Ontopolitically-oriented Research on Coca Growing: Integrating Decolonial Knowledges and Latina Feminisms

Abstract

Ontopolitically-oriented research is a concept recently developed in critical drug scholarship that draws from science and technology studies to consider the ontological politics of research practices (Fraser, 2020). It has been instructive for challenging foundational ideas about alcohol and other drugs and thinking through both the political implications and ethical obligations of research practices. This article discusses potential synergies between ontopolitically-oriented research, Latin American feminist theory, and decolonial theory. Specifically, I explore the experience of conducting research in the Global North while remaining sensitive to Latin American ontological commitments. My argument is illustrated through reflections from a research project I have conducted on coca cultivation, human rights, and gender in Colombia. The aim of this article is not to report project findings in depth but to offer a set of reflections on research methods and future practice, incorporating insights from Latina feminist theory and decolonial theory. Drawing inspiration from Gloria Anzaldúa's (1987) concept of “mestiza consciousness,” I explore the overlaps between the ontological turn and the decolonial turn and propose the need to trouble “universal” and normative concepts in research practices.

Introduction

Realist theories have played a significant role in shaping the literature on alcohol and other drugs. As Fraser and Moore (2011, p. 3) argue, within realist approaches, there are often claims about the apparent “harms” and “effects” of drugs through “evidence-based” approaches. In these approaches, drugs are conceptualized as having a set of singular, consistent and predictable effects (Fraser & Moore, 2011). In other words, the effects of drugs are said to emerge from the biological properties of drugs themselves, and reality is understood as independent of our actions, having a definitive and singular form commonly described as “objective” (Fraser & Moore, 2011).

In recent years, however, the field of alcohol and other drug has undergone an “ontological turn.” The ontological turn takes in ideas from various scholars, such as Annemarie Mol (1999, 2002), John Law (2004; Law & Mol, 2002), Isabelle Stengers (2011, 2018), and Karen Barad (2003, 2007), and focuses on broad terms on questioning the materiality of drugs, how this materiality is understood and assembled, and with what effects. Drawing together and synthesizing ideas from the ontological turn, including ideas from Mol, Law, Stengers and Barad, leading critical drug scholar Suzanne Fraser (2020) has now introduced the concept of “ontopolitically-oriented research.” Ontopolitically-oriented research focuses on the relationship between research practices and alcohol and other drug realities. Fraser's concept recognizes that reality is emergent and that all research projects are intrinsically performative. As Fraser (2020, p. 9) puts it, research methods are as:

intimately involved in the making of everyday material realities as they are in reflecting them. As such, researchers have the obligation not only to track the realities being made by their research, but to approach the design and conduct of the research with this action in mind.

In this article, I engage with Fraser's work to explore the overlaps between the ontological turn broadly, Fraser's (2020) work on ontopolitically-oriented research, and the decolonial turn from where many Latina scholars draw inspiration. The former questions conventional notions of knowledge by analyzing the fundamental categories that underpin modernity, while the latter examines modernity and connects its findings to issues of “colonialism, capitalism, Eurocentrism, and racial-based social classification” (Fúnez-Flores, 2022, p. 28). In exploring these shared histories, interests and trajectories, I identify ways that Latin American feminisms and ontopolitically-oriented research are connected and can complement each other, particularly in the alcohol and other drugs field, where I argue that there is a need to challenge “universal” and normative concepts in research practice.

My argument will be illustrated using insights from a research project I am conducting on coca cultivation, human rights, and gender in Colombia. However, the aim of this article is not to report project findings in depth, but to reflect on elements of the project, and offer a set of considerations for research method and practice, drawing insights from Latina feminist theory and decolonial theory. Consequently, this article integrates theoretical discussions and methodological considerations directly into the analysis, instead of presenting them as a separate “theory” section, as is common in sociological work conducting an analysis of a dataset.

