Conceptualizing "Trauma": Navigating suffering in international research podcast transcript

Avery Moore Kloss  00:06

Welcome back to CRSP Talk. I'm Avery Moore Kloss and If you're just tuning in, welcome, CRSP talk is a podcast from the Center for Research on security practices, also known as CRSP at Wilfrid Laurier University. At CRSP we have researchers doing amazing work. But those researchers also have connections with some very impressive colleagues who are ready and willing to let us record their conversations about both their research and their chosen research methods. Today, we have a panel discussion led for you by CRSP Associate Director Bree Akesson. Bree wanted to focus this conversation on the idea of conceptualizing trauma and suffering and how research methods can be used to walk the tightrope of both acknowledging the reality of research participants suffering will also uncovering their everyday experiences and humanity. And so to do just that, we've asked Cindy Sousa of Bryn Mawr College to join us again, and we're introducing you to a new guest, Martha Bragin from Hunter College at City University of New York. Before we begin, I thought I'd let our panel introduce themselves. So take it away Bree.

Bree Akesson  01:23

My name is Bree Akesson. I'm an Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. I'm also the Canada Research Chair in global adversity and wellbeing. And I'm the Associate Director of CRSP. My research focuses on war affected families and how they persevere in contexts of adversity. Hi, I'm Cindy Sousa. I'm an Associate Professor of Social Work at Bryn Mawr College, outside of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in the United States. And I'm also the director of our doctoral program there. I focus my research on violence and resilience, especially looking at how different kinds of violence impact health and taking a global view of that. And I have a special interest in the experiences of parenting within adversity, and also professional responses to collective suffering.

Martha Bragin  02:20

Hi, my name is Martha Bragin. I'm associate professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College City University of New York, and the doctoral program in social welfare at again at the City University of New York. I am also the chair of global social work and practice with immigrants and refugees. My work overall focuses on the effects of all forms of violence that is structural, social and interpersonal, on children and families in the context of their communities. And my specific area of research is child and adult well being among communities in crisis or facing adversity. Okay,

Avery Moore Kloss  03:19

let's launch right in, please enjoy this discussion on research methodologies, and how researchers should or should not interact with trauma and suffering in volatile contexts. Okay, well, welcome. I'd like to thank you all for being here today. It's so always so nice to have so many wonderful minds in one digital room. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation and, and, and all of your thoughts on on conceptualizing and researching trauma. So I thought we might start out by just getting a little bit of a history on this on this specific issue and method. And so Martha to you, I wonder if you might start us off and, and just describe the history of the concept of, of trauma and suffering, if you will.

Martha Bragin  04:08

I'm going to contextualize that in the world of social work and psychosocial work, and start with an idea in the turn of the 20th century, in which a new technique was used. There were a lot of women running around Vienna, in the middle of the end of the 19th century, who were said to be behaving badly acting weird, and nobody could figure out why. And the soon to become famous Sigmund Freud, having not done very well in his neurology practice, decided to interview these women and for the first time asked them to tell him their life stories. And he found that underneath their life stories, or in the midst of them was something he called trauma for the word for wound or rupture. And what he meant was that they were suffering from experiences of abuse, often multiple that they had not had acknowledged from their childhood. And as he got involved in his work, he looked at what people around the world were doing about suffering, and remembering things that were not convenient to remember. And he particularly learned some concepts from Southern Africa and Southeast Asia, that again described a taboo against violence, its commitment by oneself, or other people committing it about you. And that got into his consciousness, he had no idea how important it would become, when he was asked following World War One by that time being a very popular psychologist and solver of people's problems, to look at the problem of soldiers who returned from war to what they were calling shell shock, which they thought came from having bombs exploding too near their ears. And what they learned was that the soldiers were affected by the horror of wars. So from that time, till the mid 20th century, there was quite a discussion about the effects of war on both the soldiers who fought them and the people who experienced them. But there was not a lot or a consistent level of acknowledgement of how much suffering that caused. And therefore, these stories that came from listening to soldiers to civilians, and from literature from all over the world about the suffering of people who experienced war, led to the need by the American Psychological Association and its corresponding unit in Europe to develop a new diagnosis, which they called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And la-later expanded to include acute stress disorder, and said that when people were in fear of their life, or in proximity to violence, and severe suffering, that they also had emotional suffering. And that did two things. And then I will turn it over to Cindy, the first thing it did, is allowed soldiers to get their benefits and people who were harmed in war to be compensated. So this was a very good thing. So it acknowledged suffering, but in that process, began to treat it like a disease, like the flu instead of a normal response to abnormal situations.

