ABSTRACT
The ontological turn is a paradigm change—a fundamental shift in how we conceptualize knowledge work—occurring across academic disciplines. In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published the influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Prior to Kuhn's work, scientific progress was largely understood to accumulate through a series of small progresses over time. Anzaldua introduces a concept she calls nepantla which is useful for this discussion. Nepantla is a space of destabilization, a borderland in-between of movement and change. The ontological turn presents another radical change in worldview. This turn is emergent across a multitude of academic disciplines, signaling perhaps a broader cultural shift in thinking about the real. Research methods textbooks spend an inordinate amount of space justifying the legitimacy of social science research. Standardization of method creates a culture of surveillance. Transparency in research is based on the notion that anyone reading the research should be able to follow the researcher's use of trusted techniques to arrive at some truth.
