Research as freedom: Using a continuum of interactive, participatory and emancipatory methods for addressing youth marginality

This article offers an analysis of a continuum along which interactive, participatory and emancipatory inquiries may be placed in critical qualitative research with a social justice focus. It draws on critical distinctions to make the argument that labelling research ‘participatory’ hides both interactive approaches and those that might be seen to be emancipatory in the vein of Paolo Freire and Stanley Biggs. To support the argument for a continuum of engaged research, four recent research studies from South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria and Sierra Leone that address youth marginality and views on an array of topics are discussed with a view to articulating divergences and convergences in approaches. Included are considerations around adapting research for specific audiences and participants, the location of power, research ethics, as well as the demystification and democratisation of knowledge ownership and generation, and the nature of collaboration. The article offers tentative criteria by which research may be located along the suggested continuum and argues that an emancipatory approach, whilst being key to bringing about change or freedom, is a difficult but not impossible aim to achieve in research.

Holistic Knowledge Management: Towards Eliminating Ethical Dilemmas of Knowledge Ownership and Sharing

Knowledge management is more than a mere accessory to business strategy; it occupies a pivotal position in organizations that operate in the knowledge-based economy. In order to realize an effective knowledge management system it is imperative to ensure an environment of ethical coherence, which is impossible until the dilemmas regarding knowledge ownership and sharing are resolved. This essay approaches the ethical resolution on the basis of a constructivist and humanistic epistemology wherein the invariable tacit dimension of knowledge and the resultant dualistic dialogic discourseare acknowledged. It proposes the achievement of ethical harmony, insofar as holistic knowledge management is concerned, through the channel of seven organizational dimensions, which through the realization of organizational commitment and trust are deemed to generate an ethically paradigmatic harmony across allcultural strands of the organization, viz., starting from the visionary attitude of its leadership, through the organizational norms, values, and beliefs, down to the perception of every individual knowledge worker.

Locating, Negotiating, and Crossing Boundaries: A Western Desert Land Claim, the Tordesillas Line, and the West Australian Border

This is a story about the boundaried nature of stories and the storied nature of boundaries. It concerns a modern ‘scientific’ boundary: the West Australian border. In the process of trying to locate Aboriginal boundaries in a native title claim, this border is revealed as problematic and bent, and as rooted in the colonial history of the last 500 years. The tensions between Western and Aboriginal conceptions of boundaries open up a space for the exploration of the hidden social and narratological dimensions of land and knowledge, ownership, and authority.