Key question 1: How do post-positivist epistemologies shape what is considered “legitimate” research and thus possibilities for alternative approaches?

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Creating sustainable research practices in comparative & international education

Proposal

**Note: We have structured the remainder of the proposal not as separate presentations, but rather in terms of key questions that we wish to address in this roundtable. We envision a session that integrates these questions as they move from an initial, more abstract framing of the topic towards a practical focus that addresses:
1) Methodological implications of the issues discussed for comparatives who choose to espouse non-dominant epistemologies and how can we support the sustainability of such perspectives; and
2) How this affects our teaching and the production of future scholars in the field.

Our goal is to open up the discussion beyond the panel to all attendees, with the hope of a wide-ranging discussion that might span areas including methodological implications for:
• Teaching (what building ‘sustainable research practices’ means in terms of courses offered, products expected, mastery of skills/competencies, etc.)
• Sustainability of methods (participatory and decolonial research and democratization of the knowledge process)
• Sustainable research within the context of academic systems and structures (i.e. Graduate school and dissertation research, production of a single authored dissertation (product), pressure to publish in venues that may not be as open to alternatives methods of sharing knowledge)


To address our first question, we seek to explicitly illuminate and deconstruct the norms around “legitimate” research, both in the academy and in practice. In particular, we seek to discuss the implicit focus on outcomes, quantification and measurement, and the impact of post-positivist epistemologies on non-dominant epistemologies that challenge the discourses and practices encouraged within, for example, neoliberal and market-based contexts. To begin, we will discuss what a postcolonial or decolonial perspective to research looks like. We will begin with discussing the colonial legacies of the field and how this has resulted in a Eurocentric perspective embedded within the very geopolitics of knowledge in the disciplines from which we draw our theories and concepts. Implicated in this perspective is a particular way of conceptualizing knowledge and engaging in the knowledge production process. This hierarchical structure in the field of knowledge production has many implications for how we as comparativists do research; one of which includes positioning those in power to do research “on” others.
In reflecting on these post-positivist epistemologies, we would like to continue the conversation into what alternative epistemologies may center. Such questions such as: Whose history are we using when we engage in research? Who/what is the location/history or the communities with which we work? How do questions of race, class, gender intersect and manifest themselves in the contexts of our research? Who produces knowledge about peoples and from what space/location? What are the methods used to locate and chart individuals’ self and agency? Addressing these questions can help us think about who engages in the knowledge production process and how. We can then discuss what it means to do research “with” participants rather than “on” them.

Author

• Payal P. Shah, University of South Carolina