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Figure 2.1 clarified a lot for me.

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“It (imperialism) is also a complex ideology which had widespread cultural, intellectual, and technical expressions” (p. 40) This reminds me of Quijano’s theory of the Coloniality of Power, and Lugones’ theory of the Coloniality of Gender, and how systems of race and gender were introduced to indigenous populations via imperialism as a means of subjugation and extractivism.

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Writing and literacy= “superiority”

As I was reading this chapter, this is a concept that stood out to me, and that was because it marginalizes many indigenous cultures who did not have "writing" (or was destroyed) and it makes them seem as inferior.

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"Backgrounds can be liabilities"

As qual researchers, I think our background can be our greatest strength and allow us access to certain communities and allow us to be insiders.

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Hegemony People accept consent to internalize and are complicit in reproducing values and norms that are not in their own best interest hierarchical relationships are viewed as common sense normal and unchangeable rather than socially constructed.

Had a big discussion with my wife about the use of "indigenous" vs indian, and how in El Salvador you can not call anyone either one of these terms due to the perception that it represents backwardness and rudimentary.

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“Real power lies with those who design the tools—it always has”

Took me back to college years studying international development of 3rd world countries. Developing technology and final products always yield the most revenue, but what was produced in third world country were raw materials.

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Bhattacharya's explanation of uncertainty principle discrediting positivism shows a misunderstanding of that principle.

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Albert Memmi dismissed the indigenous society’s system of order by claiming: They were not fully human, they were not fully civilized enough to have systems, they were not literate, and their languages and modes of thought were inadequate. Whenever I read narratives like these, I get angry. Indigenous societies have been responsible for some of the earliest blueprints of what modern technology is today. To raid their homes, displace their communities while claiming superiority over them was done out of pure spite and egotism. This is why our history books are being rewritten to hide these ugly truths about the people who so-called assisted with establishing a new and better world.

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Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman both believed that social phenomena exist not only in the mind but also in the world, and that some reasonably stable relationships can be found among the idiosyncratic messiness of life (2014). The authors are saying that good research requires careful, patient attention. Research is a balance that allows us to make sense of the world and reveal patterns that contribute to more theoretical understandings.

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Warns against “force-fitting” data into a theory; instead, researchers should thoughtfully select frameworks that align with their paradigmatic stance and research goals.

Encourages reflexivity: being transparent about why a theory is chosen and how it shapes interpretations.

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Highlights flexibility and interpretive nature of qualitative research compared to quantitative approaches.

Calls for awareness of researcher positionality and the social, cultural, and historical contexts shaping research.

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Challenges the assumption that “objective” or “universal” theories are neutral; instead, they are deeply political and historically situated.

The chapter sets the foundation for rethinking how and why we do research, especially in contexts involving marginalized or colonized peoples.

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Reflexivity is central: researchers must be aware of how their positionality and paradigmatic commitments shape their work.

The chapter stresses paradigm fluidity — researchers may move between or combine paradigms rather than sticking rigidly to one.

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How would one distinguish between a narrative inquiry and an oral history? Is it the medium of communication (oral vs. written)? Is it the depth/length of the subject studied? For that matter, is the only difference between an interview study and a narrative inquiry how the conversation is directed?

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Under colonialism, Indigenous peoples have struggled against a Western view of history and yet been complicit with that view. We have often allowed our 'histories' to be told and have then become outsiders as we heard them being retold. Schooling is directly implicated in this process. Through the curriculum and its underlying theory of knowledge,  early schools redefined the world and where Indigenous peoples were positioned within the world.

Question: How does this change? Go to the local school board? Exert power over the Department of Education? If the teacher goes outside the approved curriculum, punishment may result.

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Axiology = the study of values, including ethics (right and wrong) and aesthetics (beauty and meaning).

Interpretation: This area of research appears challenging due to the subjective nature of values, which are often influenced by people’s traditions, customs, and societal accepted practices.

It asks questions like:

What is valuable in life?

What makes actions right or wrong?

What counts as beauty or meaning?

