Abstract
Postcolonialism and decoloniality, which question the epistemology of Western science as a colonial construct, also challenge qualitative methods. Based on an overview of various attempts to decolonize qualitative methods, this article explores how the Documentary Method, a methodology for reconstructing the modus operandi of social practices, can avoid the pitfalls of colonial epistemology. To achieve this, it is crucial to consider multiple contexts to adequately interpret the utterances and actions of research participants. Comparative and multilevel analyses help not only to uncover hidden contexts but also to give voice to previously unconsidered social groups, such as subaltern and oppressed communities. The concept of “postcolonial location” is newly introduced as a theoretically elaborated search strategy to focus researchers’ attention on the potential coloniality of practices. Rather than relying on self-confession, self-reflexivity is methodically initiated and controlled.
Introduction
Postcolonialism and decoloniality criticize Western science as a whole. While the critique is primarily directed at its quantitative operations of counting and measuring, it also extends to qualitative research. Numerous special issues of this and other journals have been published to give voice to the criticism raised by postcolonial thinkers, Critical Race Theory (CRT), Critical Whiteness Studies, Black Studies, and other congenial approaches. Central to this criticism is the “coloniality logics within QI,” that is, within qualitative inquiry (Henson, 2021, p. 1201). Regarding racism, rooted in colonialism, the task is particularly challenging. Qualitative research is not only called upon to uncover racist structures in modern society; rather, the task is to halt the “unchallenged performances of racism hidden in the conceptualizations and practices of qualitative research” itself (D. R. Collins & Cannella, 2021, p. 1139).
The aim, therefore, is to decolonize qualitative research. As Campbell-Chudoba (2024, p. 7) states,
Intentional decolonizing of research is an urgent call to dismantle the colonial foundations upon which academia rests, unlearning of colonial frameworks, a reverence for ancestral knowledge, and an opening for voices that have not usually been heard or heeded in scholarly conversations.
However, even if intentional decolonization were easy to achieve, it is not sufficient. As Scheurich (2024) reminds us, decolonization is not only a matter of epistemology but also of ontology. Colonial structures of thinking, including racist patterns, influence not only the methodology of qualitative research but also “who we White researchers are, what our understandings of the social and educational systems are, and how we White researchers conceive and do our research” (p. 3). If this “coloniality” (Mignolo, 2009; Quijano, 2000) extends not only to our reflective thinking but also to our being—including its preconscious and embodied components—then, as Scheurich (2023, p. 142) argues, there is “simply no way to jump outside one’s ‘historically located sociocultural set of semiotic and linguistic (named) categories.” In this sense, the decolonization of qualitative research, when pursued in isolation from the broader decolonization of the world, seems hardly possible. Therefore, all attempts to decolonize qualitative research can only aim to find
This article explores how the
Building on Karl Mannheim’s (1952, 1982) sociology of knowledge, Ralf Bohnsack (2014, 2018) developed the Documentary Method as a methodology to uncover the “collective tacit knowledge” (H. Collins, 2007) that exists within social groups, organizations, and individuals. This method emphasizes practices, including the performative aspects of speaking and interacting. Regarding the interpretation of such practices, the Documentary Method acknowledges the “existential determination of knowledge” (Mannheim, 1954, p. 239) on the part of the researchers and seeks to control it, especially through comparative analysis. Comparative analysis also serves to create typologies that capture findings across different cases in research. This article demonstrates that with these summarized features the Documentary Method offers valuable starting points for developing answers to the postcolonial critique. 1
The article is structured as follows: First, I will discuss how qualitative research has responded to the challenges posed by postcolonialism, decoloniality, and related approaches. Specifically, three distinct paths emerge: The development of new theoretical frameworks to interpret empirical data, the decolonization of existing methodologies, and the exploration of decolonial methodologies. This review of the current landscape highlights several essential considerations that the Documentary Method should address: Fostering the researcher’s reflexivity in relation to coloniality, amplifying the voices of subaltern and indigenous groups, taking into regard (colonial) contexts beyond research participants’ attention, and systematically including postcolonial structures in research. In the main section of this article, I will, therefore, discuss how the Documentary Method can meet these requirements, by critically referring to exemplary analyses. This methodological approach carefully interprets research participants’ utterances and actions within their diverse contexts, comparatively uncovers tacit experiences across different dimensions (such as gender, class, and postcolonial dimensions), and reconstructs how participants’ social practices are embedded in meso and macro contexts. As a new category to inform search strategies, the concept of “postcolonial location” is proposed for the Documentary Method. Finally, I will discuss how this approach methodically fosters self-reflexivity, particularly in relation to the researchers’ tacit postcolonial entanglements.
