(Re)Imagining the Ethics of Knowledge Creation: Moving Toward Loving and Undisciplined, Refusal-Oriented Community-Based Participatory Research

In this article, I build on decolonizing and participatory methodologies in order to unsettle the limitations of institutional ethics frameworks and to (re)imagine the parameters of ethical conduct in sociological research. Foregrounding the interconnections between ethics, epistemology, methodology, and politics, I interweave a vision of loving and undisciplined community-based participatory research (CBPR), grounded in decolonial refusal as both a theoretical and a practical orientation. Specifically, I argue that refusal-oriented CBPR may disturb the prevailing compliance with colonizing logics in knowledge co-creation and create space for engaging historically marginalized communities more deliberately in the research process. Furthermore, I propose that by refusing CBPR's own decolonizing claims—through active negotiation of both its decolonizing and colonizing aspects—researchers may use CBPR to foster critically engaged, ethical practice and offer insights for other methodologies, where such negotiations may be less transparent. In doing so, I contribute to current debates within Germany on embedding ethics and ethical reflexivity into the everyday practices of sociological research.