SSH 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Research, Internal Validity, Racialization

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Social Sciences and Humanities
• Course: SSH 301
• Professor: Julie Tomiak

Document Summary

Three position on values in social research: should be value-free, cannot be value-free, but researchers should be open explicit about their values, researchers should use their values to direct and interpret their investigations. Value commitment is a good thing to have. Researchers are people and do not exist outside of the social worlds and web of social relations they attempt to describe and explain. Researchers bring their social locations, values, assumptions and beliefs to the research. Another area that illustrates the political nature of research is the institutional infrastructure related to it: e. g. funding and access. Indigenous peoples have experienced unrelenting research of a profoundly exploitative nature. Has been complicit in colonization, racialization, othering, dehumanizing, marginalization. Essentializing and freezing indigenous peoples in the past. Denying indigenous peoples agency as researchers and knowledge holders. Researchers analyze, interpret and report data without consent, approval, review or input by indigenous participants. Research that is not relevant to indigenous priorities and needs.