Co-Constructing Central American Knowledge: A Research in Accompaniment Methodological Approach

• In Event: Building Kinship and Becoming Relatives: Ancestral Alignment Guiding Our Methodologies

Abstract

Within the U.S. academy, Central American and Isthmian scholars have noted resistance to Central American-based knowledge production and overall epistemic neglect (Alvarado et al., 2017). Similarly, U.S. Central American collegians have found that their specific histories, both national and transnationally, are missing from the course curriculum available to them on college campuses, thus, limiting opportunities for scholarly development (Linares & Maffini, 2018; Maldonado Dominguez, 2019). As a result, Central American scholars have written urgently for U.S. Central Americans to take on the responsibility of transforming invisibility into visibility within the academy and cultural productions (Arias, 2007; Chinchilla, 2007). As a Salvadoran and Central American scholar in resistance, I designed a qualitative research study investigating the experiences of three forms of (in)visibility: visibility, (in)visibility, and hypervisibility (Settles et al., 2019) as experienced by Central American and Isthmian faculty in the U.S. academy. In order to better understand, analyze, and interpret findings from the study, the study and its methodology was constructed with intentional alignment of Central American and Isthmian cultural histories and knowledge systems. More specifically, I applied the Research as Accompaniment methodology that is grounded in the philosophical teachings of Salvadoran liberation theologist, Oscar A. Romero (Tomlinson & Lipsitz, 2019; Abrego, 2021). Research as accompaniment rejects knowledge production research practices from the “objective” gaze that constrains findings through limited understandings (Abrego, 2021). In its practice, research in accompaniment reimagines a research ethic in which study participants become co-constructors of a flexible methodology, makes space for emotional processing, and fosters trust through a Central American practice of kinship that leads to more authentic and rigorous research findings (Abrego, 2021). In the process of methodological alignment, I chose the method of storying, an ancestral and living oral traditions from throughout the Central American isthmus (Huff, 2006). For this study, I engaged in four separate 90-120 minute storying sessions with each of the seven participating Central American and Isthmian faculty, and in the process, we co-constructed knowledge in kinship from the reflections of eighth Central American and Isthmian scholars. The methodological findings of this study drew out meaning-making in storytelling as a relational practice that disassembles Central American silence and (in)visibilities; draws out matters of the heart, including grief, trauma, joy, love, sadness, melancholia, and a search for home in scholarship world building (Corinealdi, 2022).

Author

• Eileen M. Galvez, Colorado State University