A Grounded Theory of Liberated Identity: Lesbians transcending oppression...

Amy Russell, Ph.D., LMSW Abstract The purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged based on the conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women through Classic Grounded Theory methodology. Theory generation is grounded in the unique perspectives of lesbian women’s experience in cultural contexts. This is a strengths-based process that focuses on how participants meet challenges in culture, rather than how they are consumed by them. From the data, a basic social process emerged that is both complex and paradoxical: transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity. The paradox lies in the aspect that from a lesbian woman’s pain comes her strength. This difference, lesbian identity, is also the source of strength. This paradox is compounded with the awareness that culture negates lesbian loving relationships. There are three stages to lesbian liberated identity: authenticating, reconciling, and integrating. Application to and implications for professionals and academics are presented. Keywords: lesbians, liberated identity, spirituality, political, classic grounded theory Introduction Historically, behavioral science theories and developmental models have focused on the individual outside of culture, hence negating the unique cultural oppression of lesbian women. The few theories that address lesbians are seated in “heterosexist paradigms” that fall outside the lived experience of lesbian women (Brown, 1995, p.18). Subsequently, theory has pathologized lesbian development through the absence of biopsychosocial frameworks (Brown, 1995). Research and psychological interventions have also focused on the internal daily living problems of lesbian women instead of the oppressive cultural experiences that lesbian women encounter (Kitzinger & Perkins, 1993). The absence of political theories that explore lesbian cultural experience have opened the door to pathologizing explanations that blame the victim (Kitzinger & Perkins). Instead of investigating the challenges posed by the system the individual is navigating within, labels of coping are applied to the individual (i.e. internalized homophobia) as opposed to the source (homophobic and heterosexist oppression), thus minimizing external forces and maximizing assumed pathology of the person within the system. Using Classic Grounded Theory, the purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged from conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women. Findings revealed that the women in this study created unique social processes to maintain, even edify, their lesbian identity when it was threatened. From conceptualization of the data, theory emerged as a specific process in which strengths were utilized to face challenges when interacting within culture. This process and theory, transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity, is complex and paradoxical because the participants garnered strength from the pain caused by oppression. Although this oppression may lead to suffering, it also created resilience. Since lesbian loving relationships are thus ignored or minimized within culture, this compounded the paradox. Method Participant selection was based on lesbian identity and diverse demographic characteristics because heterogeneous sampling is required to expand and refine the emergent theory (Glaser, 1978). Heterogeneous lesbian subgroups were recruited to enhance non-comparability of groups. Key informants, lesbian women identified as resources with exceptional knowledge of the potential sample, were used for access to lesbian subgroups and later as interview participants for theoretical coding. Using the researcher’s own network, key informants, snowball participants, and lesbian social services, theoretical sampling was conducted. Lesbian Social Services To diversify potential participants, the initial sample was drawn from lesbian social service agencies. Four social service agencies agreed to publicize the study. Theoretical sampling began with a local lesbian social service sponsoring a function for recipients. Interviews were conducted onsite and from this event additional participants were recruited. All agencies and participants...

A grounded Theory of Liberated Identity: Lesbians transcending liberation...