Ontopolitically-Oriented Research in the Alcohol and Other Drugs Field

Fraser (2020) argues that research shapes realities in a range of ways. This includes through processes of naming, because “all phenomena are at least partly constituted in the process of naming” (p. 6). Explaining this process, Fraser argues that the term “addiction” is frequently deployed in alcohol and other drug research, and conventionally understood as being “a common-sense signifier of a clearly defined singular problem” (p. 7). However, “addiction” is also a heavily contested and controversial concept, with meanings that change across place and time (Levine, 1978; Room, 2003; Sedgwick, 1983). In other words, addiction is not a stable object with clearly defined features or contours, but is constantly made and remade through practices, including research itself. The process of naming something as “addiction” helps to bring it into being, simultaneously foreclosing other ways in which the object in question might be conceptualized, addressed, or practiced. Fraser (2020) therefore encourages us to pay “close attention to language and discourse” (p. 3), including how the process of naming something helps to constitute it, and invites researchers to recognize the ethical obligations they have when “enacting” these realities.

Fraser (2020) also invites attention to the ontological politics of data generation, arguing that the use of the term “addiction” in recruitment can also shape whether someone sees themselves as eligible for the study. Given concerns that the word “addiction” is stigmatizing (Fraser, 2020), for instance, some people might be discouraged from participating in a study that uses terminology they reject as pejorative. Alternatively, others might not recognize themselves through the language of addiction for various reasons, including because they might interpret it as a medical category or diagnostic label not previously applied to them. People might also come to understand themselves as “addicts” or as having a “problem” with alcohol or other drug use through the processes of naming and data recruitment, such that research expands the contours or size of the problem, allowing the scale of “addiction” to grow (see also Moore & Fraser, 2013). Fraser (2020) shows how our choice of language in research is inextricably linked to data collection, with the potential to both enable and foreclose the shape our data sets take. She (2020) argues that language and discourse is a “force in the production of realities” (p. 3), and the fact that there are some people that might not see themselves as eligible for a study ostensibly about “addiction” shows how important it is that we attend to relevant dynamics and effects that might be obscured when deploying certain language or concepts in our work.

Additionally, Fraser (2020) explores the limits of representation and experience by showing how dominant discourses and practices might produce a kind of “unified knowing” (p. 7). To explain this, Fraser (2020) reflects on insights from a project she led called Lives of substance. Lives of Substance aimed to complicate “prevailing simplistic and stigmatizing portrayals of people” said to be experiencing addiction (p. 5). Employing a diverse range of strategies for both recruitment and naming, Lives of Substance “enacts different accounts of addiction and in doing so, materialises addiction differently for the people involved and for others who come into contact with the accounts” (p. 7; original emphasis). The overarching point here is that researchers need to “think about questions differently, to constitute research fields and datasets more actively, [and] to research material objects in ways that acknowledge their status as ethical actors” (Fraser, 2020, p. 9).

Importantly, Fraser (2020) notes that her account of ontopolitically-oriented research is “partial and intrinsically incomplete” (p. 9) and invites other researchers to suggest additional aspects of an ontopolitically-oriented approach. Inspired by this invitation to develop ontopolitically-oriented approaches, in what follows I examine the intricacies associated with conducting ontopolitically-oriented research in the Global North while also remaining sensitive to the distinct ontological commitments that characterize Latin American ways of knowing. In doing so, I introduce ways in which Latina feminist theory and ontopolitically-oriented research can complement and enhance each other. To illustrate this argument, I draw on insights from a research project that critically examines the role of human rights in drug policy, with a particular focus on coca growing areas in Colombia. The research is funded by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) scholarship and engages with the global momentum towards the inclusion of human rights principles in drug policy (United Nations, 2019; World Health Organization, 2019). While many proponents argue that human rights offer an opportunity for transformative change towards less punitive drug policies, this research project challenges the assumption that human rights “inherently” lead to such transformations. My analysis, informed by Seear and Mulcahy's (2021) observation that “there has been very little research on whether human rights processes can actually achieve such aims” (p. 1), questions the assumptions surrounding the inherent capabilities of human rights in drug policy. I highlight the need to critically interrogate the assumptions underpinning human rights as a “universal” and “fixed” concept and emphasize the importance of context-specific analysis to study the possibilities and limitations of human rights.

