Relational ontologies and epistemologies that are informed by our philosophies: Inaugural Ubuntu Annual Lecture 2022

Abstract

It’s always a pleasure, a privilege, and an honour to share my thoughts with other African scholars.  So, today I chose to talk about decolonising research and evaluation methodologies.  I’ll start off with my understanding of what social workers do, then talk about the challenges that are there for social workers and others as evaluators and researchers.  And then I introduce the decolonising paradigms and present the opportunities that are there for us as African scholars to work together to further our vision of an Africa that is liberated from only hearing from the global north.  I understand that as social worker, you provide help and support to children and others in need, and that in doing so, you are informed by research.  I understand that social workers are also evaluators, and they evaluate interventions to inform policy revisions and even modification of their interventions.  I understand that social workers, they do research on social problems to inform design and evaluation of the interventions they design for efficacy.  According to the SDGs, social workers have a responsibility, and this responsibility includes making sure that the interventions that they design are sustainable, that they provide long-term solutions for the wellbeing of the entire ecosystem that includes human beings and nature.  I understand that social workers are also guided by the principles of social justice, human rights, and holistic and sustainable development to reach freedom and wellbeing.  And I understand that social workers are expected to use various theories that take into account historical, cultural, and environmental underpinnings of society.  Now, there are challenges with evaluation if you are a social worker.  And the biggest challenge that we have today is that the paradigms that we use, the world views that we use that inform how we do evaluation have been informed by the ways of knowing of the West, the ways of seeing reality of the West, and the value systems of the West, and are also driven by Euro-Western methodologies.  This has resulted in stagnation of thinking about other ways of doing evaluation and other ways of doing research.  The biggest problem is that Western researchers and evaluators and the funders and donors from the West are reluctant also, because remember, most of our development interventions are funded from the West.  These people are reluctant to engage with philosophies that see a connection between the living and the non-living.  And these are called relational ontologies and epistemologies that are basically informed by our philosophies, especially the philosophy of Ubuntu.

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Chilisa, B. (2024). Relational ontologies and epistemologies that are informed by our philosophies: Inaugural Ubuntu Annual Lecture 2022. Ubuntu Lecture delivered on 25 November 2022. African Journal of Social Work, 14(3), 158-165. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajsw.v14i3.8

Visit journal website: https://ajsw.africasocialwork.net