Decolonizing Relationality: Reflections From the Summer Institute in Anti-Racist and Decolonizing Research Methods

Abstract

We are members of the Summer Institute in Anti-Racist and Decolonizing Research Methods, which attempts to shift social science research to be more inclusive and more explicitly connected to anti-racist and decolonizing principles. We tell a complicated, messy, often difficult story of what relationality could be in the context of work like ours. We hope that readers will consider the complications of relationality beyond the interpersonal questions of methods, as those conversations remain too narrowly focused on the interpersonal in the research encounter, with insufficient attention to the institutional and system-level assaults that inflict both material suffering and symbolic violence.