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I never quite understood when people in articles said this was a phenomenological study. However, Bhattacharya helped simplify the framework. It is forming meaning based on the structure of a phenomenon (experience). Overall, I appreciated how we were provided with Major Scholars within a particular school of thought.

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I appreciated Bhattacharya's Table 2.1 which helps organize the Paradigms and Purpose of Qualitative Inquiry. The categories of understand (interpretivism, Narrative Inquiry, Phenomenology), Interrogate (feminism, Marxism, and Critical Theory), and Deconstruct (postcolonial, poststructural, and Diaspora) help me visually categorize different frameworks of qualitative inquiry.

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term from Tracy’s (2024) that resonated with me was hegemony, which refers to “situations in which people accept, consent to, internalize, and are complicit in reproducing values and norms that are not in their own best interests,” (p. 60). The term sparked an idea for a research topic considering how student leadership positions contribute to or deconstruct the hegemonic institutional culture of who fits the mold of a student leadership position. I feel I have more to think through, but the wheels are spinning.

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Tuhiwai Smith (2022) states, “We believe that history is also about justice, that understanding history will enlighten our decisions about the future. Wrong. History is also about power.” (p. 37). I was listening to the Daily Wire episode on how President Trump’s administration is leveraging its power and influence to rewrite the history displayed at the Smithsonian. Regardless of your politics, the fact that one person can influence an institution as respected as the Smithsonian to rewrite history so that it aligns with their position is a symbol of power. A power that will impact how a society learns, interprets, and perpetuates a history that excludes the voices, experiences, and contributions of marginalized people, primarily, people of color. As researchers, we need to be aware of our power in writing history, knowledge, and theory. Do our words squander the experiences of our research subjects and rewrite their truths in ways that do not reflect their experiences from an intersectional perspective? This is something I will have to continue reflecting on throughout the course.

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Critical paradigm: “life is fundamentally mediated by power relations and that actions cannot be separated from the way knowledge is institutionalized and produced”

Everyday life is affected by resistance to or acceptance of power structures. Data collected in qualitative research is not outside of this relationship. Interpretation of qualitative data is shaped by the prevailing ideology of the researcher. From the Tuhiwai-Smith reading, this ideology is often colonial in nature and erases or favors certain voices.

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This chapter was incredibly eye-opening and reflective. It presented a different way of thinking in ways that were logical and systematic. It poised many thought-provoking questions and challenged my upbringing in ways that was refreshing and liberating. It helped put so much of what I have been experiencing and learning over the last decade in one place and into words that are cohesive and thought inspiring. The description of the “Other” and feminism throughout the chapter helped me understand my experiences over the last ten years.

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This chapter was a great overview of 4 major paradigms and 7 genres of qualitative research. It challenged me to think of how I naturally think and how I might shift between different paradigms in different aspects of my life. In my personal social life, I think I operate very strongly in an interpretive way while in my professional life I am more critical in trying to strengthen and improve my work while understanding the systems that are at work. In my academic life I think I tend to lean into positivist and (post)-positivist ways of thinking. It is also fun for me to engage in “post” lines of thinking to broaden my perspective, but it’s not a paradigm that I find useful in more serious and practical ways yet. The table on pages 66-67 will be especially helpful to me.

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What resonates with me most from this chapter, though, are the terms, “interpretive,” “critical,” “narrative inquiry,” and “verstehen.” In my estimation, the aforementioned four approaches are intrinsically linked – these approaches most closely align with how I foresee approaching my own work as a qualitative researcher. The truths of colonialism and imperialism, and the breadth of the harm that resulted for people of color, are still yet to be fully reconciled. Such reconciliation cannot happy effectively in the absence of empathy, or, “verstehen” (p. 57). I have long been a believer that empathy is a key requisite of social justice – the refusal to acknowledge, understand, and validate the reality of others’ lived experiences nullifies all pretense of care.

