Original title: The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: Making the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement
New materialismA group of approaches that examines how material things, not just people, shape events and social life. and Indigenous studies both explore how things beyond humans can have agency, or a role in shaping what happens. But these fields have not often engaged with each other in qualitative social scienceResearch that studies people and society through sources such as interviews, observations, or written accounts rather than mainly through numerical measurements.. The essay examines why, including racism in universities and differences in each field’s priorities and assumptions. It argues that researchers using Karen Barad’s idea of agential realismKaren Barad’s approach to how agency and reality take shape through relations among people and things. should read and cite Indigenous studies on agent ontologiesIdeas about what kinds of beings or things can act and have agency., which may help address challenges in their work.
Imagine a group planning a shared meal, with each person bringing a dish and a different way of doing things. The plan goes wrong if one group’s knowledge is ignored, especially when the groups have different priorities and histories. In this paper, the shared meal stands for work on non-human agency, and listening to Indigenous scholarship stands for taking seriously knowledge that researchers have often left out.
Social scientists studying how non-human things act can miss important Indigenous scholarship if the two fields stay disconnected. The essay argues that reading and citing Indigenous studies can strengthen this work while making its ethical and political responsibilities clearer.
The abstract describes an essay that argues for engagement and gives examples, but it does not report an empirical test of whether reading Indigenous studies changes research outcomes. It does not identify the examples or specify which challenges the Indigenous literature addresses.
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The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: Making the Case for Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement — Jerry Lee Rosiek, Jimmy Snyder, Scott L. Pratt — Qualitative Inquiry — doi:10.1177/1077800419830135
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.