and to raise awareness of the hyphenated identity and encourage further study of this sector of youth experience, as it relates to changes in the social and political landscapes around the world. (Fine, 2007, p. 17)
Since the subject of the study was the dissecting of complex and multi-layered identities, the researchers had to develop a variety of research tools and methods in order to give the subjects a broad and inviting space in which to reveal their experiences. (Fine, 2007, p. 29) Yet the authors acknowledge that the subjects still may not be able to fully enunciate the ways in which the social and political forces are affecting them. Therefore a deeper aim in the study is also to examine what it not said, what is not revealed, and to find in the spaces in-between the deeper effects on the subjects’ inner experience. This approach recommends further study of the lives of youth caught on the see-saw of identity, using the hyphenated selves framework:
“The framework of hyphenated selves, however, also suggests that many influences on young lives lie outside the consciousness of these young people, encouraging researchers to search for and theorize those social factors and processes that are felt but perhaps not named.” (Fine, 2007, p. 31)
From the advocacy or activism perspective, the researchers hope that further use of the hyphenated selves framework will ultimately serve populations of young people who are experiencing displacement, alienation, discrimination and disequilibrium because of the hyphenated identity that is either imposed on them, or that they choose to assume. (Fine, 2007, p. 23) This concept also appears in a discussion of “values.”
- How does knowledge accumulate?
As I mentioned above, the authors used a mixed-methods approach to collect both quantified and qualified data, including focus groups, mapping projects, interviews and surveys. They relied heavily on a participatory action research approach, forming a “participatory advisory board” of representative Muslim-American youth who contributed to the formulation of the research questions and advised on the design of the research and the use of the various methods. The authors described being “gently educated” by the kids in their PAR group. (Fine, 2007, p. 24)
The “hermeneutical / dialectical process” as described by Guba & Lincoln (Guba, 1994, p. 114) shows up in the article in a few different ways. The authors mention an earlier phase of the study done in 2003, through surveys, which had a narrower focus and area of inquiry. The survey results led to the coding of three different kinds of experiences: “integrated lives at the hyphen,” “parallel lives,” and “”conflict and tension between lives.” (Fine, 2007, p. 26) These results then informed the cognitive mapping method, which turned out to be very informative about the subjects’ true feelings regarding the intersection of multiple identities in their lives; and that ultimately led the researchers to isolate “the hyphen” as the true focus of the study. (Fine, 2007, p. 21) In this way, there was a feedback loop of results leading to more questions leading to more refined and distilled results.
While the article does not say much about private interviews with individual subjects, it does include some of the more revealing cognitive maps that the subjects created; one has the sense that Fine and Sirin were both surprised and impressed by the clarity and intensity that these kids were able to convey in their drawings. (Fine, 2007, pp. 27-28) These maps satisfy the requirement of “vicarious experience” described in Guba and Lincoln as a constructivist approach to knowledge accumulation. The focus groups were also valuable in this way, as they provided the researchers with a “doubled analysis” of the discourse, by first recording the subjects’ a priori experience, and then listening in on the group’s critical conversation about those episodes.
Another approach to knowledge collection, described on page 32 in the discussion of analysis, is also informed by the values of the authors (more on values in a later section). To show the greatest respect to the subjects and their individual experiences, the researchers had to accept what they said “at face value,” and not try to re-shape them to fit in a pre-determined, potentially hegemonic frame. Yet at the same time, it must be acknowledged that there may be important or valuable insight that is not being said, so good old fashioned psychoanalysis had to be employed to read between the lines, to interpret the maps and to decipher texts.
- What criteria are appropriate for judging the goodness or quality of an inquiry?
Guba & Lincoln seem to be distrustful of the ability of the constructivist approach to sufficiently establish trustworthiness and authenticity, ostensibly because this approach is absent of the conceit of the impartial, objective distanced observer (Guba, 1994, p. 114). But Fine and Sirin answer this criticism as if it had been leveled directly at them, and provide a few opportunities for the work to be objectively evaluated.
Among the challenges the researchers faced was that of discussing “Muslim-Americans” as a definable group, while acknowledging that far from being homogenous, there were multiple subgroups within it, defined by the usual markers of identity: gender, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and so on. (Fine, 2007, p. 24) (I will refer to this passage again in the section about values.) Early in the article we are told that while non-Muslims (one assumes they mean their academic peers who happen not to be Muslim) challenged them for lumping together a diverse group that has only religious identity as a constant, the actual members of that group have confirmed that the discussion is accurate and important, despite this flaw. (Fine, 2007, p. 25) Perhaps stating this was a defensive move, but it seems to me that if the subject of the study confirms its value, then that should override, to some degree, external criticism from a strictly academic perspective.
In a section called “Confessions at the Methodological Hyphen,” the authors describe in detail the risks and biases that they faced as a result of their specific methodology. Yet their honestly and humility about these challenges serve only to enhance the trustworthiness and usefulness of the study. For example, while (in respectful obedience to the values of Constructivism) they describe in detail the social and cultural identities of both themselves and their subjects, they do acknowledge that their sample was not necessarily representative of all Muslim-Americans, because most of their subjects were “largely well educated, middle class” from institutes of higher learning. (Fine, 2007, p. 33) They used this to investigate ‘the hyphen’ further, stating that the conflicts of living on the hyphen might only be experienced by youth from privilege. Thus a potential liability in the methodology led to a deeper conclusion, which can then be incorporated in further studies of this kind, which they encourage: “such a research project would be important to undertake.” (Fine, 2007, p. 33)
I would think that an inquiry that is grounded in ethical considerations, and that is so transparent about theethical risks and challenges it faced, and that invites scrutiny and criticism from its subjects and advisory group would by definition be a study with great quality.
