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The purpose of this paper is to revisit Spivak’s seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak” and the perennial challenges of researchers to collect information about the Other, focusing on the recent developments in affect theory.

The paper brings into the conversation the recent work on affect and sentimentality by Lauren Berlant with Spivak’s claims in the essay concerning the representation of the subaltern by scholars and researchers. The paper draws on Berlant’s work to trouble the liberal culture of “true feeling” as well as the liberal subject implied in Spivak’s essay as a subject who is “actively speaking.”

Recent theoretical developments on the affect theory make an important intervention to the perennial methodological tensions about representation, ontology and epistemology – as raised by Spivak and others over the years – and inspire new ways of thinking with the tools of doing qualitative research.

Bringing into the conversation, the affect theory and Spivak’s iconic essay have important methodological implications for qualitative research.

The classic essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak takes leftist western intellectuals to task for essentializing subaltern subjectivity. I say this as someone who is guilty of this very thing and is struggling with this very question in my work as qualitative researcher. While Spivak concludes the essay with a resounding, “No,” she does provide us with a blueprint for conduction effective qualitative analysis using Derridean deconstruction. But after the deconstruction is done, how might I think about intellectual uncertainty and regret? Reflecting on a study of domestic workers I disbanded, in this paper I examine these questions and further query the limits of intellectual representation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This essay uses ethnography as an approach.

Through an engagement of the seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” I argue that in the ethnographic relationship, researchers will be sure to come up against their own limitations, but that does not mean they should refrain from the work. Rather, being open to seeing our errors, and working through uncertainty and regret, reveals something vitally important about the participants of our study and about ourselves.

This essay adds to the academic discussion on the ethics of researching subaltern subjects, and expands on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of contradictory consciousness.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a sense of the perspectives that guide the collection of articles.

This paper provides an introductory essay regarding the contributions and critics associated with Spivak’s work.

In addition, the contents lay out brief descriptions of the articles included in the collection.

The notion of revisiting “Can the subaltern speak?” provides authors with innovative and provocative ideas to guide their submissions.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the challenges and complexities in conducting research faced by scholars utilizing postcolonial feminist frameworks. The paper discusses postcolonial feminist key concepts, namely representation, subalternity, and reflexivity and the challenges scholars face when deploying these concepts in fieldwork settings. The paper then outlines the implications of these concepts for feminist praxis related to international management theory, research, and writing as well as entrepreneurship programs.

This paper discusses the experiences of the author in conducting fieldwork on Turkish high‐technology entrepreneurs in the USA and Turkey by focusing explicitly on the challenges and complexities postcolonial feminist frameworks bring to ethnography and auto‐ethnography.

The paper suggests that conducting fieldwork guided by postcolonial feminist frameworks faces challenges related to representation inclusive of the author and the participants in the study. It offers subalternity as a relational understanding of subjects in contrast to comparative approaches to the study of business people. The paper also discusses how positionality impacts reflexivity through gender, ethnicity, and class relations.

This paper offers a critical perspective on conducting research related to non‐Western subjects by addressing issues arising from feminist and postcolonial intersections. It is a valuable contribution to those researchers who are interested in conducting feminist research particularly with non‐Western people and cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to engage some of the central themes of Gayatri Spivak’s seminal essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak? (CSS)” In particular, her criticisms of post-structuralism’s treatment of the “subject” as well as its privileging of “discourse” and micrological analyses of power vis-à-vis her discussion of Foucault and Deleuze.

The paper also draws on a historical materialist approach to examine how Spivak’s own work often reinscribes the discursive and politically pusillanimous tendencies of both post-structuralist and post-colonialist thought.

This lends itself to the “complexification” of capitalism – a bourgeois form of mystification of capital’s essential workings and the underlying class structure of the globalized economy, inclusive of “postcolonial” societies.

The authors conclude that CSS – while an important question – is ultimately a misdirected one that, in effect, mistakes discursive empowerment for social and economic enablement.

Purpose – Role-taking refusal was a foundational problem in Mead's work but was ignored by subsequent interactionists who focused on the benefits of role-taking – empathy and solidarity – but failed to examine how they are destroyed or crippled from emerging as inclusionary aspects of social consciousness. Role-taking refusal constitutes both the microfoundation of dehumanization in the case of the oppressor and, in the case of the oppressed, the microfoundation of resistance. Role-taking refusal is linked to Giddens's notion of the reflective project of the self, Omi and Winant's racial formation theory, Feagin's theory of systemic racism, and the perspective of Critical Race Theory.

Methodology – I shall portray role-taking refusal by using historical, theoretical, and empirical works, especially ethnographic studies.

