Jairo I Fúnez-Flores
Texas Tech University, Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty Member
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Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Decolonial Thought, Pensamiento decolonial, Narrative Inquiry, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Studies, and 78 moreOntological Turn, Critical Race Theory, Higher Education, Internationalization of higher education, Globalization, Social Movements, Student movements, Ontology, Political Ontology, Coloniality, Colonialidad, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Research, Philosophy of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Comparative & International Education, Southern Theory, Pós-Colonialidade E Descolonialidade, Decoloniality Thought, Latin American Studies, Education, Critical Theory, Narrative, Qualitative methodology, Qualitative Research, Qualitative Research (Education), Political Economy, Neoliberalism, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Cultural Theory, Social Theory, Latin America, Latin American History, Colonialism, Political Sociology, History, Critical and Cultural Theory, Urban Education, Critical Theory/Pedagogy, Critical Literacies, Youth Culture, Hip Hop Culture, Curriculum & Development, Paulo Freire, Neocolonialism, Neoliberalism and Education, Neoliberalismo, Post-Colonialism, Social movements and revolution, Social Movement, History of Students Movements, University, Marxism, Postcolonial Studies, Sociology of Education, International Education, Social Movements (Political Science), Antiglobalization Social Movements, Literary Criticism, Education Policy, Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Movimientos sociales, Social Sciences, Educación, Narrativas, Decolonization, Decolonialization, Descolonización, Decolonialidad, Space and Place, International Political Economy, Political Economy and History, Social Science, Philosophy, Cultural Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Ethnography, Postcolonial Literature, Postcolonial Theory, Decolonial Feminism, and Frantz Fanon edit
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Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies at Texas Tech University. His research wor... moreJairo I. Fúnez-Flores, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies at Texas Tech University. His research works at the intersections of sociocultural studies of education, curriculum studies, decolonial theory, and qualitative methodology. He has a particular interest in the ways in which Latin American student movements create alternative pedagogical spaces within and beyond educational institutions. Through critical ethnography his work interprets how student activists construct political identities, knowledges, pedagogies, and practices of resistance that unsettle neoliberal education reform. Jairo’s research also theorizes the geopolitics of curriculum and examines how curriculum reform perpetuates coloniality within the context of neoliberal globalization. His most recent work advances transgressive decolonial hermeneutics in activist education research and examines the conceptual and methodological points of convergence between the decolonial and ontological turn in social theory. edit
This paper examines the experiences of racialized PhD students in British elite universities. It is framed by Mills' (2007) conception of white ignorance and reflects on the power of whiteness that shapes everyday experiences in such... more
This paper examines the experiences of racialized PhD students in British elite universities. It is framed by Mills' (2007) conception of white ignorance and reflects on the power of whiteness that shapes everyday experiences in such places of privilege. For Mills, the production of racism relies on epistemological processes that produce ignorance, and which promote various ways of ignoring the histories and legacies of European colonialism. Research has shown that professors find it difficult to talk about racism and coloniality within higher education. Professors responses are important as they may affect the outcomes of conducting research for PhD students, yet there is less understanding of how racialized PhD students experience or address white ignorance. Using in‐depth interviews with 14 racialized PhD students, this paper critically examines the intertwined relationship between the coloniality of knowledge and white ignorance within elite universities in the United Kingdom. While universities have been regarded as “neutral” knowledge‐producing institutions, this study challenges the assumptions, interactions, and practices of higher education disciplines in the social sciences, namely anthropology and sociology. Based on the findings of this work, we argue that white ignorance is an epistemic strategy that justifies racial domination within and beyond the halls of academia.
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To better understand Latin American autonomous universities as well as the Longue Durée of the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, it is imperative to first examine the historical specificity of the region. Historical specificity,... more
To better understand Latin American autonomous universities as well as the Longue Durée of the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, it is imperative to first examine the historical specificity of the region. Historical specificity, in this case, is what decolonial scholars conceptualize as the colonial difference demarcating the region’s particularity (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). Latin America’s colonial difference is expressed through its spiritual, religious, political, economic, and educational institutions, as well as through the knowledges and subjectivities constituted therein. Conceptualizing the dialectical or, better yet, trialectical relationship between history (Lefebvre, 1991), biography, and social structure is what Mills (1959) referred to as the sociological imagination. It is the latter that enables one to analyze, critique, reimagine, and transform the social structures and institutions in place. This chapter engages in a decolonial sociological imagination to refuse the erasure of the region’s shared colonial past
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The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical... more
The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical perspective throughout to emphasize the varying diverging narrative paths this form of inquiry has taken. The intellectual history reviewed is not exhaustive but rather limited to a few scholars involved in developing narrative inquiry into a methodology and as a counter-narrative practice.
