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International Journal of CRITICAL DIVERSITY STUDIES 6.2 June 2024
Leveraging Critical Diversity Literacy
(CDL) to Promote Social Justice through
Reflexive Research in Higher Education
KudzaiishePeter Vanyoro
Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the
Witwatersrand
Melissa Steyn
Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the
Witwatersrand
Submission date: 5 March 2024; Acceptance date: 22 May 2024;
Publication date: 18 June 2024
Copyright
© 2024, Kudzaiishe Peter Vanyoro and Melissa Steyn. This is an open- access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, dis-
tribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source
are credited.
ABSTRACT
Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) is a lens we can use to achieve social justice con-
sciousness among privileged identities in academic spaces. CDL, by Melissa Steyn
(2014), consists of ten criteria that reveal how and why specic differences make a
difference. Among other things, CDL exposes the workings of power through struc-
tures and individual complicity within structures. CDL is about having the capacity to
read the complexities of the twenty- rst- century world. The article argues that CDL
nurtures the development of “critique towards” normalised quotidian language and
personal prejudices in research in higher education. Critiquing and interrogating
our positionality comes with the literacy of social, political and economic scenarios
that play out in our practices. Using the intersections of race, gender, and disability,
the article shows how researchers can use Steyn’s ten CDL criteria to acknowledge
differences in research in higher education. In this article, the researchers argue
that the university, its curriculum, pedagogy, and research methods are contested
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LEVERAGING CRITICAL DIVERSITY LITERACY
cultural terrains. The article illustrates how CDL can challenge some limitations of
traditional research methods in creating positive social justice outcomes.
KEYWORDS
Critical Diversity Literacy, pedagogy, social justice, university, diversity
DOI: 10.13169/intecritdivestud.6.2.00134
Introduction
The Critical Diversity Literacy (CDL) framework by Steyn (2014) provides various frame-
works to interrogate power. CDL informs the approach of the Wits Centre for Diversity
Studies (WiCDS) in its educational and advocacy initiatives ( Blanckenberg & McEwen, 2014).
WiCDS is a centre that seeks to produce critical research that recognises power as the focal
point of interrogation, seeking to determine how and why normalised accounts of reality are
legitimised as the proper regimes of thinking about the world. Critical perspectives also seek
to expose the concealed structures of power deployed in its construction and maintenance
and the disempowerment of others ( Cannella & Lincoln, 2012). CDL is a critical thinking
approach, but we employ it in the current article in areas of research and higher education.
CDL is a set of theoretical tools formulated by Steyn (2014) to deliberately engage with
how power influences differences that matter. According to Steyn (2014),
Critical Diversity Literacy can be regarded as an informed analytical orientation that
enables a person to “read” prevailing social relations as one would read a text, recog-
nizing how possibilities are being opened up or closed down for those differently
positioned within the unfolding dynamics of specific social contexts. (p. 381)
CDL is self- reflective and realises that in as much as we “read difference in the world …
we also write it in that we participate in the production of scripts that help or harm other
people” ( Steyn, Burnett & Ndzwayiba, 2018, p. 3). This is key to reflexive research practice
that uncovers and recognises the difference that the researcher’s difference makes ( Reay,
1996). It echoes Pascale’s (2018) call for scholars to turn decolonial lenses on the epistemic
foundations of their endeavours where she argues that: “As scholars concerned with equity,
we must always ask how, and to what extent, our work is implicated in systemic inequalities”
(p. 46). CDL is a ten- point distillation of critical theories that state skills required for a con-
scious and just engagement with human diversity ( Steyn, Burnett & Ndzwayiba, 2018). We
have devised ten ways to think about our research tied to the existing ten CDL criteria.
These will be outlined in the final section of the article.
Among the other characteristics of CDL, is its attempt to capacitate people with an
understanding of how some differences are constructed as those that make a difference
while others remain unmarked ( Hall, 2007; Steyn, 2014). CDL enables one to engage with
the discourses circulating within the various definitions of being a particular type of human
being. Steyn (2014) posits that:
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Having a language for CDL assists our agency not to be in the grip of dynamics that
we cannot name; it enhances the capacity to recognize, point out and insist on the
reality of the practices, strategies, and effects of the operation of power on differ-
ence. (p. 385)
This article argues that the often- unnamed relationships established in research can be
relationships of domination depending on the actions and decisions researchers take during
their stay in the space. It also seeks to flesh out the importance of being conscious of differ-
ences while conducting research. This is based on the realisation that social research is
always political ( Kobayashi, 1994, p. 76), and it has the potential to reproduce existing
social, economic and political power arrangements. Research risks duplicating the univer-
sity’s dismembering effects which are a consequence of its coloniality ( de Sousa Santos,
2012; Gaidzanwa, 1995; Grosfoguel, 2002, 2007; Mpofu & Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2020; Quijano,
2000; Vanyoro, 2020). These scholars define coloniality as the continued existence of the
colonial matrix of power’s influence in modern Global South institutions. Coloniality speaks
to power arrangements that are influenced by multiple identity markers such as race, gen-
der, and disability. Coloniality of power is a term developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal
Quijano to critique the endurance of colonialism. Grosfoguel (2002, p. 4) defines coloniality
as the continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end of formalised colonial
administration. Therefore, the university and its research office form part of the enduring
colonial institutions of domination. Using the intersections of race, gender and disability,
the article shows how researchers can use the ten CDL criteria by Steyn (2014) to acknowl-
edge differences in research conscientiously. By acknowledging that the curriculum,
research methods and pedagogy are a contested cultural terrain ( Lather, 1991) the article
explicates how CDL can been used to challenge some limitations of traditional research
methods in coming up with praxis- oriented research.
