Highlighted Session: Selves as Methods: Reflexive Dialogue and Praxis in Global Knowledge Production

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

Asian scholars, like other scholars from the Global South, have consistently confronted the colonial matrix of power (Mignolo, 2011), most notably a form of ‘bifurcation’ that hierarchically separates theory/Global North from data/Global South (Chen, 2010; Connell, 2007) within global research and publication entreprises. This bifurcation compels Global South researchers to speak the ‘global language’ that inadvertently ‘further remove their analyses from the actualities of their local contexts’ (Takayama, 2016, p. 22) and to prioritize theory development over responding to the practical needs of the communities they study. As a result, researchers extract data from the Global South to produce and reproduce knowledge established in the Global North – often perceived with greater conceptual and methodological validity – thus reinforcing unequal power dynamics (Connell, 2015).

As Global South scholars with various experiences in and affiliation with academic institutions in the Global North, the participants of this panel engage in reflexive dialogues to unpack how the colonial matrix of power have shaped our own knowledge production practices as well as to explore possibilities of transformation. We named this panel “selves as methods” because of the shared focus on our own educational and intellectual journeys as a means to understand and transform structures of power. Our endeavors echoes and further develops Xiang & Wu (2023)’s proposal of “self as method,” which invites individuals to explore the self to uncover the social structures undergirding personal experiences.

Paper 1 is based on a collaborative autoethnographic project among six transnational female Chinese scholars. It aims to unpack the asymmetric power relations and epistemic injustices that undergird the authors’ knowledge production practices and to identify strategies to strive toward pluriversality. Gathering in virtual circles regularly over six months, the authors examine their plural selves in relation to a spectrum of intellectual resources from traditional wisdoms to decolonial theories. Inspired by Xiang & Wu (2023)’s proposal of “self as method,” they develop through iterative dialogues the conceptual and methodological framework of “selves as methods,” which highlights the relational nature of selfhood – in contrast to the conception of self as independent agents with free will prevalent in Western discourses – as well as the reflexive and transformative potential of relational selfhood. Guided by this framework, the authors identify key relationships that shape their identities and knowledge production, tease out the power structures embedded in these relationships, and investigate strategies to foster pluriversality in global social science research paradigms and methodologies. Moreover, the “selves as methods” framework proposed in this paper serves as a shared inspiration for the other three papers in this panel.

Paper 2 is a reflection on the author’s journey of writing about education in marginalized migrant communities in China as both an insider and outsider, with a focus on her ongoing endeavors to apply the “Asia as Method” framework in her interpretation and theorization. Drawing inspirations from the “selves as methods” framework introduced in Paper 1, she analyzes her own positionality within transnational knowledge production entreprises as well as her various attempts to break away from the assumption of the West as the taken-for-granted frame of reference, searching for possibilities of knowledge production that center and empower the marginalized communities she studies.

Paper 3 is a dialogic reflection on a Chinese researcher’s experiences of engaging in a university-school partnership to improve the teaching of critical thinking through jiaoyan (教研, lit. teaching research) activities. The said researcher, one of the three co-authors of this paper, relied on the Western notion of deliberation – based on the work of Habermas, Dewey and Schwab – to guide his collaboration with school teachers. Nonetheless, he gradually realized that their de facto approach was perhaps closer to the Chinese conception of xieshang (协商, often translated as deliberation) grounded in ontological inter-relatedness and embedded in the notion of harmony, than to the Western notion of deliberation rooted in individuality and skepticism. Inspired by the “selves as methods” framework introduced in Paper 1, the three co-authors of this paper engages in reflexive dialogues to unapck the power and cultural dynamics undergirding the aforementioned collaboration and knowledge production process with the support of teaching videos, lesson plans, records of jiaoyan activities and interviews with participants.

Paper 4 is a reflection on the author’s experiences of conducting research and writing about sexual harassment in Chinese educational institutions. In her empirical research, she repeatedly found that Chinese educators and students’ understanding of and responses to sexual harassment are rooted in relationality, distinct from the dominant conception in English-language literatures. Her attempts to engage in this issue receive tremendous resistance both in China – where the topic is viewed as too contentious – and in the West – where her focus on local meaning-making is often interpretated as not critical enough. Through this reflexive exercise inspired by the “selves as methods” framework, she hopes to unpack the complex cultural and power dynamics undergirding her precarious engagement with this highly charged social issue and her shifting positionalities within global knowledge production enterprises, in search of possibilities of transformative dialogues.

Using “selves as methods” as conceptual framework, this panel highlights how so-called “universal” theories or knowledge often undermine the relevance of experiences outside the Global North. The authors of the four papers collaboratively and reflexively examine the social power structures shaping knowledge production, seeking possibilities for transformation and alternative points of reference. Our shared struggles resonate with efforts in other marginalized communities resisting and challenging the colonial matrix of power that upholds the supremacy of institutionalized theory over practice and Western-centric knowledge over indigenous ones, and perpetuates patriarchal and neoliberal norms of productivity. This panel thus calls for opportunities for building solidarity and forming alliances among marginalized scholars in the Global North and those based in the Global South.

Sub Unit

• East Asia SIG

Organizer

• Xin Xiang, Beijing Normal University

Chair

• jingjing lou, Beloit College

Individual Presentations

• Selves as Methods: Transnational Scholars’ Journey toward Pluriversality through Collaborative Autoethnography - jingjing lou, Beloit College; Jun Teng, 1.Beijing Normal University; Ting Wang, University of Canberra; Xin Xiang, Beijing Normal University; Yun You, East China Normal University; Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Asia as Method and the Reflection on Research in and about China’s Migrant Communities - Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Reconnecting with Chinese cultural and philosophical resources in education research and practice: xieshang jiaoyan (deliberative teaching research) as an example - Yun You, East China Normal University; Liang Cheng, Department of Education，East China Normal University; Jeremy Rappleye, The University of Hong Kong

• Understanding Sexual Harassment in the Ivory Tower in China: A Personal Journey over Two Decades - Ran Zhang, Peking University

Discussant

• Iveta Silova, Arizona State University