RESEARCH AS RESPECTFUL INQUIRY
Richard Katz
SaskatchewanIndian Federated College
Mario Núñez-Molina
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez
The study of non-Western, nontraditional cultures calls for the development of a new research methodology. The predominant research paradigm for the social and physical sciences in Western culture is logical positivism. Its doctrine cannot adequately guide the study of cultures having ethnic, religious, cultural, racial or other characteristics that differ markedly from those of Western researchers because its monocultural bias creates an insensitivity to cultural diversity. Strictly speaking, logical positivism asserts that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge that describes and explains observable physical or social phenomena, verified by sensory experience. The problem with this approach is that its methods of investigation and verification may invalidate cultural experiences that have no sensory aspect and therefore are not easily detected and measured by its instruments. It tends to identify cultural phenomena, which in fact may be distinctly different, as recognizable instances of phenomena already studied. Unfamiliar phenomena may be classified and filed in the pigeonholes of the positivist model of the world just because a research paradigm designed to make them evident is not being employed (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Reasons & Rowan, 1981; St. Denis, 1989).
Fortunately, the positivist approach is not the only scientific method available to conduct culturally sensitive research (see Chapter 4; Hollway, 1989; St. Denis, 1989). Community-based participatory research, as one example, combines scientific investigation with education and community action. Such investigative techniques as description of individual experiences, surveys, interviews and document analysis render it especially effective in dealing with unfamiliar material emanating from culturally diverse people and communities. Participatory research differs markedly from the predominant research paradigm in its emphasis on the participation of the people being studied, acceptance of popular knowledge as valid, open deliberation of power and empowerment issues, education of participants about their situation, and political action. The logical positivist researcher might question the objectivity and validity of data generated under these conditions, however. Other alternatives to the predominant research paradigm are equally culturally sensitive, while also meeting the logical positivist requirement of being “scientific,” “empirical,” and “objective.” These adjectives, previously appropriated by proponents of logical positivism to describe its scientific methodology and to substantiate its claim as the only valid methodology, can now be applied to a variety of alternative research methodologies.
If the predominant research paradigm cannot meet the test of cultural sensitivity, what characteristics must a research paradigm have?
CHARACTERISTICS OF A CULTURALLY SENSITIVE RESEARCH APPROACH
The foundation of a research paradigm sensitive to cultural diversity is respect — respect by the researchers and research program for the uniqueness of each individual, each group, and each community in the research context being studied. Respect means going beyond recognizing differences in the demographics and behavior of individuals and groups in the community to appreciating the source of these differences in the community’s unique “experience of reality.” Traditional communities, often made up of indigenous peoples,2 especially experience a reality that is radically different from that of Western societies.
For traditional cultures, respect is a cornerstone of principled living. Rt. Noa, a Fijian elder, expresses the reason:
Respect is our most basic principle. We respect each other, always, because we are all creatures of God, just as we respect our traditions and our land, for they too come from our Creator.
To the degree that a research program is designed to respect the people and community being studied, a researcher can truly begin to understand their life and experienced reality. With respect, research becomes “research with” rather than “research on” people and communities; people and communities become partners in the research process, not objects of study. But without a foundation of respect, research inquiry can be an uncivil process whose outcome can be badly skewed research study results.
In traditional cultures, respect means truthfulness. Howard Luke, an Athabascan elder living in Alaska, talks about how he customarily transmits knowledge:
Before I speak, I think carefully about what I will say. And I don’t speak until I’m clear and know that what I’ll say is true to the best of my knowledge, true because I’ve experienced it. It’s my responsibility to tell only what I know — and no more — and to pass that knowledge on to others.
For Luke, being respectful means communicating only those words that exactly describe the truth of what he is thinking; he takes responsibility for making sure that, to the best of his ability, no miscommunication occurs. Of the listener on the other side of the transmission, he says
[I]t’s when I find a person who really wants to know, and is able to listen, that I wish to share what I know.
So, to transmit his knowledge, Luke needs a human receiver who has as much respect for the content of the communication as he has. Luke stresses that he does not answer questions when he believes that the questioner is not prepared to receive and deal with the answer.
