Abstract
This chapter argues that media and communication research are deeply entrenched in global capitalism and the imperial projects of the Global North. The problem of Eurocentrism and the coloniality of knowledge in media studies does not only negatively impact the projects theory-building in the South, but also methodology as medium through which we interpret the word and the world. The coloniality of knowledge production in the Global South means that the South is not just faced with the problem of epistemicides as genocides of knowledge, but also methodicides as genocides of non-Western ways of knowing. This chapter discusses the need for decolonizing research methodology and methods in order for the Global South to create transformative agency in its research that currently remains neutralized by theoretical mimicry and puppetry. The chapter concludes by a typology of alternate decolonial or resistance research methodologies. These methods, albeit a work in progress, aim not only to resist epistemic colonization in cultural analysis, but also help the Global South to unlearn the Western method.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Asante, M. K. (1998). The Afrocentric Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Asante, M. K. (2008). The Ideological Significance of Afrocentricity in Intercultural Communication. In M. K. Asante, Y. Miike, & J. Yin (Eds.), The Global Intercultural Communication Reader. New York: Routledge.
Asante, M. K. (2011). De-Westernizing Communication: Strategies for Neutralizing Cultural Myths. In G. Wang (Ed.), De-Westernizing Communication Research: Altering Questions and Changing Frameworks. London: Routledge.
Asante, M. K., Miike, Y., & Yin, J. (Eds.). (2008). The Global Intercultural Communication Reader. London: Routledge.
Bailey, M., & Freedman, D. (2011). The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance. London: Pluto Press.
Barben, T. (2006). Umntu Ngmuntu Ngabantu (‘A Person Is a Person Because of Other Persons’): The Ethos of the Pre-colonial Xhosa-Speaking People as Presented in Fact and Young Adult Fiction. Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 60(1&2), 4–20.
Boal, A. (1979). Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press.
Brown, L., & Strega, S. (Eds.). (2005). Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Brydon-Miller, M. (2001). Education, Research and Action: Theory and Methods of Participatory Action Research. In D. Tolman & M. Brydon-Miller (Eds.), From Subjects to Subjectivities: A Handbook of Participatory and Interpretive Methods. New York: New York University Press.
Brydon-Miller, M., Maguire, P., & McIntyre, A. (Eds.). (2004). Travelling Companions: Feminism, Teaching and Action Research. Westport: Praeger.
Cahill, C. (2007). Participatory data analysis. In S. Kindon, R. Pain, & M. Kesby (Eds.), Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods Connecting People, Participation and Place. London: Routldge.
Cheng, C. Y. (1991). New Dimensions of Confucian and Neo-Confucian Philosophy. New York: State University of New York Press.
Chilisa, B. (2012). Indigenous Research Methodologies. London: Sage.
Cieri, M., & McCauley, R. (2007). ‘Participatory Theatre: Creating a Source for Staging an Example’ in the USA. In S. Kindon, R. Pain, & M. Kesby (Eds.), Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods Connecting People, Participation and Place. Milton Park: Routledge.
Clifford, J. (1986). Introduction. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Clifford, J. (1992). Introduction. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Denzin, N. K. (2009). Qualitative Inquiry Under Fire: Toward a New Paradigm Dialogue. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Downing, D. H. (2003). Where We Should Go Next and Why We Probably Won’t: An Entirely Idiosyncratic, Utopian, and Unashamedly Peppery Map for the Future. In A. Valdivia (Ed.), A Companion to Media Studies. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
Dussel, E., & Vallega, A. A. (Eds.). (2013). Ethics of Liberation: In the Age of Globalization and Exclusion. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. London: Routledge.
Finnegan, R. (1992). Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Research Practices. London: Routledge.
Fourie, P. J. (2008). Ubuntuism as a Framework for South African Media Practice and Performance: Can It Work? Communicatio, 34(1), 53–79.
Freire, P. (1970). The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin.
Geertz, C. (1977). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Gildea, R. (2019). Empires of the Mind: The Colonial Past and the Politics of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Groh, A. (2018). Research Methods in Indigenous Contexts. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing.
Grosfoguel, R. (2007). The Epistemic Decolonial Turn: Beyond Political-Economy Paradigms. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 211–223.
Grosfoguel, R. (2009, Fall). A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy: Transmodernity, Border Thinking and Global Coloniality. Kult, 6. Special Issue, Epistemologies of Transformation: The Latin American Decolonial Option and its Ramifications.
Hardt, H. (1992). Critical Communication Studies: Essays on Communication, History and Theory. London & New York: Routledge.
Herman, E. S., & McChesney, R. W. (1997). The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism. London: Continuum.
Johnstone, B. (2002). Discourse Analysis. London: Blackwell.
Kidd, R., & Byram, M. (1982). Demystifying Pseudo-Freirean Development: The Case of Laedza Batanani. Community Development Journal, 17(2), 91–105.
Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (2007). Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods Connecting People, Participation and Place. London: Routledge.
Kothari, U. (2001). Power, Knowledge and Social Control in Participatory Development. In B. Cooke & U. Kothari (Eds.), Participation: The New Tyranny (pp. 139–153). London: Zed Books.
