Take a listen to The Excessive Podcast where I talk about the connections I study between poetry and sociology. Poetry as expression opens potential for empowerment and I argue a measure sense of the potential for individual agency and social change. How awesome if through poetry we continue to chance the world for good, one word at a time!
Here is a bit from my research in this area and work on my own podcast for poems and poets.
My research trajectory documents the evolution of an environmental crisis. I have engaged the environmental crisis through a critical approach combining the role of sociology and discourse analysis throughout my career. This project builds on the foundational work I have developed challenging the use of quantitative data in determining the extent of an environmental problem and how the role of mobilization is impacted by such claims (Snow and Benford 1988; vanDijk 2023). Despite the data supporting evidence of an environmental claim, such as climate change or high incidence of particular cancer rates in contaminated communities, decisions to promote and protect human health are primarily made using a risk model, instead of a model of precaution (Steingraber 1998; Giffin and Dunwoody 1997). Meaning that until harm can be proven, the potential harm is reified to receive the benefit of the doubt. Arguably, the lack of accountabilityfrom corporate and politicalpowers calls for the need to employ an environmental justice framework from social movement activists. This framework, while focusing on the role of democratic decision making, allows organizers to provide members with skills that enable them to promote their own initiatives to move towards social and environmental justice (DellaPorta2006;Giddens2009). Empowerment through this form of decision-making enables individuals to strengthen and transform mobilization potential into tools that members use to advocate for things they want to see change in their communities (Emirbayer and Mische 1998). One such tool in particular that has had a noted effect on members is storytelling.
“Personal narrative analysis, we argue demonstrates that human agency and individual
through historically specific and social relationships and institutions. Second, these
social action is best understood in connection with the construction of selfhood in and
analyses not only reveal the dynamics of agency in practice, but also can document its
construction through culturally embedded narrative forms that over an individual’s life,
impose their own logics and thus shape the life stories and lives” (Sandelowsky 1991:2).
Arguably, the individual evolves as social actor. The use of narrative as a tool empowers individuals to think of their own ideas and everyday experiences as part of justice work that connects them to social structure. In this way, experiences becomerelevantto the broader discourse of social change, connected toother narratives that begin to serve as a collective discourse instead of individual claims that can more easily be dismissed (van Dijk 2023; Robinson 2012).
I have engaged in data collection of personal narrative through oral history and in-depth interviewing. While engaged in this process, a component of the research included the development of a photovoice project wherein participants were invited to submit photographs to support their narrative of an environmental claim. The results of this work led to the development of further analysis of cultural discourse that extends from art (photography) and literature (spoken word poetry) as primary forms of expression. I argue that the act of expression of original works of art allow for a deepening of individual and collective forms of empowerment and engagement and hence individual and. As Smith (2024) argues, there have been recent calls for the recognition of the alignment between sociological research and poetry as a way to engage social current and the public sphere (Hill 2006; Schwalbe 1995). I seek to further analyze the narratives individual actors have shared about their activism and experiences with environmental claims; and further this work by investigating the origin of the spoken word as a form of human agency, particularly in environmental justice social movements.
This work further supports my role as a qualitative researcher seeking innovative ways to explore evidence and the legitimation of environmental claims. As the literature in social movements has documented, issues are often framed, or presented from a certain lens, in order to seek general cultural and/or political support. This research will offer additional social and cultural ‘spaces’ where frames of issues exist as part of the cultural vernacular.
This qualitative research endeavor serves to complement the quantitative evidence of an environmental hazard, so often documented through statistics, by showing how environmental claims impact individuals’ lives through the use of narrative discourse analysis. I will employ a qualitative methodological framework to include participant observation of spoken word events, as wellas investigations of other forms of narrative expression through spaces of public creative expression such as slam poetry and community open-mic forums; one-on-one in-depth interviews with activists and authors; and content analysis of oral history and previously collected environmental narratives continue to be analyzed as continual forms of self-empowerment resulting in non-traditional means for emergence and employment of a community’s social change agenda.
The Sociologist's Eyes 