ABSTRACT
Chicanas/os have fought vicious oppression within the borders of the United States since the nineteenth century. More, researchers have attempted to address the concerns of the Chicana/o community, perhaps most tangibly through the creation of a new field: Chicana/o studies. With regard to the goal of seeking social justice, participants may already be engaged in efforts at empowerment in which the researcher may then become participant. The “research” will continue as the researcher and the participants begin to conduct meta-analyses of the area of investigation by reevaluating the entire research process. The researcher shows that s/he understands and shares the epistemological traditions in which Chicana/o students have been raised. Critical race theory does not provide us with a method, but it questions traditional epistemology’s top-down tendencies and, in so doing, gives us the rationale for a method of los de abajo that is grounded in social justice.
