Prefigurative design as a method for research justice

Abstract

While there is growing concern around justice and equity, they mean different things in different sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Additionally, it can be difficult to make sense of how to incorporate the more abstract concept of justice into our research practices. This paper discusses prefigurative design as a framework for more just research practices to challenge inequity, particularly in community-based collaborations. I draw from past fieldwork with activist organizations and radical organizing literature to explore opportunities for how to engage with justice as academics, identifying three main opportunities for intervention through research: social relationships, resource distribution, and counter-institutions. I offer these contributions in the spirit of generative critique, in hopes that other researchers with similar concerns will iterate on these practices to commit to more just and equitable scholarly impacts.