ABSTRACT
This dialogical chapter explores how emergent methodologies stem from community-based engagements with transdisciplinary feminist research. Emergent strategy is a framework through which to co-create transformative change; among other elements, the framework is interdependent, decentralized, non-linear, iterative, adaptive, and possibility-generating. It is with an emergent framework in mind that we highlight intergenerational mentoring within the context of Detroit, Michigan—a place that has deeply influenced how we participate in community-based research. We suggest that many of the ongoing place-conscious research practices and community collaborations in Detroit are, and have been, iterations of transdisciplinary feminism. Alongside Detroit-based intersectional feminists, philosophers, theorists, and community organizers and activists such as adrienne maree brown and her mentor Grace Lee Boggs, therefore, we examine how emergent strategies work to create transformative change within local communities and, as Boggs and brown observe, within ourselves. In taking up emergent strategy through the conversations and continuing dialogues for which Boggs calls, we aim to illustrate how—within transdisciplinary feminist research—the community-based actions that begin as modest, everyday practices have the potential to continue, expand, and sustain on much larger scales.
