Shifting Ground: How Research Is Transformed When Caribbean Practices Are Used as Methodologies

• In Event: Shifting Ground: Embracing the Power, Value, and Possibilities of Caribbean Research and Pedagogical Approaches

Abstract

This presentation analyses the process of developing and using a Caribbean research methodology to conduct a doctoral research. The study was informed by eight limes where fifty-four Caribbean migrants, including the researcher, reflected together about their cultural identity. The process of knowledge articulation that took place in these limes was captured and systematised to inform a Caribbean research strategy: Liming and Ole Talk (LOT) Methodology. In this presentation, the author analyses how a shift in the underlying assumptions about the objectives and practices of academic research, the role of the researcher and the role of participants profoundly transformed how the research was designed, how data was collected, analysed and written. She also analyses how this transformation conflicted with several academic and institutional structures and expectations.
A lime is a Caribbean practice for gathering, interacting and sharing. Liming (the act of participating in a lime) and Ole Talk as its conversational component are core activities in Caribbean peoples’ daily lives, not only as a space for relaxation and leisure, but also as an ambit where meaning is negotiated, social and political discourses are elucidated and contested, and cultural products and spaces are collectively used. Liming and Ole Talk (hence forth LOT) took place in this study as a composite of cultural practices, including the use of music, movement and dancing, cooking and sharing food, ole talk. LOT showed great value when used for non-linear knowledge articulation in research among Caribbean people. The flexible nature of liming allowed for subject positions to be articulated with discourses by means of performance and story-telling. These subject positions could then be rearticulated and challenged or on the contrary, reinforced. Humour was a key component of liming and enabled subject positions to be established provisionally and then mocked, subverted or affirmed. This created an environment of permissibility where diverse edges of controversial issues could be explored at ease.
In LOT methodology participants and the researcher engaged in knowledge construction as limers (i.e. participants in a lime) and established a horizontal relation of intersubjectivity. As limers, participants could draw on their cultural and communicative strengths and engage in their own terms (walking in and out of conversations; curtailing, extending or returning to topics; staying silent; using humour and teasing). As a limer, the researcher shared her own experiences as a migrant with other limers, in a process where all had access to each other’s knowledge. Dismantling the traditional hierarchy between the researcher and the researched created the space for limers to take on roles traditionally assigned to the researcher, like asking questions, synthesising information, drawing conclusions and determining timing for the discussion of topics.
By developing Liming and Ole Talk as a Caribbean research methodology this study makes a significant contribution to the development of culturally affirming strategies for Caribbean research by systematising the process of recruitment, fieldwork, analysis and writing in research using Caribbean cultural practices as a guiding framework.

Author

• Anabel Fernandez Santana, Auckland University of Technology