Quest for Methodological Alternatives

Abstract

Ethnic students and academics currently affiliated with western or westernized academic institutions and whose research explores indigenous knowledge and cross-cultural subjects often find themselves in a methodological dilemma. Often this dilemma involves repression of knowledges they bring to the academia in order to conform to scientific methodological orthodoxy and gain acceptance within the scientific establishment. This article raises questions concerning such methodological repression that ethnic academics encounter in western institutions. To do this, the author draws on the methodological barriers he encountered in the course of his own research. In so doing, he opens a discussion of the limitations of established methodological orthodoxy in researching the subaltern in his or her own life-worlds. The article concludes with some suggestive pointers towards the enrichment of methodology.