Leading article: (Trans)disciplinary research (re)considered (original) (raw)
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Part 2: Leading Article (Trans)Disciplinary Research (Re)Considered
2017
In this article I review the emergence of transdisciplinary research and in particular the integrative approach to this category of research. I examine the potential of the integrative approach to achieve cognitive justice-whether it decentres Western science and gives equitable treatment to other ways of knowing such as indigenous knowledge. I aver that transformations that have occurred within discourses on transdisciplinary research have not changed the Western cultural archive itself and that Western science continues to dominate other ways of knowing in the integrative approach in transdisciplinary research. I draw on insights from Deleuze and Guattari to open up ways of reimagining transdisciplinary research as a decolonising process.
Socialist Studies, 2017
There is conceptual confusion in academic scholarship regarding Indigenous research methodologies and decolonising research methodologies. Scholars view these paradigms as similar yet distinct, but very few seek to define that distinction. In this article, I explore the relationship between these approaches to academic research. Both paradigms emphasise the need to transform the academy because of its tendency to marginalise non-Western epistemologies. Transformation requires the interconnection and coordination of many paradigms including Indigenous, feminist, and antiracist approaches to research. I propose viewing Indigenous and decolonising research methodologies as a relationship, and suggest both are dynamic practices that do not exist outside of the people who use them. What they look like and how they relate to one another will depend upon who uses them, why they are used, and where they are practiced.
Decolonizing both researcher and research and its effectiveness in Indigenous research
How does one decolonize and reclaim the meanings of research and researcher, particularly in the context of Western research? Indigenous communities have long experienced oppression by Western researchers. Is it possible to build a collaborative research knowledge that is culturally appropriate, respectful, honoring, and careful of the Indigenous community? What are the challenges in Western research, researchers, and Western university methodology research training? How have 'studies' – critical anti-racist theory and practice, cross-cultural research methodology, critical perspectives on environmental justice, and land-based education – been incorporated into the university to disallow dissent? What can be done against this disallowance? According to Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang's (2012) suggestion, this article did not use the concept of decolonization as a substitute for 'human rights' or 'social justice', but as a demand of an Indigenous framework and a centering of Indigenous land, Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous ways of thinking. This article discusses why both research and researcher increasingly require decolonization so that research can create a positive impact on the participants' community, and conduct research ethically. This article is my personal decolonization and reclaiming story from 15 years of teaching, research and service activities with various Indigenous communities in various parts of the world. It presents a number of case studies of an intervention research project to exemplify the challenges in Western research training, and how decolonizing research training attempts to not only reclaim participants' rights in the research but also to empower the researcher. I conclude by arguing that decolonizing research training creates more empathetic educators and researchers,
Decolonizing epistemologies: resolving the tension between Western science and Indigenous knowledges
2020
The goal of this paper is to resolve the tension between Western knowledge (WK) and IK, challenging the exclusivity of the former and reformulating the latter not as a complement, or an additional theory, but as a valid and legitimate knowledge system to study global affairs sui-generis, by exploring questions of Eurocentrism, incommensurability and internal standards. In the following sections, a literature review on the coloniality of knowledges and the current debate on alternative worldviews will be presented, along the research gap this paper aims to fulfil and the theoretical framework underpinning this quest. Then the argument will be further developed challenging the nature of both paradigms and the tools to validate such, and brief conclusive comments will be provided, reflecting on the limitations, implications for IR and further research recommendations.
This paper assesses transdisciplinarity as an epistemological and methodological approach to research and teaching in the emerging field of global studies. It posits that the world’s most pressing problems in the areas of migration, health and intersectional identity politics, to name a few, are unlikely to be addressed convincingly by inquiries rooted exclusively in singular social science disciplines. At the same time, transdisciplinarity is understood as a means to complement disciplinary research, not to dispense with it. By foregrounding global-local dynamics and their effects across scales, global studies can draw from a wealth of approaches and experiences in interdisciplinary scholarship without becoming entangled in protracted epistemological battles over scholarly turf. The paper provides examples of transdisciplinary research in global studies and closes by stressing the importance of disciplinary methodological innovations as building blocks for multi-modal designs and arguing for methodological rigor in global studies, whether transdisciplinary or not.
Research as Vision Quest into Indigenous Epistemology
Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, 2017
Our interest in asserting the validity of our Indigeneity within academia brought us together at the Annual International Maroon Conference, Jamaica in 2014. Here we recognized our common heritage rooted within the context of colonization and our want to move beyond the borders of geography in breaking down the hegemonic boundaries of Western education imposed upon us. Tirza, a US based Nanny of the Maroons scholar of Jamaican heritage, and Denzel, a First Nation Kamilaroi scholar from Australia, critically interrogated the inadequacy of academia to facilitate our scholarship and efforts to interrogate the dynamics of exclusion and alienation in claiming our rightful place within academia. Meditating on global matters, we explored themes of Indigeneity and resistance, questioning our physical location within respective continents where institutionalized racism maintained the hegemonic system of poverty, inequality and educational apartheid among our people--African Americans and Abo...