Non-Binary Embodiment, Queer Knowledge Production, and Disrupting the Cisnormative Field: Notes From a Trans Ethnographer

Abstract

In this article, I show how my non-binary embodiment, along with regularly being misgendered, shapes the questions I ask, the research I conduct, the data I can gather, how I understand my research and data, and the knowledge I produce. Through this interrogation of my body in relation to research methods and epistemologies, I illuminate how trans and non-binary scholars disrupt the cisnormative assumptions of ethnographic fieldwork, of sociology, and of academia. These disruptions generate queer forms of knowledge production that center trans and non-binary experiences and perspectives and that move us toward thinking anew about researchers, embodiment, and methods, and their epistemological effects.

Latinx LGBTQ+ youth and grandparents: Intergenerational solidarity, precarious familismo, and cisnormativity

“…Additionally, this study examines how LGBTQ+ Latinx youth say that grandparents enforce cisnormativity in family life-a process that impacts all youth. Cisnormativity is the structures and practices that privilege people who identify with their assigned birth and who embody and enact gender expressions aligned with this assigned birth gender (Robinson, 2022). We examine this cisnormativity within the dynamics of familismo or familism, the use of solidarity and interdependence to prioritize the family unit over individual family members in Latinx family life (Patr on, 2021b).…”

Precarious engagements and the politics of knowledge production: Listening to calls for reorienting hegemonic social psychology

“…Knowledge production within hegemonic social psychology (and indeed within many other disciplines) is unequal and built upon engendering precarity within the field, yet this is little acknowledged when considering how to create a more inclusive and diverse field (Bacevic, 2021 ; Bou Zeineddine et al, in press ; Gordon, 1985 ; Hendricks & Moghaddam, 2020 ; Hiemstra & Billo, 2017 ; Robinson, 2022 ). While numerous scholars have challenged hegemonic psychology and its sub‐disciplines for its theories, methods and approaches being embedded in specifically Western thinking and standards (Adams & Salter, 2019 ; Bou Zeineddine et al, 2022 ; Kessi, 2019 ; Martín‐Baró, 1986 ; Readsura Decolonial Editorial Collective, 2022a ; Sinha, 1998 ), the reflections and reorientations offered by these scholars often lies on the periphery.…”