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Tuhiwai Smith (2021) opens the first chapter with a quote from Audre Lorde: “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 21). I have been wrestling with this idea often as of late, particularly in light of the current political climate in the United States. A question I have is whether we in this country are seeing the master’s house being dismantled by the master’s own tools. Racism, bigotry, white supremacy, and ethnocentrism are all tools of the oppressive master. These tools were employed for the explicit purpose of building this country, and have created systems of oppression and subjugation that are alive and well. And, yet, many people are wondering if we are beginning to see the demise of the nation as a direct result of the uprising of outward displays of racist ideology. As economic instability rises and people wake up to the realities of having voted against their own best interests, could the state of the nation, the direction it is moving, and the costliness of racism be an example of the master’s tools dismantling his own house? Just some food for thought!

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“The means by which these histories were stored was through their systems of knowledge. Many of these systems have since been reclassified as oral traditions rather than histories.”

Another way that language affects meaning. By excluding non-written stories as traditions, we (intentionally or not) exclude them from the idea of "history".

“Who is doing the writing is important in the politics of the Third World and African America, and indeed for Indigenous peoples; it is even more important in the politics of how these worlds are being represented ‘back to’ the West.”

How would this decision even be made? While image is important, isn't silencing Indigenous voices because they aren't saying the "right things" just another aspect of colonialism? You would removing voices because they don't fit the idea the group wants to project, which both gives a false impression of homogeneity and also shows another deference to whatever the prevailing power is.

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Tuhiwai Smith (2021) - Ch 1 Imperialism, History, Writing, and Theory

This is one of my favorite reads and I enjoyed re-reading it.

I understand that Imperialism, and specifically settler-colonialism, are predicated off of erasing Indigenous people.

This includes rendering Indigenous knowledge systems as “primitive”

I understand that Imperialism, epistemologically, is based on Enlightenment era thinking

This means that knowledges that are not rooted in Enlightenment era knowledge are considered as “unproductive” and “unworthy”

I understand that Post-Colonial does not mean that colonialism has ended, but rather that we live in a world that deals with the fallout of colonial missions.

I understand that views of history as totality are rooted in positivist and Eurocentric epistemologies

I understand that views of history as apolitical, Truthful, or unbiased allow for dominant narratives to be assumed as True and remain unchallenged

Implications for my work

As a scholar who works with Post-Colonial Theory and Settler-Colonial theory, the work of Smith is very relevant

I’ve employed Smith’s work to build my understanding of Post-Colonialism and Settler-Colonialism from Indigenous centered perspectives rather than solely relying on White interpretations of these theories

While Smith does not explicitly state that settler-colonialism and imperialism are uniquely Western or White phenomena, her work puts for the assumption imperialism and settler-colonialism are endemic to Whiteness

My work challenges this assumption by using the logics put forth by Smith and other decolonial scholars to identify and critique non-White/non-Western settler-colonial states like Turkey and Japan

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Tracy (2025) - Ch. 3 Paradigmatic reflections and qualitative research genres

Key Takeaways

This was a very fun read!

I understand that paradigms act as lenses shaped by ontology, epistemology, axiology, and methodology, and that researchers often move across paradigmatic boundaries rather than staying fixed in one.

I understand that positivist/post-positivist paradigms emphasize objectivity and triangulation, interpretive paradigms stress social construction and empathy, critical paradigms highlight power and transformation, and post paradigms reject singular truths in favor of multiplicity and marginalized ways of knowing.

I understand that qualitative genres: case study, grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenology, PAR, narrative/autoethnography, and arts-based research, each provide different ways of generating and representing knowledge but can overlap and complement one another.

I understand that choosing a paradigm or genre is less about rigid categories and more about reflexively asking which approach best addresses the research question and context.

Tools

Verstehen (interpretive paradigm) emphasizes empathy and understanding the world from participants’ perspectives.

The Ologies

Related to my research, settler-colonialism weaponizes each one to serve its goal

Ontology - The Nature of Reality/Existence

Erasure of Indigenous People

Epistemology - How We Know What We Know

Erasure of Indigenous Knowledge

Epistemicide

Axiology - What We Value and Why We Value It

Dehumanization of Indigenous Peoples

Methodology - How Do We Collect Information and Gather Data

Indigenous Knowledges are not “reliable” for data collection

Ethnography requires long-term immersion; ethnography of communication focuses on the rules of language and identity in communities.