Avery Moore Kloss  08:13

Martha, that's, I think that's such a great way to ground this in kind of a historical context. Cindy, I think next, I really wonder if you might give us a sense of like, how, you know, we've talked about trauma and suffering, and and that that concept of the history of that, how was that conceptualized today?

Cindy Sousa  08:31

I think that's a great question. And I think, you know, what's interesting in this moment of time, and I think what's so exciting about the work that my colleagues do, and hopefully the work that I contribute to as well is that there's one, you know, there's a few ways that trauma is conceptualized now that really relate to what Martha was describing as being a very western focused, individualized conceptualization of trauma. That really pathologizes it. And then, as Martha, you know, left off with this idea of, you know, thinking about trauma as the normal response to abnormal events. There's been a lot of work, especially since the 1960s and 70s, that really coincided with you know, anti-imperialist movements, anti-sort of racism work, and people thinking about the ways that colonization has affected our conceptions of health, especially mental health. So that has shifted the conceptualization of trauma from a standpoint of individualized pathological sort of ideas of trauma, which still very much exists, but it's shifted for many researchers, but not all it's shifted it into us thinking about trauma as a healthy response, I mean, If something horrific is going on around you in your community, you should have a response to it. And I know a lot of people, you know, doing work, for instance, and thinking about trauma among veterans, maintain, you know, if people you know, perpetrate war crimes, for instance, not that all veterans do. But let's say a lot of veterans come back and talk about the things that they were compelled to do or forced to do. If you do that, and you don't have a response, such as trauma. If it does not stress you out, then that actually is a symptom of ill health, rather than being troubled by something that's morally wrong. I think, in short answer, there is a very, still very western individualized, problematizing approach. But it's that is being pushed back against by researchers and clinicians who tend to think in a more collective way, in a non western way to think about culture and to think about healing and health as part of a continuum rather than just ill health or fine health.

Avery Moore Kloss  11:13

Yes, Cindy, I think that's a really excellent answer, and also an excellent kind of path forward into talking about research and conceptualizing trauma through that. So I think to Bree, my question would be, you know, with the historical context that Martha talked about, and you know, how we conceptualize trauma and suffering today? How does that play out in a research context?

Bree Akesson  11:36

That's a great question, Avery. And what I think happens is when we as researchers enter the room with an individual or a family, or a group to conduct research, and this, you know, individual family or group has experienced, suffering has experienced adversity has experienced so called trauma. And if we focus so much on the trauma, if we focus so much on diagnoses, like PTSD, and all the bad things that are happening, what happens is it eclipses, these groups, these individuals everyday experiences, and it can put them into a category that is really, really focused on deficits, and is really focused on that the challenges. And it can also contribute to kind of a stereotypical representation of these people's lives, and a really one dimensional view of that. So I like this trauma focused conceptualization really can leave out an understanding of, of everyday experiences that people are going through. So even in context of war, or disaster, or extreme adversity, extreme poverty, those kinds of things. People are still doing everyday things. They're getting married, they're having dinner with their families, they're having babies, they're going to school, if they can't go to school, they're trying to learn. They're making jokes. You know, there's all sorts of things that are happening. But what happens is we tend to use the lens of trauma, and it just kind of blinds us to all the other things that are happening. And those are the things that are happening, those everyday experiences. I believe those are the ticket, that's the kind of a ticket or the window into looking at how people persevere, and how we can help to ameliorate the impact, the negative impact of these horrible experiences that people are going through. So what happens with research is that research research has tended to and we're going to, I think hope, I hope, hoping my colleagues will chat a bit more about this. But research has tended to use epidemiological studies, things like surveys, things that measure things like PTSD, or trauma checklists, and those kinds of things that really focus on kind of a medicalized framework, the framework that Martha talked about in terms of trauma and how it's been conceptualized in the past, and focusing on those epidemiological methods of surveys, or focusing on the individual. And those kinds of things can really ignore the dynamic or collective responses to suffering and trauma. I think in the recent, I'm not sure how, you know, maybe a decade or two, we've started to shift a bit more and looking at more holistic, more dynamic approaches to researching things like suffering and trauma.

