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Epistemology and Moral Economies of Difference: Transforming Social Research
Abstract
Colonialism’s incitement to difference threads through the historical and intellectual formation of academic institutions. How are today’s standards for scholarship compromised by methodologies and methods that are entwined with colonial productions of difference? My analysis begins with a brief consideration of colonialism’s social and intellectual projects, most particularly, I attend to some of their systematic productions of belonging and erasure. I then demonstrate how the power of coloniality extends through the hegemonic practices that define social science scholarship to (re)produce systematic erasures that continue to normalize particular forms of belonging and exclusion. My analysis illustrates that even when research practices have purportedly progressive aims, they can reproduce hegemonic relations of power through the ordinary constraints of epistemic foundations. The goal of this article is to provide analyses and insights that contribute to more globally inclusive intellectual environments, to a more diverse range of epistemologies, and to more effective studies of power and privilege. I conclude by considering decolonial strategies to build inclusive global communities of scholars and to transform our epistemic foundations of research.
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