Roxana Ng#External links

Roxana Ng was born in 1951 in Diamond Hill, a hill in the east of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong which used to be a large urban squatter village.{{Efn|Diamond Hill underwent rapid social and architectural transformation in the 1950s and 1960s.|name=|group=lower-alpha}} In 1968, she left to attend The Mount School, a Quaker boarding school in York, England.{{Cite web|url=https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/roxana-ng-fonds|title=Roxana Ng: Biographical History|last=Suurtamm|first=Karen|date=2016|website=University of Toronto Archives|at=Context area}}{{Cite news|last=Shanahan|first=Noreen|title=An activist who fought racism and sexism|date=13 February 2013|work=The Globe and Mail|page=S.8|issn=0319-0714}} There, she was asked to change her name from Ng to Wu (the Mandarin translation) to make pronunciation easier for native English speakers. Ng refused. After graduation in 1970, she moved to Vancouver with her family. When they immigrated, Ng kept her last name; the rest of her family took on the Mandarin translation ("Wu").

Ng trained in sociology at the University of British Columbia for her Bachelor's and Master's degrees. During her final years of study in Vancouver, Ng dedicated a large portion of her time to caring for family during her mother's sickness.

In 1977, she co-founded Vancouver Women's Research Centre (VWRC), an independent feminist organisation known for its participatory approach to research.{{Cite journal|last=Heyniger|first=Line Robillard|date=1985-01-01|title=The international conference on research and teaching related to women: Report of the coordinator|journal=Women's Studies International Forum|series=Special Issue The UN Decade for Women An international evaluation|language=en|volume=8|issue=2|pages=157–160|doi=10.1016/0277-5395(85)90066-4|issn=0277-5395}} Participatory research emphasises "knowledge for action" (in order to help resolve the problem being researched) and self-awareness on the part of the researcher as a participant with power and influence in research settings.{{Cite journal|last1=Cornwall|first1=Andrea|last2=Jewkes|first2=Rachel|date=1995-12-01|title=What is participatory research?|url=https://www.civitas.edu.pl/pub/nasza_uczelnia/projekty_badawcze/Taylor/what_is_participatory_research.pdf|journal=Social Science & Medicine|language=en|volume=41|issue=12|pages=1667–1676|doi=10.1016/0277-9536(95)00127-S|pmid=8746866|issn=0277-9536}}{{Efn|Participatory research, as is often true of academic concepts, has many definitions and may refer to many approaches and techniques. The description in this sentence focuses on what distinguishes participatory methods from conventional methods. Participatory research is critical of conventional methods which treat research subjects as fixed (as opposed to dynamic and prone to change), and which consider the researcher separable from the social situations being researched. Conventional methods have tended not to reflect on the politics of the research situation itself, whereas participatory methods have sought to bring greater awareness to the researcher's own position and responsibilities.|name=|group=lower-alpha}} VWRC was "founded on the principle that all research on women must start with women and must include their perception on the project, the parameters, the process, and the questions raised". VWRC's work helped identify and address problems faced by women—particularly immigrant women—in economic development, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. Its publications included a report (1980) on sexual harassment in the workplace undertaken in collaboration with the British Columbia Federation of Labour.{{Cite web|url=https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/activism/issues-actions/labour-movement-and-womens-equality/bcfedlabourstatusofwomen-1980-sexualharassmentworkplacereport/|title=Report on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace|date=1980|website=Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive|language=en|access-date=2020-02-10}} Ng went on to set up similar centres for immigrant women across Canada.

In 1978, Ng moved to Toronto for her PhD at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), which she received in 1984. She was mentored by Dorothy E. Smith, and became involved with Women Working with Immigrant Women (1979) and INTERCEDE (1980) during this time.{{Cite web|url=https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/groups|title=Roxana Ng: Groups|last=Suurtamm|first=Karen|date=2016|website=University of Toronto Archives}}{{Cite journal|last=Carroll|first=William K|date=2011-02-06|title='You Are Here': an interview with Dorothy E. Smith|journal=Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes|volume=6|issue=2|pages=10|doi=10.18740/S4QS3F|issn=1918-2821|doi-access=free}}{{Cite web|url=https://riseupfeministarchive.ca/activism/organizations/women-working-with-immigrant-women/|title=Women Working With Immigrant Women|website=Rise Up! A Feminist Digital Archive|language=en|access-date=2020-02-11}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/CX2351.htm|title=Organization profile - Intercede: International Coalition To End Domestics Exploitation|date=1981|website=connexions.org|language=en|access-date=2020-02-11}}