Martha Bragin  14:37

Can I dialogue a little bit with what Bree was saying, please do. Okay, because here is we've got a contemporary situation, as Cindy has mentioned, in which many people many researchers and many scientists are becoming aware of historical suffering and inequity and the and the ways in which structural violence affects people's everyday lives, and hurts them and their children and affects their lives differently. We saw this particularly in COVID-19. However, so here's where we get into a problem. The way that that has been languaged is around the experience of trauma. And therefore trauma becomes weaponized. Because if we don't study it, we can't get help for people or recognition, which we want, of their lived experience and reality. So we're kind of in a very special moment here, I think, in which we have to acknowledge that the word trauma has been revived, to help people understand complexities, and historic inequities, and social suffering and all kinds of things that we really want to be aware of. And we don't want to gloss over, at the same time as we don't want to just handle that by saying, okay, 98% of Afghans have PTSD, or 100% of African Americans are suffering from historical cultural trauma, and therefore, as though without really understanding the depth and the complexities. So I just want to leave that on the table for conversation.

Avery Moore Kloss  16:34

Does anyone want to respond Bree, or Cindy, to what Martha saying?

Bree Akesson  16:38

Yeah, I would love to the point of the being a special moment, I think it's it's such a complicated moment. And each of us has, you know, decades of work internationally. And I think I've seen the ways that the organizations that we partner with, especially internationally, but also locally, have to do have to engage in both conversations about trauma at once. They have to sort of play this game about, you know, documenting trauma, in the ways that the funding agencies expect to see it. And even the ways that, you know, people working for human rights expect to see it, while also opening up the discussion about trauma so that the kinds of recognitions of trauma fit what's actually happening with the communities and that their own unique ways of healing, most times, which are very collective, are also honored. So to get more specific, a couple years ago, I wrote a book chapter with a colleague, Sandy Marshall, and we call the chapter the tr-or we call it a section of the chapter the traumas of trauma relief. And what we meant by that is that, you know, for those of us especially that have been studying political violence and structural violence for some time, you know, first we see this layer where the wars and the violence and the you know, gutting of people's economies around the world, you know, is perpetrated by the outside by the Western world, often, and then after that, as part of the quote, unquote, clean up, there comes all of these western controlled nongovernmental organizations that then basically mandate that you document that populations have the specific trauma, the way that we've decided in the west, to define it. So that then the sort of imperialist project is even furthered that not only have we contributed to the destruction of a community and say, one of the places where I've done a lot of work is Palestine, but I saw the same thing decades earlier in Nicaragua. So you know, we've first destroyed or attempted to destroy, for instance, independence movements, or movements to redistribute wealth to avoid and confront structural violence. And then after we pull out of that project, we go back in with a so called Mental Health Project, which really furthers the dynamics of outsiders controlling somebody else's, you know, another country's structures in terms of health and well being. And so, I think that that is, is this, you know, tension of this present moment that we're in is how do we, as researchers, and also as I mean, at least I think of myself as a health activist, you know, how do we do our work in such a way where people can get the funding that they need to do the programs that actually are authentic? And a lot of times that creates an element where people are doing both at the same time.

Avery Moore Kloss  20:01

I wonder if I could go to Bree, just in response to what Cindy saying this idea of, you know, how do we move forward with doing doing research with all of these different intricacies that involve trauma considered? What's the, you know, are there? How can we use those research methods to acknowledge the reality of the suffering? While also like keeping focus in in some positive places?