Russell, Amy (2011). A grounded Theory of Liberated Identity: Lesbians transcending liberation. The Grounded Theory Review, vol.10, no.1, pp.59-83. The purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged based on the conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women through Classic Grounded Theory methodology. Theory generation is grounded in the unique perspectives of lesbian women’s experience in cultural contexts. This is a strengths-based process that focuses on how participants meet challenges in culture, rather than how they are consumed by them. From the data, a basic social process emerged that is both complex and paradoxical: transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity. The paradox lies in the aspect that from a lesbian woman’s pain comes her strength. This difference, lesbian identity, is also the source of strength. This paradox is compounded with the awareness that culture negates lesbian loving relationships. There are three stages to lesbian liberated identity: authenticating, reconciling, and integrating. Application to and implications for professionals and academics are presented. A Grounded Theory of Liberated Identity: Lesbians transcending oppression Amy Russell, Ph.D., LMSW Abstract The purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged based on the conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women through Classic Grounded Theory methodology. Theory generation is grounded in the unique perspectives of lesbian women’s experience in cultural contexts. This is a strengths-based process that focuses on how participants meet challenges in culture, rather than how they are consumed by them. From the data, a basic social process emerged that is both complex and paradoxical: transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity. The paradox lies in the aspect that from a lesbian woman’s pain comes her strength. This difference, lesbian identity, is also the source of strength. This paradox is compounded with the awareness that culture negates lesbian loving relationships. There are three stages to lesbian liberated identity: authenticating, reconciling, and integrating. Application to and implications for professionals and academics are presented. Keywords: lesbians, liberated identity, spirituality, political, classic grounded theory Introduction Historically, behavioral science theories and developmental models have focused on the individual outside of culture, hence negating the unique cultural oppression of lesbian women. The few theories that address lesbians are seated in “heterosexist paradigms” that fall outside the lived experience of lesbian women (Brown, 1995, p.18). Subsequently, theory has pathologized lesbian development through the absence of biopsychosocial frameworks (Brown, 1995). Research and psychological interventions have also focused on the internal daily living problems of lesbian women instead of the oppressive cultural experiences that lesbian women encounter (Kitzinger & Perkins, 1993). The absence of political theories that explore lesbian cultural experience have opened the door to pathologizing explanations that blame the victim (Kitzinger & Perkins). Instead of investigating the challenges posed by the system the individual is navigating within, labels of coping are applied to the individual (i.e. internalized homophobia) as opposed to the source (homophobic and heterosexist oppression), thus minimizing external forces and maximizing assumed pathology of the person within the system. Using Classic Grounded Theory, the purpose of this study was to generate theory that emerged from conceptualized data from interviews with lesbian women. Findings revealed that the women in this study created unique social processes to maintain, even edify, their lesbian identity when it was threatened. From conceptualization of the data, theory emerged as a specific process in which strengths were utilized to face challenges when interacting within culture. This process and theory, transcending oppression through liberating one’s identity, is complex and paradoxical because the participants garnered...

Reading with Methodological Perspective Bias: A journey into Classic Grounded Theory...

Deady, Rick (2011). Reading with Methodological Perspective Bias: A journey into Classic Grounded Theory. The Grounded Theory Review, vol.10, no.1, pp.41-57. The following is a naïve narrative of my journey into classic grounded theory (CGT) and the consideration of the possible existence of methodological perspective bias when reviewing literature. Whilst research bias has been viewed from a number of differing perspectives, such as sample bias, interviewer bias, publication bias etc (Sica, 2006), there appears a dearth of discussion within the literature on methodological perspective bias, as well as, a reluctance to publicly acknowledge the existence of such bias. For the purpose of this paper the concept of bias is defined as “a source of systematic error … deriving from a conscious or unconscious tendency on the part of a researcher to produce data, and/or to interpret them, in a way that leans towards erroneous conclusions which are in line with his or her commitments” (Hammersley and Gomm, 1997, p.1). Article...

Forging a Path for Abstinence from Heroin: A grounded theory of detoxification-seeking...

McDonnell, Anne & VanHout, Claire (2011). Forging a Path for Abstinence from Heroin: A groudned theory of detoxification -seeking. The Grounded Theory Review, vol.10, no.1, pp.17-40 Through a classic grounded theory approach, this study conceptualises that the main concern of heroin users who are seeking detoxification is giving up heroin use; ‘getting clean.’ Forging a path for abstinence explains how people respond to their concern of getting clean from heroin. Three sub-processes make up this response which are; resolution (resolving to stop); navigation (deciding how to stop), and initiation (stopping use). These sub-processes are carried out by heroin users within a context of subjective levels of four significant personal resources; dependence knowledge; treatment awareness; treatment access, and alliance. The nature of the resource context greatly determines whether a heroin user seeks detoxification, or not, is response to getting clean. The substantive theory demonstrates that valuable insights are gained from studying heroin users out of treatment experiences of trying to become drug-free. Article...

Blocking Conceptualization

Glaser, Barney G. (2011). Blocking Conceptualization. The Grounded Theory Review, vol.10, no.1, pp.1-16. My purpose in this chapter is to go into some detail on the various blocks to conceptualization that the reader can and should be wary of so he/she can either avoid them, deal with them adequately to do a GT study, or submit to them humbly for greater gains for the moment. They are authoritative blocks, preconceptions, inability to adequately conceptualize, the initial confusion and regression, multi-version view of GT, QDA requirement blocks, data collection overload, data coding overload, peer reviews, dealing with jargonizing GT, and being a novice both in experience and in scholarship with GT. Obviously these are related in many ways and I have dealt with them a bit in above chapters on helping coding. My goal here is to put them into relief for focused attention and thought so they can be avoided or handled. Article here…...

