Image: Members of the Deurali Water User Committee and Water Safety Planning team as part of a WHO study on equity in water safety planning. Credit: David Sutherland.
The pause in international travel during 2020 and experiencing the complex impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the communities in which we work, has given us cause to reflect on our research practices in international development. In this blog, we will provide some considerations on our role as researchers and why decolonising research practices is vital. To illustrate our thinking, we will share five ways we aim to embed decolonising research into our practice.
For some time, we’ve struggled with the benefits and awkward realities of being international development university researchers while working towards social transformation. On the one hand, we value local expertise and knowledges and question whether we are best placed to research other cultures and development issues in the Global South. On the other hand, the reality is that development funding comes mostly from donors (government and not-for-profit organisations) in the Global North. These donors require research outputs and expert reports to be written in English. Drawing on the reputation and position of a university in the Global North, and capacity to secure and manage these funds, we believe we can support local agendas with our research expertise, together in ethical partnership with government, civil society and researchers in the Global South. A role we potentially fill is bridging the contexts of the globalised development sector and the diverse communities that participate in research to support evidence-based policy and practice.
Debates on decolonising knowledge have come to the fore this past year, though the precursor to these ideas has been around since dependency theory in the 1970s. Dependency theory analysed the political and economic relationships between the centre (colonial powers) and periphery (colonies). Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano linked coloniality of power in global politics and economics with the coloniality of knowledge.[i] Coloniality enforced Eurocentric worldviews and value systems that denigrated other ways of knowing, living and being (genders, sexuality and subjectivity). Research conducted through a colonial-lens maintained hierarchies of scholars in the Global North owning and directing research agendas, and a decolonising approach seeks to change this.
Decolonising knowledge involves recognition of a plurality of values, practices and knowledges, especially Indigenous knowledges. The task of decolonising knowledge makes visible ways of thinking and knowing, cultures and ethics that had been oppressed under the names of rationality and modernity.[ii] Rather than entrenching the view of a singular or linear path to development or progress, a decolonising approach involves imagining many different possibilities for collective wellbeing of all beings on this planet. According to Argentinian academic Walter Mignolo, decolonial thinking can help us vision a future world that is inclusive of diverse knowledges and sets of values and implement a set of strategies to create that future. [iii]
We acknowledge that as part of academia, we are part of the problem of unequal power and privilege in the Global North. As Franz Fanon stated, decolonisation is a double operation that requires both liberation of the colonised and emancipation from the coloniser.[iv] So how do we go about decolonising knowledge and practice in international development given we are operating within structures that have emanated from colonisation?
Firstly, we aim to avoid a hierarchical research dynamic, through research practice that gives opportunity and voice to multiple perspectives and knowledges to inform development policy and practice. Our work has diverse entry points and often engages people from across all parts of society including local and national government, civil society organisations, unions and associations, businesses, traditional/Indigenous leaders and individuals. We practise transdisciplinary research, which draws on diverse disciplines and multi-actor perspectives to provide learning and evidence to address current social and environmental justice issues. In literature reviews, we aim to include academics from the Global South and maintain awareness of the tendency to privilege knowledge produced in the colonial languages of English, French and Spanish. We engage in multiple parts of a system or society to transform relations between stakeholders and influence policy.
Secondly, we work to build equitable partnerships with civil society organisations and research institutions in the Asia-Pacific. We provide research expertise from an international perspective, while research capacity is being built locally. We have actively played a part in building skills of researchers in the Global South through training activities and working collaboratively with other scholars and universities. We treat such experiences as mutually beneficial, and are continuously building our own capacities to listen, engage and refine our approaches to be more responsive to our partners.
We seek guidance from our research partners on the issues they want to know more about, the questions they are asking and the information they need to increase gender equality, disability and social inclusion (GEDSI) in their programs. We encourage reflexive practice and transformative change within our own organisations and call on the international development sector to ‘do better’. We consider our personal and organisational approaches from an intersectional perspective. [v]
Thirdly, we often draw on participatory research approaches, which can support efforts to decolonise knowledge. Paulo Freire promoted participatory research as a social practice that helps emancipate marginalised people from colonial systems of thinking. In the process of pursuing knowledge independently, people who were previously oppressed can gain control, solidarity and confidence.[vi] Working towards social change requires conscious reflection by the people involved, in analysing and evaluating questions of morals and values and how their life conditions influence ideas of the ideal actions to take. We can facilitate these learning spaces to reflect on underlying values, world views, and experiences together and co-design responses and recommendations for change. This demands we take the time to reveal underlying assumptions, values and visions, which are too often skipped over or assumed to be the same as our own.
Conventional quantitative and qualitative research methods are not always the most effective in revealing submerged or difficult-to-articulate aspects such as resource distribution or intergenerational social issues. Not only may they not be the most effective, they may also be detrimental as Linda Tuhiwai Smith explains: “The collective memory of imperialism has been perpetuated through the ways in which knowledge about Indigenous peoples was collected, classified and then represented in various ways back to the West, and then through the eyes of the West, back to those who have been colonized.”[vii] Alternative research methods include photovoice, oral history, theatre, dance and so on. Involving marginalised people in leading reflection can build up their understanding and self-confidence to engage in social change activities.[viii] As well as these participatory methods sharpening the ability of individuals to think and act critically, they can be effective in strengthening community ties.