Background: Coca Over Time and Cultures

Ideas about and approaches to coca have changed among different cultures and over time. For example, during the Inca rule (1400–1533 CE), coca leaf was considered a sacred plant, and its uses varied from agricultural practices and religious ceremonies to medical purposes (Stolberg, 2011). Coca leaves were used as medicine to combat fatigue, pain, and to assist people to run long distances in the Andes (Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1981). In Europe during the nineteenth century, coca leaves were used for therapeutic purposes, such as stomach disorders, asthma, and diseases of the vocal cords (Grisaffi, 2021; Stolberg, 2011). Even though coca derivates reached high levels of popularity in western medicine in the nineteenth century, coca-growing was later criminalized under The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 (Thoumi, 2015). This convention established that coca leaf was “a drug subject to the highest level of control” and coca chewing—still practiced in South America—had to be abolished within twenty-five years of the treaty coming into force (Thoumi, 2005). The Single Convention established a dominant conceptualization of coca as illegal and threatening, even in those national contexts in which it was an ancient, Indigenous and ancestral practice (Weil, 1981).

When Colombia signed and ratified the Single Convention in 1971, the country began a new era of intensive use of criminal law to combat coca growing and trafficking (Uprimny, 2016). Later, in the 1990s, Colombia intensified the “war against drug trafficking” with a US-aided strategy called “Plan Colombia.” One of the strategies employed by Plan Colombia was the use of aerial fumigation with glyphosate, a herbicide that kills weeds and plants (Dion & Russler, 2008). Unfortunately, this approach resulted in serious environmental damage and forced the displacement of many rural people (Ceballos, 2003; Mejía, 2012). The aerial fumigations caused significant food insecurity and health problems as glyphosate pollution can lead to skin problems and miscarriages (Mejía, 2016; Murcia Huertas, 2021). In 2015, the World Health Organization announced that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Guyton et al., 2015). This led to the suspension of aerial fumigation to eradicate coca crops as well as the end of Plan Colombia.

The end of Plan Colombia coincided with the development of the Peace Process between the Colombian government and The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (hereafter FARC): a left-wing guerrilla group that has played a major part in the Colombian conflict linked to drug trafficking. The Peace Process is an agreement to end the Colombian armed conflict and address coca production through a human rights and gender-based approach. This focus on human rights and gender within Colombian drug policy unfolds within a wider international context of growing enthusiasm for human rights and gender-sensitive programs in drug policy (United Nations, 2019; World Health Organization, 2019). Worldwide references to human rights in this area have increased significantly in the last decade (Barrett et al., 2020). The main assumption for this inclusion is that human rights present an opportunity for a transformational change in drug policy, towards less punitive policies. However, research examining the capacity of human rights processes to achieve such objectives has been limited (Seear & Mulcahy, 2021).

As part of the research project on coca, gender and human rights, I was particularly interested in how ideas or imaginaries about human rights and their intersection with social movements, such as feminism and LGBTIQ+ rights in conservative countries, come to matter in drug policy. Following Fraser (2020)'s idea that “researchers have the obligation not only to track the realities being made by their research, but to approach the design and conduct of the research with this action in mind” (p. 9), I undertook an analysis which focused on problematizing human rights in the local context. In what follows, I draw on insights from my research project on coca growing, gender, and human rights in order to reflect on the utility of ontopolitically-oriented research in diverse contexts (i.e., Colombia), as well as how Latina feminist and decolonial theories can complement and expand Fraser's (2020) framework.

Problematizing Research Methods in the Constitution of Human Rights

Ofelia Schutte says that being a Latina doing research in the Global North involves being an alterity within herself and in outside contexts (Schutte, 1998). This resonates with my own experience. Academics in Australia believe that I am bringing a non-Western point of view to the discussion of human rights and drug policy; they are right, but I did not know it until my first cross-cultural communication exchanges in Australia (Schutte, 1998). Previously, I had perceived Latin America as part of the West, a belief instilled in me through my Colombian education. But in doing this research project, I started to engage more critically with this positioning, beginning to question these categories, Colombia's “place” in the world and my own place in relation to both. Samuel Huntington's book “The Clash of Civilizations” defines the West by democratic values, Christian heritage, the rule of law and economic freedom. This all fits with Colombia to some extent. However, Huntington (2011) goes on to argue that Latin America has a blurred identity, with some dichotomy between its self-identity and its “Westernization.” After reading Huntington's work, I ended up more confused than when I started: I am not part of the West (at least not fully), nor am I part of the East, so who am I, and what is Colombia? Trapped in this binary logic, I found answers in Latin American feminist scholarship.