A Swedish perspective on research ethics review...

Hans Thulesius, M.D., G.P., Ph.D. I have participated in writing ethical approval applications for research projects in Sweden a dozen times. I am also since some years a member of the local ethics advisory board in a mostly rural area serving 180.000 people. From that position I advise on what types of local project applications will have to be sent further to the regional ethics committee, REPN in Sweden. With that background I will try to give a brief Swedish perspective on research ethics reviews in general and regarding CGT (classic grounded theory) studies using qualitative data in particular. The most famous Swedish example of unethical research is the 1947-1951 Vipeholm sugar trial (Krasse, 2001). Several hundred intellectually and mentally challenged persons at the Vipeholm institution were for years given an excess amount of sugar, mostly in the shape of candy. This resulted in caries that totally ruined the teeth of 50 persons. Of course participants did not give informed consent. Yet, at the time the research was not considered unethical. At least there was no debate about it. In Sweden there are 6 REPNs each with a population base of around 1.5 million people. Above the REPN is a central research ethics committee – CEPN – to which one can appeal the decisions of the REPNs (http://www.epn.se/start/startpage.aspx). The REPN consists of one judge as a chairman, 5 scientifically competent persons and 5 laymen, all ordained by the Swedish government. In order to get the REPN to even look at an application there is a fee of 5000 SEK (700 USD) to be paid by the applicant; 16000 SEK for collaborative projects involving more than one Swedish region. Yet, student projects below the Ph.D. level are not requested to apply for REPN approval although they can get advisory statements from the REPN that also require a fee. As a consequence local ethics advisory boards have sprung up to supply the need for research ethics advice in a context where the respect for personal autonomy becomes more and more important and research ethics increasingly politically correct. The EPNs are guided by research ethics principles that can be formulated in a number of rules. These research ethics rules deal with four different requirements: information, consent, confidentiality, and use. In brief: 1. The person potentially being researched should receive adequate information from the researcher about the aims, risks, advantages and costs of the research project as well as conditions for participating. 2. The person has the right to self decide about participation or non-participation at any time even after the project has begun. 3. The person should be guaranteed anonymity and that research data is kept safe and secret. 4. The data from the research may not be used outside of the research project. Ethical review boards, both regional and local, deal with research methodology apart from looking at the direct ethical integrity aspects of research. It is often emphasized that research projects with a questionable methodology are unethical since they will eventually fail to produce useful results and thus they represent a waste of, mostly public, resources. This part of the research review can actually be very useful to the researcher in order to refine the study protocol that may prove valuable when applying for grants and for publishing the study. There was a time in Sweden when projects that could be defined as societal/behavioral from a research ethics perspective were treated differently, read less critically, than projects with a more...

Book Review: Kaplan, S. (2008).Children in Genocide: Extreme traumatization and affect regulation, London: International Psychoanalysis Library...

