ABSTRACT

This chapter will explicate the research methodology, broadly defined, by which I have undertaken this project, engaging with relevant scholarship throughout. It will begin by retracing my reflexive process of becoming a scholar-activist, wherein I try to show the co-constitutiveness of normative commitments, methodology, and political activism. Although not commonly done in a scholarly work, this critical reflection on my role as a scholar and activist is what International Studies Association (ISA) president J. Ann Tickner has called for in her address “Politics, Policy and Responsible Scholarship” given at the 2006 annual convention, and is also in the spirit of past ISA president Steve Smith’s address following the September 11 attacks on the US and the start of the war on terror.1

In doing so, I also argue that this sort of research requires us both to explain and understand, and to consider individual, relational, and structural factors involved. Toward the first goal, I attempt to reconcile explaining and understanding through comprehending, or taking up and grasping together. Next I situate the aspiration to comprehend within participatory action research. I then turn our attention to the emerging field of critical globalization studies, showing that empirically based, participatory research aimed at comprehension is what is most called for in order to advance critical globalization scholarship today.