Latin American feminist scholarship is a diverse field that rejects rigid definitions of the self and argues that Western binary logics of knowing—for instance, West-East notions—ignore much of the human ambiguity and contradiction of the world. In contrast, Latinas “draw attention to the multi-layeredness and fluidity of the self” as well as “the intricate connection between discursive realms and identity-formation” (Ortega, 2015, p. 248). To explain the concept of multi-layeredness, I turn to the work of Gloria Anzaldúa. In Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa explains that Latinas live in the borderlands between cultures where a “clash of voices” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 78) generates emotional perplexity. The clash of voices is a constant internal fight between dominant Western ideas of the world and a Latin American self-identity formation. This perplexity results in a “tolerance for ambiguity,” ambiguity that has been embraced by some feminist scholars and is part of a cultural shift that has opened space for a new consciousness: a consciousness that Anzaldúa (1987) calls “mestiza consciousness.” In Anzaldúa (1987, p. 80, original emphasis) words:

the work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject-object duality that keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images on her work how duality is transcended.

Latina scholars define subject-object duality or binary logics as sources of epistemic and structural violence that perpetuate subject-object relationships in research. For instance, the Western idea of a “first” and “third world” needing “saving” or “development” has led to the creation of many assumptions, concepts, and meanings. To explain this further, I draw on the work of Rodriguez Castro (2018) on decolonial feminisms in rural Colombia.

Rodriguez Castro (2018) explains that from 1980 to 1990 there was a proliferation of non-governmental organizations coming from the Global North into Latin America. This proliferation generated tensions among some rural feminists, decolonial intellectuals, and local grassroots organizations, who started to question the relationship between human rights discourses and neoliberal projects. As Rodríguez Castro (2020, p. 12) puts it:

the issue here is that universal human rights approaches are often prioritised by donors and aid agencies over local and grassroots actions that are more akin to people's body-land experiences and self-governance. At the same time, these top-down approaches reproduce white saviour and colonial actions.

Rodriguez Castro (2018, p. 14) goes on to argue that despite the epistemic violence of the North:

decolonial projects led by women all over the world continue to provide alternatives of re-existence. The most transformative practices in Abya Yala [which is the name for the American continent before colonization] are happening in the heights of the Andes and in the plains of the Amazonia jungle [where] [n]otions in colonial languages such as socialism, human rights, development or democracy are not present in native languages, but terms such as dignity, respect, territory, self-governance, Buen Vivir [which is a concept used in South America that challenges dominant logics of development] and Mother Earth are being brought to the fore.

In Colombia, Indigenous and rural women “are reimagining ‘gender’ […] from conceptions of identity that are not essentialist” (Rodriguez Castro, 2018, p. 15) and ideas of rights around concepts of identity, dignity, nature, and community. This knowledge, which is rooted in community discussion and dialogue, has been often overlooked in international academic spheres. The relevance of this diversity in knowledges is relevant to many issues in research, and to my own role in the process of creating knowledge. For this reason, I propose expanding the concept of ontopolitically-oriented research through the incorporation of Latina feminist theory and decolonial theory. Here, it is important to acknowledge the—in some ways shared—intellectual history from which the ontological turn and Latina and decolonial theory emerge. For instance, scholars working across these fields launched overlapping critiques of dominant white Western patriarchal knowledges both separately and together in the 1980s and 1990s. For instance, the ontological turn emerges from a range of theoretical trends, and was variously inspired by Foucault's work on power, knowledge, and discourse (Foucault, 1977), Butler's work on gender and performativity (Butler, 1988, 1993), work on class, gender and race in the United States (Davis, 1983; hooks, 1981), and work on the masculine “bias” in scientific research (Haraway, 1985; Harding, 1986; Oakley, 1981). In Latin America, similar concerns were mobilized about coloniality and race, most notably in the work of Dussel on the philosophy of liberation (Dussel, 1980), through Escobar's work on the invention of the third world (Escobar, 1995), Quijano's work on the coloniality of power (Quijano & Ennis, 2000), and Lugones’ work on the coloniality of gender and decolonial feminisms (Lugones, 2003).