Bree Akesson  20:26

Yeah, this is I mean, this is a really tough question, because it's something I think all all of us struggle with, when we're doing research in this area, exactly what Cindy said, you know, we want to acknowledge the hardship that people are going through. So Cindy talked about Palestine, I also have done work in Palestine, it's, I think it's a great example is, you know, as researchers, we want to draw attention to what those populations are going through, we want to draw attention to it as a, as a, as a means of addressing it as a means of stopping the suffering. And so I think it's a balance between acknowledging that in our research and sharing, the experiences that people go through that are quite challenging, and could, you know, would constitute suffering and trauma, while also balancing it out with how families persevere, and how families survive in the, in that context of adversity. So it's a tricky question one. And I'd love to hear what my colleagues have to say about this too. But one thing is that I think is really useful is storytelling and storing, having stories shared. And by stories, what I mean is a family story. So one of the techniques I use in my research is a collaborative family interview. So typically, interviews are done one on one, it's a researcher asking an individual questions, and they to answer those questions, and that those questions, or those answers become data. In a collaborative family interview, the way that I've structured this method is to interview a whole family. So it's usually the mom and the dad, if if their their, and their children and sometimes other family members come in to the room as is, as happens in international research. And it's asking questions of the family to tell their story, tell your story of whatever the research question is focusing on. So in one of my studies focusing on the concept of place, and space, so I asked, you know, the families about their current living situation, and, you know, tell me the story of your family, how did you get to this place, and, and then what are your dreams for the future and so forth. So that way, the family, as the research kind of participants, they have control over their story, they can share what they want to share, they can share the suffering, they can share the joys, they can share their everyday experiences, and they have, they have kind of control about what they want to share in that way, by telling that story. And the by using that story as data by, by by sharing that story with, you know, the world and so to speak, you know, as a as a researcher, when we publish things are when we, you know, post these stories on the Internet, for example, or share them in conferences and things like that. By sharing that story, it actually includes both the suffering and the perseverance includes both the trauma and the and the the joys that the families are experiencing. So that's one technique that I can see being very powerful. And it's a way to balance it, but it is really challenging. Absolutely.

Avery Moore Kloss  23:45

Bree. I wonder if just as a follow up question, you know, you're talking about using the methodology of collaborative family interviews in Palestine? How do we go about like determining what's the appropriate methodology to use, especially in volatile context? That's a follow up question for you. But But also, you know, after you're finished answering, I'd love to hear from Cindy and Martha about the same.

Bree Akesson  24:06

Another great question, Avery. And by great, I mean, difficult to answer. But I think, you know, Martha, Cindy, and I have have all we've all immersed ourselves in the context that we study, we, we try as much as we can to learn about the context on the ground with the populations that we wish to work with. And I think determining an appropriate methodology in volatile contexts, like the ones we're talking about today, really does depend on the on conversation with the population that we're working with. So it's always we might have an idea of what might work, but it has to be checked with the population. So how is this working? What do you think about this? I give one example, that actually refers back to my collaborative family interviews that I've done. I was working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and I was doing an interview with a woman and her two children, I was doing a collaborative family interview. And I conducted the interview. And after I asked her, you know, what did you think about the interview? Is there any? Do you have any feedback for me any advice for me, and she said, she gave me the advice, she said, she recommended that I go in order, she wanted it to be chronological, she said, if you start with my life in Syria, then you can talk about then I can talk about my, my, how I came to Lebanon, the flight from Syria, to Lebanon, and then talk about my everyday life in Lebanon, and then talk about the future. So it goes chronologically in my lifetime. And if you tell the families, that this is gonna go chronologically, then they won't get anxious that you might go back and talk about something that was hard for them. That was that was so called traumatic for them. So by focusing on this kind of timeline, and going from the past to the present in order, she recommended this as a way to avoid, avoid asking questions that would be very uncomfortable for families. And this in this way, by doing the research in this way, by doing the collaborative family interview in this order, it would put families at ease, knowing that they've already talked about maybe the hard stuff, and then they can talk about the everyday things that are happening now. So that's I think one example of kind of how we determine methodologies is by listening to the populations we've worked with. And by integrating those kinds of that kind of advice, and I have integrated that into all my future research. So my collaborative family interviews in that way, they are all chronological now.

Avery Moore Kloss  26:51

I think that's actually a perfect spot where I'd love to ask Cindy to chime in here. I mean, specifically about practicing listening, because I know you you have extensive experience in kind of that prolonged field work and building community as part of your methodology? What's kind of your reaction to that same question.