Social implications – The oppressed know the image their oppressors have of them. Refusing to internalize this image is the first step – the microfoundation – of resistance. Role-taking refusal in the oppressed fosters critical consciousness, which, if solidarity with others is formed, can lead to collective action and, possibly, permanent institutional change.

Originality – “The superiority delusion” is the paradigmatic ideology of all oppressors, deployed to justify their power, privilege, and prestige. This delusion is maintained by the microfoundation of dehumanization, which is a systematic refusal to role-take from those over whom oppressors oppress. All other ideologies that justify oppression are derived from some form of “the superiority delusion,” identifying for the first time role-taking refusal as paradoxically both the original sin of social relations and the foundation of social resistance.

Sociology is often pitched as the social science discipline most obviously in need of postcolonial deconstruction, owing to its ostensibly more transparent Eurocentrism as a formation. For this reason, even postcolonial scholars working within the ambit of sociology are reluctant to play up its analytical strengths in addition to exposing its ideological deficits. Without underestimating the profound impact of the growing body of postcolonial theorizing and research on self-reflexivity within sociology, this paper points up some key ways in which the structure of comprehension within postcolonial critique itself is characteristically sociological. Alternatively, if that latter conclusion is to remain in dispute, a number of core epistemological and socio-theoretical problems must be accepted as being, still, radically unresolved. Consequently, a more dialectical grasp of sociology’s role within this domain of enquiry and style of intellectual politics is needed. I develop these considerations by critically engaging with three recent currents of postcolonial critique – Raewyn Connell's advocacy of “Southern Theory”; the project of “reinventing social emancipation” articulated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos; and the “de-colonial option” fronted by Walter D. Mignolo.

Early childhood education is a visual field. Much of our work begins with observing and documenting children's talk and actions. The knowledge gleaned from looking is then used to plan curriculum, much of which involves the creation of materials-rich environments to engage children's learning. Yet, quite often we do not question what we see. This chapter uses visual cultural theory to examine the multicultural props used in dramatic play with young children. By examining these images for what is both seen and not seen, I illustrate how these props create a specific discourse in early childhood education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between “informal economies” and the concept of “resistance.” The author argues that the petty illegalities of the dominated and subaltern classes should be seen in their connections to the illegalism of the élites and the state. Within this framework, the informal economy is seen as both the outcome of a set of material conditions aiming at the subordinated inclusion of entire classes of citizens, and the mark of the willingness by these same subalterns to evade the bonds imposed on them by the legislations and the social hierarchies.

A review of the ethnographical and socio-economical literature on the issue of informality, accompanied by ex-post reflections on pertinent studies conducted in the past by the researcher.

Against the dominant public rhetoric, the informal economy is here seen as a particular space of enactment by the dominated and subalterns aimed at self-producing paradoxical forms of inclusion within social contexts characterized by barriers to access integration within mainstream society. It is argued that in consideration of the power relations that structure the “field,” researchers themselves become part of the struggle counterpoising individuals and institutions, and should thus make a choice among the clashing parties.

The paper draws on a vast body of literature that appears to go in the same direction. However, it radicalizes the instances proposed by previous authors and studies, and draws conclusions concerning the nature of the object and the ethics of research, that are opposed to the prevalent approaches to the subject.

In this chapter, rephrasing Spivak's question into ‘can subaltern children speak?’, I reorient the research on China's gigantic population of children and youths in rural migrant families towards a critical interpretative approach. Based on life history and longitudinal ethnographic interview gathered with three cases, I unpack the multiple meanings migrants' children attach to mobility in their childhood experiences. First, despite emotional difficulties, children see their parents' out-migration more as a ‘mobility imperative’ than their abandonment of parental responsibilities, which should be contextualized in China's long-term urban-biased social policies and the resultant development gaps in rural and urban societies. Second, the seemingly ‘unstable’ and ‘flexible’ mobility patterns observed in migrant families should be understood in relation to a long-term family social mobility strategy to promote children's educational achievement and future attainment. The combination of absent class politics in an illiberal society with an enduring ideology of education-based meritocracy in Confucianism makes this strategy a culturally legitimate channel of social struggle for recognition and respect for the subaltern. Last, children in migrant families are active contributors to their families' everyday organization amidst mobilities through sharing care and household responsibilities, and developing temporal and mobility strategies to keep alive intergenerational exchanges and family togetherness. The study uncovers coexisting resilience and vulnerabilities of migrants' children in their ‘doing class’ in contemporary China. It also contributes insights into our understanding of the diversity of childhoods in Asian societies at the intersection of familyhood, class dynamics and cultural politics.