Introduction
Scholars have noted that it is almost impossible for us—non-Indigenous qualitative researchers—to deny or abandon our past experiences and values while conducting a study and/or writing about the same to represent cultural groups or spaces (
Bogdan & Biklen, 1998;
Ermine, 2000;
Mantzoukas, 2004). Therefore, scholars have argued in favor of developing critical consciousness within ourselves, so that we can potentially (i) reduce our ethnocentrism and cultural baggage in order to better understand contextual realities and situated power dynamics, (ii) become cognizant about problems or possibilities of misrepresentation, and (iii) thereby, create avenues for social equality and emancipation (
Aluwihare-Samaranayake, 2012;
Hooks, 2000). By reflexively recognizing nuances of contextual dynamics and reflecting on our unearned privileges,
De la Garza (2014) argued that it is crucial to include research participants to guide as well as to contribute in designing and conducting qualitative studies.
Palaganas, Sanchez, Molintas, Visitacion, and Caricativo (2017) noted that such an embracement of reflexivity is a journey of both learning and unlearning.
Loppie (2007) opined that we (non-Indigenous researchers) need to be prepared for (re)learning from local and Indigenous realities and principles by going above and beyond West-centric approaches toward ensuring plurality of epistemologies and ways of knowing.
Denzin, Lincoln, and Giardina (2006) called for deconstructing existing ways of doing scholarships and exploring approaches to privilege local and Indigenous voices, practices, and knowledge.
Such unlearning and relearning attempts do not deny or dismiss the importance of systematic and/or institutional learning and practices of qualitative research (
Kwame, 2017;
Tracy, 2010), but they seek to add values to ever-emerging qualitative scholarship to better understand the nuanced and hidden aspects of participants’ knowledge, articulations (or silences), and activities. For more than a decade, I regularly visited underserved Indigenous
1 spaces of eastern India to conduct qualitative studies. As many of the studies had action components, in most of the studies my role was of a participant observer. For instance, with active participation and inputs of Indigenous communities in three locations of rural eastern India, we (the villagers and I) co-constructed a mini hospital and a library, organized a grassroots innovation initiative, and codesigned culturally/communicatively appropriate computer interfaces to bridge situated digital divide. In other words, all the research projects were community-driven, where the villagers made collective decisions to own, lead, and implement their initiatives. This article documents examples and reflections from my aforementioned field research experiences and discusses the roles and relevance of unlearning, co-learning, and relearning in conducting qualitative studies in marginalized contexts of the global South
2.
Literature Review
Smith (2013) argued that the marginalized populations have been historically denied the opportunity to be the owner and the creator of their cultural practices and knowledge productions, as evident by the fact that the West had rejected Indigenous people and their alternate ways of knowing. Challenging such dominant intentions, she opined that rewriting history, reclaiming knowledge, and refighting rights are necessary to decenter the West and their hegemonic desires and acts of claiming ownership of singular (or dominant) ways of knowing (
Smith, 2013). It is therefore the need of the hour to reflexively engage with other knowledge production avenues, especially with underrepresented voices and epistemologies, which have systematically experienced delegitimization and erasures (
Kwame, 2017). However, according to these scholars, resisting the global North’s ethnocentric intents does not mean absolute rejection of Western theories and knowledge; rather, it refers to the production of knowledge by centering Indigenous values, worldviews, and concerns (
Smith, 2013). Scholars have also emphasized that local and Indigenous people have adequate contextual knowledge and deep insights about their lived realities and their own communities (
Palaganas, Sanchez, Molintas, Visitacion, & Caricativo, 2017). Critical scholars therefore remind us that we (non-Indigenous qualitative researchers) need to privilege and foreground subjectivities and knowledge produced by the marginalized communities of the global South (
Denzin, 2017).
Philosophies of the global South fundamentally argue in favor of epistemological diversity and a plural form of emancipation (
Santos, 2015). Epistemologies and praxis of the world, according to
Santos (2012), is greater than Western understandings; therefore, he argued that to advance global knowledge, it is important to transform the knowledge production processes as well as foreground alternate ways of knowing (
Santos, 2015). In other words, it is crucial to ensure ecology of knowledge, where ignorance will not be celebrated, and more than one form of knowledge will be recognized and respected. In order to reestablish and reclaim epistemological diversity at the margins, it is necessary to recognize and represent distinct modes of being, alternate viewpoints, values, and interaction opportunities (
Smith, 2013). Thus, exploring ways for overcoming and minimizing epistemological violence and delegitimization of Indigenous knowledge is foundational to unearth newer theoretical avenues as well as to build possibilities of social change. Moreover, reflexive engagement at the margins is potentially instrumental in transforming the life, lens, and epistemological foundation of many of us, the non-Indigenous qualitative researchers (
Denzin, 2017).
