The challenges of methodology in a glocal world

Most research methods (both quantitative and qualitative) used in the social and political sciences can be regarded as global methods, that is, methods that are applied (with few variations) in almost all research conducted in the world. These methods have long been in crisis and qualitative and quantitative research is now questioned by both the postcolonial turn and those epistemologies which are alternative to Western thinking models or, at least, do not entirely fit with them. The challenges directly concern the tacit cultural foundations of traditional research methods (especially the quantitative ones), which still embody an ethnocentric, and sometimes colonial, attitude. Hence, a growing need to find postcolonial methodologies and non-ethnocentric methods, and to transform current global research methods into more flexible tools, is challenging contemporary research procedures and practices. Researchers wanting to pursue this alternative can choose from at least three methodological directions: indigenization, glocalization and creolization. Most researchers following a postcolonial approach have strongly affirmed the need to employ Indigenous Methodologies. However, upon careful inspection, we discover that these methodologies, if alternative from an epistemological point of view, are not from a purely methodological one either. In other words, Indigenous Methodologies have not been followed by the making of indigenous methods and techniques. In fact, these researchers continue, ultimately, to adopt (with small variations) Western or global or colonial methods and techniques. Why is this happening? If, as various scholars, such as Robertson, Ritzer and Meyrowitz state, the global and local no longer exist, this explains on the one hand why global methods are in crisis, and on the other, why indigenous methods have not yet been born (and probably never will). In this situation, to better understand the cultures they investigate, researchers are presented with two different alternatives: glocal methods and creole methods. These two methodological directions will be scrutinized in regard to their advantages and (also) intrinsic limitations.