On being and doing

Today, we (Charlotte and I) have been at a conference where we presented some of our work on diversity in the psychology curriculum. Like all projects, I never really realise how I’m connected to them until somewhere after the point of starting it! I’m going to try to reflect a bit on that here. The conference today was one which aimed to explore inclusion and barriers to inclusion in Higher Education. Of course HE is an institution built on privilege (multiple layers of privilege) and therefore, oppression and multiple disadvantages. I won’t mention the subtle comments about VC salaries throughout the day. These kinds of power structures and struggles at play, means that ‘doing’ diversity work in this context is really interesting, difficult, problematic, wonderful, hopeful and, hopeless, at times. For context, I’m writing this from what feels like a privileged space. I have the time, space and access to what I need to write and think. Not always - really, not always. But today, I do. I'm sat outside the university restaurant in the sun. Campus feels quite empty – students are either taking exams, or somewhere revising for their exams, or maybe doing other things – I’m not sure, but they are not here in the way they usually are during term time. It’s quiet. It’s pretty peaceful. It’s also really warm and sunny and I’m pretty sure I should be wearing sunscreen. Anyway, the perils (and joys) of being a redhead in the sunshine whilst also being a sun-lover, is not for this post. I wanted to spend a bit of time writing about, and reflecting on what we mean when we say ‘diversity’, especially in the context of institutional power structures which are inescapable, and in the context of relationships that are sometimes wonderful, sometimes messy, and mostly, everywhere inbetween (*note: it’s now gone 11pm and definitely not 4pm when I was sat outside the restaurant in the sun. Ironically, as I was writing about how quite campus was, one of my third year students walked by and sat down with me. We sat for quite a while and chatted in the sun. It was really lovely – and I guess the ‘doing’ of these kinds of relationships, and the space in which they are created, is a bit of what I’m writing about here).

Today has been all about inclusion and barriers. This kind of language is really geographical and spatial, which has got me thinking. It’s got me thinking about the space I take up myself and the multiple spaces I occupy with students (and clients and research participants and friends, family, etc). It’s got me thinking about how I occupy spaces, and how spaces are occupied by others, and shared with others. How relationships are made and lived in/through in spaces. How I used the space today – how I moved in and out (I mean, I was able to choose when I was there and when I was not. When I sat out in the sun, which sessions I attended, who I sat with, and so on). Some of the discussions I’ve been part of today (and really over the past few weeks especially) have made me reflect back on myself. Perhaps it’s also because I’m on research leave and I’m trying to stop a little and take stock. But my discussions today have included reflecting with Charlie on our work and our research and teaching. This kind of thinking, especially at a conference like today’s, has led me back to thinking of Sara Ahmed’s leaky pipes analogy. She talks, and writes, about letting the pipes leak until they leak everywhere and no amount of plumbing can fix them, despite the several efforts to do so. Because that’s what people do – they fix the broken things. They fix the pipes when they leak with stuff that doesn’t fit/stuff that disrupts the norm. So you can think of the pipes as the structures, and the leaks as the stuff that disrupts the structures that we bump up against. The structures that leave us a little uncomfortable or bruised. But the stuff that leaks is important – it is necessary. I probably mean that in more ways than only institutional structures. The personal *and* institutional – the two aren’t as separate as we think. It’s as important to let the personal leak as well as the rest. Taking up space is important. But it's not all on one person to do that. The space needs to be built to accommodate.


I’m also thinking of Sara Ahmed’s rolling eyes feminist pedagogy; the feminist killjoy. How when the white man speaks out and says race is not a thing, that he *is* part of the problem (cue eyerolls). I’m also thinking about myself in relation to all of this. My teaching over the past couple of years has largely been about ‘diverse’ subjects (mental health, children's development, non-normative development, different experiences of childhoods, etc). OK, Psychology as a discipline, from a mainstream lens, is about as non-diverse as you can get. It aims to study human minds and behaviour but usually mainly from white, masculine, adult perspectives.  You don’t need to do rocket science and to have ten degrees to see that there are fundamental problems with that. This kind of knowledge is built based on a narrow (and privileged) position. I’ve been trying to work to challenge some of this through my research – mainly by working on research that’s involved children’s participation, and in some senses going against the grain. I guess trying to let pipes leak. And now, after two years teaching (yes, I am still learning and feel like a newbie), I’m coming to a place where I’m positioning myself in that too. I’ve spent the day having some really interesting discussions about *how* we do diversity work in teaching contexts. How we let the pipes leak and let the messy challenging stuff take up space. How we disrupt norms and do things differently. How we put it into what we already do. How it fits. But I think it’s not so much a question of making it fit… it doesn’t actually fit, because the structures we live/work within aren’t built for difference. I think it’s more a point of doing things differently – reframing what doing ‘diversity’ is – letting the pipes leak and letting spaces take new shapes.

We ran a session of our own, and we took part in some sessions this afternoon, exploring some ‘different’ teaching practices. One of the sessions involved some creative work with soft systems methodology. I’d never done this before – I think it’s based on a business model but I think it is quite applicable to other disciplines too. I don’t want to criticise this model at all – I actually really liked it. But I do want to unpack what ‘doing’ it was like. Those of us at the session did an activity around food poverty. We explored what it meant to each of us, and then we collectively discussed what we’d produced. Following discussion, we went back to our drawings and developed them to produce a more nuanced picture, in response to sharing our thoughts and the meanings we applied to food poverty. I think the overall finished piece would be something which represented multi-layered systems and the complexity of food poverty experiences. Aside from the fact that this was actually really enjoyable, the first thing I noticed was that although food poverty is an important social issue, we were sat around a round table, mostly consisting of academics, with crackers, cheese and grapes (after a free lunch), discussing issues of social justice – usually from quite a distance (i.e. able to position the self as not the ‘other’). Whilst we all have experiences of ‘stuff’, we were still sat on comfy chairs, able to access a space, with an abundance of food freely available, discussing what food poverty means, using a methodology which would be used as part of a social justice movement to taking action and facilitating change. Whilst that’s great, and I don’t think our positions are avoidable, what is also useful, is stepping back and looking at how we do what we do. Looking at the ‘I’. I think the values that inform the ‘doing’, are just as important as the aim of what we do.

Charlotte and I also held a session about how we’ve been working with students on the ‘I’ position – i.e. positioning themselves, and ourselves (first person writing, but also first person thinking). And it’s got me thinking some more about how I position myself, and how I am positioned. It’s got me thinking that quite often I’ll say ‘oh but it’s not about what you *do*, it’s about how you feel’. But I actually I think that whilst this kind of work is about relationality, feeling and connecting, it is also about doing (and not doing!) – it is as much about action, as it is about everything else. What we do speaks sometimes in ways that words can’t. What we do, matters. I guess I’m working on being, but also on doing. Some of this feels quite intuitive, but it also requires intentionality. For example, we’ve been talking today about how we ‘do’ diversity work. How it’s not a thing on the side, or an add-on – it’s a way of being but it’s also done by doing. You can’t do a week’s awareness week and tick the box. That sort of defeats the point. That doesn’t let the pipes leak in the way they need to. The stuff doesn’t leak and settle. It leaks for a week and gets mopped up, and the pipe is fixed. You also can’t shift responsibility and let others do the doing – but I think it’s also OK to step back and LET others do the doing if you need to. Being, and doing, is work, especially when it’s intentional. Guess that’s the self-care stuff, or collective self-care at least.

Here’s to intentional being and doing. And letting pipes leak.