Qualitative Inquiry Vis-à-Vis the Postcolonial Challenge
Although colonialism continues to have an economic and political impact even after formal decolonization—in the exploitation of resources of the Global South, land theft, unjust trade agreements, and so on—postcolonial and decolonial theories are primarily concerned with the knowledge and worldview that colonialism brought with it and that legitimize it. This is because the “colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo, 2009, p. 19) is supported by a “web of imperial knowledge” (p. 20), which regards the (colonized) countries of the Global South, their inhabitants, and their knowledge as inferior, contrasting them with the colonizers’ own “enlightened” and “rational” knowledge (Quijano, 2000). According to postcolonial theory, it is only through this colonial (knowledge) difference that Europe has created itself as a hegemonic subject of history (Spivak, 1992, p. 75). In the blind spot of the view of the “Orient,” Europe constructed itself as the universal standard—without having to make this explicit (Said, 1995). An important consequence of colonialism is the racism that legitimized the exploitation of conquered peoples (Quijano, 2000).
Following this thesis, a link can be made to CRT, which views racism not merely as prejudice but as functional to White dominance (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 55; Gillborn, 2015, p. 278). As such, racism is considered institutionalized in Western societies, reaching their very foundations (Delgado & Stefancic, 2023, p. 3; Parker & Lynn, 2002, p. 9; Scheurich, 2023). Both critical race theorists, post- and decolonial thinkers emphasize that racism intersects with other dimensions such as gender and class (Delgado & Stefancic, 2023, p. 11; Gillborn, 2015; Quijano, 2000; Spivak, 1992).
Postcolonial and decolonial theories also question the very foundation of scientific knowledge. As Mignolo (2009, p. 2) aptly put it: “Once upon a time, scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known, and untouched by the geopolitical configuration of a world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured.” As other approaches, such as Feminism as well as Science and Technology Studies, have also shown, this “assumption is no longer tenable” (p. 2): The production of scientific knowledge is deeply permeated by all dimensions of the researcher’s social experiences. While other dimensions of experience, such as gender and class, also influence scientific practice, postcolonial critique is primarily concerned with the “coloniality of the researcher” (Henson, 2021). Scholars of qualitative inquiry have developed a range of responses to this postcolonial challenge. There are three significant areas of focus which I will discuss in the following sections.
New Theoretical Horizons for Empirical Interpretation
Post- and decolonial studies, along with CRT and Critical Whiteness Studies, offer robust theories about the constitution of society. These theories present challenges for qualitative research methodologies that claim to be inductive or abductive, aiming to generate new theories from the methodically controlled interpretation of empirical data. There are two strategies to incorporate the theoretical assumptions of postcolonial and other related studies:
First, such theory—or more precisely, its most generalized components—can be used to develop basic theoretical concepts intended to guide empirical research without themselves being questioned by it. A relevant example is Scheurich’s (2023) thesis that white supremacy is fundamental to the constitution of modern society (see also Quijano, 2000). However, corresponding basic theoretical concepts must allow enough leeway so that “substantial theory” (Glaser & Strauss, 1969, p. 32) can be developed in the course of empirical research.
A second strategy for incorporating postcolonial and other related theories is to use, for example, CRT to inspire the interpretation of empirical data. Using CRT during (rather than prior to) empirical analysis, is, however, by no means a simple process. Malagon et al. (2009), in their thorough discussion of Grounded Theory as a suitable methodology for integrating CRT, initially remind their readers that this approach is conceived as an inductive methodology. However, they then argue for an abductive understanding of Grounded Theory, in which it is possible to use a “prior theoretical framework like CRT” (p. 263). If one wishes to “get at larger social structural factors that have an impact at the micro-level and beyond,” such a theoretical framework, used as a “conditional matrix” (Strauss and Corbin, cited in Malagon et al., 2009, p. 268), seems downright necessary to them.
