Decolonizing Interpretive Research

A Subaltern Methodology for Social Change

Antonia Darder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351045056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

To what extent do Western political and economic interests distort perceptions and affect the Western production of research about the other? The concept of 'colonializing epistemologies' describes how knowledges outside the Western purview are often not only rendered invisible but either absorbed or destroyed.

Decolonizing Interpretive Research outlines a form of oppositional study that undertakes a critical analysis of bodies of knowledge in any field that engages with issues related to the lives and survival of those deemed as other. It focuses on creating intellectual spaces that will facilitate new readings of the world and lead toward change, both in theory and practice. The book begins by conceptualizing the various aspects of the decolonizing interpretive research approach for the reader, and the following six chapters each focus on one of these issues, grounded in a specific decolonizing interpretive study.

With a foreword by Linda Tuhiwai Smith, this book will allow readers to not only engage with the conceptual framework of this decolonizing methodology but will also give them access to examples of how the methodology has informed decolonizing interpretive studies in practice.

PART I

The conceptual foundation

Many other Maori people, I was aware of, were scared of what lay in cupboards, of whose bones and whose ancestors were imprisoned in those cases.¹

1 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing methodologies (London: Zed Books, 1999), p. 11.

1

DECOLONIZING INTERPRETIVE RESEARCH

Antonia Darder

Decolonization is a process which engages with imperialism and colonialism at multiple levels. For researchers, one of those levels is concerned with having a more critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values which inform research practices.

(Smith, 1999)

Decolonizing the interpretive encompasses a rigorous process of study that demands of us to “risk imagining an entirely different relationship between knowledge and reality” (Savransky, 2017, p. 18), by expanding and transforming the limits of rationality. In so doing, we labor toward the development of counterhegemonic forms of thinking and reflecting upon the world, so to better grasp the colonizing impact of current social and material relations of power at work in the lives of subaltern populations. In turn, decolonizing interpretive research designs aim to demystify the artificial limits of colonizing and racialized formations and economic hierarchies of domination, viewing all languages and cultures as not only significant to our planetary survival but also open to critical discernment, with respect to their oppressive or decolonizing impact on communities.

Although critical influences inform a variety of qualitative approaches, including critical ethnographies, critical narratives, and indigenous research modalities, the critical discussion here is focused on a decolonizing interpretive approach, in that it is often the least well defined, understood, or discussed in research methods courses within most educational studies programs. This may be the case because interpretive theory building is often, overtly or covertly, discouraged in educational research and only seldom offered up as a viable alternative, particularly to graduate indigenous or subaltern students in the field who are often not perceived as sufficiently capable of such depth of analysis—whether openly acknowledged or not. Yet, it is significant to note that despite this traditional deficit notion, much of the decolonizing interpretive research currently found in the field has actually emerged directly from the doctoral studies of subaltern scholars.

Yet, it cannot be ignored that there is “very real ambivalence in Western universities about the legitimacy of indigenous [and subaltern] knowledge and the role of indigenous [and other subaltern] intellectuals” (Mutua & Swadener, 2004, p. 10). This same ambivalence is also extended toward our form of knowledge production. As such, common critiques of decolonizing interpretive research can include concerns that it is purely abstract work, which fails to provide a sufficiently challenging research experience, produce practical or useful knowledge, or include the voices of the oppressed. Of the first line of critique, decolonizing interpretive research is absolutely by no means a less significant research design or less rigorous. In fact, according to Rudestam and Newton (2007):

Original theoretical contributions are a profound intellectual challenge … If you know an area of inquiry inside out and are intimately familiar with the issues and controversies in the field, you have the chance to contribute a new theory … If you do choose to pursue a theoretical [approach], you will be expected to argue from the literature that there is a different way of understanding a phenomenon than has heretofore been presented. Some of the more viable theoretical dissertations in the social sciences are those that bring together or integrate two previously distinct areas.