Inspired by this intellectual trajectory, and particularly drawing from the work of decolonial and Latina feminist scholars, I have identified three ways that Latin American feminisms and ontopolitically-oriented research can complement and enhance each other in research practices in the alcohol and other drugs field:

Trouble Normative Concepts in Research Practices

Research approaches could benefit from working with various sites of struggle and knowledge production (Fúnez-Flores, 2022). For example, Fúnez-Flores (2022) highlights the significance of decolonial perspectives in the production of knowledge, arguing that such perspectives can shed light on issues of oppression faced by non-white populations, which may be overlooked in research practices. This issue is relevant in the field of alcohol and other drug scholarship, which might have its own exclusionary practices. To illustrate this point, I return to my own research topic. While there has been global growing enthusiasm for the use of human rights principles to inform drug policies, this approach is based on certain normative assumptions and concepts, including an individualistic understanding of rights. Such assumptions may not be applicable to some contexts in the Global South. As Rodriguez Castro (2020) notes, many women in the Global South argue that the acknowledgement of collective rights is crucial to the exercise of their individual rights. Here, we see a tension in understandings of rights. Some women from the Global South also reclaim their ancestral knowledge to “question the ‘civilising’ project of the West” (Rodríguez Castro, 2020, p. 9) and the imposition of Western values and norms. Despite these challenges, much of the literature on human rights and drug policy leaves the category of human rights unexamined, which presents a challenge in contexts where human rights might be viewed with skepticism, including contexts which might view human rights as a Western project that furthers colonization.

Keeping these ideas in mind about the performative function of normative concepts in research, I conducted interviews with people engaged in coca cultivation, as well as policymakers and various stakeholders, including rural human rights activists. ¹ Interview questions were carefully designed to attend not only to assumptions regarding human rights, as advocated by Fraser (2020), but to how participants brought complexity and multiplicity to the normative concept of human rights based on issues of colonialism and racial-based social classification. This latter inquiry was guided by the notion of “mestiza consciousness” articulated by Anzaldúa and the decolonial turn. When preparing the questions for participants, I deliberately avoided framing my questions in ways that suggested that human rights have a definite, singular, and objective form. Instead, I designed gentle and open-ended questions, such as “how do you view human rights, generally?” or “do you think that reforms to drug policy should be informed by human rights considerations?” For instance, when I asked Berta, an Indigenous woman that lives in a coca growing territory, to describe the first image that came to her mind in connection with human rights, her response was:

The Indigenous Guards, who promote the whole issue of territory and peace.

When I asked about the role of the state in upholding human rights, Berta explained that:

I believe that the state has always had a different relationship with ethnic and Indigenous communities. For example, struggles such as establishing an Indigenous university are things that we have heard of thanks to Indigenous resistance, rather than as a direct result of the implementation of human rights per se. I believe that the knowledge generated in Europe and from external sources to our country and our continent […] has played important roles in everyone's lives but has not been integrated into our context, with our existing knowledge–that has always existed—and the realities of Latin America. That's why I mentioned the importance of having a university here, it was for this reason. We needed to strengthen our own knowledge and identities, so that our communities would not disappear, and to bolster leadership capable of contributing to the understanding of rights. This is a topic that is widely discussed here in the communities, where we place the community and the territory at the center of our focus.

It is important to note that Berta's mention of “territory” does not pertain solely to physical space. Instead, she addresses the issue of “deterritorialization” (Escobar, 2018), wherein normative discourses not only displace people from their land but also remove the concept of territory from the people themselves. In other words, territory goes beyond physical lands; it encompasses traditions, histories, lived experiences, cultures, and languages. Berta's comment addresses the concept of “body-territory” as well, which enacts “bodies as historical and living territories” (Ojeda, 2023). These processes are ontological experiences that various Indigenous communities have undergone throughout history (Escobar, 2018), leading them to question and challenge narrow, individualistic and “normative” interpretations of rights.