At this point, however, it is important to reflect on the fine line between using CRT as an all-dominant theoretical concept and employing CRT as a theoretical source of inspiration for empirical interpretations. A succinct example of the latter is an empirical inquiry by Gillborn (2015) who, in his research on Black middle-class parents whose children were suspected of having a dis/ability, empirically considered the intersection of class, race, gender, and dis/ability. By doing so, he did not theoretically assume racism but instead turned it into an empirical question. It is precisely by showing that the class affiliation of parents (and the cultural and economic capital they deployed) was influential in their interactions with schools, but ultimately took a back seat to their race, that Gillborn demonstrated the “primacy of racism” (p. 283) empirically.
Decolonizing Existing Methodologies
Instead of, or in addition to, introducing new theoretical frameworks like CRT to inspire empirical interpretation, many scholars opt to revise established methodological assumptions to decolonize their research. A significant focus of these decolonizing revisions is the practice of coding, initially formulated by Glaser and Strauss (1969) and further developed by other scholars.
According to Viruru and Rios (2021), Glaser and Strauss emphasized coding to protect their approach from positivist criticism. However, this allowed both positivist quantitative researchers and those who perpetuate a colonial way of knowing “to lay claim to such coded qualitative data for the purposes of quantitative categorical comparison robbed of context and amorphous in meaning” (Viruru & Rios, 2021, p. 1149). By using coding to isolate the utterances (e.g., in interviews) from their context, researchers are able to create their own “narratives that only vaguely resemble their origins” (p. 1152), that is, do not convey the meaning-making of the marginalized people under scrutiny. As decolonizing strategies, Viruru and Rios propose to present research findings “as tentative, transient, and incomplete,” rather than “with authority” (p. 1154). This approach allows for the inclusion of the research participants’ own meaning-making processes and, hence, the development of a “pluriversal rather than a universal worldview” (Couldry & Meijas, cited in Viruru & Rios, 2021, p. 1153). An important aspect of this approach is to consider not only the words spoken but also “the way in which” (p. 1154) they are said by interview partners. Regrettably, this last point, which is also significant for the Documentary Method (see below), has not been further elaborated on by Viruru and Rios (2021).
Scheurich’s (2024) criticism also begins with the practice of coding that abstracts utterances from their context. However, he is less concerned with giving dominated voices more space but more focused on questioning qualitative researchers’ emphasis on the subjectivity of individuals. Scheurich underscores that “words spoken by individuals do not include many critically important dimensions of any specific context” (p. 4). Most importantly, results from such research “leave out an address of issues like White supremacy racism that is not readily evident in words or observation notes” (p. 4). Instead of proposing a methodology that would empirically address racism (even if it may not be “readily evident”), Scheurich asks qualitative researchers to “do deep study of the ontology of oppression,” for example, of the “ontology of systemic White supremacy racism” (p. 7). He believes this ontology governs not only the social worlds that are the objects of research but also the researchers themselves. In this way, unlike the approach of Gillborn (2015, see above), CRT is turned into an all-encompassing
Whereas Scheurich (2024) and Viruru and Rios (2021) propose substantial (albeit different) changes to existing versions of the coding paradigm, De Eguia Huerta (2020) views the version of Grounded Theory developed by Charmaz (2006) as sufficiently open and flexible to incorporate decolonizing elements. Using her field research in Bolivia as an example, De Eguia Huerta (2020) highlights the (post)colonial involvement of the researcher, which begins not just in data evaluation but already in the data-gathering process, especially in the communication with the research participants. In this regard, her research aligns with approaches that advocate for a decolonial methodology.
Exploring Decolonial Methodologies
It is not yet possible to speak of a fully developed, independent decolonial methodology of qualitative research. However, various authors, including those already mentioned, are exploring new approaches toward a decolonial methodology that are worth taking a closer look at.
A central strategy of decolonization is for colonized and subaltern people to
An important strategy to ensure that dominated social groups’ voices genuinely reflect their perspectives is to focus on
As several scholars make clear,
Reconsidering the Documentary Method Vis-à-Vis Decolonization
As the discussion of the state of the art has shown, there are many tasks involved in reconsidering the Documentary Method vis-à-vis decolonization. Attention must be given to the hidden and tacit contexts of research participants’ utterances (Scheurich, 2024; Viruru & Rios, 2021). The way in which words are spoken and interviews are conducted needs to be considered (Viruru & Rios, 2021, p. 1154). People who are under-researched and who have been colonially or otherwise oppressed need to be included in the empirical analysis (Au, 2023; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021). During the empirical inquiry, potential structural racism and other dimensions of oppression must be addressed (Gillborn, 2015; Scheurich, 2024; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Finally, the decolonizing self-reflexivity of researchers must be fostered (Au, 2023; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021).
