Restorative validity and healing through inquiry: A visual ethnographic case study in Guatemala

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• Author: Giovanni P. Dazzo,Carmencita Cúmez,Erica Henderson,Fredy Peccerelli
• Date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/crq.21376

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Restorative validity and healing through

inquiry: A visual ethnographic case study

in Guatemala

Giovanni P. Dazzo

1

| Carmencita Cúmez

2

|

Erica Henderson

3

| Fredy Peccerelli

3

1

University of Georgia, Athens,

Georgia, USA

2

Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de

Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala

3

Fundaci

on de Antropología Forense de

Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Correspondence

Giovanni P. Dazzo, University of Georgia,

Athens, GA 30602-0002, USA.

Email: giovanni.dazzo@uga.edu

Abstract

This case study is an exploration of the potential restor-

ative and healing qualities of inquiry. The co-authors—

a university-affiliated researcher, a Kaqchikel Maya

community leader, and forensic anthropologists—

document their stories navigating a participatory action

research project as co-researchers. Using visual ethnog-

raphy, we illustrate how we approached inquiry from a

place of restorative validity, which challenges inquirers

to reclaim and restore the humanity of researcher,

researched, and the research process itself. Through a

culturally sustaining frame, we grounded our interpre-

tations in the Maya cultural elements of land, commu-

nity, and attachment to place. We demonstrate how we

intertwined our various ways of knowing and methods,

from Indigenous oral tradition to interactive techniques

such as ripples of change, to co-create a form of inquiry

rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. As

peace, conflict, and justice researchers and practi-

tioners work with those who have been subjected to

and witnessed atrocities, we problematize whether our

methodological practices are in line with our values as

a community of care. In moving toward restorative

validity, we ask: If the outside world robs people of

Received: 8 September 2022 Revised: 5 January 2023 Accepted: 23 February 2023

DOI: 10.1002/crq.21376

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distrib ution and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2023 The Authors. Conflict Resolution Quarterly published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Conflict Resolution Quarterly. 2023;40:383–404. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crq 383

their humanity, identities, and memories, do we simply

observe and document these injustices; or can our

inquiry work toward reclamation and restoration?

1|INTRODUCTION

This case study is an exploration of the potential restorative and healing qualities of inquiry. It

is a pursuit that seeks to argue, as Stanfield (2006) noted, that “one purpose of…qualitative

approaches is to bring about healing, reconciliation and restoration between the researcher and

the researched”(p. 725). This is situated within the broader work of the Fundaci

on de Ant-

ropología Forense de Guatemala (Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala, FAFG)

and one of its community partners, Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala (National

Coordination of Widows of Guatemala, CONAVIGUA). Through collaboration spanning several

decades, FAFG and its community partners have developed a forensic and criminal investigation

process that honors and integrates the principles of the Maya Cosmovision, rituals, cultures,

identities, and languages. In this process, FAFG and its partners seek to “recover the truth of

what happened to the Disappeared and to locate the remains of the dead”(Peccerelli &

Henderson, 2021, p. 307). As a collective, we collaborated as co-researchers to form a research

agenda, gather data,and make meaning. We explored whether inquiry—specifically,participatory

forms of applied research and program evaluation—could push beyond the idea that our research

was simply an end to understanding Maya priorities after the 36-year armed conflict (CEH, 1999),

and become a means to support the restoration and historical recovery of participants' identities,

memories, and culture, in line with the liberation psychology of Martín-Bar

o(

1994). While the

armed conflict and thework of FAFG and CONAVIGUA will be briefly described, the exploration

of the restorative and healing qualities of inquiry is the primary topic of this casestudy.

This article documents the process of our participatory data collection and analysis, occur-

ring from July 2019 to November 2021, with a collective of co-researchers including the

Kaqchikel Maya community in San Juan Comalapa, many of whom are members of CON-

AVIGUA (Carmencita); FAFG staff (Erica and Fredy), and a university-affiliated researcher

(Giovanni). Among the Kaqchikel, many are still searching for their loved ones who were forc-

ibly disappeared (i.e., desaparecidos in Spanish) between 1960 and 1996, while FAFG staff con-

tinue to partner with them in the process of investigation, exhumation, identification, and

burial. Through our activities, we sought to create a space that allowed us—as co-researchers,

practitioners, and, as human beings—to explore whether our work could serve as a site for pos-

sibility; what Fine and Torre (2004) refer to as the commitment to “review ‘what is’and ‘what

could be’but also from an ethical belief that critical researchers have an obligation…to help

readers/audiences imagine where the spaces for resistance, agency, and possibility lie”(p. 26).

Rather than seeing a short-term project to evaluate the process and outcomes of a particular

activity, we sought to examine how researchers and practitioners could incorporate approaches

that go beyond doing no harm (e.g., mitigating resultant trauma from sensitive research, limiting

participants' exposure to reprisal); moving toward the idea that inquiry can actually do good

(e.g., honoring Indigenous interpretations of research and practice to broadly educate others,

understanding how community members want to be compensated for their knowledge). This

draws on the notion that our social science must be modeled after an Aristotelian phronesis,i.e.,

an intellectual virtue associated with practical wisdom (Flyvbjerg, 2012), amounting to praxis,i.e.,

384 DAZZO ET AL.