Abstract

Using a duo ethnographic methodological frame, this article chronicles a professional relationship that transpired years ago, one that created a negative impact on one person and was inconsequential for the other. Happenstance brought the pair together with the passage of time, and they were able to address the power dynamics that had occurred in that first encounter years ago. Now, as both professionals had evolved in their understanding of human relationships and anti-racism, feminism and decoloniality, they discuss these issues within the context of their subject positions–one as a man of European heritage, the other, a woman of South Asian/Middle Eastern heritage. In their first encounter, the power difference between them was significant. The dialog in this article is honest, vulnerable and unusual. It is a shift from the standard professional conversation where productivity is seen as the most important and often only metric. Both Farah M Shroff (hereafter referred to as FMS) and Michael Quinn Patton (hereafter referred to as MQP) have now arrived at similar analyses of power in relationships and how this power emanates from socio-economic structures. They name the elephant in the room of their first encounter–sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression, coming up with a path forward for their own working relationships which they hope will illuminate a path for others. As a type of scholarly inquiry, duo ethnography provides a method that is interactive and collaborative, in which two researchers engage in a dialogue and share perspectives on their divergent experiences of a situation to identify and extract larger societal themes, then report what they’ve learned in a dialogic format. The scholarship builds on classic and foundational social science grounded in the sociological imagination, intersectionality, qualitative reflexivity and praxis, and the social construction of knowledge. Given the prevailing ideological climate, this conversation feels increasingly urgent.

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