- What is the role of values in inquiry?
As I mentioned earlier, notions of values and ethics arise throughout the Hyphenated Selves article, and are intrinsic to analyses of intent, method, and quality of results. Really, it was the fundamental values of Michelle Fine and Selcuk Sirin that led them to the study in the first place; without an interest in the experiences of youth affected by social and political unrest, they wouldn’t have undertaken this study. In their short answer about values, Guba & Lincoln refer to “powerless and ‘at-risk’ audiences” requiring more consideration than the ‘powerful’ – into which category, it should be noted, they place the researcher. (Guba, 1994, p. 114)
Values also inform the choice of methods that is central to a discussion of this study. For example, the formation of the PAR group, with the intention of generating questions to put to the broader sample, arose from the researchers’ understanding that they are external observers of this group (despite Selcuk Sirin being Muslim) and that their work would be most effective, relevant and useful if it was informed by the actual experience and knowledge of those individuals it intended to study. (Fine, 2007, p. 24) Furthermore, coming from a values-based acknowledgement that Muslim-American youth was a wildly diverse group, the researchers had to employ a variety of methods in order to give all of their subjects the opportunity to express their diverse individual experiences while being a member of the group.
Throughout the article, Fine and Sirin reveal their sensitivity to the risk of forcing their subjects’ responses into a binary system of ‘Muslim or American.’ (This will come up again in the next section about ethics.) They are wary of survey questions that ask respondents to place themselves somewhere on a scale from ‘more Muslim to more American.’ (Fine, 2007, p. 29) In an endnote, they revealed that they were even afraid to ask respondents about how they identified with “ ‘Muslim communities’ and ‘mainstream US society’ ” until their PAR group, essentially, told them it was ok. (note #3, p.35) By making the investigation of ‘the hyphen’ the ultimate aim of the study, the authors had to establish a value system that didn’t pigeonhole the subjects as one or the other.
- What is the place of ethics in inquiry?
As with the values question, the ethical underpinning of the hyphenated selves study is inseparable from its theories, methods, and analyses. From the start, the authors expressed an “ambivalence” in even using the term “Muslim-American,” which forces a collection of very different people into one exoticized group. (endnote #1, p. 35) Yet since this label was placed on them by the greater socio-political, media-driven culture, it became at once the object of their study and the reason for it. In this way ethics are foregrounded in this study, and can be used as a lens to examine every choice that was made, every analysis, every conclusion. Here are a few that stood out for me.
At the beginning of the section on methods, the authors reveal their wariness of the ethical risks and possible limitations of the research methods they chose, even though the entire methodological design was constructed as a hedge against inaccuracy or inauthenticity. (Fine, 2007, p. 23) Since their subject was youth, and teens are in constant flux, they knew that definitive answers would be elusive:
“…even as we remain skeptical and humble always about these decisions, all too aware of their limitations, their ambitions, and the impossibility of ‘catching politics’ as they circulate through the rapidly metabolizing bodies of youth.” (Fine, 2007, p. 23)
I believe that this awareness, as well as their other expressions of uncertainty, ambivalence and hesitation about how the subjects were summarized, creates an ethical structure that enabled the researchers to move forward in this ethically volatile area of inquiry.
The use of the PAR group to design the studies demonstrates ethical considerations around the interactions with the subjects, in that its goal was to streamline the inquiry to get directly to the issue of the hyphen, and specifically without insulting, generalizing or limiting the subjects. “They warned us about ethical concerns,” they wrote on page 24; in this way, there was a dialectic process between methods and ethics, as ethics prescribed methods, which led to the formation of more ethical guidelines, which led to methodological choices, and so on.
The very definition of ‘the hyphen’ meant that the respondents were not going to identify as more Muslim or more American; so the researchers specifically designed the surveys to make sure that there was no risk of even slightly nudging them towards a “one or the other” answer. Generating one survey that only asks about their Muslim identification, and another that only asks about their “mainstream US” identification, the researchers thus respected and acknowledged the hyphen – as well as the mercurial nature of young people, as discussed above. (Fine, 2007, pp. 28-29)
Throughout the essay, Fine and Sirin described how they took great pains to encourage their subjects to reveal themselves with maximum authenticity, honesty and self-awareness. And yet, as with any ethnography, it is impossible to guarantee that the subject of study will behave the same as when it’s not being observed. The authors describe the ethical concern of “research as a form of surveillance,” (Fine, 2007, p. 33) which is particularly salient in this case since one of the main experiences of Muslim-Americans post 9/11 is of being placed under constant surveillance. They acknowledge that it was very likely that some of their subjects, afraid of even the slightest comparison to “terrorists,” may have tempered their responses ever so slightly to dilute any aggression they may have been harboring. The authors indicate that they “felt” rage from some of their young respondents, though this rage was not expressed.
Conclusion
Ten years ago, when Michelle Fine and Selcuk Sirin plubilshed their article “Theorizing Hyphenated Selves,” they couldn’t have known how relevant their study would be today, as we watch the party in power in the US swing violently away from the global, inclusive, anti-discrimination approach of the last administration and towards fear-based, protectionist, discriminatory, military-based policies. The notion of “living on the hyphen” is about to become even more relevant for Muslim-American (and Latino-American, and African-American, and just about any kind of Brown-American) youth today than it was in the period that directly followed the events of 9/11. With the values held by both the left and right being called into question, and the ethical structure that used to give at least some solidity to our expectations being dismantled by the current administration, all ‘hyphenated’ people will face challenges to their identity, and in many cases, their safety.
Now more than ever, the social sciences have an obligation to embrace the paradigm of “hyphenated selves” as defined by Fine & Selcuk, and to utilize it to acknowledge and affirm the experience of all American youth who could be identified as ‘hyphenated’.