Since research and data analysis are historically based on formulaic and evidence- based
techniques, they are susceptible to operating under limitations that reproduce essential rep-
resentations of research participants, groups, or experiences. This is even more likely if we
consider that research and data analysis processes are structured within pedagogical pre-
scriptions and assumptions that are based on raced, gendered, and abled institutionalised
colonial legacies. Pascale (2018) posits that:
Many disciplines continue to naturalise scholarship by teaching research methods—
techniques for data collection and analysis— without also teaching the epistemological
and ontological logics that constitute the range of valid methods. (p. 52)
As such, there is a continuous transmission of methods that do not always consider the
different contexts in which the researcher is located.
Kobayashi (1994) posits that “every discursive field is a site of negotiation and struggle
for power, and the politics of doing fieldwork will inevitably come up against the politics of
the field” (p. 79). One’s internalised prejudices and surrounding socio- economic and politi-
cal structure will interact with research in complex ways that demand individuals to look for
potential biases. Therefore, this article considers how researchers can use CDL to read their
imbrication with power systems in the research field.
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Where and for Whom Has Knowledge Been Historically
Produced?
As we have already shown, research and the university have both been normalised as white
(colonial), male, and able- bodied, making them dismember non- Western communities. As
Pascale (2018, p. 54) shows, research methodologies are historically produced social forma-
tions that circumscribe and produce culturally specific forms of knowledge. This is
knowledge based on power relations that make the “researched” the other to the researcher,
who in comparison most likely occupies a position of both epistemic and systemic privilege.
Against this backdrop, it is worth acknowledging the quotidian power contestations that
research presents for those seeking to carry out politically emancipating research and those
to which emancipation is deemed to be “given” through research.
The habitus of the modern university is not for the subaltern. Foucault (1980) argues
that no naturalised form of knowledge is instituted without the influence of some form of
social determination. All canonical knowledge is produced in relation to hegemonic sys-
tems of power, which are (West)Eurocentric, colonial, white supremacist,
hetero- patriarchal, christonormative, capital(abl)ist, anthropocentric, nationalist and
militaristic. This makes it knowledge that was generated based on certain lenses rendering
it important to be critical of such hegemonic knowledge. These hegemonic knowledge
systems subtly manage the type of oppression we (re)produce if we go about our work
with non- reflexivity. Mignolo’s (2007) colonial power matrix explains our immersion in
modernity and what it means for our relationship with the university. The colonial power
matrix operates through control of the economy, authority, gender, and sexuality and con-
trol of knowledge and subjectivity ( Mignolo, 2007). The Bologna process upon which the
modern university is built is highly colonial, breeding institutional authoritarianism
under the guise of scholarly authority ( de Sousa Santos, 2012). This scholarly authority is
phallic, male, hetero- patriarchal, and able- bodied. Mignolo (2007) argues that modernity
is deeply connected “with the geopolitics and body- politics of the knowledge of white
European and North Atlantic males” (p. 13). This statement illustrates how the world is
built on Eurocentric ideas of what it means to be human, that is, white, male, heterosexual,
and able- bodied.
Power relations are not just economical but operate “at all levels of interrelation between
the different domains of the colonial matrix of power” ( Mignolo, 2007, p. 15). This matrix
also ties into Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s (2001) ideas on kyriarchy, a term she used to
refer to a complex pyramidal system of intersecting multiplicative social structures of super-
ordination and subordination, ruling and oppression. Kyriarchy addresses the intersecting
power systems that lead to the subordination of others. We, therefore, acknowledge that
knowledge and bodies are (de)legitimised through kyriarchal power relations that the uni-
versity and non- reflexive research mediates.