Luke is describing how elders communicate; it is a process of inquiry, a traditional form of research based on respect. Its emphasis is on patient, careful listening to the message being communicated, because that is all the speaker is prepared, or willing, to share at that moment. For the speaker to say more would violate the truth as he sees it and his own standards of responsible behavior.
Contrast this inquiry method of eliciting information about a traditional culture to the logical positivist approach. In this methodology, a series of questions is formulated by the researcher outside of the research context, often without any intimate knowledge of the culture. The questions are designed to gather, even pry out, information. Not only is the methodology inappropriate to a traditional setting, it also does not fulfill the requirements of the research, that is, to elicit accurate information about a traditional culture.
Questioning without respect for the reality of the persons living in the traditional culture under study reveals its purpose as more to confirm the researcher’s own preconceptions, or hypotheses, than to discover what is actually being experienced.
Questions are not inappropriate, however. When researchers ask about a topic and they are responsive when the research participant does not wish to respond, the inquiry is respectful. For, as Luke pointed out, the research participant may feel the questioner is not prepared within himself to receive the response. It is the persistent, research-driven questioning so characteristic of the positivist approach that seems inherently disrespectful.
A culturally sensitive research paradigm must also offer a method that accurately explains the experienced reality of the culture being studied. In this new approach, descriptions of the experienced reality offered by the people living with it are valued over academic interpretations. Comparative frameworks are eschewed, at least until the phenomena being studied are clearly delineated. If this paradigm is to work, researchers must temporarily give up their personal worldviews in order to “hear” the worldview voiced by the traditional community (Katz, 1986). To do this requires them to be vulnerable–that is, to enter a state of ambiguity, flux and receptivity to others through the radical questioning, then suspension, of their personal points of view. In losing their accustomed sense of self and thereby experiencing vulnerability, they can allow the reality of others to be known (see Chapter 2). Culturally sensitive research paradigms are well suited to research in communities, because an individual or group’s experience of reality is developed in the context of community, and can even be said to define the boundaries of the community (Katz, 1986; Rubenstein et al., 1985).
The willingness of researchers to experience vulnerability seems intrinsic to field research, and perhaps to the research enterprise in general (Katz et al., 1986). The first author Richard Katz experienced his own vulnerability during a research study on community healing systems among the Zhun/twasi of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, Africa. Only after he was able to release his own culture’s worldview and accept his vulnerability did he begin to understand the culture of the Zhun/twasi (Katz, 1982a). One of Katz’s experiences of vulnerability came to him at a Zhun/twa dance, a ritual at the core of the community’s system of healing. He describes his experience as follows:
At this dance, I began to feel the n/um or “healing energy” boil inside me — just like the Zhun/twasi describe it happened to them before they are able to heal. I was scared — just like the Zhun/twasi say they feel — because the n/um is hot and painful. I was also scared because I felt out of my world and into their world — and alone in that change. But then I realized that my world was now theirs — and they were helping me as they always help each other. (Katz, 1982a)
Experiencing the Zhun/twa experience of reality made understanding it easier.
I was never sure what actually happened that time, but I now knew that n/um was, as the Zhun/twasi say, a “real thing,” not just a metaphor or some psychological process. I also knew the depth of the community’s support. (Katz, 1982a)
The effect of Katz’s experience of vulnerability on his research is probably most remarkable.
After that dance, my research opened up to new directions of understanding. For example, I learned how the community guides the individual’s transitioning through fear toward healing, and in that, how the community, by helping healers, heals itself. (Katz, 1982a)
Katz would attest that abandoning one’s worldview and opening oneself to the worldview of the culture under study brings new material unavailable by other means.
Vulnerability is a very effective research approach.