Bree Akesson  27:08

I think the idea of how we choose our methodology and how that follows from a practice of prolonged engagement, and a practice of, you know, deep listening, is a really important one. There's a story that I often tell my students in my qualitative methods class, which is that when I first went to Palestine as a student researcher, I went, you know, with very much an anti imperialist and feminist sensibility expecting to do deep qualitative research and, you know, dig into the phenomenology of suffering and survival and resistance. And when I asked the agency that I was working with what they needed, which was, you know, consistent with that methodology, they said, We want you to do quantitative research, we need a survey, that includes outcomes that we can use for funders. And that was such an interesting lesson for me, because it's such a contradiction that sometimes the most anti oppressive, you know, kind of practice has to also reflect oppression. And it's not a method that I necessarily would have chosen. Thinking that it would be a method for liberation. But they were very clear that, you know, in order to fund their programs that then gave them the flexibility to to do creative programming. They needed to play the game, first of you know, giving the funders what the funders wanted. And at that time, two funders were very interested in funding debriefing. So there was a lot of talk about debriefing debriefing as a method of healing. So, you know, I did surveys with people and but as part of my work, I also did accompanying the psychologists and social workers on their programs. And so what I saw was them very creatively combining the things that they felt like they needed to do to get funding and documentation of suffering, including, you know, surveys and, and this debriefing with very, you know, collective based kinds of healing programs, like working with the children to do skits. Like, you know, running group sessions, and also really importantly, and quite in opposition to the kinds of sort of conditions on much of the funding. There's more and more talk about the need for political action and political resistance as part of healing. And I know in Palestine specifically the work of Rita Yacktman. And others that work with her. Brian Barber here in the United States has done a lot of work in Palestine and other countries really points to how when the suffering is political in nature, whether it's related to outside aggression or structural violence, you know, communities working together to resist that is a way of reasserting agency, which is such an important aspect of recovering from trauma. So that's something that I've seen that I really appreciate and have learned from over the last several decades is the importance of political action as part of as part of healing, which includes sometimes playing by the rules that the people didn't set themselves.

Avery Moore Kloss  30:52

Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Both those examples of different approaches, I think, are really powerful. Martha, in your experience, do you have kind of similar stories of of having to get creative about the methodology that you're using or kind of pivot as you go?

Martha Bragin  31:06

I'm gonna Well, I'm going to pivot in a different way, and talk about what I learned, it was only one context, where, what the reason I do community wellbeing studies, and I'm gonna start with the ones for children, is except for one situation in South Sudan, and where I learned pretty quickly, that linear ideas of child development were not part of the culture of how people raised children and how people lived in that particular agro pastoralists life. So there, I had to find out what wellbeing looked like without being specific to children, in order to understand people's needs. But let me talk about participatory wellbeing studies and why I like them in emergencies and why they usually work particularly ones for children. Because first of all, everybody wants to do something for the children in a disaster. And the idea that, that you can get communities to talk about what a well child looks like, what in the situation is impeding them being able to do what they do to help children be well, what methods they already have to fix things. And what is needed is something you can then also measure throughout the life of a fundable program, and keep it in the hands of the community. So I've had people one time, it still astounds me. So I'm going to retell the story where I thought I had to pivot I went to it was right, it was 20 years ago now it was right after the, you know, the first the 2002 Western invasion entrance into Afghanistan. And I was going around the country to find out what was going on with kids, how they were, what they needed, what would be needed to help them. And going around the country where it was winter, this January, we were in the north, we went into an informal refugee camps, and we hadn't brought any supplies with us. And we saw people were freezing cold, some were barefoot. And we said, let's get the hell out of here. Let's come back with supplies, suitable for kids, and then we can do our assessment. But this is ridiculous. People need practical things. They're practical people. So when Elvis stopped me and said, Well, you know, we apologize, profusely explained what we were doing there. At his insistence, well, what were you going to do? And then he talked to a couple of other people. The next thing I knew 200 people were crowded around, asking me to do the survey, checking with translators to make sure I got the answers, right. Because they were sure they had such confidence that if the UN was coming to do something about kids, that they wanted it to be done on their terms, what they thought kids needed, and they stood there for an hour and a half. I would have thought it unconscionable to do that. I you know, but people were, were so eager. And this has been my experience, to detail how you should raise children properly, what resources people need to do that, what works and what doesn't. And then we will also be usually in tandem with this, engage kids and a more Linear project of talking about their lives and the ups and downs of their lives, and what or mapping their community to see where places are helpful for them where places need to be changed, and where places may be harmful for them, but supplemented, but that essence, has gotten me eventually into also doing well being studies for adults and cultures that were not prioritizing their kids where people wanted to talk about what good looks like for them. And because there is a quantitative potential component, I found that that met that need well, we don't want something airy fairy, because these studies can be done with fairly big numbers of people. So you've got a significant sample. They can help people to describe what goes well. And then they can get measurable results that donors can then gobble up and understand.