Carol Roderick, M.Ed., Ph.D. In Children in Genocide: Extreme traumatization and affect regulation (2008), Suzanne Kaplan explores the affects and memories of individuals who have survived extreme traumatization during their childhood, specifically Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and teenagers who survived the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. In the introduction, Kaplan explains that she has aimed to “write a text that can, to the greatest extent possible, convey a fraction of the feeling of what it meant to be a child during a genocide” (Kaplan, 2008, p.1). The majority of the book is devoted to presenting an analysis of the oral life histories of the survivors interviewed. The experiences are organized into three themes: 1) perforating, how the psychic shield is has been perforated by intense trauma; 2) space creating, the inner psychic processes through which the persecuted create mental space helps to survive the psychological damage and trauma; and 3) age distorting, a twisting of time that results in participants not feeling their actual chronological age. Age distorting is presented as containing aspects of perforating and space creating, and is linked to reproductive patterns of the survivors. A chronology of genocide events is used to organize these themes, through which the life histories of participants are presented in rich descriptive detail. Kaplan focuses both on the content of the interviews conducted as well as how the memories of the atrocities survived were recounted (the affects). The text provides readers with a glimpse into lived experience of these horrors in a manner that can only be achieved through narrative. The analysis of the life histories is presented as a theory in the final chapter, From conceptual models to a theory. Here, concepts previously presented as life histories are reorganized into a table and then into a diagram. The diagram represents Kaplan’s theory, the affect propellor. The affect propeller is offered as an analytic tool for the affect regulating of extremely traumatized individuals. Trauma linking, an inner psychological consequence of perforating, is contrasted with generational linking, the result of successful space creating. These four concepts are associated with levels of affect regulation, from low to high integration. These levels include affect invading, affect isolating, affect activating, and affect symbolizing. Each level of affect regulation is assigned one blade of the affect propeller diagram. Each blade is subdivided into three levels of linking processes two levels of trauma linking (destructive) and one of generational linking (constructive). The blades rotate around the center of affect regulating. Kaplan claims to have used grounded theory methodology for this research. Grounded theory is a complete package from collection, coding, analyzing, memoing, theoretical sampling, sorting, writing, and using the constant comparative method (Glaser, 1998). The result is a set of carefully grounded, well integrated hypotheses organized around a core category. The theory helps to explain as much of the behavior within the substantive area as possible with as few concepts as possible (Glaser, 1978). Kaplan’s theory falls short of a classic grounded theory in a variety of ways, three of which I will address here. The goal of grounded theory is to uncover a main concern of individuals and how these individuals attempt to resolve or process this concern (Glaser, 1998). This contrasts with qualitative research methods where the goal is description. The author states that the aim of her research was to present the life histories of individuals who have survived genocide and to communicate what it means to be a child during genocide. This aim...

Theory buried under heavy description

Vivian B. Martin Ph.D. Children in Genocide: extreme traumatization and affect regulation, International Psychoanalysis Library, 2008 In journalism when a reporter puts the main news or point of the story deep down in the text, we say she’s buried the lead, the lead being the main point of the story and usually the first paragraph. In Children in Genocide: extreme traumatization and affect regulation, psychoanalyst Suzanne Kaplan buries her theory. Her study of the after effects of trauma among Holocaust survivors who were children during their persecution and survivors of atrocities during the Rwandan atrocities of the 1990s, is filled with highly descriptive material from the many interviews that serve as data. An interesting grounded theory is peeking out from under all the disciplinary discourse and historical background one must read through to get to what grounded theory readers will consider the juicy parts: concepts on affect regulation in trauma survivors. Published by the International Psychoanalysis Library, it’s clear that the author’s work was necessarily grounded in psychoanalytic assumptions and theory for the main audience. Kaplan drew on psychoanalytic theory to help her understand what is going on in the interviews. But the procedures of classic grounded theory helped the author take the mounds of data and create theory. Kaplan did some of the grounded theory analysis as part of a dissertation, later extending the work. Kaplan makes reference to grounded theory’s influence in just a few words on two pages in this book (pg. 13, 206), so grounded theory’s impact is never explicated here. The presentation of her theory suffers for this. Nevertheless, the book provides an opportunity for some discussion of the role of theoretical sensitivity in grounded theory and the challenge of navigating the preconceptions of received theories and models. The book deals with the memories of elderly Holocaust survivors who were children in hiding or concentration camps. Kaplan makes use of visual archival material as well as interviews she conducted. As a comparison group, she draws on interviews people whose trauma is still relatively recent: survivors of the Rwandan crises. By comparing the immense childhood suffering of groups whose persecution is separated by time and culture, Kaplan was able to identify recurring patterns that led to her eventual theoretical model. She states that generational collapse as the “core process.” (As will be noted shortly, she also names other concepts as core processes, making aspects of her presentation unclear). Genocides wipe out families, leaving the survivors with broken links. Kaplan introduces the concept of perforating to describe the tearing away experience, which has many indicators and invades physical and psychic space. The realization that a number of the interviewees chose to forgo reproduction (“because I was a child myself” with the disruption occurred) alerted Kaplan to a continued pattern of generational collapse. The concept pf space creating signifies the mental strategies for survival. She writes that space creating is an attempt to recapture a normal time: “Space creating refers to a psychic room that an individual, as a child, creates according to his or her needs” (p.56). The mental link may be to a hiding place or other space associated with a safer time. In much the same way that classic works such as Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) outlines the everyday mental strategies people used to survive life in concentration camps, Kaplan presents space creating as a survival strategy that helps people hold on to their humanity and spirit. Space creating is necessary...