Using mixed methods to decolonize the study of Cherokee and West African "Civilizing" processes / Dr. Gnimbin A. Ouattara.
The goal of this case study is to demonstrate to students how to plan and execute advanced undergraduate research of missionary sources in ways that will allow them to identify the voice or agency of the so-called people "outside of the documentary record," as Thomas Spear, editor of the O...
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| Format: | Ebook |
| Language: | English |
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London :
SAGE Publications Ltd,
2024.
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| Series: | SAGE Research methods: diversifying and decolonizing research
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | SAGE |
| Summary: | The goal of this case study is to demonstrate to students how to plan and execute advanced undergraduate research of missionary sources in ways that will allow them to identify the voice or agency of the so-called people "outside of the documentary record," as Thomas Spear, editor of the Oxford encyclopedia of African historiography: Methods and sources, put it. This concept refers to Indigenous peoples who, contrary to Europeans, did not independently leave written documents behind for us to study. This case study focuses on two stages of my research, which used mixed methods of written and oral history, when I investigated the parallel and assertive agency of Cherokees and West Africans during their respective "civilizing"-education-processes in the nineteenth century. I explain how to decolonize this kind of research and analyze missionary sources with the purpose of identifying the voices of the natives supposedly absent from these records. Because these records tend to be located in Western archives, Indigenous researchers must exert a special effort to reach them as well as an unusual technique to read them to uncover the hidden voices of the "civilized" natives. I therefore encourage Indigenous as well as Western students to seek these sources without fear of bias if they use my methodology of parallel agency. I also urge them to combine written and oral colonial archives about Indigenous communities in their research. Finally, wherever possible, I suggest a comparative transnational study of the natives that were the object of Western civilizing missions. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| ISBN: | 9781529689785 1529689783 |