Knowledge Decolonization à la Grounded Theory: Control Juggling in Research Situations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Knowledge production is not free of political connotations. The researcher defines and moulds the research situation in which she will be gathering the data. Simultaneously, she will be also conditioned by the ways the situation is constructing her as a researcher. I shall elucidate some of aspects that influence how research situations are constructed based on the examples of my own empirical work. I will show some of the multiple negotiations contained in the process, influenced by the fact that I was a Spanish urban young woman doing research in a rural region of Bolivia for the German international cooperation for development (DED). Two sorts of control will be outlined and an argument for control juggling within a decolonial move of humanizing research will be sketched. I shall argue that Kathy Charmaz’s constructivist Grounded Theory is flexible and systematic enough to make space for other ways of knowing, to grasp these subtle multifaceted processes of constructing a research situation while facilitating the necessary reflexivity for transformation purposes, contributing to a wider project of decolonizing knowledge production.