Challenge of “Serious” Scholarship 121
New research methods, such as community-based, participatory approaches that
tie research to the knowledge and needs of communities (Dei, 2010; Higgs, 2008,
2010), seem fruitful for deaf communities as well. Cameroonian deaf people’s inter-
pretation of this research project in terms of “development” and the working of
an NGO can be understood as “sidetracking.” De Sardan (2008) notes that side-
tracking is common in development work, where different logics are in conflict and
actors try to obtain their own goals: “Sidetracking is a sign that the actors involved
have ‘appropriated’ the development project” (p. 40).
Discussions of the findings with the Cameroonian deaf community started from
ethical considerations and “principled engagement” (Janes & Corbett, 2009, p. 176),
as opposed to “epistemological naiveté” (p. 178), and I encouraged par ticipation,
awareness, and local practices by deaf leaders and com munity members.
Searching for answers to the community’s question “How can deaf people in
Cameroon develop?” also challenged me to reflect on my own investigative process
and on deaf studies research in developing countries. Cameroonian deaf people
were not asking for research. They were asking for service and solutions to problems
(see also Farmer, 2010a, 2010d). This is in alignment with African universities’ ori-
entation toward teaching and community service. Although universities on the con-
tinent are increasingly making a shift toward the research and publication emphasis
that is common in Western universities (Neubert, 2008), African scholars have also
continued to advocate for solution-oriented and contextualized research, which can
meet the challenges and needs of the communities (Dei, 2010; Higgs, 2008, 2010;
Nsamenang, 1992). Sidetracking in the direction of “serious” scholarship was a nec-
essary condition for CANAD and the community to support the study. Partnership
with the Cam eroonian deaf community, negotiations of the research process and
findings, and movement to “a third position” (beyond mutual bias) have provided
some (tem porarily valid) answers to this challenge.
In this process, I have been guided by the naturalized epistemological stance dis-
cussed in the present chapter in the areas of an thropology, deaf studies, sign linguis-
tics, and critical pedagogy. For the approach of critical pedagogy, I have found in-
spiration in Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2005) and in the presupposition
articulated by Rancière (2009) that “all intelligence is equal,” not in the sense of IQ
but in the sense that all people can make observations, analyze data, make conclu-
sions, and communicate these conclusions to other people (Verstraete & Pinxten,
2009). This approach also aims to be helpful in encouraging leadership in light of the
(ideological) separation of uneducated/illiterate and educated/literate deaf people.
In the workshop I provided as part of the WFD training (De Clerck, 2011),^13 I had
the opportunity to illustrate how the research put into practice a triangular and inter-
active model of partnership of NGOs, academics, and deaf communities (De Clerck
& Lutalo-Kiingi, 2011) that is supportive of the Cameroonian deaf community. In
deaf studies and sign language research, there is increased attention being paid to
research eth ics, the involvement of deaf people in the investigative process, and the- Further information on the WFD training and an exploration of concept formation during the
training can be found in Chapter 8.