On Restorative Validity: Reorienting Inquiry Toward Peace, Justice, and Healing

Abstract

This work begins with a simple premise: (re)imagining a healing and restorative space for inquiry. Drawing on the work of John H. Stanfield II (2006), who first suggested the restorative functions of qualitative inquiry, this manuscript forms the basis for an axiologically-actuated conceptual model, restorative validity, which asks what it would take to (re)humanize researcher and researched alike. Beginning with the knowledge of co-researchers in our collective, the formulation of this framework was organized to understand the importance of orienting our research and ourselves toward relationships, justice, and liberation. After this review, I discuss a series of reflexive questions, rooted in the trans-disciplinarity of restorative justice, which researchers and practitioners can use to consider the potential and real harms in/from inquiry. By unsettling expertise and examining the implicit intersection of validity and ethics, I question: What would it take to be part of a research project that leaves those involved feeling greater than how we have all been defined? What happens when we do not question what our research does for/to us and our participants, especially when it spurs intellectual debate with little benefit in the way of peace, justice, or healing of past traumas and loss?