NCJ Number
242339
Journal
Child & Youth Services Volume: 33 Issue: 3-4 Dated: July - December 2012 Pages: 178-205
Date Published
December 2012
Length
28 pages
Annotation
In this article, the authors share their simultaneous struggles with and passion for their work and the CYC field and consider what can be gained from a critical ethic of practice, research, and activism.
Abstract
Like many others seeking to make room for alternative voices in the narrow canon of CYC theory and practice, this work is steeped in theoretical and activist perspectives on colonialism, neoliberalism, normativity, social power, and social change. This critical, multidisciplinary lens is too often cast outside the realm of authentic CYC. In this article, the authors share their simultaneous struggles with and passion for their work and the CYC field and consider what can be gained from a critical ethic of practice, research, and activism. The author's transtheoretical framework, drawn from Indigenous, postcolonial, queer, feminist, and poststructural perspectives, helps them unpack how coming together critically, hopefully, productively enables them to trouble exclusionary notions of CYC. The study presents vignettes from the authors practice and research that explicitly challenge the assumption that critical practice is somehow less effective and less responsive to the realities of the diverse children, youth, families, and communities with whom they work. Abstract published by arrangement with Taylor and Francis.