Africa and Cultural Studies

Option 1 Assumptions about truth can be dangerous in any research because they can lead to bias shaping the research: a researcher may suffer from confirmation bias, seeking only the type of answers that align with his assumptions (Nickerson, 1998). Objectivity and subjectivity, therefore, are important to consider when conducting research, just as deriving the correct interpretation of the meaning of collected data is important. Objectivity, subjectivity and meaning are interconnected, as both objectivity and subjectivity will feed in to how meaning is understood.

Every person is capable of being both objective and of having a subjective experience at the same time. Being mindful of how one’s subjective experience can shape one’s perspective is critical to being as objective as possible. Potential concerns for this study consist of the risk of researcher bias and confirmation bias intruding up on the methodology. Removing researcher bias and preventing confirmation bias are critical for maintaining the integrity of the study and in assuring that the study has credibility and trustworthiness.

Data triangulation can help to achieve this aim, but it is also important for the researcher to state up front what he expects to find so that he can “bracket out” his bias, as recommended by Johnston, Wallis, Oprescu and Gray (2017). By stating expectations, beliefs, and assumptions up front, the researcher is able to bracket out potential bias and remove them from the approach to collecting data as objectively as possible.

The intention is not to find data that proves a hypothesis but rather to let data emerge organically to paint a picture that can then be studied and interpreted using the theoretical model employed. Bracketing out bias can be accomplished “by identifying and suspending preconceptions and being open to the data” (Smith & McSweeney, 2017, p. 292).

This will allow for the researcher to resist inserting himself into the data collection and analysis process and simply allow the threads to appear as they do and follow them and analyze them according to the criteria stipulated in the methodology. Being upfront about one’s subjective assumptions can help to allow the actual meaning of facts to emerge through the data collection process as well.

One can approach a subject with a sense of what the meaning of things already is—so it is important in this case for the researcher to state those ideas up front and to allow the reader to understand the researcher’s own background and where he is coming from.

This will give the reader the chance to see that the researcher already has some meaning of events in mind and that he aims to build on that meaning or change it as necessitated by the facts that are encountered. When researchers design and conduct research they have to be mindful about what they perceive the truth to be—because there is an objective truth and a subjective truth, and both have to be considered.

The objective truth is what one sees: it is the awareness of the facts as they are, without interpreting them or applying a judgment to them; it is just a statement of the facts. The subjective truth is how one experiences those facts—how one interprets them. It is out of that interpretation that meaning is derived. However, one can strive to make one’s interpretation as objective as possible by describing the theoretical lens through which one is looking.

The researcher can describe the process by which the data is analyzed and defined. This helps the research to take on a more objective character and quality. The more that one uses different data sources, too, the more one can make the study more credible and trustworthy—this is what is meant by triangulating data: using two or more sources of information instead of collecting all the data from one source, which could lead to a highly biased presentation of meaning.

Research Design As Moyo (2009) shows, the state of Africa today is such that the Aid promised to the country and given is simply not an effective source of strength and stability from Africans: “sub-Saharan Africa remains the poorest region in the world” (p. 5). This research design is going to be a case study to explore the role of self-reliance in bringing stability to African nations. Self-reliance will be defined by countries’ independent and assertive policies to develop on their own merit, resources, and capacity.

The focus of the study will be on how national policy does support or is antithetical to traditional practices—so it will assume a national level analysis and how nations support or do not support informal forms of associations as well as customary practices among local self-groups and religious institutions. Insights I have gained from previous work include the role of literacy as an important factor in social and economic development.

For example, according to Steven Radelet, the Central African Republic is one of ten countries in the developing world “with negative per capita growth, or falling average incomes” (Radlet, 2016, p. 49). Most of these ten countries are indeed in Africa, but the Central African Republic is unique not only for its dismal economic outlook but also for its dismal rate of female literacy. The literacy rate for women in the Central African Republic sits at only 24.4%.

Still, this is 26.4% below the rate of male literacy in the country, which is at 50.7%. Compared to a nation like Iran, the African Republic has far fewer women who are able to read—in fact, just under 3 out of 10 women are literate. This is especially meaningful considering the dire state of the Central African Republic in terms of economic and social development.

The Central African Republic is not well-advanced at all: it has no nuclear facilities, it has a considerably poor infrastructure, safety and corruption in society are issues that need to be addressed, and the outlook remains bleak as there is very little culture that is to be thought as sustainable for educational development. As a result, in Central African Republic, “women make up less than 10 percent of the students in institutions of higher learning” (King & Hill, 1997, p. 100).

The nation’s poverty is linked directly with its low female literacy rate because both are affected by the country’s cultural impoverishment and instability in social, political and economic terms. My role as a researcher is to locate the meaning of the information I collect by analyzing it objectively and discussing my own subjective experience of the information so as to be fair to my reader.

The reader will want to know where I am coming from and what perspective I bring and so I must be able to describe that, based on the theories that I apply and based on my own knowledge of things in Africa. I will ask questions such as why countries like Central African Republic are not more developed and how self-resiliency and the country’s attitude towards self-resiliency play a part.

Mulumba and Namuggala (2014) state that “women’s benefit is largely hinged on their self-resilience and determination” (p. 27). Wang, Li, Hu, and Li (2011) note that “money stimulates competition, power promotes symbiosis, and spirit induces self-resilience” (p. 17). It will be my job to identify the spirit in these countries by looking at what other scholars have written and exploring the topic through the eyes of African artists, leaders, speakers, scholars, and so on.

The research question this study will seek to answer is: how is self-resilience factoring into the situation in Africa today, and how are national governments facilitating or not facilitating the emergence of self-resilience among African men and women. Data will be collected by examining the different literature sources that are available and not confining myself to any one literature genre. Scholarly literature is helpful but so too is art and news and all other sources of information.

I will also conduct interviews with persons who are familiar with events in Africa so that I can have multiple data sources aside from literature genres. Ethics concerns regarding protecting persons’ identity should be considered, therefore. These will include making sure that interviewees give informed consent and that their identities are protected and not published. Participants will be kept anonymous. I will also use member checking to ensure that my interpretation of their data aligns with what they meant when they gave their responses.

This will help to give the study more credibility too. I will locate persons for interviews by using social media platforms to reach.