In this post, OHMA student Elyse Blennerhassett (2016) discusses how Dr. Leslie Robertson’s community-generated and collaborative methodologies inform her own practice in working with communities who are politically marginalized and stigmatized in the criminal justice system. This article is the first in a two-part series exploring Dr. Robertson’s recent OHMA Workshop Series lecture, “Devalued Subjectivities: Disciplines, Voices and Publics.”
Read MoreThe Politics of (Mis)recognition
Robertson shows a slide of a photograph of anthropologist Franz Boaz in which she points out how Boaz was “literally holding up a blanket to cover a white picket fence behind him.” By covering the fence, Boaz tried to recreate the world he imaged, a wilderness perhaps, before European contact. By contextualizing her voice and the voices of the people involved in the representation of Cook, Robertson’s approach offered guidance as to how understanding forms of social knowledge within politically and culturally sensitive contexts is essential to how we see ourselves in relation to one another.