Decolonizing Research
I mentioned in class that the first criticism of my thesis was that it was using a survey. Surveys, in the view of the critiquer, could never be decolonial. I also had us read in a previous class The Master’s Tools. Are surveys a tool of the master? How can something which is so baked-in to research methods even have its origins traced? I am of the opinion that the survey is not innately colonial, rather the boxes that they choose to place on surveys are colonial. If we must use the master’s tools, it’s all about how we use it. And you all know by now that I think arguing about the origins of things is kind of useless, rather we should simply look at problems and come up with solutions. I have made much progress in my field to decolonize linguistics research, freeing it from the white cishet norm. But my research will remain niche. And that is the problem with decolonization: it is viewed as radical, and therefore will be pushed to the margins of research as the groups we are attempting to liberate have been. An attempt of Digital Humanities is to make that decolonization more public, however Digital Humanities thus far has had difficulties bringing itself into the public eye. I won’t stop trying to decolonize my field, but I know that, as I often repeat, progress is incremental and we can’t burn it all down. Eventually we will exit the margins. It just takes time.
One Comment
Amanda Dunker (She/Her)
“If we must use the master’s tools, it’s all about how we use it.” Sometimes in these conversations about data and statistics and research, it’s like people think math itself is owned by the right.
I really struggle with this. I got my Master’s in Public Policy during President Obama’s first term. The program was statistics, economics, and political economy. I went to school in Chicago and he was bringing all these really smart people from Chicago with him to Washington. It was really formative for me to have this model of politics based on evidence instead of emotion. If you just collect the right data and explain it to people the right way, you’lll get good things done. This is the most reasonable human being that’s ever held office, and we’re all just going to reason our way through things now. I was definitely one of the people who looked at his Presidency and thought it meant something about how the world works. I know how stupid it was but it was such a shock and so destabilizing to be that wrong.
I think the thought process was something like this: the right always seems to get credit for rationality and the left are emotional fantasists. But I’m going to get good at economics and statistics and they aren’t going to be the only ones with those tools. Neoliberalism is about drawing absurd conclusions from classical economics, but economics is still a helpful tool for thinking about policy issues in a democracy. They are lying about the conclusions you can draw from these fields and I’ll be able to explain that to people. And I still think that way, like economic theory definitely suggests it is ridiculous to have private health care markets. But it doesn’t matter. They became more and more openly hysterical and it turns out people like that better than public figures who try to explain things to them.
On another note: you mentioned how difficult it is to change false beliefs. I took a class about belief formation and change and have been meaning to share some of the papers. I have this one handy:
Cian O’Mahony et al., “The Efficacy of Interventions in Reducing Belief in Conspiracy Theories: A Systematic Review,” PloS One 18, no. 4 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280902.