Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples [Paperback]

Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999 | ISBN-10: 1856496244 | ISBN-13: 978-1856496247

'NOW AVAILABLE- FULLY UPDATED SECOND EDITION OF DECOLONIZING METHODOLOGIES. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION.'


From the vantage point of the colonized, the term "research" is inextricably linked with European colonialism; the ways in which scientific research has been implicated in the worst excesses of imperialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world's colonized peoples. Here, an indigenous researcher issues a clarion call for the decolonization of research methods.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the author critically examines the historical and philosophical base of Western research. Extending the work of Foucault, she explores the intersections of imperialism, knowledge and research, and the different ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and methodologies as "regimes of truth". Providing a history of knowledge from the Enlightenment to Postcoloniality, she also discusses the fate of concepts such as "discovery", "claiming", and "naming" through which the west has incorporated and continues to incorporate the indigenous world within its own web.

The second part of the book meets the urgent need for people who are carrying out their own research projects, for literature which validates their frustrations in dealing with various western paradigms, academic traditions and methodologies, which continue to position the indigenous as "Other". In setting an agenda for planning and implementing indigenous research, the author shows how such programmes are part of the wider project of reclaiming control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Exploring the broad range of issues which have confronted, and continue to confront, indigenous peoples, in their encounters with western knowledge, this book also sets a standard for truly emancipatory research. It brilliantly demonstrates that "when indigenous peoples become the researchers and not merely the researched, the activity of research is transformed."

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book, which can be used in helping design and carry out research or in teaching research methods, will certainly play a role in remedying this clearly identified and sorely felt absence in the field of health research." -- Journal of Health Psychology

About the Author

Linda Tuhiwai Smith is an Associate Professor in Education and Director of the International Research Institute for Maori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856496244
• ISBN-13: 978-1856496247
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #45 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Methodology

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 65 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Constructing Critical Indigenous Research Methodologies April 15, 2003

By Chicano Loco de la Frontera Aztlan

Format:Paperback

Looking at Western research practices from the �underside� of a positivist paradigm deeply entrenched and diffused throughout public and private educational, governmental, and corporate tentacles, Linda Tuhiwai Smith is a Maori (New Zealand) intellectual presenting a counter-methodological narrative stemming from a collective indigenous historical cynicism and whose voice bespeaks the refusal to be objectified by an inherently racist and imperialist mode of constructing knowledge and re-presentations of non-Western peoples. Deconstructing Western research paradigms is simply an act of defiance and resistance for Smith, particularly since she constructs a radical alternative methodology rooted in self-determination, social justice, intellectual property rights, and active participation in all knowledge-making, contributions to the research processes, and dissemination of �findings�. The exigency of articulating a research methodology aimed at critical praxis for Western and non-Western peoples interested in indigenous issues emerges at a point where globalization and neo-liberal imperial practices and investments are opening new spaces for the unilateral and/or predominant benefit of Western research regimes that continue capitalizing and objectifying indigenous peoples through racist and incorrigible projects that erase human dignity, i.e. Human Genome Diversity Project.

The book can strategically be divided into two main sections: the first section explores the contemporary and historical legacy of an imperial tryst between Western scientific, economic, and ideological formations shaping relations with alterity (Chapters 1-5); the second section outlines a radical alternative methodology for conducting research on indigenous peoples and issues (Chapters 6-9). The first chapter reveals the �Enlightenment� and positivist threads that weave imperialism, history, writing, and theoretical practices that continue to shape current research and socio-political policies on an international level. Smith states: �research within late-modern and late-colonial conditions continues relentlessly and brings with it a new wave of exploration, discovery, exploitation, and appropriation� (24). Deconstructing the historical legacy of imperial practices is also a call for rewriting and rerighting history with indigenous perspectives. The second chapter outlines the Baconian processes by which Westerners come to view the world as a standing reserve of objects for empirical inquiry, discursive appropriation, and mimetic comportment processes aimed at subjugating and �controlling� nature and indigenous peoples with an intellectual will to power stemming from racist ideologues who trace some form of theoretical lineage back to Bacon, Kant, Hegel, Hume and others. Borrowing from Stuart Hall, this process moves from classification of the world and others, to collapsing images for a convenient system of representation, to presenting a reified model for comparative analysis, and, finally, establishing criteria for hierarchical positionality. Chapter three delves further into deconstructing research, as viewed through imperial eyes, and how this methodology produced a self-perpetuating apparatus comprised of multifarious disciplines for the construction and future survival of colonial �knowledge� and all those who invest in these truth regimes that purport to be �universal�, �neutral�, objectively sound, and constructed on a foundation of �absolute certainty�.

