Colourism, race and power
Episode Description
In this episode of Talking about Methods, Professor Linda Mulcahy talks to Dr Varona Sathiyah (University of Johannesburg) about the complexity of colourism, race and power in the South African context and beyond. They talk about power dynamics between researchers and research subjects, the politics of consent forms, being laughed at in the field and the importance of reflexivity.
Readings recommended by Dr Varona Sathiyah
- Audrey M. Kleinsasser (2000) Researchers, Reflexivity, and Good Data: Writing to Unlearn, Theory Into Practice, 39:3, 155-162, DOI: 10.1207/s15430421tip3903_6
- Hoogendoorn, G., & Visser, G. (2012): Stumbling over researcher positionality and political-temporal contingency in South African second-home tourism research. Critical Arts, 26(3), 254–271. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2012.705456
- Barnabas, Shanade Bianca (2018): The Intermittent Researcher and the Marginalized Research Community: Reflections of Research Praxis from Two Studies Conducted Amongst the !Xun and Khwe in San Rinehart, R. E., Kidd, J., & Quiroga, A. G. (eds.) (2018): Southern hemisphere ethnographies of space, place and time. Peter Lang.
- Sathiyah, Varona (2022): An Indian South African’s reflections on conducting fieldwork in the global south in Pezzano, Antonio; Pioppi,Daniela; Sathiyah,Varona; Frassinell, Pier Paolo (eds.) (2022): The Question of Agency in African Studies. UniorPress.
About the Speaker
Varona Sathiyah
Dr. Varona Sathiyah is a lecturer at the Department of Communication Studies, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She has worked in the publishing industry as the editorial coordinator of an internationally accredited academic journal titled: Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies. Her research focuses on how indigenous communities construct their identities and representation of cultural practices for heritage and tourism purposes.