Disciplines also enforce exclusionary practices. According to Pascale (2018), “Social
sciences were designed by people with power and privilege to examine ‘others’ those who
are poor, disenfranchised, or ‘foreign’” (p. 48). Using the framework of coloniality of
power, scholars ( Pascale, 2016; Grosfoguel, 2002, 2004; Quijano, 2000) have identified
how the enduring legacy of colonialism still influences current research and university
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practices. Quijano speaks of how the colonial thrived on the standardisation of categories
such as the “racial”, “ethnic”, “anthropological”, or “national” as categories based on “objec-
tive”, or “scientific”, inquiry ( Quijano, 2007, p. 168). Likewise, among the research’s current
pitfalls is the risk of universalising local experiences or adopting European epistemologies
and methodologies for local use without reflexivity. We know that universities have his-
torically served the expansion of empire ( Grosfoguel, 2002), therefore we need to be
critical before uncritically adopting the methodologies they teach or the competitive life-
styles they naturalise.
Colonialism is a system that thrives on politicising differences that make a difference
( Steyn, 2014). Likewise, today’s standards for scholarship are compromised by methodolo-
gies and methods entwined with colonial productions of difference. Coloniality still has
power over what is considered quality, standard, rational, or measured, and that is male,
white, and able- bodied. This leads to a scenario where those whom the university considers
more human become the most successful. This is in keeping up with the university’s role in
inculcating exclusionary discourses and practices. For example, colonialism’s historical
dependence on research to disseminate eugenics shows that the academy and research
served to provide a “facticity to racism” that appealed not to the spirit but to a politicised
reason that operated in a particular mode ( Pascale, 2016, p. 157). Hence, the worst news,
even for emerging social- justice- oriented researchers, is that Western culture maintains
hegemony over the production and legitimation of knowledge ( Lather, 1991), particularly in
the university.
In fulfilment of their studies, individuals produce research that buys into these stand-
ards, and the line between social justice researchers and imperialists becomes blurred by
unconscious complicity. For Grosfoguel:
The success of the coloniality of power is achieved by producing subjects who, while
socially located on the oppressed side of the colonial difference, think like those in
the dominant positions— that is to say, they take up dominant epistemic frames.
( Grosfoguel, 2007, p. 213)
As a result, being socially/geographically located on the oppressed side of power rela-
tions will not guarantee that one is thinking from a subaltern epistemic location ( Pascale,
2018, p. 51). Being from the global south does not necessarily mean we are inclusive in our
approaches.
(Dis)Abilityism is one of the norms overlooked by academics. (Dis)Abilityism is a form
of social oppression involving the social imposition of activity restrictions on people with
impairments and undermining their feelings ( Thomas, 2004). The colonial power matrix
and kyriarchy underscore the need to view disability as a product of myriad and complex
systems of dismemberment and dehumanisation rooted in colonialism. Coloniality allows
us to see the disabling effect of neo- colonialism and capitalism on former colonies and the
continued dismemberment of their people. According to Muzite (2020) as cited in ( Mpofu
& Ndlovu- Gatsheni, 2020), there is an urgent need to see colonialism for what it truly is in
the context of disability; that is, as something more than a metaphor for domination but as
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a historical event that is responsible for the creation of disability. For Pascale (2018, p. 47),
“the dehumanization that colonizers inflicted upon people around the globe was constituted
through ontologies that rendered colonised peoples (and consequently their nations) as fun-
damentally deficient and developmentally primitive” (p. 47). This “deficiency” discourse
forms part of the repertoire of colonialism that saw the need to attribute “both physical and
psychological inadequacy” to the black other. This resulted in systemic ableism, a norm that
marginalises people living with disabilities (PWDs) and those defined as racially inferior. It
is easy to medicalise disability by conflating PWDs with helplessness as objects to be studied
rather than as subjects and agents of research ( Chappell etal., 2014). Explaining his use of
youth with disabilities as co- researchers in sexuality research, Chappell posits that “youth
with disabilities are social agents capable of constructing and deconstructing their social
world within a reflexive and enabling research environment” ( Chappell etal., 2014, p. 386).
This means non- disabled researchers let PWDs lead the research process, instead of assum-
ing that they are incapable of doing so.
Goodley (2013) posits that disablism intersects with hetero/sexism and racism in how
they both rely on infantilising and hypersexualising women and Blacks.
While all colonial knowledge is racialised, all knowledge is gendered. McKeganey and
Bloor posit that a “taken- for- grantedness of gender influences” still exists (1991, p. 198).
There is silence on how male researchers’ gender increases the possibilities of normalising
maleness as the gender of our research participants ( McKeganey & Bloor, 1991) and of the
legitimate academic.
