Moving to Tier 2 Thinking:
Integrating Critical and Emancipatory Approaches and Wilber’s Theory of Everything
By Vanessa Smith and Andrew Lorenzana — University of San Diego
With the current societal climate calling for greater cultural consciousness surrounding racial and social justice, the direction of qualitative research is increasingly leaning towards critical and emancipatory methodologies. With this in mind, we are exploring emancipatory research as exemplified by Russell Bishop’s (1998) work with the Maori and Gloria Anzaldua’s (1999) concepts of Borderlands and conocimiento. We will continue by exploring how emancipatory research fits into the theories of human developmental psychology, specifically that of Beck and Cowan’s (1995) Spiral of Development and as explained further by Ken Wilber (2000).
Beck and Cowan’s (1996) Spiral of Development was elaborated upon in Ken Wilber’s (2000) book A Theory of Everything where he ventured to create an integral vision of the spiral that could be used across disciplines and be applicable to society as a whole. A defining feature of the Spiral of Development is the juxtaposition of the individual versus the collective and how one shifts their attitude from an individualistic to a collectivist mindset. This shift is a necessary component, in order to shift from Tier 1 thinking to Tier 2 thinking within the Spiral of Development. The Spiral is separated into color-coded memes, or levels, that all individuals progress throughout their lives. The green meme is the highest level of Tier 1 thinking, this is where much of the postmodern and critical thinking today stems from. The yellow meme is the first level of Tier 2 thinking and takes the individuals critical notions from the green meme and expands them to more collective, in some instances global, application. We argue that emancipatory research techniques are a way of moving from Tier 1 thinking to Tier 2 thinking because it emphasizes a collective view on critical and postmodern thought.
What is Emancipatory Research
The understanding of emancipatory research that we will be referencing stems from Bishop’s (1998) Freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in research: A Maori approach to creating knowledge. Bishop conducts research that is concerned with emphasizing how research practices should promote self- determination of cultures, populations, and communities being researched; while simultaneously addressing contemporary research issues that directly come from and reinforce colonization.
Researchers from colonizing nations continue to come to colonized lands and perform research that meet their own agenda without regard for the wellbeing of those in the colonized lands. This aspect of colonization is, perhaps, less obvious to the outside observer than its economic and political aspects, though it has serious implications on indigenous culture and knowledge. It essentially commoditizes indigenous culture and thinking to be intellectually mined by researchers outside of that culture. It perpetuates the values of the colonizer at the expense of the colonized and the historical and cultural knowledge that accompanies them. The aim of emancipatory research is to decolonize the way research is performed in many of these contexts and empower those groups that have been extorted by the traditional methods of social science research for so long. Its overarching goals are to involve the collective communities being researched and for those communities to be self-determined. The key word self-determination should, in every way possible, be elaborated on. Emancipatory research practices essentially transfer knowledge back to colonized communities and allow them to take what is needed from research and make it applicable to their own communities in ways that they determine for themselves.
Historically, traditional research methods have continued the cycle of colonization by reaping the benefits of indigenous knowledge and using that knowledge solely for the researcher’s benefit away from the indigenous lands being studied. In the next section we will discuss how emancipatory research methods break this cycle and work to repair these traditional Western methods.
Anzaldua as a Necessary Step Towards Emancipatory Practices
Gloria Anzaldua addresses in depth topics such as intersectionality, which is inclusive of racial, sexual, gender, socioeconomic and other identities. She describes intersectionality in terms of living in “borderlands”. These borders being both physical and social lines. Anzaldua’s theory and work is based on her own personal life experience and can be grounded or associated with critical theory and postmodern thought.
In terms of emancipatory research we draw connections to Anzaldua in various ways. The first and simplest connection and explanation being that research historically and continually is not inclusive of intersectionalities. Which therefore can cause research to replicate physical and social borderlands. When research is conducted the researcher can extrapolate numerous conclusions from data to meet their own research agenda. While we view Anzaldua as a critical theorist we also see her as someone who is grounding a theory that pushes us towards a more emancipatory research approach. That is taking a critical step towards giving those being researched some semblance of self-determination and allowing them to navigate the borderlands themselves, as Anzaldua is doing in her own work.
