Epistemic hegemonies, Indigenous methodologies and the dialectic turn.

Abstract

This conceptual paper reflexively explores an emerging turn towards a dialectic engagement in the development of Indigenous methodologies, using insights from Bourdieu and Foucault in a deconstruction of discourses regarding hierarchies of positionalities, which are associated with the construction of epistemic authority. The paper draws on examples from the authors’ completed study with Indigenous communities in Costa Rica and Malaysia in exploring localized understandings of key concepts that may form a potentially fruitful terrain for further dialectic engagement. The challenges of this process are considered within the context of superior-inferior hierarchies of knowledge and being, as implicated in the colonial ‘Other’ versus the ‘Indigenous’ identity. The paper considers how the benefits of an interrogation of these discourses of the oppositional binary, create the conditions for the dialectical production of shared and expanded knowledge.