(pp. 54–55)

About concerns that a decolonizing approach is less rigorous, due to its expressed political and cultural subjectivity, there are a few things that must be understood. Rigor is the outcome of developing an intellectual capacity to engage critically and move with depth into different aspects and dimensions of an issue or problem that one is studying and to do this both systematically and creatively. However, within the context of a decolonizing interpretive analysis, critical subaltern researchers must enact these critical skills in a manner that consistently contends with the link between theory and practice and within their own labor as educators and researchers out in the world. Academic rigor within the context of a decolonizing interpretive research design must be understood then as not only a cognitive or abstract process of analysis. Rather, it also entails a deeply physical, emotional, and spiritual activity for subaltern researchers; which, when practiced consistently, allows them to become more integral human beings, through a creative epistemological process of what Freire called problematization and radicalization (Darder, 2015)—an empowering process of knowledge construction that is also deeply rooted in the researcher’s worldview.

On the second criticism relative to practicality or usefulness, a decolonizing interpretive design is meant to generate new insights or develop a new theory from the richness of a detailed comparison of bodies of existing literature related to both theory and practice. This is essential if critical subaltern researchers are to disrupt and deliberately shift the hegemonic understanding of a social or educational phenomenon and move beyond traditional views of schooling and society. This inherently implies that a different practice must ensue, given the shift in the epistemological framework that both defines the problem and posits alternatives for future liberatory practice. For example, this calls for critical approaches that move beyond the deceptive quantophrenia of positivism, which counter the tendency to embrace quantification of all social phenomenon and a tyrannous discourse of evidence-based, even among qualitative researchers. This traditional privileging of a scientific epistemology of knowledge construction, wittingly or unwittingly, disrupts our ability to delve deeper into the human meanings and conditions that result in oppression and its disastrous consequences on oppressed populations. Decolonizing methodologies are in direct opposition to this tendency in education and the social sciences. It is for this reason that Fanon insists, “But the native intellectual who wishes to create an authentic work … must realize that the truths of a nation are in the first place its realities. [They] must go on until [they have] found the seething pot out of which the learning of the future will emerge” (1967, p. 223). This seething pot is precisely that decolonizing interpretive knowledge that can support a shift in social consciousness, social relationships, and social structures in the interest of economic and cultural democracy.

Further, there is the often-voiced and well-meaning concern about the “absence of voices” with respect to interpretive research. Decolonizing interpretive research, however, signals an analysis that inherently requires a formidable decolonizing process of deductive analysis—an inferential analysis deeply anchored upon the a priori communal knowledge of the subaltern voices emerging from the communities in which they labor (Darder, 2012). This is what it means to “know an area of inquiry inside out and [be] intimately familiar with the issues and controversies” (Rudestam & Newton, 2007, pp. 54–55) that exist within the communal cultural context. However, Grosfoguel (2011) rightly asserts that “this is not only a question about social values in knowledge production or the fact that our knowledge is always partial. The main point here is the locus of enunciation, that is, the geo-political and body-political location of the subject that speaks” (p. 4).

Accordingly, research conclusions—although assumed in traditional definitions of interpretive research to be a process of individual production or a unilateral voice (due to the individualistic assumptions of humanness and knowledge construction inherent in the episteme of the West)—are derived from subaltern researchers’ sense of kinship, as well as consistent and ongoing critical engagement with the collective voices of fellow colonized or subaltern subjects within their communal interactions. Decolonizing interpretive research then is inextricably tied to the communal subaltern voice (or the “I am because we are” voice), which sits and remains ever at the center of this communally informed interpretive analysis. This radical understanding of the subaltern voice echoes Freire’s notion that the emancipatory knowledge of the researcher must emerge from an intimacy with “the empirical knowledge of the people” (Freire, 2012, p. 181). It is from whence that the subaltern decolonizing researcher knows herself or himself, as part and parcel, with the people, while also recognizing that we always speak from a particular location in the structure of power (Dussel, 1977, cited in Grosfoguel, 2011).

Hence, the overarching purpose of a decolonizing interpretive methodology is to provide an emancipatory reformulation of the conceptual or ideological interrelationships that exist between theoretical explanations and practical applications from a particular location within a specific field or area of study. In light of this purpose, the development of theory (or a theory building emphasis) must be understood here as primarily an integrative process. This to say, it will either produce a new or reformulated decolonizing framework for consideration in some aspect of human phenomenon or demonstrate the ways in which existing theoretical constructs in the field do (or do not) coincide with decolonizing epistemological requirements or are in sync with other counterhegemonic theoretical perspectives (i.e., critical, feminist, queer, etc.). Important to this rearticulation is a sound decolonizing analysis and interpretation that distinctly demonstrates what theoretical, structural, and practical transformations would be necessary in the process of effectively positing decolonizing conclusions that may arise from such a study.