Avery Moore Kloss  36:03

Well, I think that's that's a really powerful story. It does anyone want to respond to what Martha's saying here, or

Bree Akesson  36:09

I just wanted to make sure that Martha has a chance to tell more about to like, sort of duck like, drawing out from other people to their definitions of suffering.

Avery Moore Kloss  36:19

Go ahead, Martha. I think it's a great question.

Martha Bragin  36:21

So. So this is something that I would talk about. And now I guess I'm sort of addicted to doing these wellbeing studies. Because I don't present I ask for a definition of well being. And people may contrast it to suffering suffering is such really, a cultural historical people suffered differently, and should have the right to talk about it. I don't want to deny that if that's what you're suggesting. But I do want to, I find that putting it in the context of what would it take to be well, allows people to make it in some ways, operationalizable instead of something that is so overwhelming that there is no way forward. And it is not forbidding people to say that things were terrible, or that they suffered or that they are suffering. But it contextualize is it in contrast to what well would look like?

Avery Moore Kloss  37:34

I think it's a really poignant question. Bree, what do what's your response to that?

Bree Akesson  37:40

As Martha was talking, I was recalling my first kind of foray into this world of, you know, definitions of well being and definitions of suffering. And I've worked I've been lucky to work with Martha on her well being on one of her well being studies in Afghanistan. And I worked with Alaster Ager on another wellbeing study, in northern Uganda, that was probably about 15 years ago, one of the first research projects I worked on, and maybe I can just explain what I learned from that, because I think it kind of informs my understanding of, of suffering and well being today. But we were working in northern Uganda, and we wanted to do again, the the community wanted a a quantitative study of child well being that we wanted to see it was actually a program evaluation. So there was a, an evaluation of a project for children, a psychosocial program. And we, in order to find out if the program was effective, we needed to learn what children's level of well being was before the intervention, and then what the level was. And we can use a comparison group to kind of see if there were any differences with it. So like Martha said, you know, it's a bunch of, of Western researchers coming in and, you know, trying to determine what does it mean to be? What does it mean to have wellbeing for a child? What does it mean, if a child's doing well. We could come up with our own definitions of that, of course, we could say, well, they're smart, they smile, and they're happy. And they're, again, like Martha said, kind of contrasting it with, with suffering, you know, that they don't suffer, they're, you know, playful things like that. So, we could have come in and said that that's what well is, but what's so important what I've learned from doing the research in northern Uganda, and what I've learned from working alongside Martha, is that you really have to develop these definitions from the specific community that you're working with. So we did focus groups and gathered information on the definitions of what does it mean to be a Well Child and it was interesting because you know, I when I teach this to my students, I always ask them well, what is your definition of being a well child? What is that mean, if you're working with children, and they're doing well, what are your indicators? And you know, depending on the class, they'll say certain things, right? And it's very, it might be very different than what you know, families in northern Uganda would see as being well, so they came up with things like, you know, does well in school, and is obedient and things like that. So these are all very cultural, culturally relevant, and specific, context specific ways of looking at these definitions, and suffering is the same suffering is the same we might I mean, I've gone into, into interviews with families. And all I asked about, I remember, when I was just starting out, all I'd asked about is the trauma and the war, and how is the political violence impacted you? And how has, you know, this, how has occupation impacted your family's life, and people will answer, but if I'm not listening close enough, I'm gonna miss what the actual suffering is. The actual suffering for these families is, you know, for a lot of families, it's economic, it's livelihoods, they don't have enough money to put food on their table, their children are inside the home, and they can't go to school, or they're bored, or, you know, the mothers feel trapped inside the home. So all these things are so important when we're kind of exploring suffering. And you really have to keep our eyes and ears open to what that what that looks like, and what that feels like and what that experience is for the people that we work with.