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Critical Theory, Sociology, Education, Narrative, Qualitative methodology, and 15 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Drama, Social Drama, Qualitative Research, Narrative Analysis, Narrative Theory, Qualitative Research Methods, Curriculum and Instruction, Narrative Inquiry, Counter-Storytelling, Counter Narratives, Counternarratives, and Counterstorytelling
This essay reviews and builds upon Aníbal Quijano's contribution to decolonial theory to sketch out what I refer to as the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, broadly understood as an imperial doctrine and a pedagogical mode of... more
This essay reviews and builds upon Aníbal Quijano's contribution to decolonial theory to sketch out what I refer to as the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum, broadly understood as an imperial doctrine and a pedagogical mode of domination aimed at producing a modern/colonial subjectivity. It argues that the geopolitics and coloniality of the curriculum reveal the relationship between geopolitical designs, colonialism, and curriculum, thereby contributing to the interrogation of how dominant ways of knowing are propagated discursively and pedagogically. The article focuses on how the geopolitics and coloniality of curriculum enable the reading, interpretation, and unsettling of curricular discourses and pedagogical practices reproducing Euro-Anglo-American ways of being (ontological violence), individualist ways of knowing (epistemic violence), and racialised affective grammars. It concludes by gesturing toward ways to think, be, act, relate, and do otherwise.
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Sociology of Education, Sociology of Knowledge, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, and 10 moreDecolonial Turn, Decolonial Thought, Anibal Quijano, Educational studies, Coloniality of Power, Decolonialidad, Sociology of the Education, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Pós-Colonialidade E Descolonialidade, and Decoloniality Thought
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Although decolonial thought from Latin America and the Caribbean is a multifaceted field of research, thought, and sociopolitical praxis, it is often interpreted monolithically. To refuse this tendency, we argue that it is imperative to... more
Although decolonial thought from Latin America and the Caribbean is a multifaceted field of research, thought, and sociopolitical praxis, it is often interpreted monolithically. To refuse this tendency, we argue that it is imperative to trace decolonial theory's intellectual genealogies and engage in transgressive decolonial hermeneutics to re-interpret texts (theories) according to their living socio-historical and geopolitical contexts. Following Stuart Hall's lead, we first sketch out the geopolitical and sociocultural exigencies that allow for theoretical movements to unfold, paying more attention to the geopolitical implications of thinking "from" Latin America and the Caribbean. Second, we address the ethical imperative of thinking "with" as we seriously engage in inter-epistemic dialogues to advance an ecology of decolonial knowledges and pedagogical practices born in struggle. Ultimately, this article situates decolonial discourses and practices according to the conditions that enable their praxis-oriented intellectual expression.
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In this article, I examine the conceptual and methodological points of convergence and divergence of two intellectual currents frequently referred to as the decolonial and ontological turns in social and anthropological theory. Salient... more
In this article, I examine the conceptual and methodological points of convergence and divergence of two intellectual currents frequently referred to as the decolonial and ontological turns in social and anthropological theory. Salient points considered are the ways both theoretical projects unsettle modernity's dominant ontological and epistemological foundations by seriously engaging the conceptual potential of thinking with (ethical dimension) alterity and from (geopolitical dimension) exteriority. I compare their subversive methodological contributions, examining, in particular, Enrique Dussel's analectical hermeneutic approach and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's ethnographic method of controlled equivocation. Lastly, I discuss how both theories and approaches complement each other's efforts to destabilize Western modernity's philosophical and anthropological foundations.
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This article draws on the epistemologies of the south, namely decolonial theory, to point to the analytical and interpretive limitations of northern theories of globalisation. It gestures toward decolonial globalisation studies to provide... more
This article draws on the epistemologies of the south, namely decolonial theory, to point to the analytical and interpretive limitations of northern theories of globalisation. It gestures toward decolonial globalisation studies to provide an alternative reading of global justice movements, including university student movements in Latin America. Moreover, it maintains that situating university student movements geopolitically provides a valuable way out of the theoretical limitations of critical globalisation studies informed by northern perspectives. By adopting a geopolitical perspective, decolonial globalisation studies unsettles and provincialises the central myth of modernity, which portrays the emergence of modern institutions and globalisation as endogenous European and Anglo-American phenomena subsequently diffused to the Global South. Finally, this article addresses the need for decolonial globalisation studies to ground its theorisation in alternative sites of knowledge production.
