Research with communities, not on them. Challenge extractive habits and the assumption that Western knowledge is the default.
- +Fits Standpoint Epistemology, Post-structuralist Epistemology, Feminist Epistemology
- –Tension with Positivist Epistemology
Key thinkers: Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Walter Mignolo, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
The longer story
Whose knowledge serves whose interests? Decolonial values challenge extractive research—helicopter academics who land in communities, take data, and disappear. Linda Tuhiwai Smith's 'Decolonizing Methodologies' became essential reading because it named what Indigenous communities knew: research has been a tool of colonialism. The answer isn't to stop researching but to transform relationships—community governance, knowledge sovereignty, genuine reciprocity. If you're working with Indigenous knowledge, Global South contexts, or any community that's been 'researched to death,' you need to confront this history and do something different.