Martha Bragin  41:26

One of the things that was so interesting for me, as we've gone along with these wellbeing studies and child wellbeing studies, that how much people who seem to be very different, can agree within a culture about certain things, whether it is what a child should know, for instance, in the first year of life, what's a Well Child and in year one, and what does that child needs? And I still remember the answer that I got in Palestine, also quite a long time ago for that question. And the answer was, in the first year, a child should know that it is loved by its mother, and that it loves the people who take care of him. And some of these answers are also a different kind of fodder, for the information that characterizes people very differently from who they actually are. The other thing that becomes very interesting in these is, as Bree says, what causes some of the most intense suffering, because then you get an answer about, well, if this is how a child should be, well, at this age, they should be able to, if it's possible, go to school, but if not follow the parent in the fields and be prepared for grown up life. And that if that is not possible, because there's landmines because they're locked in, because of curfews or forbidness to go around. These things are causing tremendous suffering, because people begin to feel that their lives are not well, and that their children can't go up well. And then you have situations where because of these restrictions, what is, you know, people will often talk about love within the family, and that if they can't be respected at home, if they're not cared for at home, if they cannot freely visit, relatives that they love. If there is discord and backbiting among family members, often caused by such structural violence, these things can be so terribly painful for people in these circumstances that we may not think about. But they are thinking about quite deeply. And I think that the people who cause the harms know this, know that if you trap people in small spaces with few resources, they may well, it may well erode their ability to manage together. And that might so rather than a let's get rid of your trauma, because there was a bombing last week, you might have a program that allows families to talk to one another. I knew an Afghan psychologist who would have a weekly program where on family where families would do activities together that had been locked in because of violence.

Bree Akesson  44:52

If I could just jump in because something that you said Martha really helped me think about, you know the nature of trauma when we're thinking About It with a critical lens, and therefore the nature of healing, which is that so much part of the nature of trauma is when it's perpetrated in, you know, with, with intent. And I often draw on the work of people who have written about community trauma and collective trauma like Tessa Evans-Campbell, and Karina Walters at the University of Washington. And part of how they define that in native communities is that collective trauma is done with malicious intent. And so just to sort of loop in this idea of the importance of understanding the collective ramifications, and fostering collective action and political action as part of the response to trauma globally, the reason why I think that's, you know, proven to be such an important intervention is that so much of trauma relates to the maliciousness and also the silencing of the causes of the suffering. And so by doing that work of truth telling, by doing that collective work, and I think a lot of us have been very influenced, for instance, by Martine Burrow, who worked in El Salvador and collective trauma, and really pushed this idea of collective storytelling and consciousness raising towards action, as a way of addressing the pernicious kinds of traumas that people were facing, where it was definitely political violence, coinciding with structural violence, and that the more that people could actually name, you know, who perpetrated it, what are the systems that are at fault, then it's not just free floating, and that, again, brings agency in. And I think a lot of what, you know, agency is one of the themes that I think all of our works or work reflects, in one way or another, it brings in agency. So I think back to this idea of, you know, methodology, this process of truth telling in a very collective community way is so important.

Avery Moore Kloss  47:12

Yeah, absolutely. Cindy, I think agency is a really big theme here. You know, it's funny, when you do these panel discussions, and people share really poignant stories of the work they've done time goes by really quickly. And so we found ourselves at the end of this panel discussion. So I thought, I'm going to ask a wrap up question to the group. And I think let's, let's start with Bree, I wonder is kind of a wrap up of this idea about the methodologies and that we use in trauma and, you know, centering the community, how do we bring participants to the center of research? And and once we do that, how do you use the knowledge that we've garnered from that to kind of create more opportunities for participatory and intervention and evaluation?