This section explores how these tasks can be addressed from the perspective of the Documentary Method. As will be seen, some tasks are already fulfilled by this approach in its own way but need to be explicitly linked to decolonization. Other tasks must first be translated into the framework of the Documentary Method to make them feasible. In addition, there are tasks that the Documentary Method must reject because they fundamentally conflict with the core of its methodology.
The Context-Sensitive Interpretation of Weltanschauung
How is it possible to understand the meaning of words spoken by strangers? Karl Mannheim, the son of a Jewish-Hungarian father and a Jewish-German mother, was intrigued by this question when, after political turmoil, he had to flee Hungary, where he had recently been appointed as a professor. His first sociological analyses in Germany, where he restarted his career at the beginning of the 1920s, were concerned with epistemology, especially with analyzing different cultural products and what in German is called “Weltanschauung,” that is, worldviews. Mannheim differentiated between an “immanent interpretation” (Mannheim, 1982, p. 80) and a “documentary interpretation” (Mannheim, 1952, p. 61) of Weltanschauung. The former is concerned with the world as seen by the research participants, while the latter reconstructs how this worldview has come about.
As Ralf Bohnsack, who transformed Mannheim’s epistemology into the research methodology known as the Documentary Method, points out, pivotal for the shift from immanent to documentary interpretation is what Mannheim (1982, p. 80) called “bracketing the validity aspect.” Only when the “claims to truth and normative rightness by those under investigation” (Bohnsack, 2018, p. 205) are temporarily suspended is it possible to:
turn from the question of
This approach transcends merely accepting research participants’ truth claims at face value or questioning them from theoretical lenses—whether postcolonial, CRT, or even colonial in origin. By temporarily bracketing the validity aspect during the interpretation of research participants’ voices, the Documentary Method introduces a
The Documentary Method proposes two steps of interpretation for analyzing cases: “formulating interpretation” and “reflective interpretation.” In the “immanent” or, as Bohnsack (2014, p. 225) calls it, the “formulating interpretation,” researchers, using their own words, summarize the content of an interview or other data. This first step of data analysis serves both to carefully attend to the
However, the Documentary Method approaches the context of utterances and actions in a strictly
Again drawing on the sequential context of utterances and actions, the second step of data analysis—referred to as the “documentary” or “reflective interpretation” (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 225)—reconstructs how, that is, in which “modus operandi” (p. 229) or “frame of orientation” (p. 225) the research participants tackle the issues and problems immanent in their words and actions. Similar to the analysis of habitus (Bourdieu, 2010), this reconstruction of orientations examines a level of meaning connected to “collective tacit knowledge” (H. Collins, 2007) and, hence, may lie beyond the explicit consciousness of the people under investigation. Viruru and Rios (2021, p. 1154) seem to allude to this practice-based level of meaning when they note with reference to a teacher that her “words could not be separated from the way in which she said them.”
The reflective interpretation may uncover a previously unspoken meaning of a practice (such as speaking), which could then be confirmed by the participants if they are asked about it. However, it is also possible that the documentary meaning reconstructed by the researcher diverges from or even contradicts the meaning that research participants explicitly attach to their own words and actions.
An illustrative example is Wivian Weller’s (2003) inquiry into “Hiphop in São Paulo and Berlin.” During her fieldwork in a housing estate in São Paulo—impoverished and neglected by the state, and inhabited mainly by Black individuals and migrants from the northeastern region of Brazil—a young male band member emphasized in a group discussion:
Hip-hop changed my way of thinking [. . .] because everything I really wanted to learn in life was about [. . .] identifying with my race. Those were things they didn’t teach at school, things I didn’t learn at school. Through hip-hop, I started to have a stronger notion of blackness, you know? (cited in Weller & Paz Tella, 2011, p. 197)
Weller, who had aimed to “understand the world views of these youths, the way in which globalized cultural styles are appropriated and re-signified” (Weller & Malheiros da Silva, 2011, p. 300), interpreted this and other contributions to the discussion with this band as an attempt to “construct a notion of blackness by identifying with common elements in the history of the African diaspora and with shared experiences of discrimination and segregation” (Weller & Paz Tella, 2011, p. 197). However, since the experiences of these young people were only partly reflected in their identity as Black Brazilians (and, interwoven with this identity, pertained to class and gender positions), Weller concluded that to “build a relationship of unity and reciprocity” among themselves (p. 198), the group used this “imagined community” (Anderson, 1991) of the African diaspora. Most likely, the band members, from their immanent perspective, would not agree with this documentary interpretation, which focuses on the tacit modus operandi underlying their doings and sayings.
