Revealing with Intention, Concealing with Care: Data Disclosure as a Relational Method

• In Event: Everything Ain’t for Everybody: Refusal as a Methodological Practice of Purposeful Data Disclosure

Abstract

This paper theorizes refusal as an intentional, relational, and protective methodological practice grounded in Indigenous, decolonial, and anti-carceral frameworks. Through three distinct vignettes, we examine how selective transparency serves as an ethic of care, spiritual discernment, and political resistance when engaging with communities vulnerable to extractive research practices. Responding to calls for ethically grounded, culturally situated methodologies, we argue that refusal is not the absence of data but a generative act of scholarly responsibility. Drawing on ethnographic and autoethnographic inquiry, the paper engages with ceremonial protocols, fieldnotes, and reflexive memos across three research sites: collaborations with Indigenous Two-Spirit/Queer/Trans (2S/Q/T) community members, educational programming in juvenile detention centers, and the experiences of K–12 ethnic studies educators in politically hostile environments. Each vignette highlights the researcher’s decision to withhold specific moments, guided by intuition, relational accountability, and concerns for participant safety.

The first vignette describes how ceremony and ancestral guidance shaped decisions about what knowledge was meant to be remembered and shared, honoring Indigenous epistemologies. The second vignette centers on the ethnographer’s choice not to record acts of joy and resistance by incarcerated youth to avoid further surveillance or punishment. The final vignette explores the mutual vulnerability and solidarity shared between a Xicana researcher and teachers facing political repression—underscoring refusal as an act of collective protection. Findings suggest that ethical research cannot rely solely on consent and disclosure but must incorporate spiritual, cultural, and political discernment. This paper contributes to evolving conversations in qualitative inquiry by offering refusal as a methodology that safeguards the sacred, disrupts extractive norms, and reclaims the right to protect that which cannot or should not be translated for academic gain.

Authors

• Julissa O. Muñiz, University of California - Los Angeles

• Jasmin Patron-Vargas, Texas A&M University

• Pablo Montes, Texas Christian University