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Globalization, Higher Education, Neoliberalism, Decolonialization, Decolonial Turn, and 8 moreStudent movements, Decolonial Thought, Decolonialidad, Neoliberalism and Education, Pensamiento decolonial, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Pós-Colonialidade E Descolonialidade, and Decoloniality Thought
This chapter aims to advance transgressive decolonial hermeneutics (TDH) as a theoretical method in activist education research. Broadly speaking, TDH works at the intersections of decolonial, hermeneutic, and collective action theory. It... more
This chapter aims to advance transgressive decolonial hermeneutics (TDH) as a theoretical method in activist education research. Broadly speaking, TDH works at the intersections of decolonial, hermeneutic, and collective action theory. It surfaces from the critical ethnographic study I conducted in Honduras where I engaged in participant observation for 18 months in the university student movement. Although hermeneutics did not strictly form part of my research, the “multi-voiced interpretative praxis” (Fúnez-Flores, 2020, p. 154) inspired by Lincoln and Cannella (2009) and Santos’s (2018) interpretation of social movements as sites of knowledge production encouraged me to consider the ethico-political implications of interpretation. TDH thus evolved into a transgressive mode of interpretation entangled with social struggles. It contests the ontological and epistemological commitments and empirical methodological models of the natural sciences, namely as they are adopted paradigmatically in the human sciences. Further, it disrupts the idea that interpretation is a mode of discovering the meaning of texts and affirms rather that interpretation, understanding, reflection, and comprehension are modes of being and becoming within a living context.
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Critical Theory, Latin American Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, Higher Education, and 15 moreCritical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Hermeneutics, Curriculum Theory, Qualitative Research, Activist Ethnography, International Higher Education, Decolonial Turn, Student movements, Decolonial Thought, Sociology of Higher Education, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Curriculum Inquiry, and Critical Hermeneutics
This chapter addresses the relationship between modernity and the coloniality of being and knowing, and argues for a political ontological ethnographic approach to conceptualize “culture” as politically dynamic. This ethnographic approach... more
This chapter addresses the relationship between modernity and the coloniality of being and knowing, and argues for a political ontological ethnographic approach to conceptualize “culture” as politically dynamic. This ethnographic approach to the production of knowledge in educational contexts seeks to disrupt cultural depictions of inferiority, demythify modernity’s dominant narrative, discourses, and practices by engaging in a sociology of absence and emergence. A political ontological ethnographic approach carries many implications for education research that informs knowledge valued in K-12 contexts in that it underscores the ways in which “other” stories and enactments enter conflicting relationships in the politically charged institutional spaces of schools.
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Cultural Studies, Education, Ethnography, Postcolonial Studies, Qualitative methodology, and 15 moreCritical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Resistance (Social), Qualitative Research, Qualitative Research Methods, Cultural power and resistance, Curriculum and Instruction, Decolonial Thought, Decolonizing Methodologies, Culture and Modernity, Decolonialidad, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Pós-Colonialidade E Descolonialidade, and Decoloniality Thought
The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical... more
The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical perspective throughout to emphasize the varying diverging narrative paths this form of inquiry has taken. The intellectual history reviewed is not exhaustive but rather limited to a few scholars involved in developing narrative inquiry into a methodology and as a counter-narrative practice.
Research Interests:
Education, Narrative, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, and 12 moreCritical Race Theory, Social Drama, Qualitative Research, Narrative Analysis, Narrative Theory, Qualitative Research Methods, Curriculum and Instruction, Narrative Inquiry, Counter-Storytelling, Counter Narratives, Qualitative Research, Narrative Analysis, and Counterstorytelling
This paper briefly contextualizes the sociocultural, geo-historical, and political formation of universities in Latin America to situate contemporary higher education reform in the region. As an alternative to dominant theoretical... more
This paper briefly contextualizes the sociocultural, geo-historical, and political formation of universities in Latin America to situate contemporary higher education reform in the region. As an alternative to dominant theoretical frameworks, a decolonial theoretical perspective is used to understand how neoliberal education reform in Latin America reproduces the coloniality of power and knowledge. A political ontological approach is used to analyze the data collected from the Honduran university student movement’s Facebook page. This tentative analysis shows how the university student movement (MEU) transformed itself into a counter-structure and reconfigured the relations of power within the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH).