Weller did not rely solely on the sequential context of this case for her interpretation; rather, the contrastive comparison with other cases was also crucial. As will be shown, the documentary meaning of utterances and actions becomes increasingly complex as one delves deeper into the respective contexts through comparative analyses.
Global Comparisons and Multidimensionality
Regarding comparison, the Documentary Method was inspired by the Chicago School and the Grounded Theory’s “constant comparative method” (Glaser & Strauss, 1969, p. 101). Vis-à-vis decolonization, comparative analysis in the Documentary Method serves several functions: First, it is the operation best suited for
If researchers confined their analysis to a single case, their interpretation would heavily rely on their own “intuitive horizons of comparison which are stored in our everyday knowledge” (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 224). Such a single-case approach can inadvertently perpetuate colonial knowledge because it often goes unnoticed (Henson, 2021; Scheurich, 2024; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021). Comparative analysis can be a remedy. As Bohnsack (2018, p. 210) emphasizes, “the more those
For example, Wivian Weller (2003), who aimed at analyzing how young people acquired and performed hip-hop, sought maximum contrasts by including both other bands in São Paulo as well as bands formed by marginalized young male people in Berlin in her sample. Her interpretation of the utterances of the first band (see above) was thus also based on the horizon of comparison constituted by a second Paulistano band whose all-male members, rather than constructing an imagined community of the African diaspora, used hip-hop to deal with disrupting family experiences, including the loss of their fathers. Although one might assume that the Berlin hip-hop bands were completely different, they bore certain similarities: In Berlin, too, there was a group that subscribed to an imagined community—constituted by merging “Turkish” with “Western culture” (cited in Weller, 2003, p. 91, 94)—while a second band used hip-hop to deal with their family problems. What all the bands examined had in common, however, were experiences of racist discrimination, though differences in intensity and counter-reactions between Berlin and São Paulo existed.
The Documentary Method uses comparative analysis as a systematic tool to analyze the multidimensionality of experience. For example, the experiences of hip-hop youth that Weller (2003) analyzed could also have been reconstructed regarding aspects such as class, generation, and gender if the respective comparison groups had been included in the sample, that is, rich young people, another generation, and women. The
A compelling example illustrating the decolonial potential of multidimensional comparisons is R. Nazlı Somel’s (2019) inquiry into educational inequality, which uses the Documentary Method. Based on numerous interviews and her field observations, Somel reconstructed the tacit mechanisms that generated and reproduced inequality in a primary and lower secondary school located in a poor district of Istanbul, Turkey. By comparing 80 biographical interviews with eighth-grade students, she identified three significant dimensions of their experience: Although all students were from working-class families, they were divided into those whose parents were day laborers with “insecure working conditions” and those with “secure socioeconomic conditions” (p. 107). The latter group had already developed educational aspirations that included tertiary education, while the former group, irrespective of their educational success, were “unable to make long-term plans regarding their education” (p. 107). A second dimension of experience became evident when Somel compared students living under precarious economic conditions in terms of their gender positions. The girls experienced their failures at school, which in one case led to dropping out, as a problem of incompatibility with their families and their expectations. This was due to their responsibilities in household work and the domestic production of industrial goods. The boys, on the contrary, worked outside the home to earn a living, gaining qualifications that diminished the significance of their school failure (pp. 142–143). In contrast, for students with a regular family income, differences in school success existed regardless of gender. Some students had fallen behind in their former school performance, viewing this as a consequence of their desire for leisure activities. Others maintained high performance and saw the privileged position that school gave them as their entitlement. However, as Somel (2019, p. 180) reminds her readers, even the “options” for these types of students were “restricted” as they neither considered attending the most prestigious public high schools nor a private high school—options that would become apparent if compared to wealthier students.