Bypassing Ignorance Through Reflexivity
According to Strickland (1994), the challenge of difference is not its opposition to sameness
but its potential to expose relations of domination that those in positions of power would
rather not discuss or deal with. As a result “the social sciences have been predicated on ‘an
epistemology of ignorance’, a state of ‘unknowingness’, that obfuscates our privileged posi-
tions of power” ( Pascale, 2016, p. 158). For Reay (1996) “Even when differences are integral
to the data, researchers can choose to ignore them” (p. 445). This forms part of a strategy
that erases differences to conceal power. This can also be done through discourses portray-
ing identities as the same. Pascale (2018) shows how culturally meaningful forms of
“‘difference’ enunciate relationships of power by establishing a purportedly oppositional cat-
egory to difference— an imaginary ‘sameness’ or homogeneity” (p. 47).
Such ignorance ties to Steyn’s (2012) framing of an ignorance contract, a modus oper-
andi of power where the privileged fail to acknowledge that the oppression of the other
exists. Ignorance is also acknowledged in Moya’s (2011) assertion: “Our identities predis-
pose us to see or not see; listen to or not listen to; read or not read; cite or not cite; concern
ourselves or not concern ourselves with specific Other peoples, issues, and societal dynam-
ics” (p. 79). An ignorant, non- reflexive nationalist researcher, for example, is more likely to
reproduce essentialist ideas of the nation without being able to question the logics of power
loaded in this very idea. The researcher’s identity and positionality will have a pro- nationalist
discursive and epistemic effect that can, at best, be racist, tribalist, or xenophobic.Adopting
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a reflexive approach is therefore vital for researchers. Reflexivity involves the researcher ask-
ing themselves how their positionality predisposes them to make certain assumptions, ask
specific questions, see certain problems, and shape it into their “interpretive horizon”
( Alcoff, 2005). Interpretive horizon is essential to understanding situated reasoning and
how context impacts how one experiences the world ( Alcoff, 2005). According to Bailey,
White and Pain (1999), reflexive management of the research process should be applied to
each stage, from the early planning and establishing of relations in the field to the writing- up
of conclusions, in order to pursue qualitative validity. Reflexivity is not just a one- time event
but involves explicating the researcher’s position concerning the research ( Steyn etal., 2018,
p. 3). We must carry out a continuous reflection on our positionality throughout. According
to Reay (1996), it is important to state the difference between someone just saying some-
thing and exploring its consequences for our research. In their writing, a researcher can
identify as white, middle- class, heterosexual, and male, but reflexivity calls for much more
than that. It involves an open examination of whether any or all of these characteristics of
one’s self- identity contribute to bias ( Reay, 1996). Writing about reflexivity is one thing, and
being reflexive on a practical level is another. The latter involves realising the “knowledge-
generating potential of identities” ( Moya, 2011, p. 79), that is exploring how our identities
are complicit in shaping the type of knowledge that flows into existing canonical knowledge
systems. This helps to adopt decisions that reformulate concepts and the inclusion of alter-
native thinking domains that produce pluriversality.
At this juncture, we will outline ten non- linear CDL criteria that are useful for the reflex-
ive researcher:
1. Construction of Differences Within Unequal Power Relations
The first reflexive criterion entails thinking about the construction of differences within
unequal power relations. Steyn (2014) states, “All of our categories for thinking about dif-
ference are socially manufactured within unequal power relations.” They do not represent
a predetermined, natural order. Researchers must ask how differences encountered in
research are socially constructed and held in place through systems of power that natural-
ise the “unnatural”. The naturalisation of the “unnatural” reinforces centres and margins
of humanness, creating false hierarchies of being that result in inclusion or censure. Steyn
(2014) shows how we are socialised in a world where specific differences make a differ-
ence while others remain unmarked. The differences that make a difference are complicit
in the construction of binaries such as man/woman, able- bodied/disabled, or white/black.
“In every instance, one side of the binary is valued more highly than the other” ( Steyn,
2014). One end of the binary is guaranteed of rewards, while the other is censured and
erased. These binaries seek to cement human social understandings into self- fulfilling
“common sense” ( Steyn, 2014). Hence as researchers, we need to ask ourselves whether we
are buying into the dominant constructions of what is rendered common sense or natural.
Suppose a general assumption among a group of people is that women occupy a naturally
subordinate position. In that case, male researchers must ensure they are not buying into
this bias.
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Researchers also need to ask which differences are visible or salient and which are most
likely repressed. This inquiry ensures that we do not prioritise other differences at the
expense of erasing other forms of difference, such as disability. Pascale observes the erasures
perpetuated by traditional research methods founded in “epistemologies of the North
Atlantic” ( Pascale, 2018, p. 49). The enactment of silence by scholars is most profound when
the absences produced by research methods are thoroughly naturalised ( Pascale, 2018). One
must be conscious of the hierarchy operating between the differences. By recognising this
difference as important, one can come up with different ideas on how to work with this
hierarchy. For example, when thinking about violence, there is a tendency to attend more to
the materiality of violence while neglecting symbolic violence. The concept of symbolic
violence refers to non- physical violence that manifests itself through power disparities
between social groups. Given that distinctions are unique and ever- changing, it is crucial to
pay attention to the ways in which centres and margins are replicated, moulded, and redrawn
in various contexts.
