Methods of “Literacy” in Indigenising Research Education: Transformative Methods Used in the Kalahari

ABSTRACT

Within the current South African “research education” context, characterised by the call for decolonisation, massification of education (yet a lack of resources) and neoliberal managerialism, graduate students and academics face challenges in conducting “culturally literate” research that is transformative. This article establishes that language, in rethinking indigeneity, means more than just linguistic symbolic expression, and extends to include local, cultural and spiritual expressions by research participants. It outlines a set of participatory, transformative methods that allow both indigenous and non-indigenous researchers to become literate in conducting research with indigenous communities. It demonstrates that it is imperative that researchers are well-versed in these expressions in order to make contextual sense of data.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformative research methods
• co-production of knowledge
• decolonisation
• indigenisation
• Kalahari

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The use of the term subscribes to the characteristics of groups identifying themselves as indigenous as presented by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR 2006, 10). “The overall characteristics [are that] their cultures and ways of life differ considerably from the dominant society, and that their cultures are under threat, in some cases to the point of extinction”. The survival of their “particular way of life depends on access and rights to their traditional lands and the natural resources thereon”. They “are regarded as less developed and less advanced than other more dominant sectors of society. They often live in inaccessible regions, often geographically isolated, and suffer from various forms of marginalization, both politically and socially”. This discrimination, domination and marginalisation violates their human rights as peoples/communities, threatens the continuation of their cultures and ways of life and prevents them from being able to genuinely participate in decisions regarding their own future and forms of development.

2 For more information on the project’s intersecting and ongoing phases, see Dyll-Myklebust (2013) Dyll and Tomaselli (2016) and Tomaselli (2012).

3 To name just a few: The Language Policy Framework for South African Higher Education (DoE 2002), The Report on the Development of Indigenous Languages as Mediums of Instruction in Higher Education (DoE 2003), The Report on the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions (Soudien et al. 2008) the Charter for Humanities and Social Sciences (DoE 2011), The Green Paper on Post-Secondary School Education and Training (DoHET 2012a), as well the Ministerial Advisory Panel on African Languages in Higher Education (DoHET 2012b).

4 Available at https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-without-defining-it-first-63948. Accessed 4 December 2019.

5 This essentialism has never been readily accepted by non-Cartesian ontologies (like the Bushmen) (see Dyll 2018).

6 One approach is cultural separation from the West in order to preserve and develop local cultures and traditions. The second blends indigenous knowledge with Western science and technology, and a third approach is restructuring or adapting borrowed Western culture and knowledge to suit the African context (Oyedemi 2018, 7).

7 In South Africa, many university performance management systems and academic promotions criteria are based on these three areas. 

8 This term is used to group together fieldwork methods that can be learnt by graduate students (and other researchers) in order to work towards research that is participatory and transformative.

9 Weinberg seeks to work against an essentialised, mythologised view of Bushmen communities (1996, 1997, 2000, 2017). His work has, however, received some criticism (Bester and Buntman 1999).

10 Dunn’s unpublished photographs were taken for an exhibition in Durban during which some Bushmen’s artworks were also to be exhibited (see Manyozo 2016).

11 For a recent example of a similar inclusive fieldwork method based on photography, see Grant (2019) in this issue.

12 Republished by UNISA in 2014.

13 For more detail see Lange and Dyll-Myklebust 2015; see also Dyll 2014; Dyll and Tomaselli 2016; Lange and Dyll-Myklebust 2015; Morris 2014a, 2014b; Tomaselli and Dyll-Myklebust 2015.