Beyond the Binary: Harnessing 'Moments of Mismatch' as Critical Data in Global South Research Contexts

What explains why reductive explanations of social phenomena in the global South persist? This paper addresses this question by considering how researchers' assumptions of their positionality premised upon global North-South explanations of power shape "how" they collect and determine the scope of their data. Building upon standpoint theory's emphasis of knowledge production as material sites of inquiry, we first consider how researchers' positionality assumptions informed how they constructed 'the entirety' of their research sites in one global South context, Jordan. Second, we explore 'moments of mismatch': when researchers' assumptions of their positionality do not align with interlocutors' perceptions. We highlight these moments because they reveal critical relational hierarchies beyond global North-South dichotomies that literally shaped "how" the researchers subsequently expanded and changed the scope of their sites of inquiry in turn. We argue that these moments of mismatch provide fruitful opportunities to engage in more thorough forms of reflexivity that reflect the dynamism of social relations of power in the global South.