Rosalind Edwards

Interpreters/Translators and Cross-Language Research: Reflexivity and Border Crossings

In this article, the authors examine the implications of extending calls for reflexivity in qualitative research generally to cross-language research with interpreters. Drawing on the concept of ‘borders’, they present two research projects to demonstrate the need to locate the interpreter as active in producing research accounts. They extend the concept of ‘border crossing’, relating this to identity politics and the benefits of making the interpreter visible in research.

Immigration, social cohesion and social capital : a critical review

In recent years, there has been an intense public and policy debate about ethnic diversity, community cohesion, and immigration in Britain and other societies worldwide. In addition, there has been a growing preoccupation with the possible dangers to social cohesion represented by growing immigration flows and ethnic diversity. This paper proposes a critical framework for assessing the links between immigration, social cohesion, and social capital. It argues that the concept of social capital is episodic, socially constructed and value-based, depending on the prevailing ideological climate. Considerations of social capital as a public policy tool to achieve social cohesion need to incorporate an appreciation of alternative conceptions of social capital rooted in a textured under-standing of immigrant processes and migration contexts.

A critical examination of the use of interpreters in the qualitative research process

(1998). A critical examination of the use of interpreters in the qualitative research process. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 197-208.

Connecting method and epistemology: A white women interviewing black women

Abstract This article reviews the literature produced by feminists on women interviewing women. It questions some of its underlying assumptions both on the basis of critiques of feminist work by Black feminists and on the basis of the authors own experiences as a white woman interviewing Afro-Caribbean women. It is suggested here that when the interviewer is white the contacting and interviewing of Black women needs to be conducted in a different way from that of white women so as to take account of the meanings of race for Black women. It is argued that following a feminist methodology is the way to achieve this. Additionally, some indications of the ways in which their sex may unite both Black and white women are drawn out.

Present and absent in troubling ways: families and social capital debates*

Social capital has become a key concept in Government policy-making and academic circles. Particular forms of social capital theorising have become dominant and influential, invoking certain conceptions of the nature of family life. Inherently, ideas about ‘the family’ not only draw on gender divisions in fundamental ways, but also on particular forms of intergenerational relationships and power relations. This paper explores the place, and understandings, of family in social capital theorising from a feminist perspective, including the way that debates in the social capital field interlock with those in the family field. These encompass: posing both ‘the family’ and social capital as fundamental and strong bases for social cohesion, but also as easily eroded and in need of protection and encouragement; the relationship between ‘the private’ and ‘the social’; notions of bonding and bridging, and horizontal and vertical, forms of social capital as these relate to ideas about contemporary diversity in family forms and the nature of intimate relationships; and analytic approaches to understanding both the natures of social capital and family life in terms of an economic or moral rationality. It argues for greater reflexivity in the use of social capital as a concept, revealing rather than replicating troubling presences and absences around gender and generation as fundamental axes of family life. ‘We can only realise ourselves as individuals in a thriving civil society, comprising strong families and civic institutions buttressed by intelligent government … a modernised social democracy for a changing world which will build its prosperity on human and social capital’. (Tony Blair, 1998, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century: 3–20)

Children and Young People's Views of Social Research The Case of Research on Home-School Relations

In recent years there has been a concern to produce guidelines and explore ethical practice in social research with children. Much of this is framed within a general concern to empower children. However, there has been little attention paid to exploring how children can view research and what understandings inform their decisions about participation. This article draws on empirical data to argue that childrens views of research are linked to the meaning of the particular research topic in the pre-existing and interlocking personal, local and wider societal contexts of their lives generally. Researchers may seek to provide children with the means to make an informed consent about participation in, and to empower them through, research. However, children can view children in different ways, whatever our intentions.

Contesting Cultural Communities: Language, Ethnicity and Citizenship in Britain

In recent years, the Home Office has adopted a reinvigorated policy of citizenship education and integration towards both new immigrants and settled minority ethnic communities. One of the cornerstones of this new policy is English language, which is seen as a key tool for the successful integration of Britains diverse communities. This paper is divided into two parts. Firstly, it explores the changing role of English language in the current debates around citizenship, nationhood and belonging. It argues that English language is used symbolically as a cultural boundary marker, which both defines minority ethnic ‘communities’ and excludes them from the re-imagined national ‘community’. Secondly, using empirical research from a recent study on ‘Access to Services with Interpreters’, the paper seeks to challenge the reification of national and minority versions of ‘community’ that lies at the heart of current discourses around nation and citizenship. Taking language as a key symbol of ‘community’, the paper explores the complex contours through which individual, familial, local and collective identities are lived. It concludes that minority ethnic ‘communities’ are best understood as arising out of systems of localised ‘personal’ networks which challenge reified and abstract ideas of ‘imagined communities’ and provide insights into the performance of citizenship and belonging ‘from below’.

Shifting analytic ontology: using I-poems in qualitative longitudinal research

In this article we highlight the way that different qualitative analytic methods implicitly place the interpretive analyst in different sorts of relationship to their interview subject and their data. The process of data analysis constructs an analytic mode of being in relation to the interviewee and their social reality. In particular, we illustrate this point through a detailed consideration of the analytic process involved in producing I-poems from qualitative longitudinal interview data (derived from Gilligan and colleagues’ ‘Listening Guide’), to explore change and continuity in a case study young person’s sense of self over time. We contrast how we understood those changes and continuities through the different analytic angles provided by the gaze of thematic analysis and the voices identified through I-poems.

What's in a name? An exploration of the significance of personal naming of ‘mixed’ children for parents from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds

This article is concerned with how and why parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds choose their childrens personal names? The limited literature on the topic of names often focuses on outcomes, using birth name registration data sets, rather than process. In particular, we consider the extent to which the personal names that ‘mixed’ couples give their children represent an individualised taste, or reflect a form of collective affiliation to family, race, ethnicity or faith. We place this discussion in the context of debates about the racial and faith affiliation of ‘mixed’ people, positing various forms of ‘pro’ or ‘post’ collective identity. We draw on in-depth interview data to show that, in the case of ‘mixed’ couple parents, while most wanted names for their children that they liked, they also wanted names that symbolised their childrens heritages. This could involve parents in complicated practices concerning who was involved in naming the children and what those names were. We conclude that, for a full understanding of naming practices and the extent to which these are individualised or affiliative it is important to address process, and that the processes we have identified for ‘mixed’ parents reveal the persistence of collective identity associated with race, ethnicity and faith alongside elements of individualised taste and transcendence, as well as some gendered features.

Brain science and early years policy: Hopeful ethos or ‘cruel optimism’?

Ideas that the quality of parental nurturing and attachment in the first years of a child’s life is formative, hard-wiring their brains for success or failure, are reflected in policy reports from across the political spectrum and in targeted services delivering early intervention. In this article we draw on our research into ‘Brain science and early intervention’, using reviews of key policy literature and interviews with influential advocates of early intervention and with early years practitioners, to critically assess the ramifications and implications of these claims. Rather than upholding the ‘hopeful ethos’ proffered by advocates of the progressive nature of brain science and early intervention, we show that brain claims are justifying gendered, raced and social inequalities, positioning poor mothers as architects of their children’s deprivation.