Research Interests:
Social Movements, Latin American Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, Higher Education, and 15 moreCritical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Comparative & International Education, History of higher education, Neoliberalism, Globalization And Higher Education, Educational reform, Higher Education Policy, Student movements, Decolonial Thought, Latin America, Internationalization of higher education, Decolonialidad, and Decoloniality Thought
Decolonial studies from Latin America is a vast and multifaceted field of research, thought, and sociopolitical praxis (Aquino Moreschi, 2013; Curiel, 2016; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015; Díaz Gómez, 2004; Espinosa-Miñoso, 2014; Leyva et al.,... more
Decolonial studies from Latin America is a vast and multifaceted field of research, thought, and sociopolitical praxis (Aquino Moreschi, 2013; Curiel, 2016; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015; Díaz Gómez, 2004; Espinosa-Miñoso, 2014; Leyva et al., 2015; Mariátegui, 1928/2007; Marcos, 2001; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Pacari, 2009). However, it has too often been critiqued and interpreted monolithically or, conversely, omitted entirely by North American academics relying predominantly on anglophone scholarship. This special issue builds upon the 2014 Educational Studies special issue, guest-edited by Stephanie L. Daza and Eve Tuck, which drew from several concepts advanced by Latin American decolonial scholars with the intent to “unsettle the boundaries of post-, de-, and anticolonial theory and practice” (Daza & Tuck, 2014, p. 310). Most of the articles, however, centered anticolonial and postcolonial North American scholarship informed by US-based and anglophone settler colonial frameworks (e.g., Calderón, 2014; Patel, 2014). Our special issue seeks to advance the contributions of this work and complicate the decolonial conversation by thinking from and with Indigenous, Black, and Mestizx discourses and praxes emerging from the Global South.
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This paper brings the Latin American decolonial and ontological theoretical turns in conversation. I begin with the critique the ontological and decolonial turn have received as precautionary red flags, which will be used throughout the... more
This paper brings the Latin American decolonial and ontological theoretical turns in conversation. I begin with the critique the ontological and decolonial turn have received as precautionary red flags, which will be used throughout the paper when necessary. I use the work of various scholars—some known more than others—from differing disciplines to find how these two theoretical turns converge and diverge in their understanding of modernity, ontology, and epistemology in relation to the political economic, sociocultural, and the ecological domain.
Research Interests:
Social Theory, Latin American Studies, Anthropology, Ontology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 15 moreModernity, Decolonialization, Cultural Anthropology, Decolonial Turn, Decolonial Thought, Latin America, Decolonizing Methodologies, Decolonization, Decolonialidad, Pensamiento decolonial, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, Ontological Turn, Pós-Colonialidade E Descolonialidade, Decoloniality Thought, and Colonialidad Del Poder
The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical... more
The article draws on Victor Turner’s (1980) heuristic concept of social drama to construct an academic drama between diverging intellectual genealogies. It reviews narrative inquiry’s intellectual history and uses a dramaturgical perspective throughout to emphasize the varying diverging narrative paths this form of inquiry has taken. The intellectual history reviewed is not exhaustive but rather limited to a few scholars involved in developing narrative inquiry into a methodology and as a counter-narrative practice.
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Each presenter retains copyright on the full-text paper. Repository users should follow legal and ethical practices in their use of repository material; permission to reuse material must be sought from the presenter, who owns copyright.... more
Each presenter retains copyright on the full-text paper. Repository users should follow legal and ethical practices in their use of repository material; permission to reuse material must be sought from the presenter, who owns copyright. Users should be aware of the .
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This paper works at the conceptual borders of space/place theory, social movement theory, and decolonial theory to provide a transdisciplinary understanding of student movements in Honduras. By working at the intersection of these... more
This paper works at the conceptual borders of space/place theory, social movement theory, and decolonial theory to provide a transdisciplinary understanding of student movements in Honduras. By working at the intersection of these literatures, I hope I can bring clarity to the ways in which student movements construct collective identities and knowledges that counter the neocolonial designs of the university. I situate the university as a space and place of contention in which student activists inscribe meanings, understandings, and experiences that make the university a place where curriculum is embodied in and through collective struggle. I narrate what I have observed and participated in at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) to offer a short account of student activists' lived experiences.