Kovach, M. (2005). Emerging from the Margins: Indigenous Methodologies. In L. Brown & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press.
Kovach, M. (2007). Emerging from the Margins: Indigenous Methodologies. In L. Brown & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Lee, C. C. (2015). International Communication Research: Critical Reflections and a New Point of Departure. In C. C. Lee (Ed.), Internationalizing “International Communication”. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Liamputtong, P. (2010). Performing Cross-Cultural Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mamdani, M. (2007). Scholars in the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neoliberal Reform at Makerere University 1989–2005. Pretoria: HSRC Press.
Manning, J. (2018). Becoming a Decolonial Feminist Ethnographer: Addressing the Complexities of Positionality and Representation. Management Learning, 49(3), 311–326.
Matolino, B., & Kwindingwi, W. (2013). The End of Ubuntu, South African. Journal of Philosophy, 32(2), 197–205.
McTaggart, R. (Ed.). (1997). Participatory Action Research: International Contexts and Consequences. New York: State of New York University Press.
Mda, Z. (1993). When People Play People: Development Communication Through Theatre. London: Zed Publishers.
Mignolo, W. (2000). Thinking from the Underside of History: Enrique Dussel’s Philosophy of Liberation. New York: Roman and Littlefield.
Moores, S. (1993). Interpreting Audiences: The Ethnography of Media Consumption. London: Sage.
Morley, D. (1980). The ‘Nationwide’ Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: BFI.
Morley, D. (1992). Television, Audiences, and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge.
Morley, D., & Brunsdon, C. (1999). The Nationwide Television Studies. London: Routledge.
Moyo, L., & Mutsvairo, B. (2018). Can the Subaltern Think?: The Decolonial Turn in Communication Studies Research. In B. Mutsvairo (Ed.), Palgrave Handbook on Communication Research in Africa. London: Palgrave.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2013). Why Decoloniality in the 21st Century? Thinker, 48, 10–15.
Nyamnjoh, F. (2005). Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging. Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Oyewumi, O. (1997). The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Western Gender Discourse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Potts, K., & Brown, L. (2005). Becoming an Anti-Oppressive Researcher. In L. Brown & S. Strega (Eds.), Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Toroto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Pratt, M. L. (1992). Fieldwork in Common Places. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rivire, P. (1989). New Trends in British Social Anthropology. Cadernos Do Noroeste, 2(3), 7–24.
Rogers, E. M. (1983). Diffusion of Innovations-Free Press (3rd ed.). New York: Free Press.
Santos, B. (2002). Towards a Multicultural Conception of Human Rights. In B. Hernández-Truyol (Ed.), Moral Imperialism. New York: New York University Press.
Santos, B. (2018). The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press.
Servaes, J. (2008). Beyond Modernization and the Four Theories of the Press. In C. C. Lee (Ed.), Internationalizing “International Communication”. Michigan: Michigan University Press.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books.
Stuit, Hanneke. (2016). Ubuntu Strategies: Constructing Spaces of Belonging in Contemporary South African Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Thomas, J. (1992). Doing Critical Ethnography. London: Sage.
Tikly, L., & Bond, T. (2013). Towards a Postcolonial Research Ethics in Comparative and International Education. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 43(4), 422–442. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.797721.
Tomaselli, K. G. (2003a). “Our Culture’’ vs “Foreign Culture”: An Essay on Ontological Professional Issues in African Journalism. Gazette, 65(6), 427–443.
Tomaselli, K. G. (2003b). (Afri)Ethics, Communitarianism and Libertarianism. The International Communication Gazette, 71(7), 577–594.
Tomaselli, R. (2001). Who Is the Community in Community Radio: A Case Study of Community Radio Stations in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. In K. Tomaselli & H. Dunn (Eds.), Media, Democracy and Renewal in South Africa. Colorado Springs: International Academic Publishers.
Venn, C. (2001). Occidentalism: Modernity and Subjectivity. London: Sage.
Wa Thiong’o, N. (1981). Writers in Politics Essays. London: Heinemann.
Wa Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: James Carey.
Walter, M., & Andersen, C. (2013). Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Research Methodology. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Wasserman, H. (2013). Journalism in a New Democracy: The Ethics of Listening. Communicatio, 39(1), 67–84.
Wasserman, H., & de Beer, A. (2005). A Fragile Affair: The Relationship Between the Mainstream Media and Government in Post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 20(2–3), 192–208.
Wodak, R. (2004). What CDA Is About—A Summary of Its History, Important Concepts and Its Development. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.
Zavala, M. (2013). What Do We Mean by Decolonizing Research Strategies? Lessons from Decolonizing, Indigenous Research Projects in New Zealand and Latin America. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 21, 55–71.
Ziai, A. (2007). Exploring Post-Development: Theory and Practice, Problems and Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Moyo, L. (2020). Decolonial Research Methodologies: Resistance and Liberatory Approaches. In: The Decolonial Turn in Media Studies in Africa and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52832-4_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52832-4_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52831-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52832-4
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)