Chapter 6 : Methodology
6.2 Location of research argument and the case for multi-paradigm
critical ontology only allows certain kind of perspectival pluralism and knowledge positions to be articulated (Scheurich and Young, 1997). Critical researchers working on social justice issues on identities and belonging have noted, that, historically
marginal groups have been excluded on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, social class, queerness and religion. One particular reason, for marginal groups’ exclusion has been the theoretical, ontological and epistemic mono-logicality and denial of “polysemy” (Kincheloe, 2005; pp. 327-328), in conceiving and conducting, the object of inquiry that could articulate difference, complexity, oppression and transformative action about marginal positions. The researchers have then tried to work as “bricoleurs” (Kincheloe, 2001) in situating their “useful theories”, bringing together “diverse philosophical understandings” and “ divergent methods of inquiry” (Sikes, 2006b) to conceptualise and “grasp the complexity of research act” (Kincheloe, 2001; p. 1). In this respect, the ontological and epistemological complexity grounding allows researchers to know the potential of their theories in developing radical critique and perform meaningful “re-
description” of power from specific cultural and contextual locations about the dominant social reality (Lingard, 2015).
It is in the above sense of ‘bricoleur’ and its mediation for transformative “bricolage” (Kincheloe, 2005), I situate the misrecognition theoretical case of British Pakistani voices in the stand point interdisciplinary ontologies (critical multiculturalism, post- colonialism, critical hermeneutic). The above bricolage helps me to carve the
ontological space for my research argument, in which, I am able to theorise power and ideological functioning of the social construction and counter constructivism of misrecognition social reality on the politicisation of Muslim consciousness in Britain. Below, I briefly discuss the three above mentioned ontological ideas that form the complexity space-place, form and nature of my misrecognition critical research
knowledge. Also, I discuss how the above mentioned three ontological ideas inform my view of the being of linguistic social reality which my research engages.
6.2.1 Critical multiculturalist and postcolonial situatedness
Firstly, I consider misrecognition phenomenon of identities, agency and belonging in critical multiculturalist and postcolonial situatedness. By this, I mean that social narrativisation and performance of identities, agency and belonging is ideological- linguistic in character which gets mediated through power relations that are historically and socially-culturally constituted. For example, Goldberg (1994) argues that critical multiculturalist stance seeks in developing radical transformative thinking from the position of heterogeneity, difference and situated resistance in challenging dominant power inscriptions. The critical multiculturalist ontology then provides counter
narrativisation re-description space to critique the established and disciplinary forms of social, cultural, political and economic practices of identity formation and belonging; in terms of its practised social meaning, experiences and interpretations (May and Sleeter, 2010). By mobilising critical multiculturalist transformative ontology, I highlight the misrecognition account of difference, context and particularity. I study the negotiation of power relations about my participants’ performance of educational and social contexts in the mediation of their identities, agency and belonging.
In the postcolonial sense, this research has engaged with the subaltern position of British Pakistani Muslim consciousness in the British educational and social contexts.
Spivak (2005) argues that the subaltern is the postcolonial condition of marginality managed by Western dominance and power to inscribe regularities of narrativisation, voice, agency, and value coding (cultural, political & economic) for marginal groups located in the postcolonial metropolis and the Global South (Young, 1991). It then denies these marginal groups, the listening and speaking of alterity, about the
negotiations of historical narratives, subjectivity and belonging formation, resistance and struggle about their marginal conditions (Spivak, 2013). The postcolonial ontology then provides the space for transformative critique which in Parkash’s (1994) words can be called the “radical rethinking of knowledge and social identities authored and
authorised by colonialism and Western domination” (p. 1475).
My research has generated misrecognition cultural, political and economic critique from the position of postcolonial subaltern British Pakistani Muslim position in speaking alterity in the dominant framing of British Muslim identities, agency and belonging in educational and social contexts. In doing so, my research has engaged with
transformational postcolonial critique of the dominant sense of historical, cultural- political and economic appropriation of social relations of power. It does this, by exposing “contradictions, ambivalence and gaps” (Prakash, 1994; p. 1488; Bhabha Homi, 1994); in the misrecognition terms to counter position British Pakistani Muslim voice, agency, in value de-coding and liminal re-coding.
6.2.2 Critical hermeneutic contextualisation
Secondly, I consider misrecognition phenomenon of identities, agency and belonging in critical hermeneutic ontological contextualisation. By using critical hermeneutic
position, I have engaged with the social reality of British Pakistani Muslim consciousness in its iteratively ideological, meaning making, interpretive and phenomenological performance senses. However, I see that the above senses are mediated through the intersection of power, historicity and embedded cultural-political contexts of meaning making. Steinberg and Kincheloe’s (2010) more detailed insights on critical hermeneutic ontology are useful here:
As critical hermeneutics observes the intersection of power and
omnipresent, pre-reflective cultural meanings, a sensitive and rigorous understanding of the socio-educational world begins to take shape. Critical hermeneutics takes the concept of historical contextualization to a new conceptual level, as it specifies the nature of the historicity that helps produce cultural meaning, the consciousness of the researcher, the
construction of the research process, and the formation of human subjectivity (p. 148).
In the critical hermeneutic ontological space, I have then tried to expose of how
dominant “cultural messages show and hide” in the framing of British Pakistani Muslim consciousness from the misrecognition perspective. How are counter “ideological, moral views” are performed from British Pakistani Muslim marginality? (Roberge, 2011). How do my participants specify the “nature of the historicity” about the politicisation of their consciousness? What is the relationship of their specificity to misrecognition perspective? What does it tell about “the intersection of power” about their inclusion/exclusion?
Furthermore, I locate the ‘consciousness of the researcher’ and the participatory ‘construction of the research process’ in the hermeneutic “Interpretive Communities” tradition. The seminal work by Stanley Fish (1980b) “The Authority of Interpretive Communities” elaborates that our social communication is based on reference and structures of community interpretations. These interpretations are dependent on social situations as well as positional and historical contexts of individuals located in the specific communities in the social world of existence. He argues that no critical
interpretation is possible without positions in the linguistic world, and, no positions are possible without communities in which individuals as readers of social text are located. So, whereas, the social text has variegated meanings in socio-political and historical frames of interpretations with reference to respective communities; however, the reading of the social text is only made interpretive, meaningful and political with
reference to the readings of individuals of a particular community (professional, cultural or any other).This however does not mean that individual do not bring their own
innovation in critically interpreting the social world, but, it means there is a specific and shared way of reading the problem within a community (Fish, 1980b). It is in this shared way of reading the problem from British Pakistani Muslim teachers’ position, that, I situate the voices of myself and my participants which are in critical dialogue with misrecognition theory.
In the above-mentioned three features of critical ontology, I have framed my object of inquiry, used my misrecognition mode of critique, negotiated ethics and participation in the field, selected my research strategy, and negotiated further participation of my participants by iteratively “trading off” my methods (Patton, 2015) to generate, code
and analyse my participants’ data. The epistemic negotiation of ethics, knowledge and power in the fieldwork in this sense is not neutral, uninformed, natural or universal, but, it is theoretical, situated, and collaborative (Carr and Kemmis, 1986).
In the following sections, I discuss how in the negotiation of field work, I dealt with the relations of power, ethics and insider bias in reflexively considering the above re- negotiated theoretical, methodological and ethical choices.