Motivations for using decolonial and feminist methods in social research
Written by Jihyun Kim and edited by the Sydney GJS Hub team.
Project: Innovative Methodologies and Methodological Innovation
This is the first in a series of three blogs looking at decolonial and feminist methods in social research.
Why use decolonial and feminist methods in social research? Some of the motivations for conducting decolonial and feminist research might include a researcher’s reflections on their positionality, including the relationality between the human and non-human world; allyship and solidarity with communities and research interlocutors; honouring the legacies of their own communities; as well as ethical considerations. Many researchers working in this area feel a sense of disillusionment in – and a need to atone for – doing fieldwork as researchers from Global North universities, and this can act as a driver for conducting decolonial and feminist research.
There are contradictions and discomfort in conducting decolonial and feminist research within Global North universities and the field of social sciences, given its history and continued perpetuation of colonial structures and inequalities. This can prompt critical consideration of positionality but also extend to questions about what it means to conduct decolonial and feminist research, and ultimately, what should come after decolonial and feminist research.
Positionality
A researcher’s positionality can be a key motivation for pursuing decolonial and feminist research. In the workshop, researchers identified variously (in)visible aspects such as being White, European, (non-)English-speaking, or non-White, Indigenous, Black, their gender, ability/disability, migratory histories, or class, as intrinsic motivations when considering questions like “How should I participate? What should my role be?” Ultimately, the choice of research topic is often motivated by personal experiences or history. The research process thus becomes a journey of self-discovery and understanding of the communities and the world around them. In this context, participants raised the question, “Can you ever have a motivation that is not self-serving?” and noted that many researchers naturally draw motivation from personal interests or backgrounds.
Through reflections on our positionality, we discussed the risk of especially exploitative relationships with local communities and interlocutors and concern of perpetuating further epistemic violence as significant motivations for decolonial and feminist research. For instance, research might solely serve as a career achievement for privileged scholars, potentially causing harm or perpetuating violence within grassroots communities and reinforcing extractive relationships that reproduce colonial knowledge structures. We explored questions such as, “What happens if you fail and reproduce something harmful?” and “How can we navigate research practices within institutions that reinforce violence or have a history of colonial violence?” Critically reflecting on the coloniality within Global North academia and disciplinary frameworks involves important questions about who bears responsibility toward, for, and within such systems.
How can we politicise care ethics within the university?
Reflecting on our positionalities involves critically considering the spaces we inhabit, particularly within the privileged position of Global North universities. Specifically, we discussed the difficulty of translating university research ethics approval processes, bureaucratic language and processes, and disciplinary methodologies into the language and epistemologies of grassroots communities when doing fieldwork. Moreover, there is a need to constantly question whether our research perpetuates the structural reproduction of the White episteme (Sabaratnam, 2020) of Global North academia and discipline that we aim to critique and deconstruct.
In this context, the motivation for decolonial and feminist research is about transforming university institutions from sites of white epistemic violence into spaces of care and respect, and contemplating how to navigate, challenge, or carve out spaces for collective and participatory research.
Critical to doing this research is the creation of spaces for decolonial practices of care and the radical transformation of the institutions, epistemologies, and disciplines of Global North universities. This requires us to think through what doing decolonial research and using decolonial methodologies look like on a day-to-day basis for researchers and research communities, and to start to think about what comes after decolonial research.
What comes after decolonising?
While postcolonial studies has, to a certain extent, successfully deconstructed Whiteness and critiqued its white epistemic violence, the question that remains is “What comes after ‘decolonising’?” After all, decolonial research goes beyond ‘undoing Whiteness’. One of the discussions we had was about how to actively use, embrace, and amplify lenses of Blackness, community, and indigeneity in non-extractive, non-exploitive and non-appropriative ways, with an end goal of liberatory research.
Ultimately, the use of decolonial and feminist methodologies in social research is replete with challenges and ethical imperatives but also entirely necessary and worthwhile. As we navigate the complexities of positionality, accountability, and ethical engagement, we need to remain steadfast in our commitment to transformative research practices in order to effect meaningful change.
You can access the full blog series here.
Acknowledgement
This blog post was produced as part of a collaborative workshop hosted by the Methodological Innovation stream at the University of Sydney in March 2024. The ideas presented in this blog were generated through the collective discussions of the workshop participants.
Workshop Participants
Myra Abubakar, Kirsten Ainley, Lily Atkinson, Sulagna Basu, Caitlin Biddolph, James Blackwell, Alba Rosa Boer Cueva, Felicitas Bran, Charlotte Carney, Beatriz Carrillo García, Tanja Dittfeld, Cristina Enjuto, Serena Ford, Keshab Giri, Fiona Goggins, Cait Hamilton, Jihyun Kim, Mamta Sachan Kumar, Amra Lee, Kerrie Lyons, Georgette Matthews, Philip McKibbin, Aryana Mohmood, Katherine Newman, Marcus Phillip Paul, Sian Perry, Manita Raut, Shivangi Seth, Laura J. Shepherd, Natalie Jane Thomas, Ngoc Lan Tran, Diana Tung, Nuri Widiastuti Veronika.
References
Sabaratnam, M. (2020). Is IR Theory White? Racialised Subject-Positioning in Three Canonical Texts. Millennium, 49(1), 3-31
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