Examining Concepts of Reflexivity and Positionality in Native and Indigenous Research Methods

Abstract

The progression of anthropology as a discipline has long been recorded as having a mutually reinforcing relationship with colonial discourses of power (see particularly Lewis 1973, Pels 1997). This has created a multitude of power dynamics which infiltrate research methods on both micro and macro levels. Thus, reflexivity and positionality have emerged as two crucial elements of the ethnographic process in order to allow for a critical examination of these power dynamics.