Can Research Heal? Toward Restorative Validity: Axiological Commitments and Methodological Obligations as Contact Zones

Abstract

This work begins with a simple premise: (re)imagining a healing space for social inquiry. I briefly highlight the work of a critical participatory action research collective—composed of Maya community members, nonprofit staff, and a university-affiliated researcher—and how we explored whether research could provide a restorative function for those experiencing trauma, abuse, and everyday restrictions on free will. We revisited our co-constructed conceptual framework—restorative validity—which paints inquiry as interconnected orientations rooted in relationships, justice, and liberation. By presenting our experiences as counternarratives, I describe how our axiological commitments act in opposition and resist methodological obligations, illuminating Pratt’s conceptualization of contact zones—in this case, a social space where co-researchers’ ethics and values clash with hegemonic research practices. These counternarratives offer a reflexive example of the ethical and axiological considerations that should be examined as collectives approach inquiry as a healing and restorative space. The aim is to educate those interested in questioning dominant paradigms, as well as critically exploring the necessary conditions for restorative validity. These reflections act as an open call: Are we simply too preoccupied with being scientific enough to the detriment of freeing ourselves to imagine, co-construct, and commit inquiry as a healing space? It questions whether our communities of research and practice hold sufficient freedom: Freedom from dominant paradigms. Freedom to challenge methodological practices and empower ourselves to create new forms of inquiry. Forms of inquiry that seek to heal and restore, rather than simply prove a point.