The multidimensional comparison, therefore, enables the specific inclusion of social groups that are marginalized and oppressed in particular ways. In Somel’s (2019) inquiry, for example, the female students with precarious family incomes could certainly be described as
Tacit Contexts on Multiple Levels
Confining an empirical inquiry solely to those who suffer from marginalization and oppression would inevitably obscure how their situation originated. This approach might lead to two potential outcomes: either holding the dominated individuals themselves responsible for their situation or having the researcher rely on theoretical hypotheses about “external” factors that influenced it (as, e.g., Scheurich [2024] and Malagon et al. [2009] suggest). Somel (2019) did neither. Instead, she resorted to
In addition to interviewing students, Somel (2019) interviewed
This multilevel analysis, hence, revealed at least three hidden contexts of the unequal educational situation of the eighth-grade students: The attitudes of teachers, the inequality mechanisms of the school organization, and the competition among schools that functioned as a catalyst of these mechanisms. From a postcolonial perspective, it was significant that Somel considered further possible contexts, including the position of the school in the
Such
The Postcolonial Location: A New Search Category
As is evident in the research examples mentioned above, there are certainly analyses using the Documentary Method that are relevant to postcolonial issues. However, such questions have not yet been systematically pursued. This is also reflected in the fact that the Documentary Method, which otherwise has a decidedly theoretical framework (see Bohnsack, 2018), does not provide any corresponding theoretical concepts for the empirical search for and recording of postcolonial phenomena. It is in this context that I wish to introduce the concept of
Similar to gender, class, and the “generation location” (Mannheim, 1972, p. 292), the postcolonial constellation can be conceived of as a “social location” (p. 293) which defines a limited social space of
The concept of postcolonial location that I am introducing here incorporates many components of what postcolonial researchers and proponents of decolonization of qualitative methods address in their reflections on colonial knowledge and the structural racism rooted in it. They are concerned with a constellation situated at the societal level, which began with the racist and Eurocentric legitimization of colonization. Since then, this constellation may have constrained people’s potential for experience and action, often beyond their own conscious will.
However, in the Documentary Method, the concept of postcolonial location should strictly be used as a search strategy. It is an empirical question whether the potential for experiences and actions provided by the postcolonial location is realized by the research participants. Mannheim developed a second concept, the
It should be noted that within this experiential nexus—among all those who have (tacit) postcolonial experiences and orientations—very different and even opposing postcolonial milieus can emerge, whose experiences and orientations may diverge. After all, the postcolonial location, that is, the potential of experiences produced by the permanence of the colonial “heritage,” includes not only those who occupy non-White positions in the “subaltern” (Spivak, 1992) of societies and those who are socially privileged as Whites. In addition, intermediate positions—such as those of non-Whites who have migrated to Western societies (Castro Varela & do Mar Dhawan, 2020, p. 324)—must also be considered, especially since other experiential nexuses, including class- and gender-specific ones, also contribute to the multidimensional constitution of
Self-Reflexivity and the Existential Determination of Doing Research
The postcolonial location pertains not only to the research participants. The researchers themselves are also involved in it. As Mignolo (2009, p. 4) rightly put it: “The knower is always implicated, geo- and body-politically, in the known.” At this point, Mannheim’s (1954) warning should be recalled: “As long as one does not call his [or her] own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his [or her] opponents’ ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy” (p. 68), the analysis risks overlooking its own ideological components. Thambinathan and Kinsella (2021, p. 3) therefore suggest fostering “critical reflexivity” on the part of researchers, as it is “powerful for examining researchers’ epistemological assumptions, their situatedness with respect to the research, and crucial in addressing power dynamics in research.”
However, it is by no means sufficient to merely explicate one’s own position within the postcolonial, gender-, and class-specific locations—for instance, describing the author of this article as an “old white man”—as this would only lead to “oversimplified confessions” (p. 3). For it is precisely the preconscious experiences and habitual aspects of a social position that constitute the “existential determination of knowledge” (Mannheim, 1954, p. 239). The question then is: How can self-reflexivity, extending to the preconscious existential determinants of knowledge production, be fostered?
One answer by decolonial methodologies focuses on “
A second answer builds on the Documentary Method’s emphasis on
In view of these two ways of promoting self-reflexivity among researchers, it becomes clear that decolonizing approaches and the Documentary Method agree in conceiving the results of research as “tentative, transient, and incomplete” (Viruru & Rios, 2021, p. 1154). In the Documentary Method, this is not merely a commitment but can be methodologically justified through the gradual yet always limited extension of multidimensional comparative and multilevel analysis.
