Scientifically Based Research and Settler Coloniality: An Ethical Framework of Decolonial Participatory Action Research

• In Event: Supporting Epistemological Diversity and Widening the Struggle for Justice: New Directions in Critical Qualitative Research

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation will argue that the IRB process is just a small part of what social scientists must consider in conducting ethical research, and that without a more robust consideration of ethics, academe is complicit in expanding, extending, and legitimizing settler colonial projects under the auspices of scientifically based research production. We will present an analysis of ethical considerations that are ignored by the IRB process and contextualize what we call decolonial participatory action research (DPAR).

Theoretical framework
This paper engages settler colonialism as a core structure that animates white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Settler colonialism is a form of colonization in which the colonizers come to stay; a structure and not an event (Wolfe, 1999).

Modes of inquiry
This is a conceptual paper that looks to the history of various disciplines to trace the legacy of settler colonialism within educational research and several other related academic disciplines, and the ways that legacy continues to shape relationships between scientists and communities and research efforts in those disciplines.

Materials
In the paper, we look to accounts of the historical emergence of educational research and a variety of disciplines that are closely related to educational research, including anthropology, psychology, and medical research. We observe that Institutional Review Boards and indeed all ethical regulatory bodies were created reactively; largely in response to public exposure to instances of outrageous abuse such as the Nazi experiments, Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972), and the deaths of Jesse Gelsinger and Ellen Roche.

Results
Institutional Review Boards undoubtedly perform an important task within institutions, but they are primarily concerned with protecting the institution from claims of abuse– thus, vigorous considerations of ethics of research are elided if we mistakenly think of the IRB approval process as anything more than just a small part of what social scientists must consider in conducting ethical research. Decolonial research necessitates a posture to ethics that frames discussions of ethics away from an emphasis on procedures that attempt to safeguard individual rights and autonomy toward conversations about relational ethics in which partnership, commitment, accountability and social justice are its central tenets. We will define decolonial participatory action research as research which is concerned with exposing the footprints of settler colonialism, and the ways in which neoliberal logic-- the most recent iteration of settler colonialism-- works to undermine and dispossess the public sphere.


Scholarly significance
One of the most distinctive and compelling qualities of DPAR is that it exposes ethical worries that are latent in all social science research. The paper will offer decolonial participatory research ethical concepts: reflexivity, dignity, humility, action, relationality and trust, as alternatives to IRB centered ethical analysis, focused on emboldening the public sphere and dismantling settler colonialism.

Wolfe, P. (1999). Settler colonialism and the transformation of anthropology: The politics and poetics of an ethnographic event. New York: Cassel.

Authors

• Eve Tuck, SUNY - College at New Paltz

• Monique Antoinette Guishard, The Graduate Center - CUNY