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Decolonising remote research

Dr Sarah Radcliffe led a thought provoking discussion on working with decolonial values in the context of conducting remote research. The following blog post gives an overview of decolonising research and how decolonial principles can be used when conducting research in a pandemic.

Research practices are ‘extractive’ and actively contribute to the marginalization of less powerful groups, as research often serves the interests and concerns of the powerful in national and global societies, sidelining plural voices and experiences. Geographical data gathering and research methods were used extensively and deliberately in processes of colonisation, colonialism and imperialism. Critical and participatory geographies have come a long way yet the discipline remains exclusionary to many people of colour, and its frameworks remain resolutely embedded in the Eurocentric, supposedly universal, “one-world world” assumptions. Informed by Indigenous and critical Southern voices, decolonizing geographical research seeks to overturn coloniality and work towards more inclusive and empowering data-gathering and knowledge creation. Decolonizing encourages the creation of egalitarian relations and spending time designing the purposes, methods, and outcomes of research alongside participants. The remote research blog series and online discussions have explored ways to adapt and re-think fieldwork and research under the present circumstances. Below, I outline some of the core issues in decolonising research, drawing on a forthcoming chapter (Radcliffe, 2021). In the final section, I reflect briefly on specific challenges and opportunities for decolonizing research under coronavirus restrictions.

The first step in decolonising geographical research is to critically assess the purpose of research and assume responsibility for knowledge production in collaboration with research participants. This involves replacing the extraction of information with a two-way process of communication and co-construction of questions and methodologies. Non-academic groups and individuals become partners, interlocutors and partners, which means adapting the research process to their realities, concerns and priorities. For example, in a project with Indigenous women in Ecuador, Indigenous women leaders talked, visited various communities and listened to Indigenous women before we co-devised the focus and questions. Decolonial research constitutes itself in relation to a particular context and set of relations, as it moves away from seeking universal knowledge and the application of western theory.

Decolonial research rests upon trust and communication, through listening and valuing flexibility in practice. Research becomes less about what the university or textbook says it should be, and more about engaging with non-university groups about their concerns and knowledge and research they would find useful. This does not necessarily preclude cross-cultural research or indeed overseas fieldwork. Trust and communication in decolonial research often rests upon negotiated codes of practice, consent agreements, and ethical protocols. These establish community control over the collection, storage and ultimate ownership of data as well as participation in analysis and interpretation, and oversight of publication and sharing of information. For the project with Indigenous women, we worked together with the national Indigenous confederation women’s office and an advisory group of NGO staff and long-term allies of Indigenous women to ensure oversight and accountability.

With these principles in mind, a variety of methods are appropriate in decolonizing research. These have been most extensively discussed by Indigenous scholars and researchers, with the aim of ensuring that participating groups are informed and empowered, and now are adaptable to a wide range of contexts and participants. Methods such as interviews continue to be used, but decolonizing principles guide the implementation, context and purposes of the interviews. A range of methods seek to reconfigure researcher-participant power dynamics to elicit narratives and experiences that would be less audible in standard methodologies. These include auto-ethnography, photo voice, storytelling, interviewee verification, drawings and participatory mapping, and body-territory mapping. In the Indigenous women’s project, we agreed that I would interview individual women during break-outs from women’s meetings; this ensured that in addition to individual responses I listened to collective narratives, problem solving and concerns expressed entirely in their own words.

Geographers often adopt participatory modes of research, as it involves interlocutors more in the research project. Decolonising research seeks to go further than participatory research, by getting participant input in research design as well as analysis and sharing of results. These steps in the research cycle are often left out of ‘participatory’ research, as they require more time and an open-ended process. As well as clashing with university procedures and requirements, decolonizing research in this way de-centres the researcher’s individual autonomy and control which can be disconcerting. To fulfil its decolonizing potential, participation needs to be woven throughout a project to build sustained partner oversight and control. Initial findings can be presented in workshops and focus groups, participants can suggest codes for analysis, and in some cases they co-author research reports. Involving participants throughout the research project may generate ideas for novel and context-appropriate means to share findings. A project by the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (THOA, Andean Oral History Workshop) researchers in La Paz Bolivia for instance invited participants to decide, and they chose for findings to be made into an Aymara-language radio soap opera, as that was the main media source for rural low-income groups.

Is decolonizing research possible under COVID-19 restrictions and health threats to vulnerable populations? Under covid-19 restrictions, travelling to spend time with potential collaborators is more difficult and — in cases where interlocutors are more vulnerable to negative health outcomes — unethical. The travel restrictions in place due to coronavirus undoubtedly place limits on the extent and nature of conversations with potential collaborators, due to uneven access to internet and computer facilities, and the lack of face-to-face interactions. Yet COVID-19 public health measures push us to be flexible and adaptable, perhaps thereby contributing to taking research away from ‘canonical’ (that is implicitly Eurocentric and colonial) formats and contributing to new forms of knowledge production. Decolonizing research does not necessarily involve going to a location in the global South or seeking out the most marginal groups; because those locations often have professional researchers and many marginal groups are already ‘over-studied’. So if a researcher’s concern is to re-work power dynamics and challenge colonial and universal assumptions and frameworks, a number of options remain open. Choosing to ‘study up’ and critique the metropolitan or dominant presumptions that shape our colonial-modern world is one possibility; archives, official data sources, and interviews with the powerful tell us much about how and why plural narratives are suppressed and marginalized. Another possibility is to collaborate with civil associations and university (and extra-university) researchers to devise research that suits their needs and concerns. This may entail remaining in the UK or training researchers via online platforms as long as coronavirus remains a constraint. Navigating one’s way, be it from a student, early career researcher or principle investigator perspective, between institutional boundaries can be tricky when trying to change how research is thought about and practiced. Finding decolonial ‘allies’ who are working with similar values in their research can be a useful form of support to share advice, experiences and even create movements within departments.

Prepared by Sarah Radcliffe, September 2020.

References:

Radcliffe, Sarah A. 2021 Decolonizing Geography: An introduction. Polity Press.