Chapter four and five highlight many instances of how imperial research regimes continue to invest in the discursive and �scientific� construction, re-presentation, and exploitation of indigenous peoples for profit and social control. The globe has become one large information colony where research is the means to inscribe social and ideological control and Westernized fabrications of history on the backs of indigenous peoples around the world. The most infamous example of how the imperial research regime continues to exist is through scientific projects stemming from private corporate entities mainly subsidized by governments. The Human Genome Diversity Project attempts to subjugate indigenous peoples by mapping and reifying DNA and possessing it as �intellectual property� for future use. The attempt to patent the genetic make-up of the Hagahai people (New Guinea) by the U.S. government is indisputable proof of how these scientific projects threaten the future, autonomy, and human rights of indigenous peoples.

The second part of the book focuses on constructing an indigenous alternative to decolonize indigenous peoples from Western regimes of research based on emergent tribal social issues, practices, and beliefs. The center of this decolonizing project is constructed through Polynesian metaphors of �space-time�. The center of social activity and identity is an archipelago comprised of self-determination in terms of tribal autonomy on a social, economic, and research level, as well as the full participation in inter-tribal and inter-national relations. Healing, decolonization, transformation, and mobilization are the four main �directions� that frame the spaces of this project. Survival, recovery, and development are the main �tides� that connect and transform all directionality of the project. This methodology is intended to transform indigenous peoples from passive objects in Western research to active-participants in an indigenous process of reconfiguring themselves and the world around them. Respect becomes the main affective principle for the survival of indigenous peoples and the project: �through respect, the place of everyone, and everything in the universe is kept in balance and harmony�the denial by the West of humanity to indigenous peoples, the denial of citizenship and human rights, the denial of the right to self-determination�all these demonstrate palpably the enormous lack of respect which has marked the relations of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples� (120). Without respect, there is no dignity.

Chapter seven outlines a means of articulating such a project to indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and the challenges associated with it. Chapter eight provides a list of current indigenous research projects. Chapter nine provides a case study of the Maori peoples in which the method outlined in chapter six was put into practice. Chapter ten details with the methodological transformation of passive objects to active agents and lists tactics for strengthening and sustaining critical research for decolonizing processes.
Generally, when the researched become researchers, self-determination and healing can take place, communities can create and control research processes and the subsequent naming of the world, and they can define their relationship with others and the environment.

If a critical theroetical/methodological �flaw� or problematic of this decolonial methodology exists, it might come to presence from a post-structural disdain for outlining a process by which people can �liberate� themselves from Western imperialist research regimes. But then again, post-structural thought is mainly a Western construction and/or response to
'modernity' and its discontents.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant - a must read !! April 15, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Linda Tuhiwai Smith captures the essence of the space that is between 'a rock and a hard place' for Maori who engage in research within the academy and the frameworks of western theorisms. She clearly and articulately explores not only this position but also the pathways beyond it. As we engage in the business of contributing to still growing body's of indigenous ways of knowing and doing it is important that we critique our own relative positions as both indigenous and colonised peoples as powerful and purposeful. Linda has set the scene for fabulous things to happen.

I have already loaned this book to others and recommended that the others who want it buy it ! Better be quick - they are disappearing from the shelves as you read !!

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, must-read April 14, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Tuhiwai Smith's masterpiece is a must-read for any discipline. Her work questions the most basic assumptions upon which academic research lies; her influence is widely felt in fields as diverse as anthropology, social work, women studies, film studies, indigenous studies, psychology, history, sociology, and ethnic studies. Smith is the Fanon of the indigenous world, and the contemporary academic cannot afford to miss her work.

The chapters are absorbing and surprisingly straight-forward for theory, and can be read separately or in sequence. The work is accessible enough for undergraduate students, but rich enough to serve as a valuable addition to the graduate student's bookshelf.

She reaches both Native and non-Native audiences, and concludes her work with indiginizing projects that detail real alternatives to current practices. An investment you will not regret!