Positioning Research
Shifting Paradigms, Interdisciplinarity and Indigeneity
- Margaret Kumar - Adjunct Professor, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, India
- Supriya Pattanayak - Deputy Vice Chancellor, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Odisha, India
Research Methods & Evaluation (General)
The availability of research methodologies and frameworks to facilitate different ways of gathering knowledge and performing research is often a matter of concern for early career researchers as well as advanced research scholars. Positioning Research, while identifying this gap, provides avenues that encompass differing cultural backgrounds and disciplines to enable exploration of research frameworks and shifting paradigms, considering the impact of social media and new forms of knowledge that assist real-time, global distribution of research.
The book highlights the possibilities of transition into ‘the third space’, where negotiation and dialogue are central to positioning research. It upholds the principle that different research methodologies are equally valid and valued in contributing to new knowledge. The book focuses on the contexts in which research questions are conceptualised and designed, and highlights the implications of research for the various partners and communities that participate in the research. It thus provides a cutting-edge framework for conducting multidisciplinary research.Contemporary Western quest for knowledge too often tends to eclipse traditional or indigenous knowledge preserved by societies over many thousands of years. The array of well-crafted chapters in this volume sets out, first, to examine the ramifications of this lacuna in the broader applied context of research pursued in higher degree education and in the works of early career academics, and second, to forge methodologies that better provide pathways for the transition to ‘the third space’, where research frameworks are explored and negotiated, overcoming the baggage of erstwhile approaches. The volume poignantly suggests constructive ways for engendering collaborative research, building effective research capacities and mentoring peer groups while conducting interdisciplinary research.
Positioning Research: Shifting Paradigms, Interdisciplinarity and Indigeneity makes a significant contribution to the global exchange of knowledge. The contributors to the book cover interdisciplinarity, as integral to: emerging research paradigms, the transition from a PhD student to an early career researcher, the relevance of indigenous knowledge to formal academic research, the roles of ‘self’ and ‘language’ in research, and new technologies and new frontiers of research. In Positioning Research, we are exposed to several ‘lenses’ of understanding, to different and unique ways of conceptualizing the world, to some decidedly non-Western ways of ‘knowing’ and to complementarities of knowledge systems. The integration of interdisciplinarity and indigenous knowledge within one body of work is truly unique.
As students and scholars interact in a globalized world, old disciplinary boundaries between academic disciplines of history and philosophy, sociology and anthropology, political science and economics seem more and more translucent, even porous. Few enquiries, if any, seem to fit neatly and squarely in one single academic box; increasingly, they require and demand the probing light of many perspectives and several angles. The present volume addresses some of these concerns boldly; by reaching out to another scholar across the national border, or across the historical period, or against the prevailing assumptions, it is daring to reformulate the research questions afresh. Such an attempt is sure to bear fruit and be creative and invigorating.
Evolving cultural dynamics and research paradigms shift our thinking and doing through modes of different methodologies. This book investigates the ever-increasing premise of technological and cultural change, affirming that research in general is finding new ascribed value in various methodological approaches to the general knowledge economy. It is here that through the filter of a ‘different’ lens, existing ideological frameworks can be reconfigured and reconstituted to allow a valued dialogue across various cultural and academic divides. The contributors to this book provide varying positions to the premise of research itself, where there is a contribution to new knowledge through ancient knowledge and traditions.
This book tries to unravel the ‘meanings’ of and the ‘relationship’ between indigenous, traditional and contemporary knowledge and how they are engaged within research. Further, it explores the boundaries between disciplines and the difficulties researchers have in traversing them, although the need of the hour is to reformulate the research question from multiple lenses. The Cartesian dichotomy is an imposition on the multiple complementarities of the diverse, multilingual, multicultural world. This book will guide researchers from the dominant mono-model world to take a relook at their research paradigms to enable them to ‘make sense of’ the ‘multiple realities’ and ‘complementarities’ of the ‘other’.
‘Positioning Research: Shifting Paradigms, Interdisciplinarity and Indigeneity makes a significant contribution to the global exchange of knowledge. The contributors to the book cover interdisciplinarity, as integral to: emerging research paradigms, the transition from a PhD student to an early career researcher, the relevance of indigenous knowledge to formal academic research, the roles of ‘self’ and ‘language’ in research, and new technologies and new frontiers of research. In Positioning Research, we are exposed to several ‘lenses’ of understanding, to different and unique ways of conceptualizing the world, to some decidedly non-Western ways of ‘knowing’ and to complementarities of knowledge systems. The integration of interdisciplinarity and indigenous knowledge within one body of work is truly unique.’
