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Vulnerability in Missiological Research: A Challenge for Westerners in Empirical Intercultural Theology

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This is a correction publication of a retracted article from Volume 53(2025). The original article was retracted on the grounds of the wrong manuscript being published and not the peer reviewed article. The first original published article can be found at https://missionalia.journals.ac.za/pub/article/view/574 ABSTRACT: Mission understood as a mode of witnessing in a context of difference inevitably involves the perpetual need for learning about the other. If a case can be made for mission to be informed by vulnerability so as not to abuse power, the same applies to research – in the context of intercultural theology as in the social sciences. Vulnerability here is understood as striving for epistemic justice. This is particularly relevant for Westerners in contexts of coloniality. Even if never fully attainable, the ambition needs to be to understand people on their own terms, both linguistically and experientially. This understanding of vulnerability was applied to an ethnographic study of the conceptualisation and practice of post-apartheid reconciliation in a multiethnic South African church. It directed the main research focus towards white people, included a subsidiary study involving an isiXhosa-medium township congregation and a linguistic concept study, and necessitated a constructivist research paradigm that was able to tolerate epistemological difference. This paper shows how vulnerability informed both the process and the findings of the main and subsidiary study. Besides revealing clear advantages, the inherent limitations of vulnerability as a research paradigm are considered as well. It has to contend with the implications of constructivist approaches and may have to exclude member validation when studying cultural-linguistic diversity. The article still encourages this ‘vulnerability of vulnerability’ as it enables limited but crucial insights while pointing out important requirements for effective cross-cultural communication in both academia and ministry.
Source: Missionalia
DOI: 10.7832/54-0-603
Language: English
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $271
OpenAlex ID: W7225733456
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