Conceptualizing Affirming Methodologies

Affirming Methodologies centres Local and Indigenous voices in the research process and recognizes the value of their ways of sharing knowledge. Affirming Methodologies embodies culturally relevant approaches to research which embrace our ancestors, and value our histories, and acknowledge the paths that have brought us to the present; it emphasizes the importance of local and indigenous knowledge systems, traditions, and lived experiences in the research process.

Affirming Methodologies is not a stagnant approach to life. It is a recognition of the value in what we create from our histories and lived experiences. In all our worlds, we are constantly evolving and creating.

In the context of the Caribbean, Affirming Methodologies aim to remove the traditional hierarchies between the researcher and the researched, promoting a more equitable and culturally relevant approach to knowledge construction and sharing. This involves using practices, language patterns, and rituals that are intrinsic to Caribbean communities.

Branches of Philosophy: Affirming Methodologies is an epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of how we know and be, how we think about the world, and how we locate ourselves and our positioning in that world. These understandings are critical in ensuring that research outcomes are appropriately and meaningfully interpreted where we take pride in what we have created and come to know, and where we recognize that these ways exist out of our relational sense of being, knowing and doing.

 
Framework: An Affirming Methodologies framework is inclusive of and relevant to qualitative and quantitative research. Engaging in research from a quantitative approach does not alter any of that, as the process, no matter how structured, emanates from how we perceive the question, the problem, and thus the solution.

Challenges faced by Researchers in adopting Affirming Methodologies: Affirming Methodologies is a concept. If you are referring to Affirming Methodologies in your research such as liming and ole talk, African storytelling, or shisa nyama, then each of those would have their own unique challenges.

Why was Liming Methodology used – Please go to featured papers: Liming and Ole Talk: Foundations for and Characteristics of a Culturally Relevant Caribbean Methodology

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