In the years that followed, Ng taught at the University of New Brunswick and Queen's University. She returned to OISE in 1988 as professor, first teaching sociology and later, adult education and community development.{{Cite news|url=https://magazine.utoronto.ca/people/faculty-staff/in-memoriam-roxana-ng/|title=In Memoriam: Roxana Ng|date=21 October 2013|work=University of Toronto Magazine|access-date=12 February 2020}}

Ng directed the Centre for Women's Studies in Education (CWSE) from 2009 to 2013.{{Cite web|url=https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/cwse/News_Announcements/Roxana_Ng/Roxana_Ng_Event_Series/index.html|title=Brown Bag Series in Honour of Roxana Ng|website=Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - Centre for Women's Studies in Education (OISE-CWSE)|access-date=12 Feb 2020}}

On January 12, 2013, Ng passed away at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario after a short and courageous fight with cancer. She left behind her parents and two brothers.{{Cite web|url=https://obittree.com/obituary/ca/ontario/toronto/newediuk-funeral-home/roxana-ng/1466304/|title=Roxana Chu-Yee Ng Obituary - Toronto, ON {{!}} ObitTree™|website=obittree.com|language=en|access-date=2020-03-03}}

Ng is noted for her scholarship on the garment industry in Canada and its relation to immigration, gender, race, and class, as well as her contributions to institutional ethnography, embodied learning, and critical pedagogy. One major strand of her work documented the experiences of migrant women in Canada and their identity construction in a globalised world and labour market.{{Cite journal|last=Creese|first=Gillian|date=Jan 1994|title=The Sociology of British Columbia|url=https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/333e/dbea4bb13450485201ac9880ce9a0e9dd9e0.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200212215838/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/333e/dbea4bb13450485201ac9880ce9a0e9dd9e0.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=2020-02-12|journal=BC Studies|volume=100|pages=21–42}}{{Cite web|url=https://www.isa-sociology.org/uploads/files/tg06newsletter_february_2013.pdf|title=Remembering Roxana Ng|date=Feb 2013|website=International Sociological Association|page=16|access-date=12 Feb 2020}} Another strand of her work sought insight from Eastern philosophy and practice to integrate the mind-body-spirit segregation (often assuming Cartesian mind-body duality) characteristic of traditional academia and higher education.{{Cite web|url=https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/authors/view/roxana-ng|title=Authors: Roxana Ng|website=Fernwood Publishing|access-date=12 Feb 2020}} Ng has also written on the experience of academia from the standpoint of a minority, immigrant woman.{{Cite journal|last=Coburn|first=Elaine|date=2017-02-08|title=Against the Grain: Socially Just Social Science from the Standpoint of Roxana Ng (Review Essay)|journal=Studies in Social Justice|language=en|volume=11|issue=1|pages=136–159|doi=10.26522/ssj.v11i1.1329|issn=1911-4788|doi-access=free}}

Ng's 1999 study, conducted on 30 Chinese-speaking homeworkers, found that wages were frozen at early 1980s levels (below minimum wage for homeworkers); none were receiving overtime pay (instead being paid per piece); and all reported work-related injuries. Ng estimated that there were around 8,000 women, many of them from Asia, who were homeworkers in the Toronto garment industry.{{Cite journal|last1=Ng|first1=Roxana|last2=Wong|first2=Renita Yuk-lin|last3=Choi|first3=Angela|date=1999|title=Homeworking: home office or home sweatshop?|journal=Centre for the Study of Education and Work|hdl=1807/2720 |language=en-CA|via=University of Toronto: TSpace Repository|hdl-access=free}}{{Cite news|title=Homeworkers paid below minimum wage|date=19 Jun 1999|work=Daily Press|location=Timmins, Ontario|page=17|issn=0841-6966}}{{Cite news|last=Lindgren|first=April|title=Garment makers paid near-sweatshop wage; Study finds Toronto-area workers have no protections|date=18 June 1999|work=The Windsor Star|location=Windsor, Ontario|page=A12}} These homeworkers, who were paid by the piece, "regularly ha[d] their piece rate reduced as their productivity increase[d]". Many garments sewn by homeworkers "[did] not have retail and manufacturing labels, making their employers difficult to trace and regulate", such that only two of the 30 interviewed workers reported labels on garments. The study was cited at a press conference at Queen's Park.{{Cite news|last=Weinberg|first=Stuart|title='Sweatshops' thrive in Toronto, homeworker study discovers ; Immigrant workers at the mercy of their bosses, sociologist says|date=18 June 1999|work=Toronto Star|page=1|issn=0319-0781}}