2. Value of Different Positionalities
The second criterion involves recognising different social locations’ unequal symbolic and
material value ( Steyn, 2014). Understanding that different social locations entail different
rewards allows us to empathise with marginalised people and hold their experiences
respectfully. This entails refraining from treating experiences as “evidence” or “data” but as
a reality that demands critical attention. In an interracial space where one is doing
research, white male positionalities invite more rewards than Black male positionalities.
Through this recognition, one attempts to open room for Black men to speak and be
heard, thus avoiding the pitfall of facilitating the silence of the Black men’s voices in this
racially diverse group. In such spaces, we also need to ask the following questions: “How is
human value/mattering distributed? Which positionalities are taken as normative? Which
are included/excluded, and who belongs?” in this space I find myself in. This may take the
form of reflexive exercises that allow for reflection on one’s social, economic and political
positionality.
Background research on the area where the research site is located allows for a macro
view of how disadvantaged people’s voices are generally perceived by that community. This
is important because while they appear separate, power and context are intertwined in spe-
cific ways ( Ahonen etal., 2014). Understanding how rewards, freedoms or choices operate
in that broader community provides insight into how (de)valued voices are conferred cur-
rency. Overall, these perceptions shape how censuring, disciplining, and policing of actions
operates within the group. For example, if PWDs are undervalued by their community, they
will most likely be undervalued or censured during the research process. It also becomes
difficult for PWDs to voice out their concerns. This is because “it is difficult for non-
dominant and subordinated people to express their personhood in ways that … fall outside
of the ‘admissible’ ways of being endorsed within their societies” ( Steyn, 2014, p. 382). If
researchers do nothing about this dynamic the views of non- disabled people are more likely
to dominate or to be taken more seriously than those of PWDs.
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3. Intersectionalities
Even within supposedly similar groups, some differences emerge along age, gender, sexual-
ity, and class. Therefore, it is important to examine how intersectionality shapes the social
currency of supposedly similar groups. The third criterion thus entails investigating how
intersectionalities are either played off against one other or mutually sustaining. One must
consider the evidence (if any) of how discursive, psychological or physical violence operates
at different intersections. This is because not all people benefit from the same power systems
in the same way, a phenomenon captured in intersectionality theory ( Collins, 2000).
According to Collins (2000), intersectionality refers to a matrix of oppression where inter-
locking systems of oppression are constantly interacting. For Nash (2008), all women are
intersectional subjects whose womanhood will intersect with other social positions to mul-
tiply disadvantage them. While a similar group can pull together towards similar experiences,
a variant axis of privilege of oppression and privilege impacts other resistances, refusals, and
oppositional bits of knowledge. The question is: “Can I recognize non- dominant bits of
knowledge or bodies operating at specific intersections, and how are they being disquali-
fied/discredited/undermined?” An example is the typical undermining of indigenous
medicinal practice in spaces where Western medicinal practices are valorised. As previously
shown through an outline of the colonial power matrix and kyriarchy, coloniality can be
considered the basis of power formations that create zones of being and zones of non- being
( de Sousa Santos, 2012). These indigenous medicinal practices become associated with epis-
temologies emanating from the zone of non- being. Therefore, our research processes need
to acknowledge the possibility of different identity markers that shape a researcher’s experi-
ences and prejudices. This will enable one to carry out socially relevant research that is
cognizant of differences that shape our collectivity. Intersectionality capacitates a researcher
to read how identity markers and subjectivities do not exist in isolation but speak to one
another in nuanced ways.
4. The Currency of Systemic Oppression
While it is easy for some to assume that the past is ahistorical, it is imperative to consider the
currency of systemic oppression. Powerful groups tend to lose track of the earlier processes
involved in forming inequities by attempting to create an ahistorical present. For example,
white men in a focus group may respond to questions about their privilege as merit- based
without acknowledging how racism afforded them an economic advantage. A historically
informed inquiry undertaking involves asking what and why we are encouraged to remem-
ber or forget. According to Steyn (2014), these remembering and forgetting struggles are
about current social arrangements, as groups jostle for relative advantage. Researchers who
view research and data with an “it’s all in the past” mentality risk reproducing the domina-
tion of others by refusing a critical memory of the past and how it has led to our current
social arrangements. Hence, it may be important for researchers to be curious about the
following questions: “In this research context, how is the past being used to entrench or
dismantle privilege or oppression? How are struggles for redress or recognition being
opened up or closed down? How can relations be shown to be contingent, not inevitable?”
