Notes on: Atkinson, P. And Ryen, A (2016). Indigenous Research and Romantic Nationalism. Societies. 6, 34 doi:10.3390/soc6040034 Dave Harris There is a link with decolonising research, which is 'inextricably linked to the promotion of IR', but the notion is not always coherent and needs clarification. It is classically taken to be part of qualitative methodology. One emphasis is that it is undertaken by members of a particular indigenous people, but here there are problems since this is a category that is used selectively. The same goes with indigenous epistemology which is often oversimplified. Despite the claims of the superiority of research strategies, there often seems to be 'a disappointing payoff', giving an 'illusory' quality to the claims of distinctiveness and superiority. Who are the indigenous? There is no simple answer. The usual number of people include North American first Nations, Maori or Australian aboriginals, sometimes Sami or Russian indigenous people. However drawing boundaries around such groups is often naïve. The Sami, for example stretch across Norway Sweden Finland and Russia, and in Norway they live in cities and more urban areas as well as the more rural areas in the North. Sami populations, Sami policies and Sami research are thus hard to define — we cannot assume that they are ethnically homogeneous. The personal stories and experiences of researchers do not give privileged access to grasp the experiences of others, nor do they guarantee 'exclusive analytical insight', and the same applies to a discovery of ancestry: it is ultimately a question of the quality of research not of ethnicity or indigeneity., As some indigenous researchers agree. Deciding who is truly indigenous is also problematic and can lead to 'an absurd (but dangerous) calculus of purity' (2), as we see in the issue of the right to vote in Norway, which covers those who have ancestors but who may have no knowledge of Sami languages and practices. Mertens at Al have explored this in their book Indigenous Pathways, and of noted definitions of indigenous which include biology, blood lines, or interpretive approaches and self-identity [cf US approaches in Omionly and Winant]. There is a parallel here with the early debates on feminism. The same goes with definitions of indigenous people linked to invasion and colonisation, since there are problems with migrations and other kinds of insiders and outsiders, majorities and minorities, and forms of social segregation. This leads to the problems of community. IR tends to mean 'an extremely restricted range of groups' (3), where there are 'many minorities that are or have been dispossessed, oppressed and marginalised, the language suppressed and their independence denied'. There is a dominance of small groups as above but a generalisation to indigenous people in general. Indigenous epistemology is also misrepresented, as is the research strategy of the West or North. There is no single paradigmatic orthodoxy and now 'oversimplified versions of "science", few examples of actual research that fit, especially with modern qualitative research. Western paradigms for research as an articulation of theory and scientific methods chosen to explain and to guarantee 'an objectivity of research'  based on Western philosophy are a caricature. Similarly the notion that knowledge is an individual identity researchers are individuals, knowledge is something that is gained and owned by individuals. Nevertheless, this caricature can then be contrasted with indigenous paradigms which argue that knowledge is relational, shared with all creation and so on. Western scholars can certainly endorse this relational notion of understanding and do not adhere to research-based knowledge as private and personal, especially in ethnography for example. Bishop on the Maori points to whanau as their epistemological framework, emphasising kinship relatedness and local concepts, but then sees them as universal categories, inviting a homogeneous is centralised indigenous framework. Kovach also has a composite type, relational understanding and accountability, shared belief systems among tribal groups and so on. Imagined communities leave no room for others or strangers. They create a reality for policy and administration. Yanow argues that there are two main types of categories in political discourse — 'slotting', which is exhaustive and has distinct boundaries, and 'prototyping' which is more flexible and can work by resemblance. The former treats elements that do not fit as category errors. In politics, birthplace has become a substitute for the forbidden discourse of race. LT Smith says the dominant cultural group have defined the native in an attempt to derive pure uncontaminated and simple definitions so they could define the other, while the native tries to escape the definition. The use of binaries are used in slotting categories. This is common in IR and the responses to indigenous demystify and re-centre indigenous knowledge, construct difference, mystifying it if necessary. One example in Hamdan suggest that Muslim Arab women in Canada can contrast dominant images of