Anticolonialism and qualitative methods for culture-centered interventions

Abstract

In this essay, we a collective of Indigenous, Black, and migrant Global South scholars engaged in experiments with the culture-centered approach (CCA) draw on our lived experiences amidst struggles against land grab, neoliberal extractivism, and capitalist exploitation to outline a framework for qualitative methods as anticolonial politics. We begin by exploring the interplays of colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism that have shaped the origins and uses of qualitative methods toward serving extractive agendas of global capital. This critique serves as the basis for outlining the key principles of the CCA, turning to voice, storytelling, and embodied action as the basis for situating qualitative methods amidst anticolonial struggles that resist settler colonialism and extractive neoliberal neocolonialism. Through our review of diverse culture-centered interventions, we explore the roles of voice infrastructures in anticolonial resistance, outlining the contribution made by the CCA to decolonizing research methods by offering a theoretical-methodological framework for communication interventions for social justice.