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For example in a conversation that deals with the question of poverty in South Africa, the
researcher needs to pick up how some participants may take up an ahistorical approach that
depoliticises the impact of the apartheid history on economic and spatial distribution. The
last question allows researchers to open to the idea of present- day events as complicit in
constructing future inequalities.
5. Understanding That Social Identities Are Essentialist
The fifth category involves a realisation of the essentialisation of social identities. Steyn etal.
(2018) argue that this criterion is based on the following observation:
Power normalises social identities through naturalising them, creating a sense that
there is something essentially (biologically or culturally) different about a particular
group of people that we have no social control over. These stereotypes mask the
socially constructed and contingent nature of all social identities. (p. 5)
Most identities are naturalised through essentialisation. While other stereotypes are
built on so- called social realities, essentialisation is the process through which all social
groups, e.g. Muslims, are assigned the fixed identity of the terrorist. According to Kobayashi
(1994):
Racism and sexism have gained social and academic legitimacy through practices of
essentialism (ascribing essential and immutable qualities to a category of persons on
the grounds of “race” or “sex”) and naturalism (maintaining that such qualities are
“naturally” rather than socially produced, and therefore part of a natural order that
cannot or should not be changed). (p. 76– 77)
If a researcher’s interpretation of the status quo follows essentialist notions, we are
unlikely to pull out the social constructivist nature of “fixed” identities like gender and race.
Likewise, in a focus group, the more privileged in a group tend to essentialise other social
groups through either xenophobic or homophobic remarks. The essentialisation of these
social groups involves ascribing immutable characteristics to them. Some participants may
declare knowledge of these differences and how for example, they have an immigrant or gay
friend. However, acknowledging these differences is not enough if the differences are
pathologised ( Reay, 1996). Hence, Kurzwelly, Rapport, and Spiegel (2020) “conclude by con-
sidering social anthropological approaches that might permit an understanding of
individuals and society in ways that neither lead to nor need essentialist thinking and
instead recognize the contradictoriness, flux, and incompleteness inherent in social life”
(p. 65). This is an anti- essentialist approach.
According to Calas and Smircich (2009), if we are not careful as researchers, we risk
reproducing the assumptions taken for granted attached to the research subjects. For
Kobayashi, a concept that is so naturalised that no one, including the researcher, has even
thought to question it, is the most difficult to understand. We must go beyond essentialism
and naturalism to ask the right questions ( Kobayashi, 1994, p. 78). To achieve this, one must
unnaturalise one’s bias by invoking an “unnatural discourse”. Invoking unnatural discourse
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forms part of the broader project of what we refer to here as “making the normative strange”.
This will be discussed in the last section of this article.
6. Grammar and Vocabulary
Because language occupies an essential role in research, it is apt that the sixth CDL approach
to research involves grammar and vocabulary: “The possession of a diversity grammar and a
vocabulary that facilitates a discussion of oppression and privilege” ( Steyn, 2014, p. 385). This
is based on the observation that language occupies a pivotal position in enforcing social ste-
reotypes. Researchers need to be aware of how closure is encouraged in a group discussion and
how to open this up. By capacitating research participants with language that names power
systems they become more equipped to explain power systems that they would not otherwise
have been capable of naming. There is always something at stake in how different people are
naming differences. For example, what white people refer to as colour blindness may be expe-
rienced and named as racism by a black person in a group. Therefore, those who assume a
grammar and vocabulary that names power systems and equips vulnerable people are more
likely to enhance the creation of emancipatory communities while conducting research.
The question people are encouraged to ask under this criterion is how recognition
is encouraged or discouraged by the language used in a space. Steyn gives an example of
how language was used in the reframing of disability by the Disability Rights Movements.
Once considered the product of one’s impairments, disability is now understood as
something that comes about because of “the normalizing pressures of an ableist society”
( Steyn, 2014, p. 386). Language can, therefore, shift understandings of norms and
marginality.
7. Coded Hegemony
The seventh criterion looks at coded hegemony and how the obfuscation of the operations
of power takes place. Hegemony is when one group is dominated by the other by consent
( Gramsci, 1971). For example, a White man might not tell a Black woman that he is oppress-
ing her, but he creates the necessary conditions for her to accept lower wages. Likewise,
racial advantage can be referred to as “colour blindness”, thus concealing the racist ideolo-
gies behind it. Coded hegemony can also be read through how unearned benefits/advantages
are being “rewritten” as merit, virtue, etc. This rewriting shifts the focus from treating dis-
advantage as a result of oppression to dealing with it as a regular part of social relations.
Coded hegemony, therefore, involves the deflection of oppressive relations. However, once a
researcher identifies how obfuscation occurs, they can also ask questions about who is ben-
efiting and what is being curtailed through coding.
