Humanizing and Decolonizing Grounded Theory: A Journey Lived by Kathy Charmaz

Abstract

Using a life story approach, I explore Kathy Charmaz's research journey marked by her profound motivation to utilize the humanizing potential of human sciences research as she developed the constructivist version of grounded theory (CGT). The experiential and social divides that she observed since her own childhood between the ill person and medical professionals or other stakeholders remained etched in her consciousness. They generated a silently but firmly held moral responsibility toward creating humanizing spaces for the voices of ill persons as well as for people marginalized by social injustice or inequity. The ontological shift Charmaz introduced in CGT enabled recovering the heretofore silenced voices of participants from the clutches of a claimed “objective truth” in the research findings of positivist research.

In her subsequent works, Charmaz also advocated and illustrated the need to use critical reflexivity to more meaningfully understand the hierarchies within and between social worlds as well as how researcher-participant relationships often shape participants' experiences. In doing so, she also demystified the colonialist nature of qualitative research methodologies, including grounded theory (GT) approaches. In such practices, implicitly individualist ideology is used to legitimate neoliberal globalization to help sustain the geopolitical economic power of a few countries over the rest of the world.

Citation

Priya, K.R. (2022), "Humanizing and Decolonizing Grounded Theory: A Journey Lived by Kathy Charmaz", Bryant, A. and Clarke, A.E. (Ed.) Festschrift in Honour of Kathy Charmaz (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 56), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620220000056010