Abstract
This article traces how coloniality traps research and researchers in the Global North into maintaining the rigidity of its politics and logics through the meaning process. As International Social Work continues to gain popularity, supporting the proliferation of research across borders, the theoretical underpinnings must be unpacked with the context of the collaboration and the cultures involved that give meaning to both. The crux of the article rests within the implications for qualitative research in social work—both within, and across borders as a way of promoting social justice with marginalized communities. It also provides new possibilities for transcending and translating methodologies across the fields of social work and anthropology. To illustrate how research operates under the rubric of coloniality, this article uses autoethnography to uncover the on-the-ground realities of working across localities. The auto-ethnography revealed that despite the goal of sharing control of the research process, tensions related to coloniality emerged. As a result of working in different localities, each team’s processes became distinct—as it was informed by different historical, economic and geopolitical processes.
Highlights
This article traces how coloniality traps research and researchers in the Global North into maintaining the rigidity of its politics and logics through the meaning process
The autoethnography presented in this article interrogates the experiences of the researchers of and within coloniality in the Global North and the epistemological underpinnings being operated in the Global South
Through auto-ethnography we explored how coloniality as a social phenomenon is constituted, functions in and structures research, and situates these operations and the researchers within the larger relations of modernity
Summary
This article traces how coloniality traps research and researchers in the Global North into maintaining the rigidity of its politics and logics through the meaning process. The goal was to turn the critical eye inward, to understand how the structures of coloniality were lived and enacted while trying to work towards the opposite – co-creating knowledge in the margins Anthropological methods such as ethnographic work, encourage the mapping of places in the space of social and cultural contexts of a phenomenon (Haight et al, 2014; Witkin, 2014). This article does not presume that bridging theories and methodologies between social work and anthropology will fully embrace the decolonial attitude, as the stains of coloniality are everywhere This auto-ethnography presents an opportunity to make the processes of coloniality visible, name them, and identify opportunities for change. As International Social Work continues to gain popularity, supporting the proliferation of research across borders, the theoretical underpinnings must be unpacked with the context of the collaboration and the cultures involved that give meaning to both
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