Anzaldua acts as a necessary bridge for the movement from Tier 1 thinking to Tier 2 thinking as described by Wilber. A fundamental part of the movement from Tier 1 to Tier 2 thinking is the shift from individualistic to collectivist thinking. Because Anzaldua does not consider herself a social scientist, rather elaborating upon her own story through autohistoria, she is speaking from the individual, not the collective. She draws upon the impact of collectives, such as her culture, on her thinking though her work is individually hers. We mark her as a necessary step in this process because she provides critical thought that is required to have a fuller view of the collective when in Tier 2 thinking, thus opening that door and acting as a bridge to Tier 2 thinking.
Anzaldua’s work regarding her idea of conocimiento can also be tied to Wilber’s movement within his Spiral of Development. Anzaldua describes seven stages one can go through starting once a rupture occurs in one’s life stemming from some sort of internal struggle. One then progresses through these seven stages with the end product being a shift in one’s reality (Anzaldua, 1999). We see this movement through the process of conocimiento aligning with Wilber’s explanation of an integral transformative practice, which he states is required to move through his spiral. While coming from two very different traditions of thought, we believe Anzaldua and Wilber are speaking to the same seminal process one goes through at major transformative periods in their life and both work to move one higher through the Spiral of Development.
We would like to emphasize that this is only one interpretation of Anzaldua’s work. We believe that Anzaldua did establish her lived experience and ultimately her grounded theory to be open to other avenues and interpretations. Anzaldua left the door open and we are extending her work to Wilber’s integrated spiral of development. However, Anzaldua can be applicable to various different interpretations of what we are presenting here and to many other phenomena.
Emancipatory Research as Second Tier Thinking
Coming full circle and returning to Bishop’s article and how Maori indigenous, collective, approaches encompass decolonial empowerment and how this is crucial to emancipatory research. The author describes an indigenous approach to research that has emerged in New Zealand called Kaupapa Maori Research. Bishop highlights several “significant dimensions” (p. 4) of the Kaupapa research method including the operationalization of self-determination of the Maori people, its collectivist approach oriented towards benefitting the research participants opposed to the researcher, its commitment to critical analysis of the unequal power relations which exist in society, and protecting knowledge that existed in New Zealand’s native communities before European arrival as outlined in the Treaty of Waitangi. Bishop’s framework highlights the need for indigenous research methods that are created by indigenous communities and work to the benefit of those very indigenous communities. It hands power back to the communities that have been colonized for hundreds of years and puts them in charge of their own intellectual property.
Bishop highlights the need for a collective approach to research that brings members of the group being researched into active participation in the research. As well as returning the power back to the groups being studied by using methods they create, by intimately involving members of the group being studied in the overall research process is the essential process in breaking the cycle of scientific colonization and moving from Tier 1 to Tier 2 thinking. What Bishop does here accomplishes the goals of emancipatory research by retaining self-determination for the Maori and their intellectual traditions while also emulating that shift from individualistic to collectivist thinking which is necessary for the move from Tier 1 to Tier 2 thinking in the Spiral of Development.
Conclusion
This move from the highest level of Tier 1 (green) to the lowest of Tier 2 (yellow) displays a shift from critical approaches to emancipatory approaches. As Wilber describes, integral transformative practice is required to move between memes, or levels in the Spiral of Development. An incredibly small percentage of the population makes it to second tier thinking, described as the space where integration occurs. The green meme is characterized as the level where postmodern and critical thinking lives. Reaching this level allows us to look back upon the levels that come before it and analyze the benefits and faults within them. Critical research hinges on the problematization of largely accepted knowledge though without the extra action taken by emancipatory practitioners in undoing the colonization that has occurred historically in that culture. This is why we use the metaphor that critical research is a necessary step, opening the door if you will, towards emancipatory practices just as the green meme is a necessary step towards reaching the yellow meme, second tier thinking. Theorists like Anzaldua provide the necessary footing on the individual level by taking a critical view of society. This thinking opens the door for scholars like Bishop to use those thoughts created in the green meme and integrate them into a collective, in his case being the Maori.
References
Anzaldúa, G. (1999). Borderlands: La frontera. Aunt Lute Books.
Beck, D., & Cowan, C. C. (1996). Spiral dynamics: Mastering values, leadership, and change: Exploring the new science of memetics. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell Business.
Bishop, R. (1998) Freeing ourselves from neo-colonial domination in research: A Maori approach to creating knowledge, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11:2, 199–219, DOI: 10.1080/095183998236674
Wilber, K. (2000). A theory of everything: An integral vision for business, politics, science and spirituality. Shambhala Publications.
