Qualitative lecture 3

Question 1

What are 3 important questions to ask yourself when researching “others”?

Answer 1

• How do we study others, are the studies we conduct important to those we are studying?
• What are the implications, what is the impact?
• How will you represent others?

Question 2

What are 4 things to consider in terms of identifying and naming research participants and collaborators?

Answer 2

1. The contestation of terms in research (e.g. “Black African”: who is this term referring to? Who is included? Who is excluded? Is that how the group refers to themselves?)
2. What do we know about them? And from whom do we know what we know?
3. Who is writing about or studying specific communities? How are they writing about those communities? Is it based on research? Is the research well informed/bias?
4. How well suited are our methodologies for those we seek to study? ( This includes language; cultural, social, and historical relevance) Do they challenge or embrace colonial ways of doing research? Are you perpetuating the cycle of colonizing and representing in negative ways? Remember that post-colonial approaches challenge colonial approaches.

Question 3

What does the “postcolonial” in “postcolonial african methods” refer to?

Answer 3

• A specified period when former colonies won their freedom
• A transdisciplinary form of thinking/critical thinking.
• Post colonial african methods challenge colonial approaches to inquiry.

Question 4

What 3 questions should you ask yourself when thinking critically about the kinds of questions you ask in a postcolonial african paradigm?

Answer 4

• Are they dehumanizing?
• Are they pathologizing?
• Are they essentializing?
  E.g. why do black people fear dogs?
• It is also important to consider how we write about those we study.

Question 5

What is a research question?

Answer 5

• The question a study wants answered/ the phenomenon investigated.
  e.g. what are people’s experiences of breastfeeding in public transport.
  e.g. What are 3rd year Psych students’ views of others breastfeeding in class?

Question 6

How are research problems represented?

Answer 6

• They are typically problems which are represented as question
  For example:
• Problem: low up-take of the covid-19 vaccine
• Question: Why have people been reluctant to take the vaccine?

Question 7

What factors inform the questions we are interested in studying?

Answer 7

• Ask yourself what you would want to study and why
• Ask yourself what is your relationship to the “topic” and context of the study?

Question 8

Where do research questions come from?

Answer 8

• Gaps in literature (theoretical/ methodological/ contextual)
• Exploratory studies on undocumented social issues or phenomena
• A needs analysis (e.g. addressing high crime rates in Constantia)
• Personal speculation and experience
• Commissioned or contracted research (e.g. NRF Research Funds)

Question 9

What are the components of a good research question?

Answer 9

• Feasible (Can the construct be measured? Can the question be answered? Is it fit for available methods of inquiry?
• Interesting
• Novel
• Ethical
• Relevant/Important (what is the impact of conducting this study? What will conducting this study accomplish? Who is it important to? This plays into questions of power: who decides what is important enough to study?)

Question 10

What are some banished questions?

Answer 10

• Historically avoided questions (E.g. Whiteness Studies)
• Questions that seem to yield no direction
• Controversial (not problematic) questions: some questions can be seen as being too taboo.

Question 11

Questions and their contextual relevance

Answer 11

• Not all questions are relevant and important to everyone everywhere
• Not all questions/topic mean the same thing to everyone everywhere.

Question 12

What is important to note when studying (ghosts) “others”?

Answer 12

• Studying “othered” and marginalized communities must begin with intricate lived cultural politics
  This means:
• Reject existing and problematic ideas about those communities. E.g. the denigration of Blackness: slaughtering as a cultural practice; Ubungoma
• Immersing yourself in the space and culture forces you to ask different types of questions.

Question 13

What is the three step approach to studying “others”?

Answer 13

1. A postcolonial approach to a nod- studying the context and its histories
   - What does it mean to be a sangoma in SA and how does the country’s history, politics, dominant beliefs shape that meaning?
   E.g. the meaning of not maintaining eye contact (dishonesty or respect)?
2. Showing up the firm handshake
   - Using approaches that acknowledge our own and others’ ways of existing.
3. A manifold refusal
   - To refuse to be co-opted (e.g. by development agencies; politics)
   - Be prepared to say no to power as a researcher.

Question 14

Reflexivity in post-colonial african methods

Answer 14

• Postcolonial approaches show that traditionalist approaches perpetuate colonial or apartheid relations of domination between the researcher and the researched. (who studies whom? What are the power relations?)
• This is an invitation to think about the possibility and productivity of finding different techniques, languages and frames to understand others.