| dc.description.abstract | Research is a modern practice whose production of knowledge needs to be
critically and continually examined. The pursuit of knowledge is not a neutral and
objective endeavor; it is a socially situated practice that is embedded within
power/knowledge/culture configurations. Historically, research discourses have labeled
and positioned minority groups to an inferiority/superiority matrix, illustrating how
research can create an oppressive otherness/alterity. Thus, the general purpose of this
study was to critically critique research from the postcolonial perspectives of alterity and
colonial discourse. In particular, the study sought to deconstruct the conceptual systems
that create the alterity of (Mexican) American children within research discourse.
The study was in part guided by Said's (1978) analysis of the colonial discourse
in Orientalism. There were two parts to the study that analyzed one hundred and
nineteen research documents from 1980-2004. Phase I identified the discursive themes
that construct that alterity of (Mexican) Americans by employing a qualitative content
analysis method. Phase II employed a discourse analysis method to deconstruct theconceptual systems and sites of power in the production of knowledge that position
(Mexican) Americans as objects of research.
The analysis disclosed that the conceptual systems that construct the alterity of
(Mexican) Americans are structured by modern and colonial research structures that
project a hegemonic Westernized vision of research, education, and human existence.
Under these conceptual structures, there are multiple levels of alterity ascribed to
(Mexican) Americans that continue to (re)inscribe positions of inferiority; as objects of
research, they are constantly placed in a comparative framework against the dominant
cultural norms. Some of the key sites of power in the production of knowledge about
(Mexican) Americans are illustrated by the researcher (as author) and the university (as
a privileged location). The conclusions problematized research as an apparatus that
reconstructs hierarchical differences and reinscribes colonial relationships where the
Other is defined only from a Western and culturally dominant perspective of
separateness. | en |
