Resistance as desire: reconfiguring the "at-risk girl" through critical, girl-centred participatory action research.

dc.contributor.authorLoiselle, Elicia
dc.contributor.supervisorDe Finney, Sandrine
dc.date.accessioned2011-12-20T20:00:14Z
dc.date.available2011-12-20T20:00:14Z
dc.date.copyright2011en_US
dc.date.issued2011-12-20
dc.degree.departmentSchool of Child and Youth Care
dc.degree.levelMaster of Arts M.A.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis thesis is based on Project Artemis, a critical, girl-centred participatory action research (PAR) project designed as part of an evaluation of Artemis Place, an alternative education program serving “at-risk” girls in Victoria, BC. Nine Artemis Place students between the ages of 15 and 18 worked alongside me as co-researchers to investigate how Artemis Place has affected their lives. Our research also explored girl co-researchers' schooling experiences more broadly and the structural inequities they experience across the multiple contexts of their lives. Our process was rooted in a critical, participatory, collaborative framework, which aimed to investigate, problematize, and address (through social action) the complex forces shaping girls' experiences of marginalization. We used arts-based methods such as photovoice, graffiti walls, journaling and participatory video to cycle through the iterative phases of PAR: exploration/data collection, critical reflection/analysis, and action. We produced a documentary film as our primary research dissemination tool. In this thesis, I undertake my own analysis of our collective research to do a deep reading of girls' resistances to “at-risk” constructions of girlhood, in order to understand their negotiations of the complex forces shaping their daily realities. I complicate the concept of resistance using a hybridized feminist-poststructural (Davies, 2000) and desire-based (Tuck, 2010) framework to explore the ways girls' resistances are produced through flows of desire – creative and productive force – that disrupt, exceed, (re)configure, and/or (re)code “girl” and “risk.” I argue that tracing the “desire flows” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and reconfigurations produced in/through our critical research process, is an important, political move toward sustaining alternative figurations of girlhood. As such, this thesis contributes promising, ethical/affirmative/political possibilities for understanding the complexities of girls' lives and for engaging alongside them in feminist research, praxis, and activism for social justice.en_US
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/3754
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rights.tempAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectgirlhooden_US
dc.subjectChild and Youth Careen_US
dc.subjectcriticalen_US
dc.subjectdesireen_US
dc.subjectresistanceen_US
dc.subjectparticipatory action researchen_US
dc.subjectyouthen_US
dc.subjectfeministen_US
dc.subjectgirl studiesen_US
dc.subjectneo-liberalismen_US
dc.subjectparticipatory evaluationen_US
dc.subjectat-risken_US
dc.titleResistance as desire: reconfiguring the "at-risk girl" through critical, girl-centred participatory action research.en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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