Discussion and Conclusion
Although the decolonization of qualitative research may seem impossible in light of the “coloniality of [. . .] being” (Mignolo, 2009, p. 17; see also Scheurich, 2023), it remains both meaningful and necessary to revise existing qualitative methodologies in response to postcolonial critique. In line with revisions of other approaches (e.g., De Eguia Huerta, 2020; Scheurich, 2024; Viruru & Rios, 2021), this article addresses this challenge by focusing on the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2014, 2018).
The Documentary Method does not provide direct solutions to the postcolonial challenge. Instead, this article reformulates the challenge while striving to preserve its original meaning. A key aspect of this involves carefully handling the utterances of research participants (Scheurich, 2024; Viruru & Rios, 2021). Rather than adopting the research participants’ immanent perspectives or critiquing them with theoretical arguments, the Documentary Method analyzes the tacit “modus operandi” (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 229) of their utterances. By temporarily bracketing the validity aspect, this approach seeks to reconstruct the internal logic and orientations underlying participants’ utterances.
Such documentary interpretations rely on the contexts within which research participants’ utterances are analyzed. This includes not only the internal contexts of individual cases but also the contrasting cases with which participants are compared. In addition, comparative analysis—regardless of the specific research question—provides an opportunity to include social groups that have been under-researched and subjected to (colonial) oppression (Au, 2023; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021).
The decolonization of the Documentary Method can be further strengthened by theoretical foundations. In contrast to all-encompassing explanatory theories (Scheurich, 2023; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), the concept of “postcolonial location” is introduced as a guiding theoretical tool and search strategy. This concept directs researchers’ attention to potential postcolonial experiences without burdening the empirical analysis with preconceived hypotheses about the subject matter.
Nevertheless, according to the Documentary Method, one can never assume that social phenomena are shaped solely by coloniality. Through its multidimensional comparisons, which also consider gender, class, and other dimensions of inequality, this methodology allows for the revelation of how postcolonial experiences intersect with and are modified by other dimensions of experience. However, this intersectionality (Campbell-Chudoba, 2024; Gillborn, 2015) must itself be understood within its specific contexts (Weiß & Nohl, 2012). Only a multilevel analysis (Nohl, 2019) can uncover how inequality and oppression are perpetuated by macro-level forces—extending to the global level—and how they are translated into practice at the meso- and micro-levels. Such multilevel analysis also helps to empirically discern the genesis of racist practices, a major focus of the ongoing discussion (Scheurich, 2023; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).
Even though (self-)reflection, particularly of one’s own positionality, is a key requirement in decolonial methodologies (Au, 2019, p. 688; De Eguia Huerta, 2020, p. 378; Henson, 2021), the Documentary Method aligns with Pillow (2003) and Thambinathan and Kinsella (2021, p. 3) in arguing that (self-)reflection should serve to expose the contingencies of research rather than shield researchers from critique. Comparative analysis and multilevel analysis are not the only tools that can illuminate researchers’ blind spots. Beyond illusions of self-transparency, the heterogeneity of experiences within a research team or workshop also offers valuable opportunities to reflect on the “existential determination” (Mannheim, 1954, p. 239) that shapes the research process.
Not only researchers are situated; every methodology is created within a specific historical and social context and shaped by its self-evident assumptions. Although the Documentary Method originated from a scholar in a marginal position—Mannheim, again, had to flee from Germany in 1933, only 2 years after being appointed professor at the University of Frankfurt—it remains firmly anchored in Western thought. It would therefore be presumptuous to claim the complete “de-linking” (Mignolo, 2009, p. 3) of the Documentary Method from the colonial legacy of Western science (Scheurich, 2023). Nevertheless, the Documentary Method, with its approach to interpreting social practices across diverse contexts, its capacity for multidimensional and multilevel comparative analysis, the newly introduced theoretical concept of postcolonial location, and its methodologically controlled self-reflexivity, provides important starting points for dealing (self-)critically with the “coloniality of power” (Quijano, 2000) in qualitative methods.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
For their feedback on earlier versions of this article, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Erhan Bağcı, Christian Lund Pedersen, R. Nazlı Somel, Denise Klinge, Kemal İnal, Wivian Weller, Sarah Thomsen, Philip Schelling, Martin Hunold, Anna F. Scholz, Simona Szakács-Behling, Alexander Geimer, and Anja Weiß.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