In a "representative (if non-exhaustive)" review of Ng's scholarship which contextualises and connects the major strands of Ng's work, Elaine Coburn has considered Ng "one of Canadian sociology and political economy’s most underappreciated theorists" whose research and theorising "was and remains relatively marginalised within more mainstream academic publications". In regard to the unity of Ng's scholarship and activism, Coburn wrote:{{Cite journal|last=Coburn|first=Elaine|date=2017-02-08|title=Against the Grain: Socially Just Social Science from the Standpoint of Roxana Ng (Review Essay)|journal=Studies in Social Justice|language=en|volume=11|issue=1|pages=156–57|doi=10.26522/ssj.v11i1.1329|issn=1911-4788|doi-access=free}}

Ng’s work is motivated by a commitment to socially just change. Arguably, this commitment informed her efforts towards analytical rigour and clarity, since the stakes of social change do not allow for sloppy analyses that might mislead solidarity work with and for the exploited and oppressed. This rigour included a reflexive awareness of the personal costs of social change, since struggles with and for dominated actors inevitably face the countervailing powers of dominant actors whose interests are threatened by the possibilities of fundamental social transformation. Sometimes, Ng observed, even forms of civility are dangerous for social change, as when empathetic desires to maintain harmonious relationships with “those close to us” lead us to mute our critiques of social justice (Ng, 1993, p.200). Likewise, Ng examined the ways that dominated actors–and even we who think of ourselves as working for social justice–may reproduce unjust inequalities and relations of exploitation, despite our best intentions.

Ng was active in immigrant women's and garment workers' organising from the mid-1970s onwards, and "continue[d] to refine her conceptualization of race, gender, and class relations based on her organizing experiences."{{Cite book|title=Race, Identity, and Representation in Education|publisher=Routledge|year=1993|isbn=9780415905589|editor-last=McCarthy|editor-first=Cameron|edition=1st|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/raceidentityrepr0000unse/page/328 328]|chapter=Contributors: Roxana Ng|editor-last2=Crichlow|editor-first2=Warren|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/raceidentityrepr0000unse/page/328}} Notably, she served as a board member of Inter Pares, and as board member then President (1994–95) of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). The organisations she supported included:

• "Decolonizing Teaching and Learning Through Embodied Learning: Toward an Integrated Approach." In Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization, edited by Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2018. doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781771991919.01 (Open Access - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• "Lifelong Learning as Ideological Practice: An Analysis from the Perspective of Immigrant Women in Canada." International Journal of Lifelong Education 29, no. 2 (2010): 169–184. doi: 10.1080/02601371003616574
• "Toward an Integrative Approach to Equity in Education." In Pedagogies of Difference: Rethinking Education for Social Justice, 197–210. New York: Routledge, 2003. doi: 10.4324/9780203465547
• "Integrating Community Diversity in Toronto: On Whose Terms?" In The World in a City, edited by C. Michael Lanphier and Paul Anisef, 373–456. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
• "Toward an Embodied Pedagogy: Exploring Health and the Body through Chinese Medicine." In Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World, edited by George J. Sefa Dei, Budd L. Hall, and Dorothy Goldin Rosenberg, 168–183. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.
• The Politics of Community Services: Immigrant Women, Class and the State. 2nd ed. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996. ([https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL349661A/Roxana_Ng?sort=old Available through Internet Archive's Open Library])
• Anti-Racism, Feminism, and Critical Approaches to Education, edited by Roxana Ng, Pat Staton, and Joyce Scane. Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 1995. ([https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL349661A/Roxana_Ng?sort=old Available through Internet Archive's Open Library])
• "Racism, Sexism, and Nation Building in Canada." In Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, edited by Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, 50–59. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 1993. ([https://books.google.com/books?id=1jndNzH05JsC Available through Google Books])
• "A Woman Out of Control: Deconstructing Sexism and Racism in the University." Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation 18, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 189–205. doi: 10.2307/1495382
• Community Organization and the Canadian State, edited by Roxana Ng, Gilian Walker, and Jacob Muller. Toronto: Garamond Press, 1990. ([https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL349661A/Roxana_Ng?sort=old Available through Internet Archive's Open Library])
• Immigrant Housewives in Canada: A Report. Toronto: Immigrant Women's Centre, 1981.

{{Archival records|title=Roxana Ng fonds}}

• [https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/roxana-ng-fonds Roxana Ng fonds at the University of Toronto Archives]
• [https://discoverarchives.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/roxana-ng-fonds Homeworkers Association records at the University of Toronto Archives]

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Category:1951 births

Category:2013 deaths

Category:Academic staff of the University of New Brunswick

Category:Canadian women academics

Category:Canadian women non-fiction writers

Category:20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers

Category:Hong Kong emigrants to Canada

Category:University of British Columbia alumni

Category:University of Toronto alumni

Category:20th-century Canadian women

Category:Academic staff of Queen's University at Kingston