Narrative Justice: Lessons and Practices from the Lippitt Hill Critical Oral History Project

Abstract

This thesis tracks lessons for people who do scholarly work in the service of peoples' struggles for equity and justice, based on the early development of the Lippitt Hill Critical Oral History Project (COHP). Led by Dannie Ritchie, MD, MPH, and scholar-activists committed to the East Side/Lippitt Hill community of Providence, Rhode Island, our work foregrounds the joy and resistance of Black East Siders in the face of federal, state, and city-sanctioned displacement, dispossession, and wealth extraction–also called urban renewal–through collective storytelling. We are developing a collective understanding of the lived experience of urban renewal, including the federal, state, and city choice-making (bureaucracy and policy) that created displacement and wealth extraction in Providence, understanding that this can inform nationwide efforts to resist the compounding impacts of urban renewal. By focusing on the early stages of an activist research project, this thesis works to challenge harmful paradigms in qualitative research. Engaged, story-driven research can help scholar-activists working toward justice in the built environment to develop more nuanced analyses of root causes, thereby troubling dominant narratives that hinder our ability to redress and stop systemic harm. Collective storytelling—in our case, the critical oral history methodology—the use of a play, and popular education practices help all of us: neighbors, peers, scholar-activists, and policy makers. These approaches connect us on a level of emotion and solidarity to engage us in problem solving toward alternatives, solutions, or resistance to displacement and wealth extraction that continues today by other means. Based on my experience working on this project and relevant literature, I name barriers to the pursuit of scholar-activism and knowledge co-production at the institutional, legal, financial, philosophical, and ethical levels. I share best practices for scholar-activist research that works to resist these barriers and address complex social issues, namely, desire-based research (Tuck, 2009). I make the case for resisting the urge to 'get it right' and the prevailing behavior of 'firsting' in research (Liboiron, 2021). This frees scholar-activists up to bring both 'expert' and grassroots knowledge into our work, broadening our understanding of what came before so we can build on it. I suggest centering intergenerational knowledge sharing through popular education practices which foreground joy as fundamental to learning. Finally, I question the theoretical examinations and practice of reparative planning, which deserves more scrutiny as it serves as a foundation for scholar-activists whose work intervenes in the built environment toward justice (Williams and Steil, 2022).