A Tolerance for Ambiguity

Tolerance for ambiguity is an invitation from Latina feminisms to not “hold concepts or ideas in rigid boundaries“ (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 80). As Anzaldúa (1987, p. 80) puts it, “only by remaining flexible […] [we are] able to stretch the psyche horizontally and vertically,” to move away “from set patterns and goals and toward a more whole perspective, one that includes rather than excludes” (p, 80). Latina feminisms propose a set of strategies to deal with ambiguity. For example, drawing from Anzaldúa and other Latina scholars, Lugones (2010, p. 755) proposes the following questions to help researchers reflect on the concept of tolerance for ambiguity:

How do we learn about each other? How do we do it without harming each other but with the courage to take up a weaving of the everyday that may reveal deep betrayals? How do we cross without taking over? With whom do we do this work?

These reflective questions propose a conversation that does not pretend to take over, but rather works with mutual respect guided by a politics of care. According to Ofelia Schutte, who has engaged with Anzaldua's inquiries, communication with those from different cultures is one of the greatest challenges facing North-South relations. To address this issue, Schutte (1998) proposes a cross-cultural approach to research methods. One way to achieve this is by collaborating with members of culturally diverse communities and incorporating diverse perspectives (see also Connell, 2015 and Dertadian & Yates, 2023 for critical drug scholarship). This approach allows for reflexivity, recognizing that while the aim should not be to show all perspectives about a particular issue – which is an endless task, cultural difference is present everywhere, and the implications of knowing this should be acknowledged in research. The geopolitics of knowledge and global migration have taught us that cultural differences matter, and research should both attend and give shape to these realities.

As part of my research project on coca, gender, and human rights, I engaged with various women's associations, including some formed by Indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant women. Before undertaking any interview, I familiarized myself with work on decolonial feminisms (Red de Organizaciones Femeninas del Pacifico Caucano Matamba y Guasa et al., 2022; Rodriguez Castro, 2018, 2020) and their insights into how researchers can be implicated not only in perpetuating harmful dynamics within research but in practices of “epistemic extractivism.” Decolonial feminisms define this as “the logic in which natural resources [as well as discursive resources] are stolen from colonised territories for the enrichment of the North” (Red de Organizaciones Femeninas del Pacifico Caucano Matamba y Guasa et al., 2022). Despite coming from the South, I recognize that I do not represent the voices of Indigenous, Afro-Colombians or peasant women. I come from different urban dynamics where my academic education has been, to some extent, influenced by Northern perspectives, shaping both my worldview and how many of these communities might perceive me (Reid, 2020). In this context, the work of many Latina decolonial feminists encouraged me to always remember how to “learn” and ‘self-correct” in conversations that allow the stretching of “the psyche horizontally and vertically” (Anzaldúa, 1987, p. 80). This involves embracing the ambiguity within myself and reaching a point where I do not make assumptions about normative concepts in research. An important aspect of this learning process, as encouraged by decolonial thought, is to expand the notion of “politics of citation” (Segato, 2022). It should encompass not only recognizing a scholar's ownership of an idea but also “caring” in acts of listening, learning, and crediting other knowledge-building praxis that emerge within distinct historical contexts and social struggles (Muñoz-García et al., 2022).

Avoid Totalizing Claims in Research

As Fúnez-Flores (2022) explains, “in addition to social position or standpoint, there is a geopolitical position that is equally important when considering epistemic exclusion” (p. 16). This is particularly relevant in academic production, as shown by Castro Torres and Alburez-Gutierrez (2022), who observe that “articles studying the global North are systematically less likely to mention the name of the country they study” (p. 1). Avoiding disclosing the geographical provenance of their data can be seen as an unwanted claim of universality that can “reinforce stereotypes and essentialist understandings” of social phenomena (Castro Torres & Alburez-Gutierrez, 2022, p. 2). This issue might be relevant in the field of alcohol and drug research, human rights, and drug policy, including universalizing or totalizing claims about how human rights and gender-based approaches might “work” to refashion drug policy or what they are capable of “doing.” This is also relevant to thinking about how results are presented in a way that can be sensitive to different ontological commitments in the world, so as to “avoid reproducing harmful relations of intellectual domination” (Castro Torres & Alburez-Gutierrez, 2022, p. 2).

