Diversifying and Decolonizing Research
Part of Sage Research Methods Database, this collection highlights case studies, expert videos, datasets, and how-to guides with a diverse range of experiences and approaches from marginalized, underrepresented, underserved, and vulnerable communities. Delve into a wide range of methodologies, from qualitative to quantitative, mixed and Indigenous methods, all enriched by international contributors with diverse backgrounds. Researchers at all levels of expertise will be able to gain the conceptual grounding and practical support needed to apply these concepts to their own research projects.
Researching With: A Decolonizing Approach to Community-Based Action Research by
Many community health interventions fail, wasting tax dollars and human resources. These interventions are typically designed by subject matter experts who don't have direct experience with the local community. In contrast, successful interventions are built from the ground up, planned and implemented by the people that will benefit from them, using community-based action research. Researching With: A Decolonizing Approach to Community-Based Action Research is a guide for how to do research that is inclusive, engages in community-building, and implements a decolonizing framework. This text advocates for a collaborative approach, researching with communities, rather than conducting research on them. Reviewing both theory and method, Jessica Smartt Gullion and Abigail Tilton offer practical tips for forming community partnerships and building coalitions. Researching With also includes helpful information about incorporating community work into a successful academic career. This book can be used as supplemental or primary reading in courses in sociology, social work, health research, nursing, public health, qualitative inquiry, and research methods, and is also of value to individual researchers and graduate students writing their thesis.
Decolonizing Qualitative Approaches for and by the Caribbean by
As academics in postcolonial Caribbean countries, we have been trained to believe that research should be objective: a measurable benefit to the public good and quantifiable in nature so as to generalize findings to develop knowledge societies for economic growth. What happens, however when the very word "research" connotes a derogatory term or semblance of distrust? Smith (1999) speaks towards the distrustful nature of the term as a legacy of European imperialism and colonialism. Against this backdrop, how do Caribbean researchers leverage recognized and valued (indigenous) methods of knowing and understanding for and by the Caribbean populace? How do we learn from indigenous research methods such as Kaupapa Maori (Smith, 1999) and develop an understanding of research that is emancipatory in nature? Decolonizing qualitative methods are rooted in critical theory and grounded in social justice, resistance, change and emancipatory research for and by the Other (Said, 1978). Rodney's (1969) legacy of "groundings" provides a Caribbean oriented ethnographic approach to collecting data about people and culture. It is an anti-imperialist method of data collection focused on the socioeconomic and political environment within the (post) colonial context. Similar to Rodney, other critical Caribbean scholars have moved the research discourse to center on the notions of resistance, struggle (Chevannes, 1995; Feraria, 2009) and decolonoizing methodologies. This proposed edited volume will provide a collective body of scholarship for innovative uses of decolonizing qualitative research. In order to theorize and conduct decolonizing research, one can argue that the researcher as self and as the Other needs to be interrogated. Borrowing from an autoethnographic ontology, the researcher or investigator recognizes the self as the unit of measure, and there is a concerted effort to continuously see the self, seeing the self through and as the other (Alexander, 2005; Ellis, 2004). This level of interrogation may require frameworks such as Reasonable Humanism in which there is a clear understanding of the role of the researcher and researched from a physiological and psychosocial standpoint. Thereafter, the researcher is better prepared to enter into a discourse about decolonizing methodologies. The origins of qualitative inquiry in the Caribbean can be traced to political and economic discourses - Marxism, postcolonialism, neocolonialism, capitalism, liberalism, postmodernism- which have challenged ways of knowing and the construction of knowledge. Evans (2009) traced the origins of qualitative inquiry to slave narratives, proprietor's journals, missionaries' reports and travelogues. Common to the Caribbean is an understanding of how colonial legacies of research have ridiculed oral traditions, language, and ways of knowing, often rendering them valueless and inconsequential. This proposed edited volume acknowledges the significance of decolonizing approaches to qualitative research in the Caribbean and the wider Caribbean diaspora..
Global Dimensions of Qualitative Inquiry by
This focused collection of original articles addresses the global dynamics of qualitative inquiry and the contextual dimensions within which such inquiry takes place. Contributions from many of the world's leading qualitative researchers in communications, education, sociology, and related disciplines focus on the changing landscape of social media, human rights, the Global South, and decolonizing methodologies, and guide the field toward a more engaged, global perspective. Chapters were developed from plenary sessions of the Eighth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (2012).