Unlearning
Unlearning can be defined as critical examination of knowledge or concepts learnt in the past toward exploring scopes and avenues for new learning (
Pighin & Marzona, 2011). Scholars have opined that past practice, knowledge, or beliefs oftentimes constitute formidable barriers to learning new behaviors, ideas, or actions (
Baxter, 2000;
Becker, 2010;
Duffy, 2003). The practice of questioning West-centric assumptions and unlearning dominant approaches is relevant in marginalized contexts of the global South where underserved populations experience great oppressions and uncertainties, unfavorable sociopolitical realities, and oftentimes follow informal/unconventional lifestyles (
La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1999;
Zahra, Abdelgawad, & Tsang, 2011).
Co-Learning
Co-learning
3 is a process of collaborative learning
with and
in grassroots communities toward co-constructing culturally meaningful knowledge and opening up avenues for social equality (
Barr, Freeth, Hammick, Koppel, & Reeves, 2005;
Rutherford, 2011). Such mutual cocreation fundamentally opposes acts and/or attempts of appropriating culture and knowledge of underserved communities (
Curry & Cunningham, 2000). Conceptualizing the participants as “knowledge makers, not simply as knowledge consumers” (
Curry & Cunningham, 2000, p. 76), co-learning process calls for an active and inclusive involvement from the margins in addressing issues of importance to underserved stakeholders (
Rutherford, 2011). Critically examining our own ethnocentrism is one of the precursors of the co-learning process, particularly when such cogeneration meant to address conditions of marginalization and foster collective and synergic efforts from the below amid limited material and symbolic resources (
Curry & Cunningham, 2000).
Relearning
Intertwined with unlearning and co-learning process, the relearning efforts are grounded in gaining and embodying new knowledge or ways of seeing (
Pighin & Marzona, 2011;
Tsang & Zahra, 2008). Conceptualizing it as a “transformative” process, scholars have noted that relearning opens up possibilities of coevolution as well as sociopolitical and cultural change (
Leal-Rodríguez, Eldridge, Roldán, Leal-Millán, & Ortega-Gutiérrez, 2015;
Yang, Chou, & Chiu, 2014).
Attending to critical scholars’ call for sociopolitical and cultural consciousness raising, an integrated effort espousing the principles of unlearning, co-learning, and relearning potentially enhances our contextual understanding, broadens horizons, and fosters enriched awareness (
Åberg et al., 2017). Such a “learning to learn” approach, according to
Spivak (2002), is a precursor to being cognizant about situated social–political realities and suspending one’s belief that “one is indispensable, better, or culturally superior…it is resisting the temptation of projecting oneself or one’s world onto the Other” (p. 6). Contextual (re)learnings from below not only make us aware about our unearned privileges and vulnerabilities in our acts of representations of marginalities (
Kapoor, 2004) but also help problematize our conceptualizations about processes such as “participation” and “dialogue” in the context of ethnographic research (
Andreotti, 2007).
Context
Many underserved spaces of the global South are still underresearched, including the rural Indigenous spaces of eastern India. A limited knowledge (including sparse information from published articles and public records) about underrepresented communities and spaces due to geographical isolation and lack of connectivity oftentimes leads us (non-Indigenous researchers and mainstream populations) to stereotype and generalize, which further marginalizes the underserved populations. Apart from physical remoteness, cultural and communicative barriers also play important roles in meaningfully interacting and researching in those spaces. Some of the barriers I experienced are my ethnocentrism and preconceived baggage, trust building aspects, literacy- and language-related barriers, cautious skepticism from within the communities (including deference effects and muteness), lack of access to structural resources (e.g., technological resources such as Internet).
Given my sociocultural identities and privileges (i.e., middle-class, Indian male, educated in a western university, patriarchal elite from an urban society, and symbolized legitimacy as a “knower”), I largely remained as an outsider to the community members. Past oppressions and exploitations of rural and Indigenous communities have been historically associated with my embodied identities and privileges. A substantial part of my childhood was spent in villages (non-Indigenous) of eastern India where I got the opportunity to regularly interact (e.g., play, visit homes) with
dalit 4 children and families. I was fluent in some of the major Indic languages (including, Hindi and Bengali) and their regional dialects (a few of the dialects have indigenous words/vocabulary); later, I learnt to converse (beginner-level proficiency) in some eastern Indian Indigenous languages. Consistent encouragement from my family for doing socially committed work gradually helped shape my worldview and consciousness as well as prepared me to conduct research toward potentially improving the lives of the underserved populations. Finally, when I was pursuing my master’s degree, I strongly felt the necessity to work with the underprivileged section of the society, which eventually become one of the research agendas and primary missions of my life. My academic journey began with engineering studies; however, I gradually became inclined and interested in studying culture and communication to understand the nuances of social and political processes, particularly in marginalized contexts. In a way, this was a journey of self-introspection toward achieving reflexivity. When connecting the dots retrospectively, I realized that the framework of unlearning, relearning, and co-learning consistently and subconsciously guided me throughout the journey.
