The Search for Emerging Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research

Many non-Western and non-English-speaking scholars express the need for supporting a methodological approach that foregrounds the voices of nationals and locals (or indigenous peoples). Supporting this stance, Western scholars will reach out in democratic and liberatory ways that effect research collaboration, helping to foster social justice and locally desired change. This article supports this search via presenting some methodological strategies culled from six different cases of cross-cultural and cross-language research in which both Western and non-Western scholars were involved and/or collaborated. A comparative study of the inquiries themselves, with follow-up interviews with their U.S.-based authors, is the strategy that has been chosen to respond to this search for additional, emerging methodological and narrative approaches to cross-cultural/cross-national research that is useful to both local and Western scholars equally.