Bree Akesson  47:58

Well, I guess to answer that question, I would probably point to some of the things that we've talked about during this episode that I think are just so important. And I want to highlight again, I think always considering the focus of the research. And that's it, that's always important to to, you know, make sure that you're answering your research question. But being open to the flexibility of how the context might shape that research question. And I guess that's where I'm coming from when I was talking about how, you know, I go in, I went into a research project, so focused on trauma and suffering. And what I was missing was the everyday experiences and the the experiences that the families were trying to tell me. So I think that that's really important as researchers to stay open and flexible and looking at the research the research question the research population, with that kind of open perspective in order to really capture what's really happening within individuals life within the families, you know, home within the community. So that's one thing that I think that's one way we can make sure we're centering people, we're centering the participants. And another way, I think, that I've already mentioned, as well as this is the stories and listening to stories and listening to people's experiences in that way. And there's so many different ways we can do that. Cindy's referenced a few ways of being open and witnessing and you know, there's ways we can do that as researchers by taking copious amounts of field notes, for example of our observations. And including that in our research, by sharing that, through our research as well, by just sharing our research more generally, is really important for getting those stories out there and sharing, sharing that both suffering and joy that people are experiencing in these contexts. And then, always thinking of research as a conversation, not necessarily the data collection, but just the general, when you're designing a research methodology, when you're thinking about what methods you're going to use to collect data, I think going back to the participants and always asking, like, is this working? What do you think? Does this work for this for, for this context, I've used research I've used, you know, the similar research methodology in different contexts, and it shifts each time. And that's, it's an appropriate shift, because I've asked the community and asked the participants what they think of the methodology. So a research I'm using a used research methods, the one I described earlier, like the collaborator family interview with families in Palestine, I've used them with Syrian families in, in Lebanon, I'm using the same methodology with refugee families here in Ontario, Canada. And every time it shifts a little bit, there's a bit of a difference. And I think being open to that, and listening to those shifts and listening to the participants. And giving feedback, I think that's going to be the most effective way of doing research.

Cindy Sousa

I think, you know, the more that we've talked today, and the more I thought about it, the more I think that one of the really important things we can do is to help educate funders, you know, I think, as researchers in this subject area, in a lot of ways we are sort of in between what's happening on the ground, and these elite, you know, funding bodies. And so by helping educate funders, and promoting and pushing for expanded definitions of trauma and also of healing, that you know, very much do Center Community Based processes, you know, culturally specific processes, processes, that center agency, I think, that helps both bring participants into research. And paves the way to expand and create and support really creative, important and, you know, effective interventions beyond many other things that I could do. I feel like if my work contributes to that, I would feel like I represented the people that I was working with on the ground well.

Avery Moore Kloss  52:22

absolutely. Martha, we started with you. And I think it feels natural to end with you. I wonder your your wrap up thoughts on this subject of, you know, how do we continue to center participants of research.

Martha Bragin  52:36

I couldn't agree more with Cindy. And her notion that when we are working in situations that engage funders, that it is terribly important that we educate those funders. And I, as I said, work specifically to have methodologies that are understandable to funders where at some point, they can get something that they can see. And something that is tangible for them to grasp, that we're going to measure effectiveness. And that if we don't have community buy in, that we will not improve, particularly in the case of children, children's well being because people will protect their children, if they can do nothing else. And if they agree to some strange thing, as the original discussion of Palestine showed us that the funders want, they will simply find a way around it, because their interest is to help their children and to work towards something positive. So I think those things are true. I think that couldn't agree more that with Bree, that it is essential to be continuously consulting with the people with whom you want to do the work to make sure they want to do the work and that you were doing the work that they want to be doing in order to provide a vehicle for agency and for change. And that they can be in the driver's seat of controlling how that work is done by whom, with whom, and for what end.

Avery Moore Kloss  54:34

I think that's a really lovely place to end. And I do hope that you know, this podcast could also be one of those ways that funders are educated about, about this issue, especially since you've all shared such rich stories that really exemplify why it's so important. So thank you all for being here. I've we've so appreciated your expertise and your time and your care when it came to this specific, this specific topic.

Bree Akesson  54:57

Thanks so much, Avery. Thank you I love this group of colleagues and I love getting any chance to talk to you all, especially with them such a great moderator as Avery.

Avery Moore Kloss  55:13

A big thank you to our panelists today for sharing their experiences and expertise. Martha Bragin is an associate professor at the Silverman School of Social Work at Hunter College at City University of New York and the doctoral program in social welfare again, at the City University of New York. Cindy Sousa is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Bryn Mawr College, and she's also the director of the doctoral program there. And Bree Akesson is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. She's also the Canada Research Chair in global adversity and wellbeing, and the Associate Director here at CRSP. You can find more information about our guests and their research in the show notes of this episode. We are so glad you joined us and we can't wait to uncover more of our research on our next episode. This is CRSP talk from the Center for Research on security practices at Wilfrid Laurier University. And I'm Avery Moore Kloss.