This obfuscation is partly because those in dominant positions would instead not
acknowledge or deal with differences ( Reay, 1996; Strickland, 1994). Their deflection may
also take the form of legitimisation, co- option or containment. Legitimisation affirms the
“truthfulness” of reasons behind the circumstances of differently positioned individuals.
Meanwhile, co- option involves making the oppressed believe their disadvantage is because
of their shortcomings. The consequence of both these processes is containment, a phenom-
enon where resistance is constantly placed in relation to the hegemonic code.
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8. The Material
Researchers will benefit from understanding who in their research is materially dependent
and on whom they are dependent. While neo- liberalism may have individuals believe that
the economy has open opportunities for everyone, understanding who gets to be economi-
cally active in advantageous or disadvantageous ways is critical. The material encapsulates
the structural matters at play in shaping different positionalities. It involves inquiring about
the spatial arrangements shaped within power relations. For example, how is the fact that
people in the research focus group stay in different parts of the city evidence of power rela-
tions? How is the fact that I am a researcher who occupies a materially different position
from them critical in building empathy towards others? Steyn (2014) posits that the arrange-
ment of space reveals much about the proper relationship between people and reflects social
norms. Spatial arrangements invoke the question of distance and proximity and how we are
made to feel unrelated to oppressed people.
The material is not only spatial but also involves objects such as clothes, food, digital gadg-
ets or properties and how certain forms of signification with social consequences are attached
to them. This is because these objects can be used to either mark differences or translate
between differences. The material also involves how taste is involved in marking socially sali-
ent differences. As part of CDL reading, taste is not considered innocuous as and when it
comes up in research or in the higher education space. For example, race and class differences
are easily masked as taste differences. Things, commodities, and tastes are vehicles that main-
tain or communicate positionalities ( Steyn, 2014). They create discursive and material distance
between people. For example, if someone says they buy their lunch from a certain cafeteria,
that also reflects their taste, race, and class. While researchers can easily overlook these objects
and commodities and their relationship to personal identities and power, we must understand
that commodities always circulate in socially significant ways. This means the circulation of
commodities relates to economies of power and requires critical interrogation.
9. Emotions
Emotions and affective economies are also important in research. This is because while feel-
ings are easily overlooked, they are caught up in collectivities ( Steyn, 2014). Identifying and
naming feelings is an integral part of a researcher’s CDL sensibilities. This criterion asks the
following questions: “How is bonding/belonging being negotiated to create socially signifi-
cant differences? How do different groups matter?” One may ask: “What feeling worlds are
people participating in?” “How do these oppose or support dominant ideologies?” For exam-
ple, a group with more similar beliefs and characteristics tend to agree or stick together in a
focus group discussion. This closes out other perspectives that can be considered to be in the
minority.
The question of emotions also assists the researcher in framing critical questions. The
researcher can ask that individuals reflect on their emotions and that they be conscious of
what makes them sad, happy, angry, and why. Likewise, researchers sometimes feel compla-
cent toward certain issues, and we need to ask ourselves why this is the case. In a group
set- up, we need to consider who is doing the emotional labour, to whom compassion, empa-
thy, indifference, contempt, or rejection is encouraged and how relationship, separation,
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KUDZAIISHE PETER VANYORO AND MELISSA STEYN
reciprocity, or non- reciprocity are being established between people. Sensitivity to the
dynamics will allow researchers to identify their prejudices and allies, activists, and
oppressed or dominant parties within a group.
10. Transformation Praxis
The primary purpose of any socially conscious actor is to someday contribute to transfor-
mation. Transformation praxis, the last criterion, describes where theory meets practice. It
involves recognising and thinking about the power dynamics in operation and having a
general conversation about those dynamics. It also involves the following questions to our
experiences and observations: “Is there evidence of disidentification? How are the prevalent
social relations being interrupted towards greater social justice? How can these efforts be
made more visible, strengthened?” Steyn etal. (2018) posit that the result of all nine criteria
is social justice:
Understanding, and committing to, the preceding nine principles should ultimately
result in taking action in the real world to change relations of domination and ine-
quality. Once people learn the ability to see through the coded structures and
harmful arrangements sustained by unequal power, injustice becomes undeniable,
and action unavoidable. (p. 6)
This criterion is about putting all nine criteria into action.
A Summary of CDL- Related Questions
The CDL- related questions researchers can ask themselves during research are summarised
in Table1 and 2 below.