RESPECTFUL METHODOLOGY
We have been discussing the conditions necessary for a research methodology to be considered culturally sensitive. Now let us look at one methodology that has been developed to operate within the culturally sensitive research paradigm, called “research as a ritual of transformation” (Katz et al., 1986). This methodology involves four elements: (a) the experience of reality of the community; (b) the experience of vulnerability of the researchers, which opens them to their own and the community’s reality; (c) the interaction between researchers and the community, often creating a condition of multiply experienced realities; (d) and the transformation occurring in both researchers and the community, which results in a research product that serves the community’s aims. Specific procedures for putting this methodology into practice have been developed, ones that stimulate researchers’ “moments of vulnerability” and enhance their ability to reflect on these moments. When researchers accept that vulnerability is necessary to the research process and allow themselves to experience it, their transformation is usually noted by community members. They are likely to be invited into the community at that point and given the opportunity to live the reality of the culture from inside. This experience deepens their understanding of the culture, thereby increasing the validity of the research effort as a whole (Katz et al., 1986).
Research as a ritual of transformation suggests that substantive differences between cultures must be appreciated and not seen as deviations from the norm or explained away using models for interpreting ethnic experience. For example, some researchers studying Espiritisimo, a community healing system practised in both Puerto Rico and the United States (see Chapter 11; Harwood, 1977; Nunez-Molina, 1987), have analyzed spirit possession, the most important ritual in Espiritisimo, as a form of psychological disturbance or as “regression and dissociation in the service of the ego.” This kind of analysis prevents a full understanding of spirit possession because it fails to consider its meaning within Espiritisimo. In point of fact, what spirit possession seems to do is help spiritist healers and clients connect to a transcendental realm where healing resources are found and shared. This is a more accurate interpretation of the same facts, one not possible without a respectful understanding of the culture.
The second author Mario Nunez-Molina had an experience of vulnerability during his research on Espiritisimo that allowed him to understand the system more fully (Nunez-Molina, 1987). What follows is his account of that experience during a spiritist meeting:
Dona Gela, a Puerto Rican healer, is known in the community for her “spiritual injections.” I talked with several of Dona Gela’s clients and they felt as if they had been injected with a needle when she touched a part of their bodies with her finger. My initial reaction was to interpret “spiritual injections” as something produced by suggestion or by the use of some object. By thinking along these lines, I was not respecting the reality of the clients and not trusting Dona Gela. I decided to observe Dona Gela very carefully when she was working with clients in order to see if she was carrying something in her hands. She “injected” several people in front of me and I could not see anything in her hands or fingers.
One day, when I was doing participant observation at Dona Gela’s home, I had an experience that changed my perception about the reality of the “spiritual injections.” After having worked with two clients, she looked at me and said: “You are very tired. You are working too much.” She asked me to stand up in front of her and began to massage my back and stomach. Suddenly, I felt as if I had been injected in my stomach by a small needle.
At that moment I tried to deny the experience, thinking that I was imagining it. However, after a few seconds, I felt another injection, but this time, it was of a stronger intensity. My mind was telling me: “You are a researcher. Keep your objectivity.” Then Dona Gela took one of my arms and she pressed gently with one of her fingers on the middle of it. At this moment, I had to move a little from her because the sensation that I felt was as if I had been injected with a bigger needle.
It was kind of painful. I told Dona Gela: “These injections are too strong.” Everybody in the room began to laugh and Dona Gela smiled at me, continuing her massage. When she finished, I looked at my stomach and arm, and I saw three small red points at the places in my body where I was “injected”.
Nunez-Molina’s willingness to experience vulnerability and then participate in the community experience contributed directly to the development of a better relationship with his research participants, Dona Gela and her clients, and a more accurate and valid understanding of their experienced reality.
As researchers accept vulnerability, insight into the community becomes available and the research increases its validity. As responsibility for the research becomes shared between the researcher and the community, both community and researcher are empowered. As vulnerability becomes a valued part of research, the conduct of research moves farther away from the counterproductive emphasis on power and control of conventional research.
Beginning a research program on a foundation of respect makes the experience of vulnerability almost inevitable for researchers. Respecting research participants means that researchers give up comfortable perceptions and preconceptions, and become vulnerable. In becoming vulnerable, researchers are able to understand. Only then can the people being studied begin to speak. And only then does research, as a truthful depiction of persons and places often different from our own experience, begin to blossom.