Ziyyarah: (Un)Settling Western Tradition of Conducting Interview Studies

• In Event: 31.092 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Three - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 31.092-7 - Critical Qualitative Methods and Narrative Ways of Inquiring

Abstract

Smith (1999) argues for deconstruction of Western scholarship and the inclusion of the indigenous ways of knowing that draw from multiple cultural knowledge systems. Drawing on Smith’s (1999) call and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of nomadic subject and assemblage, this paper examines how a doctoral student constructed her postcolonial interview study to (re)think interviewing practices beyond the traditional and prescribed methodological approaches. Ziyyarah, an Arabic word that means a visit, interrogates the reproduction of colonial subjugation that traditional interviewing inscribes on participants. By making conventions or “meetings” (Nordsrom, 2017) between participants’ ways of knowing, culture, space, and beliefs; and interrogating the researcher/researched binary, the Ziyyarah becomes an informal conversational methodological approach to examine transgressive data with non-Western participants.

Author

• Wesam M. Salem, University of Memphis