Concluding Remarks: Making the Normative Strange
Through Alternative Methodologies
One of the ways to avoid conduct that reinforces binaries and norms involves what we
referred to earlier as “making the normative strange”. To make the normative strange,
researchers must consider themselves immersed in the collective politics of knowledge mak-
ing and the university. Identifying how we are positioned as researchers in our societies can
help us remember who we are and the difference we want our work to make in other people’s
lives through research. This is no simple task. However, it can help us think of ways to unnat-
uralise traditional models by invoking an “unnatural discourse” ( Kobayashi, 1994), which
can help us research with the people, not on or against them ( Smith, 1999). We unnaturalise
our usual ways of researching and understanding differences by opening methods up to dif-
ferent communication modes. Overall we need to allow participants to express themselves in
their language, make our research spaces disability friendly and create spaces that will enable
queer people and women to express themselves. There is also a need for future research that
deals with this phenomenon of making the normative strange through research.
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LEVERAGING CRITICAL DIVERSITY LITERACY
Table1 CDL Criteria and the respective summary of questions for researchers
Criterion 1: Construction Of
Differences Within Unequal
Power Relations
Criterion 2: Value of Different
Positionalities
Criterion 3:
Intersectionalities
Criterion 4: Currency of
Systemic Oppressions
Criterion 5: Social Identities
Which differences are
operating in this context?
How is human value/
mattering distributed?
How are intersectionalities
operating? Are they played
off against one other?
Mutually sustaining?
Is there an attempt to rewrite
the past?
Are social groups being
essentialised?
Which differences are visible/
salient?
Which positionalities are taken
as normative? Which are
included/excluded and how do
these determine who belongs?
How are systematic benefits
being played out?
How may there be a tendency
to lose track of the earlier
processes of forming of
inequities? Is there an attempt
to create an ahistorical present?
Are immutable
characteristics being
ascribed to them?
Which differences may be
repressed?
How are rewards/freedoms/
choices operating?
What evidence is there
that/how violence is
operating at different
intersections (Discursive/
psychological/physical)?
What are we being
encouraged to remember/
forget?
Is there evidence of
internalised oppression/
dominance/inferiority/
superiority?
Is there a hierarchy operating
between the differences?
How are censuring/
disciplinary/policing actions
operating?
Where are the resistances/
refusals/oppositional bits of
knowledge happening?
How is the past being used to
entrench/dismantle privilege/
oppression?
How are the social identities
related to the social realities
in this context?
What evidence is there of
how violence is operating, be
it discursive/psychological/
physical?
How are blindnesses/denials
operating?
Can I recognise non-
dominant knowledges
operating at specific
intersections?
How are struggles for redress/
recognition being opened up/
closed down?
How are these differences
being naturalised?
Whose views tend to
dominate? Who is taken
seriously?
How are they being
disqualified/discredited/
undermined?
How can relations be shown to
be contingent, not inevitable?
How are centres and margins
being reproduced/reshaped/
redrawn?
Are there differences within
positionalities? Different
stances within positionalities?
How can organic experience
be legitimised?
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KUDZAIISHE PETER VANYORO AND MELISSA STEYN
Table2 CDL Criteria and the respective summary of questions for researchers
Criterion 6: Grammar
and Vocabulary
Criterion 7: Coded
Hegemony
Criterion 8: The Material
Criterion 9: Emotions
Criterion 10:
How is closure being
encouraged? How
can I open this up?
How may obfuscation
be operating here?
Who is materially dependent
on whom?
How is affect circulating among/
between collectivities? How
are feelings caught up within
collectivities? Which feelings?
Who recognises the
dynamics at work?
What is at stake in the
ways differences are
being named?
Who is benefiting?
What is being curtailed?
Who gets to be economically
active in advantageous/
disadvantageous ways?
How is bonding/belonging being
negotiated to create socially
significant differences?
Who thinks about them?
How is recognition
being encouraged/
discouraged by the
language being used?
What are the effects?
How are unearned
benefits/advantages
being “rewritten” as
merit, virtue etc.?
How are the spatial
arrangements shaped within
power relations?
How do different groups
matter?Which objects attract
strong emotions, and why?
Is there evidence of
disidentification?
How is attention
being deflected from
oppressive relations?
Is distance used to signify a
moral/social order?
What feeling worlds are people
participating in? And me? Who is
doing the emotional labour?
How are the prevalent
social relations being
interrupted towards greater
social justice?
How is ambiguity being
encouraged here?
How is the built environment
reflective of power relations
between differences?
To whom is compassion/
empathy/indifference/contempt/
rejection encouraged?
How can these efforts be
made more visible, and
strengthened?
How is legitimisation/
co- option/containment
operating?
How are objects being used
to mark differences, or
translate between them?
How is relationship/separation
reciprocity/non- reciprocity being
established?
How can the norms
operating be made
visible?
How is taste marking socially
salient differences?How are
commodities circulating in
socially significant ways?
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LEVERAGING CRITICAL DIVERSITY LITERACY
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