Some decolonizing interpretive research aims might include mounting or extending a decolonizing framework into areas in which it had previously not been applied, by applying the insights garnered from a critical interrogation of traditional perspectives. Or, it might entail a decolonizing research design that combines several emancipatory lenses of analysis into a single decolonizing conceptual framework or that demonstrates previously unacknowledged links between theoretical systems that point to decolonizing claims. On another note, it may encompass the introduction of an existing decolonizing conceptual framework from another field (e.g., theology, science, psychology, etc.) into education, with appropriate deconstructions, modifications, and extensions to make it meaningful within a new decolonizing intellectual and practical space. And, lastly, this methodological design can engage a variety of more specific decolonizing theoretical discussions related to a specific phenomenon that, by so doing, provides new critical insights related to theory and practice, by integrating concepts and perspectives derived from several critical perspectives (e.g., racialization, queer studies, and disability theories), which now are taken up through a decolonizing interpretive lens responsive to challenges, limits, contestations, and possibilities.

Key to this work is also the examination and interrogation of existing bodies of literature that focus on the topic of study, which provide empirical support and point to the need for a decolonizing approach in understanding, deconstructing, and recreating the central problem or question that drives the study. Moreover, a critical interpretive design provides a place for a detailed presentation of the new theoretical construct of analysis, which must emerge from a comparative decolonizing analysis of existing bodies of literature related to the central question, carefully substantiating the claims made through a decolonizing process of critical reinterpretation. Such a study concludes by summarizing the process of critical analysis and moving toward a decolonizing theoretical position or emancipatory framework, considering the implications for educational practices and policy formulation that would be consistent with a new decolonizing perspective, with a clear discussion of how it differs with its hegemonic counterpart.

Hence, wherever possible, appropriate recommendations related to emancipatory pedagogy, curriculum, leadership, and/or educational policy or community practices can be offered, linking these in lucid and consistent ways to the structural and practical transformations required to enact and embody a decolonizing approach, as well as political recommendations derived from the analysis. Moreover, a decolonizing interpretive approach to research integrates a critical lens of analysis across the study, arranging discussions along a new logical evolution of the argument, according to the relationship of topics that impact this evolution, rather than by chronology. That is, discussions unfold decolonizing forms of knowledge through a subaltern analysis of existing bodies of literature pertinent to the topic of study and brushing these constantly against the existing emancipatory literature and the subaltern knowledge held by the author—all which help open the field to reinvention. The critical understanding that emerges from this decolonizing approach to research can be further demonstrated through the presentation of new curriculum, theoretical approaches, knowledge practices, or political strategies that move the field into more emancipatory and just ways of knowing and reading the world.

Critical influences

Decolonizing concepts within the context of research have often emerged out of a foundation of critique: a critical analysis of the ways in which colonialism still affects the way the world is viewed.

(Alcoff, 2007)

In many instances, critical influences have served to support the epistemological creativity, imagination, questioning, doubting, and risk-taking necessary to employing this research approach. This supports a research design that incorporates the decolonizing researcher as an unapologetically political participant, whose knowledge is understood a priori as partial, unfinished, and deeply informed by historical, economic, and cultural configurations of the changing social and material conditions of our time. Moreover, “by applying a critical pedagogical lens within research, we create an empowering qualitative research, which expands, contracts, grows, and questions itself within the theory and practice examined” (Kincheloe et al., 2017, p. 243). As the discussion above suggests, this articulation of decolonizing interpretive research draws upon critical influences of knowledge construction (Darder et al., 2017; Darder, 2012), in concert with the radical epistemological tradition of critical social theory that was later reformulated by radical educational theorists as critical pedagogy. ¹

Moreover, as we often find in anticolonial analyses of the south (i.e., Dussel, 2003, 2013; Mignolo, 2007; Santos, 2005; Quijano, 2000 and others), critical influences inform the decolonizing epistemological underpinnings of this interpretive research approach. At the heart, these critical influences counter classical positivist approaches to the study of human phenomenon. They point us toward dismantling traditional Western phi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Foreword by Linda Tuhiwai Smith
• Preface
• Part I: The conceptual foundation
• Part II: Decolonizing principles
• Index