them with their own narratives in decolonisation. Kovach argues that decolonisation is welcome but decolonising research can also be transformative within the Western tradition as well, pursued by white researchers., Kovacs says it can be based on the Settler discourse, for example. She sees IR as involving a conversational method, all reality, the relational and the use of stories, and this is common, e.g. to Bishop. Narrative as a way of knowing difference from Western qualitative research [it's like counter story]. However there is some ambiguity about whether this still needs interpretation whether the stories speak for themselves. Cultural protocol in IR may be impossible to meet fully, and there may be internal conflicts between say getting community permission, showing benefits the community, and avoiding information in narratives that may do harm to the community [by confirming colonists prejudices? Sharing secret knowledge is his example I think]. IR emphasises talk as the main method, stories, sometimes consensual ones, collaborative ones. We find similar approaches in constructionist and interpretative qualitative research as well, as in Hymes modern anthropology on Native American talk and ethnic poetics. There is the tendency to celebrate some primordial state, and rituals that reflected, but this is anachronistic, even achronic [it only takes place isolated from ordinary activity]. Other useful methods such as participant observation are not emphasised, and again this leaves out everyday activity, and material culture. There is already a lot of work on the cultures of talking and listening and other forms of social encounter which do not require researchers to be indigenous. By contrast, some IR is celebratory rather than analytical, endorsing. Studies of Australian aboriginal art are an example here, strong on aesthetics and evocation, weak on analysis. The question can be asked about what is distinctive and indigenous in IR at all? There is often a lot of discussion about epistemology but little on practical methods of data collection and analysis. There is also analysis of indigenous knowledge and practices by non-indigenous scholars [some examples on page 7]. Similarly there are many examples of work by people who are not full-time academics and certainly no positivists, like studies of Aiken field all the Mass Observation programme, or others. IR has 'elective affinities with the tradition of Romantic Nationalism' (8) rooted in German philosophy and nationalist sentiment, leading to nationalistic folk studies like the work of the Brothers Grimm, and national ethics in Finland, Wales and England [Beowulf], the Norwegian sagas. All this reminds us 'to be wary of appeals to tradition and its identification with a people', especially as all these mixed together. Said also alerts us about 'imagined geography and history' which to help social actors to in intensive fire the sense of self and belonging, and inform the poetics of space. Romantic nationalism said the same for particular peoples and their spirit or culture, associated with geography, the notion of folk. We should be sceptical of research predicated on these relationships of identity, which lead to claims for validity based on 'privileged cultural knowledge, biographically based insight, or privileged access' (9). Sometimes, relative claims are clear, as in Kovach, who had to attend language classes to be able to speak Cree [most of them were border intellectuals in fact?] 'IR is, therefore, but one example of a Romantic impulse that is discernible across contemporary qualitative social research'. The outcomes of research are celebratory. Encounters between researchers and informants are ones of community and shared identity. IR is 'antithetical to many of the guiding principles of social research in general and of ethnography in particular', as range worlds are not made familiar or vice versa. Familiarity is not challenged, and learning is not stressed. There is no need to challenge identity or add to stocks of cultural knowledge. Cultural change is not only colonialism or racism. Western research strategies are not monolithic and can be counterhegemonic. They contain multiple sources of critique including feminist standpoint, CRT [!] And critiques of colonialism. Research should try and transcend cultural boundaries. Work is needed to develop understanding, not just [releasing] identity or aiming assimilation. On inspection, a lot of IR turns out to be standpoint research, or action research, not really methods. Methods that do involve local sense making do not rely on empathic relationships. So it is possible to argue on the other hand that 'all methods are "indigenous" in the sense of being shaped by their cultural and historical milieu' (10). Survey techniques and focus groups, for example are 'distinctively modern technology' with 'multiple cultural roots' research methods in social world are inevitably related [doesn't this give too much to the decolonising critics, however?] The final point seems to be that IR has not seriously challenged or informed the links but added forms of Romantic nationalism