Transformational family science: Praxis, possibility, and promise

Abstract

We advance a transformational family science as an engaged practice that may serve social justice and an anti-racist project. Our companion paper proposed epistemic revelatory interventions through which family science may re-imagine itself. We highlight pillars of a transformational family science that (a) build with epistemological and paradigmatic stances of peripherals; (b) infuse an ethic of reflexivity, accountability, and responsibility in the pursuit of knowledge claims, and their validation; and (c) engage a critical interrogation of difference and power relations and the disruption of systemic and structural inequalities in which they are aligned. Informed by epistemic praxes, transformational praxes include inquiry, knowledge production, theorizing about structured inequalities, power differentials, and differences bound to social categories and social identities, as well as pedagogy and professional training. Transformative applications that are compensatory, reformative, restorative, reparative, and transformative may be used in multiple ways to advance social justice, anti-racism, and social transformations.