Re-imagining the dialogic spaces of talanoa through Samoan onto-epistemology

Abstract

This article proposes a Samoan indigenous philosophical position to reconceptualise the dialogic spaces of talanoa; particularly how talanoa is applied methodologically to research practice. Talanoa within New Zealand Pacific research scholarship is problematised, raising particular tensions of the universal and humanistic ideologies that are entrenched within institutional ethics and research protocols. The dialogic relational space which is embedded throughout talanoa methodology is called into question, evoking alternative ways of knowing and being within the talanoa research assemblage[1] (including the material-world). Samoan epistemology reveals that nature is constituted within personhood (Vaai & Nabobo-Baba, 2017) and that nature is co-agentic with human in an ecology of knowing. We call for a shift in thinking material-ethics that opens talanoa to a materialist process ontology, where knowledge generation emerges through human and non-human encounters.
 
 
 [1] The concept of assemblage developed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) refers to a process of temporary arrangements or constellations of objects, expressions, bodies, qualities and territories that create new ways of functioning. The assemblage is a multiplicity shaped by a wide range of flows and emerges from the arranging process of heterogenous elements (Livesey, 2010).

Moving materialities: Oceanic epistemologies and embodied knowledge production in Pentecostal women's health mentorship in Samoa

“…Manulani Aluli Meyer (2013, 94) argues that the body is a plane through which empirical information is apprehended, coming from direct experience, “a knowing because it has been encountered, registered and remembered in bone and muscle” (see also Diaz, 2012; M. Meyer 2001). Manulani Aluli Meyer (2013, 94) calls this “cultural empiricism,” which is “altered by the seasons, the sharing of ideas with others, and with its own referential knowing steeped in ancestral memory” that is “alive and part of the external world” (see also Matapo and Enari, 2021; Suaalii‐Sauni et al., 2018).…”

“…Meyer 2001). Manulani Aluli Meyer (2013, 94) calls this "cultural empiricism," which is "altered by the seasons, the sharing of ideas with others, and with its own referential knowing steeped in ancestral memory" that is "alive and part of the external world" (see also Matapo and Enari, 2021;Suaalii-Sauni et al, 2018).…”

e–talanoa as an online research method: extending vā–relations across spaces

“…Talanoa continues to form the basis of newly named narrative approaches yet embraces the free-flow dialogue synonymous with the talanoa approach (Fa‘avae et al, 2016; Suaalii-Sauni & Fulu-Aiolupotea, 2014). Even though talanoa has become a research method and methodology appreciated by Pasifika or Pacific researchers (Matapo & Enari, 2021; Thomsen et al, 2021), it is not an approach that fully encapsulates the diversity and vastness within Te Moananui-ā-Kiwa and its bodies of knowledges. To assume talanoa is the predominant Pacific approach not only perpetuates the privileging of the few in Polynesia over the many in the Moana, but can also ignore the in–depth, similar yet distinct specificities and ways of beings–knowings–seeings–feelings–doings inherent within Hau‘ofa’s (1994) sea of islands.…”

Inequities and perspectives from the COVID-Delta outbreak: The imperative for strengthening the Pacific nursing workforce in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…We then share a conversation, from a nursing leadership position, reflecting on Pacific nurses' involvement in the pandemic. We draw on the concept of talanoa as a research framework that affirms Pacific thinking, language, and culture; challenges Eurocentric institutional systems; and enables the co-creation of knowledge (Matapo & Enari, 2021). We intend this conversation to open-up lively talanoa within the health and education sector.…”