Prompt: Considering the readings so far and your own learning interests, form a research question. Think about how you would locate primary, historical sources that might begin to help you answer that question. How might your findings cause you to reframe your question? What can you reasonably answer with the materials available? What materials would you like to access that are not digitized? What are your next steps? Write a blog post about your preliminary research process in a digital context.
Considering not only my readings so far, but also our conversation in the classes, my research question would be: “What the importance of listening for public policy development?”. I believe that it is extremely important to reflect on the limitations of ‘good intention’ in the process of public policy formulation. There is a clear difference between what a public policy builder believes to be an urgency for a community and what the community itself assumes to be their needs. Therefore, I would analyze how we can use active listening together with a deep understanding of intersectionality to develop effective tools.
Even though a public policy builder is a resident or was raised in the community, where the project will be integrated, it is vital to take in consideration the fact that power dynamics may affect him in a heavier or softer way compared with other people in the same community—which is part of intersectionality phenomenon. Therefore, if he wants to be sure that his project is be able to solve a problem or simply contribute positively to as many people as possible, he needs first to make his research as democratic as possible by listening people and their necessities.
In the case of a foreign scholar/researcher, I believe that it is also important to consider how guarantee the historical, ethnical, and cultural safeties of the community by understanding what can be or not exposed or published.
To answer my research question, I would first access Google Scholar or JSTOR to search for papers through the following ‘sentence-words’: “public policy development”, “steps of public policy development” or even “the importance of listening for the public policy development”. I would check if other people already discussed about this topic or what lines of reasoning they followed. Maybe, I would ask some professor for source/author suggestions. My steps, maybe, would be to write a discussion about the importance and/or function of public policy, the importance of identifying and getting to know its target audience, and finally the importance of listening. I would use a qualitative approach, possibly by proposing a case study whereby I could obtain a multi-faced exploration.
Bruno– this is a great research question and you hit on a key point from our conversations: the importance of listening. Especially in terms of shaping pubic policy, I agree that there are often too few conversations with members of the community affected by the policy. Even with good intentions, policy making requires listening to the community. To take this a step further, policies can and should be directed by the community itself, rather than a top-down model (especially when considering the legal relationship between Native nations and the settler state).