Summary
There are many innovations in “research” that push the field forward. From inclusive research, democratizing research, fast research, futures research, and VR/AR research to mixed methods, agile research, participatory research, behavioral research, AI research, systems research, and trauma-responsive research; the future of research seems to be improving. However, the vast majority of innovations in “research” work at the outer surface of “research,” leaving the Anglocentric core of “research,” along with its assumptions and views, fundamentally untouched. Interestingly, only a tiny percentage of research is done by people we call researchers. The vast majority of research is done by people around the world in the service of their hyperlocal being and doing, their aspirations, livelihoods, survival, visions, thriving, and problem-solving. With their inspiration, what happens when we break away from this UNIverse, this one-world world with only one center, one globalizing Westernized understanding and control of research and knowledge? What happens when we enter a world of many centers and many understandings of knowledge and research that come from various ways of being in the world? What happens when we acknowledge and enter the pluralistic multiverse - the pluriverse? Let us explore what research in the pluriverse looks like and whether you are ready to embark on a pluriversal journey. It only requires a yes.
Key Insights
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Research is traditionally dominated by Western, colonial paradigms privileging quantified truth over story and relational knowledge.
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Indigenous and translocal communities practice diverse forms of knowledge that include embodied, intuitive, aesthetic, spiritual, and relational epistemologies.
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Mainstream institutional research methodologies often exclude or demonize non-Western ways of knowing, limiting the scope of valid knowledge.
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Relational research re-centers relationships themselves as the source and flow of knowledge, transforming how and with whom research is conducted.
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Mixed methods in plural research contexts go beyond quantitative and qualitative to include asset-based, need-based, desire-based, past, present, and future-focused approaches.
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Community and place govern research practices in a pluralistic frame, rather than universal methodologies imposed top-down.
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Rigor in this plural world is defined by community health, elder approval, survival, and continuous storytelling, rather than just coding or synthesis.
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The colonial gaze is presented as a monoculture that tries to ingest and erase other ways of knowing, whereas plural epistemologies resist totalizing narratives.
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Some colonial researchers have begun to reject extractive practices, fostering changes within institutions toward more inclusive research modes.
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Knowledge production is an ongoing, living story that evolves as listeners and communities return repeatedly, extracting new meaning and insight over time.
Notable Quotes
"A story that moves and quakes me palpitates my heart and shakes me."
"There was a time when people vastly prioritized truth over story, claiming to know all things and bringing everything to light, never realizing the benefits of darkness."
"Mainstream institutional knowledge is just a study of aesthetic, energetic, intuitive, embodied, relational, community, cultural, and lived experiential knowledge."
"Poverty isn’t the absence of money; poverty is the absence of relationships through which resources flow."
"Research cannot be taken out of its relational context and still maintain its shape."
"Relational research isn’t research with relationships or research for relationships; it is relationship building as research."
"Coloniality moves us toward a debt-dealing universe, while pluriverses offer life-giving multiple ways of being."
"The closer you get to defining research, the more it loses its context; the deeper the context, the less specific the definition."
"In the pluralverse, rigor can mean results in the health of the community, elder-approved survival, and community-tested goodness."
"Research is not merely investigation to establish facts or conclusions, but relational story-telling, sacred holding, and rich communion."
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