080071 VU B330 Specialised Methodology: Collaborative knowledge production and (de)colonial ethnography (2024S)

In the 1980s, questions of representation and the call for a decolonization of existing knowledge systems and ways of thinking dominated the writing culture debate. This led to a significant and ongoing shift in cultural studies and anthropology: researchers are increasingly grappling with questions of representation, positionality and power inequalities in the researcher-researched relationship. Nevertheless, within "dominant anthropology" (Restrepo & Escobar 2005), theoretical references remain Eurocentric and methodologically a subject-object relationship is often perpetuated. In this seminar, we will address questions of what forms of transformative knowledge production are conceivable, whether and how Eurocentric approaches can be overcome and how an approach to a decolonial knowledge practice can be developed. Following on from current debates that advocate a restructuring of (Eurocentric) thinking and methodological repositioning, collaborations with actors in the field in particular are experiencing an upswing in ethnographic knowledge production. The aim is to reveal and reduce power asymmetries in the research process and to create a bridge between the knowledge fields of activism and science by means of a "reflexive activist scientificity" (Hamm 2013). In the seminar, we will therefore focus on various forms of collaboration: including research subjects in the process of knowledge generation as research partners, joint authorship, collaboratively negotiated representation strategies, etc.

Learning objectives:
The seminar provides an overview of current methodological, ethical and epistemological discussions of (de)colonial knowledge practice. Central to this is the joint process of reflection and discussion in the seminar plenary and in small groups. After successful completion of the course, the possibilities and limits of collaborations in ethnographic research can be discussed and basic approaches to (de)colonizing ethnography can be reflected upon.

Methods:
The content of the course will be developed through the guided reading of the book "Decolonizing Ethnography. Undocumented immigrants and new directions in Social Science" (Alonso Bejarano, López Juárez, Mijangos García & Goldstein 2019) and discussed in plenary sessions. Contextualization takes place through inputs from the lecturers based on relevant literature and through in-depth discussion in working groups and empirical exercises. A theoretical examination of (de)colonizing approaches is carried out by means of a reading note.
Accompanied reading takes place via the "Perusall" platform (https://perusall.com).