Phenomenology aims to uncover the essence of lived experience

PAR frames participants as co-researchers, emphasizing collaboration and transformation.

Narrative inquiry and autoethnography use stories to construct meaning, identity, and reflexivity.

Arts-based research values sensory, embodied, and creative ways of knowing.

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·         Say:  “There is also, amongst Indigenous academics, the sneaking suspicion that the fashion of post-colonialism has become a strategy for reinscribing or reauthorizing the privileges of non-Indigenous academics because the field of ‘post-colonial’ discourse has been defined in ways which can still leave out Indigenous peoples, our ways of knowing and our current concerns,” (p.27).

o   Mean/Matter: This is interesting because in the Tracy text- post-colonialism stated to consider Indigenous ways of knowing- counter to what is being presented here. As Tuhiwai Smith continues, they look at the difference between intent and impact. While the intent to help might be present, the impact of actions still can have a negative effect and should not be ignored. It is important in my work to think about this. How might I be unintentionally negatively impacting those I am studying by not centering their voices and what matters to them?

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·         Say: “Even when people lie, exaggerate, and forget, narrative provides a window for understanding how people interpret a certain situation and create a reality that they, in turn, act upon,” (p.76).

o   Mean/Matter: This shook me. I think so often we are concerned with finding the “truth” that we do not stop and think about how at the end of the day, the truth does not matter because people act on what they consider to be the truth. I think about journalism and the importance of verifying what a source is saying. How does that come into play when doing research? I am still processing this.

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“Research is linked in all disciples to theory… Indigenous peoples have been in many ways, oppressed by theory” (Smith, p. 41).

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“Critical approaches are oriented toward investigation exploitation, unfairness, and false communication - and how cultural participants reaffirm, challenge,  or accommodate existing symmetrical power relations” (Tracy, p. 61, Kindle).

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Can I write in ways that resist erasure?

Can I theorize from the ground up, rooted in marginalized students’ realities?

Can I teach history as contested and relational, not as a universal truth?

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Postmodern and other “post” paradigms: Question the need for strict instruction, criteria for goodness, discuss the “death of data” (Denzin, 2013)

Imagine a world without data, a world without method, a world without a hegemonic politics of evidence...

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p.66-68, 72-73, 78-79, 86-91

I really wish that these had been the types of exercises given to me during my intro to theory courses because they are so well-thought-out as both a primer and a praxis for learners new to these schools of thought.

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P.23-24 This is such a nice way to conceptualize aspects to my research and writing process that I do not necessarily name/keyword.

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p.22 “The colonizer did not simply design an education system. They designed an education especially to destroy Indigenous cultures, value systems and appearance.”

Much of the power in this phrase for me resonates from 1. My experience working with my undergraduate faculty advisor on his anti-colonial praxis around the post-colonial conditions in the Caribbean –he would always remind me “nothing is ever ‘just’ or ‘simple’—and 2. Smith’s deployment of colonial grammar against itself to indicate that the education designed by the colonizer was not passive or neutral; instead, it was/is an active, mobile, and deliberate entity.

p.25 – the description of the third definition of imperialism (in the context of spirit (Geist) as applied to time/temporality (Sein)) reminds me of this recent interview with Lisa Lowe (author of The Intimacies of Four Continents) and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay:

Azoulay, A. A., Lowe, L., Caspari, M., & Daly, R. (2023). Against Imperial Knowledges: Lisa Lowe and Ariella Aïsha Azoulay in Conversation. Parallax, 29(2), 154-172.

See also the discussion late on p.26 and at the beginning of p.27

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p.59 – I love the way so many of these exercises are structured. They de-center the

researcher and force a sense of vulnerability and empathy, while still centering analysis.

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Tracy argues that "post" scholars posit that academic structures and writing conventions serve to limit marginalized and indigenous ways of knowing” (p. 62). Begs the question of why we still do these practices when we know they are bad. What can we do to avoid our complicity in their reproduction?

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after skimming, if you have any questions, comments, include them here

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after skimming, if you have any questions, comments include them here