Fourthly, it is particularly important to practise reflexivity when engaging with marginalised groups, including those who are economically-disadvantaged, Indigenous people, gender discriminated people, people with disabilities, and members of other minority groups. A reflexive approach means that advantaged groups critically reflect on their privileged position and their relation to the oppression of other groups as a way to take responsibility.[ix] There is a potential dilemma of being within and part of the power structure that we seek to critique, and thus complicit in perpetuating existing power dynamics that privilege some people over others. Rather than being paralysed from any action or our agenda being co-opted by power, we can respond by constructively questioning and seeking change within the system.[x] By doing this, we are actively trying to avoid being the “White Consultant” that Tongan youth leader ‘Amelia Kami describes in her poem.[xi]
While we cannot make power disappear altogether from research relationships, we can acknowledge research participants as knowledgeable people. For example, in ISF’s research partnership with the University of Indonesia on gender in the water and sanitation workforce, local researchers employed a ‘dialogue’ approach to interviewing. The ‘dialogue’ approach involved researchers sharing some of their own personal experiences in relation to gender and their work lives within the interview, in addition to asking questions. In using ethical ways of working with those who are less powerful, we work to address issues of power.
Fifthly, it is important to reflect on the ways our social positions have played a role in the engagements we have developed in our research. We need to consider divides of gender, class, age, ethnicity, urban/rural and education level. In addition to shaping our relationship with research participants, our social position (‘positionality’) as researchers can shape perceptions from other stakeholders such as government or NGOs about the legitimacy of our voices compared to others. We need to overcome any assumptions that researchers from the Global North know best and cede power by using our research skills to elicit other voices and views, both within research processes and in how we work with our partners.
We prefer to structure research partnerships so that local researchers are involved in more than the data collection phase. We aim to involve local researchers in research design, analysis and communication of research findings, such as being lead-authors of research papers. We often take the personal/ political/ ethical/ epistemic decision to privilege team-based collaborative research initiatives over individual work or research interests.[xii] In addition, if we can codify the practical ethical issues of these local researchers, such as safety and security challenges of fieldwork in the formal contract of collaboration, it provides better protection to them and contributes to quality of work.[xiii]
Lastly, in generating knowledge we can reflect on own place-based learning and be explicit about how that learning has affected us as researchers. We value grounded research encounters where there is sufficient time and space to be with people by listening, feeling, and sharing. The context of limited research resources and current restrictions on gathering face-to-face poses challenges for this type of place-based and immersive research. We see value in continuing to deepen our engagement with countries and places where we have a long-term engagement and understanding of the cultural and political context. In the future, we also hope to build new partnerships and to secure funding for project inception periods in which to build relationships and trust with our collaborators, so that local priorities emerge.
As we consider international development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are new research agendas emerging from the Global South that should be locally led. Practices of decolonising research can make possible a move towards intercultural communication and genuine exchange of experiences. This means that development actors who are affected are included in dialogue and decision-making, and people are empowered to lead on their development from their own context.
References
[i] Quijano, Anibal (1992) ‘Colonialidad y modernidad/racionalidad’ (1989), reprinted in Los conquistados. 1492 y la poblacio´n indı´gena de las Ame´ricas, ed. Heraclio Bonilla. Ecuador: Libri Mundi, Tercer Mundo Editores, pp. 437-448, in Mignolo, W. D. (2007) ‘Delinking’, Cultural Studies, 21:2-3, p.451.
[ii] Mignolo (2007).
[iii] Mignolo, W. D. (2007) ‘Delinking’, Cultural Studies, 21:2-3, p. 499.
[iv] Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks. Grove press (revised edition).
[v] Cavill, S., Francis, N., Grant, M., Huggett, C., Leahy, C., Leong, L., Mercer, E., Myers, J, Singeling, and Rankin, T., (2020) ‘A call to action: organizational, professional, and personal change for gender transformative WASH programming’. in Waterlines. Practical Action Publishing, 2020, https://practicalactionpublishing.com/article/3002/a-call-to-action-organizational-professional-and-personal-change-for-gender-transformative-wash-programming.
[vi] Freire, P. (2018). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury publishing, USA.
[vii] Tuhiwai Smith, L., (2012) Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples. Second Edition. Zed Books.
[viii] Park, P. (2006) 'Knowledge and Participatory Research', The Handbook of Action Research, 2., pp. 83-93.
[ix] Harding, S. ‘Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives’. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991, p.293.
[x] Sara de Jong (2009) ‘Constructive Complicity Enacted? The Reflections of
Women NGO and IGO Workers on their Practices’, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 30:4, p. 390.
[xi] Kami, ‘A. (2018) ‘Dear White Consultant,’ Tonga Youth Leaders, https://tongayouthleaders.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/dear-white-consultant-a-poem-by-amelia-kami/.
[xii] Barbosa da Costa, L., Icaza, R. and Talero, A.O. (2015) ‘Knowledge about, knowledge with: dilemmas of researching lives, nature and genders otherwise’. Practising Feminist Political Ecologies. London: Zed Books.
[xiii] Baganda, S. B. (2019), ‘The “local” researcher – merely a data collector?’, Oxfam blogs, 20 August 2019, accessed online: https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/the-local-researcher-merely-a-data-collector/
