Doing sociology with people: Disability, coloniality and reflexivity in institutional ethnography

Isiaka, Abass B. (2025) Doing sociology with people: Disability, coloniality and reflexivity in institutional ethnography. Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 26 (2). ISSN 1438-5627 (In Press)

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Abstract

In this paper, I offer an embedded approach to reflexivity in institutional ethnography (IE). I draw on a study conducted with disabled students in a post-colonial higher education context to show why and how existing approaches to reflexivity in IE have been inadequate in preserving the voice of subaltern subjects. I engage with the question of what reflexivity means for "academic homecomer[s]" (ORIOLA & HAGGERTY, 2012) who have been educated in the global North, going to research in the South. By proposing a decolonial IE that demands biographical, epistemic, analytical and transformational reflexivity, I advance the arguments for IE to move from a "sociology for people" (SMITH, 2005) to a sociology with people who are being ruled by the "colonial matrix of power" relations (MIGNOLO & WALSH, 2018, p.4). With a decolonial IE, I take a reflexive approach to understanding how the trans-local conditions of coloniality coordinate the social relations of inclusion and participation for disabled students. I conclude that while IE allows the opportunity to empower those being ruled by a matrix of domination with the knowledge of how things are organised, like some other participatory research, it does not offer researchers a way to work with the people on how to transform their everyday actualities.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	disability,institutional ethnography,reflexivity,coloniality,sociology
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	13 Mar 2025 16:30
Last Modified:	13 Mar 2025 17:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98746
DOI:

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