Research Methods in Africana Studies Flashcards
Africana Studies
The critical and systematic study of the thought and practice of African people in their current and historical unfolding.
Black Emancipatory Action Research (BEAR)
An orientation to research meant to enhance qualitative methods in research involving African diasporic peoples. BEAR is a framework for guiding research in the process of liberation African diasporic peoples from various forms of oppression.
Ethnomethodology
A perspective that is based on the presumption that social reality is socially constructed through communication and interaction. The ethnomethodologist rejects the idea that social reality is simply there for the researcher to observe. Instead of crying social reality as it objectively is, ethnomethodology places value on people’s descriptions of social reality as their valid subjective ways of making sense of it.
Paradigm
A general way of understanding and approaching knowledge about the world. Paradigms guide a researcher through the experience of acquiring knowledge.
Racial Digital Divide
This is the problem presented by the fact that the accessibility of information and communication technologies is unequal.
Scientific Colonialism
When the center of gravity for the acquisition of knowledge about a people is located outside of that people’s lived reality.
Method
A tool of data collection
Methodology
Combines methods with the paradigms, assumptions, theories, concepts, and ideas that give life, interpretation, and meaning to data.
Cultural Difference Paradigm
Directly challenges the baseless cultural deprivation paradigm. Asserts that the culture of Black and other peoples should be considered in understanding their thinking, behavior, and social conditions.
Colonial Paradigm
A lens for understanding the exploitation and underdevelopment of Black communities. In the colonial context, the dominant groups maintains dominance and control over those with less power. Those in power use the full institutional apparatus of the state to maintain power.
Basic Characteristics of the Colonial Paradigm are;
- Colonized subjects are not in the social system voluntarily, its imposed on them
- Colonial subjects native culture is modified or destroyed
- Control is in the hands of people outside of the native population
- Racism is prevalent
Pan African Paradigm
Comes from the lived experiences of the African diasporic community. A historical movement and ideological framework led by activists and intellectuals seeking to articulate a transnational racial politics of Black self-affirmation and liberation.
Disruptive Conceptualization
Sharing some similarities with “traditional disciplines”, these theories reject and debunk some of the fundamental premises of those disciplines and their presumptions. Offer new perspectives based on the unique histories, cultures, and lived experiences of people of African descent.
Afrocentric Paradigm
A theoretical framework to be used to examine and self-consciously advance African people in every sector of society. Consists of; Grounding- Knowledge of the history and experience of the African world, Orientation- Particular interest in the needs and concerns of people of African descent, Perspective- refers to looking at the world in a way that seeks to identify ways to emancipate and empower people of African descent.
Victorious consciousness
Key concept of the Afrocentric paradigm. Refers to the knowledge and awareness that African people have been victorious in the past and will be victorious in the future. Assumes that it is difficult to engage in self-determining, liberatory behavior if one does not believe that victory is achievable.
Centeredness
Key concept of Afrocentric paradigm. Being grounded in the knowledge of the history and culture of African people, and engaging the world from that foundation.
Agency
Playing a conscious and active role in shaping one’s own destiny.