Discussion
In hegemonic depictions, local and Indigenous knowledge largely remain invisible, nonexistent, and/or illegitimate; consequently, alternative knowledge and epistemologies from the global South consistently disappears through the process of deliberate destruction of culture (
Santos, 2016;
Shiva, 1993). Scholars have noted that reflexively listening to, engaging with, recognizing, and seeking to legitimize new knowledge could open up avenues for social transformation (
Kwame, 2017). To represent local perspectives, contexts, and realities better, developing our reflexive understandings of limitations of
etic knowledge productions as well as reducing the gaps between
emic and
etic perspectives is crucial (
Markee, 2012). Instead of portraying and/or stereotyping underserved Indigenous populations, their voices and agencies from a deficit perspective (i.e., marginalized population are lacking agency or are subjects needing control and refinement), reflexive engagement at the margins potentially makes our qualitative research journeys less judgmental and a matter of responsibility and duty.
While conducting field research, embracing previously acquired formal knowledge or learning, I oftentimes felt that my approaches (learnt in class) were inadequate to understand the nuances of contextual complexities; such inadequacies also created learning barriers and conceptual conflicts that affected the quality of research (more specifically data collection) process. I also noticed that the two knowledge systems or worldviews (e.g., academic/institutionalized and traditional/Indigenous) often seemed incompatible; for instance, scholars have noted that many a time, the villagers became skeptical, kept mum, or exhibited deference effects as a consequence of epistemic barriers (
Bernard, 2006;
Dutta, 2018). Therefore, unlearning was the first step for me in reorienting myself, whereas co-learning and relearning marked the process of rediscovering the marginalized contexts. Such a journey, to me, was potentially inclusive and allowed us to cocreate mutually agreeable/understandable avenues to communicate with and/or represent underserved realities.
In my research journey, I also realized that even a tiny residue of preconceived notions and unexamined assumptions could affect the process of reflexive understandings and research interactions. More specifically, being cognizant about the slightest sense of superiority, examining critically the societal sense of normativity (and so-called deviations thereof), and dismantling the very idea of perceiving hegemonic/West-centric interventions as panacea to local problems marked the beginning of unlearning journey for me.
Conducting qualitative research by embracing elements of action research, particularly in the underserved contexts (i.e., with limited availability of, and seeking to create access to resources), the process of co-learning (along with unlearning) is both edifying and challenging for me as a participant observer. In the co-learning engagements, (i) learning from external (as well as mediated) examples (especially when community members and researchers have limited or no knowledge/experience about things/processes/phenomena), (ii) learning by iterating and by doing (especially when at least a few community members or researchers have some ideas/experiences trying new things), and (iii) learning through dialogue/deliberation and brainstorming (particularly when the community members and researchers are debating or deliberating to improve/build something) open up new possibilities of mutual learning as well as meaningfully addressing situated needs and issues.
While unlearning calls for interrogating our presumptions and privileges, the process of relearning provides me a renewed vision, which helps me to discover new cultural alphabets and new depths or dimensions in situated practices, sensibilities, and epistemologies (
Klein, 2008). In addition, an informed understanding about (i) rationale for Indigenous decision-making practices and priorities, (ii) local cultural heritage and aesthetics, and (iii) nuances of Indigenous communication and silences, and so on (
Denzin, Lincoln, & Giardina, 2006) open up newer avenues for me to potentially enrich and thicken ethnographic descriptions. In a way, such engagements potentially resurface knowledge/perspectives that usually remain invisible/hidden (
Pighin & Marzona, 2011) and help me build solidarity with underserved populations as well as rediscover my blind spots/vulnerabilities regarding power and representational matters (
Andreotti, 2007).
Thus, a combination of unlearning, co-learning, and relearning helped me in overcoming tendencies to subscribe to a single story or perspective in an uninformed way. Such engagements also guided me to experientially acquire more nuanced understanding of lived realities and dynamics at the margins. In a journey together, community members and I as coresearchers not only learn and share knowledge with each other but also try to cocreate avenues to address local issues in a collegial way. In other words, such efforts help build credibility and trust in research contexts, as well as aid in potentially reducing power disparities in the process of knowledge creation and thus contribute to achieving more rigorous accounts and meaningful representations of Indigenous cultures and contexts.
Therefore, in underserved contexts of the global South, the unlearning, co-learning, and relearning (UCR) approach could contribute to advancing current knowledge through bringing about epistemological ecology and transformative plurality. Embodying intercultural sensibilities and by favoring interactions and exchanges of various situated knowledge, the approach can create possibilities for mutual learning and enriched cultural understanding; such processes not only strengthen the relationship and alliances between Indigenous and exogenous stakeholders but also pave avenues toward ensuring social justice, human dignity and decency (
Santos, 2016).
There are many under-researched underserved contexts in the global South, which are diverse in terms of purposes, approaches, and goals, and they are interdisciplinary in some cases. The framework of unlearning–co-learning–relearning can be used in many such scenarios with varying degree of applicability to prepare ourselves, to innovate collegially, and to discover novel attributes of situated dynamics, for example, to understand the complexities of under-researched contexts, populations and their situations/discriminations in terms of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other geopolitical issues. Finally, such engagements potentially influence and transform the lives of the inquirer, and therefore, are foundational in creating avenues for transformative researches and in imagining a model of social change (
Denzin, 2017).