In her work, Fraser (2020) brilliantly concludes her exploration of ontopolitically-oriented research by raising a crucial question: “how should we decide which realities should be researched into being?” (p. 8). She goes on to argue that “we have nothing but politics and ethics to guide us” (p. 8). The accounts I have offered reflect my own experience of being a Latina doing research in the Global North, and the reflections on how my own work plays a performative function in the field of alcohol and other drugs. I invite other researchers to transcend borders. When I say “borders” I am not referring solely to physical borders, but to the confines of the politics of knowledge that permeate every aspect of research. I argue that we should view the ontological, Latina feminist and decolonial turns as complementary pathways, in which culturally diverse and alternative sites of knowledge production can contribute to the process of “knowledge creation” in the alcohol and other drugs field.

Conclusions

In engaging with a personal narrative, I have proposed a number of further considerations for ontopolitically-oriented research practice. I explored opportunities to bring ontopolitically-oriented research into conversation with the work of Latina feminist theory and decolonial theory. Drawing from Anzaldúa's (1987) concept of “mestiza consciousness” and the work of Fúnez-Flores (2022), I explored the overlaps between the ontological turn and the decolonial turn and proposed the need to trouble “universal” and normative concepts in research practices. I elaborated on ways in which Latin American feminisms and ontopolitically-oriented research can complement and enhance each other, and invited researchers to consider these as complementary pathways in the field of alcohol and other drugs research. These considerations can be articulated as follows. First, we need to trouble normative concepts in research, and attend to the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—that research on alcohol and other drugs too often employs normatively Western concepts and assumptions about the world, including ideas rooted in capitalism, imperialism, individualism, or neoliberalism, or that our work uncritically embraces legal and political frameworks such as human rights that might be more or less acceptable in some parts of the world. Here, I am advocating for the incorporation of decolonial perspectives in our research, so that we may shed light on issues of oppression and power dynamics. I draw from my work on human rights, gender, and drug policy to illustrate the need to critically examine the often-unexamined concept of “human rights” in drug policy. I showed how this concept might adapt or resist to suit diverse contexts in the Global South. This need for troubling normative concepts in research is aligned with Fraser's work on the ontopolitics of addiction and how the concept of “addiction” may be resisted in diverse contexts (Fraser et al., 2014). By questioning normative concepts in research, and applying a decolonial perspective, we might enact different accounts, and therefore, different realities much needed in the alcohol and other drugs field. Second, I have emphasized the importance of maintaining a tolerance for ambiguity in our work. In this point, I draw from my own personal academic journey to emphasize the need for researchers to remain flexible and open, rejecting the rigid boundaries of normative concepts in research. I also reflect on the importance of a cross-cultural approach to research and engaging in conversations that do not pretend to take over. This point overlaps with Fraser's work on the limits of representation and how dominant discourses may produce a “unified knowing” (Fraser, 2020, p. 7). Both ontopolitically-oriented research and Latina and decolonial theories have a common concern for the rigid boundaries of some concepts and frameworks that avoid complexities and multiplicity. By proposing a conversation between Fraser's work, Latina feminisms and decolonial theory, I have showed ways in which we can foster discussions that potentially lead to different research practices where attention to ambiguities and complexities are encouraged rather than avoided. Third, I have argued that we need to avoid totalizing claims in research. Here, I highlight the importance of avoiding totalizing language and concepts in research and the value of having research practices that do not reproduce essentialist understandings of social phenomena. Here, Latina feminisms and decolonial theory have a common concern with ontopolitcally-oriented research. Both advocate for “think[ing] about questions differently,” and “constitute research fields and datasets […] in ways that acknowledge their status as ethical actors” (Fraser, 2020, p. 9). This point is an invitation not only to researchers in their work but also to academic journals to include and advocate for more work that represents and acknowledges diverse practices important in the daily labor of shaping the field of alcohol and other drugs research.