This week, my learning took me into the fascinating territory of positionality, paradigms, and perspective-taking. I came across a video that captures these concepts beautifully, so I thought I’d share it here as part of my PhD journey reflections.
How You Know What You Know
The video explores how our personal lens (positionality) and the collective lens of entire fields (research paradigms) shape what we see as truth. It shows that our background, identities, and lived experiences are not “biases to erase,” but starting points that influence how we know what we know.
It also highlights the difference between two ways of bringing disciplines together:
- The instrumental approach, where we just borrow tools from each field for efficiency.
- The critical approach, where we wrestle with deeper differences, engage in conflict, and achieve richer breakthroughs.
The big takeaway? True objectivity doesn’t come from pretending we don’t have a perspective. It comes from becoming deeply aware of our own lens and intentionally seeking out the perspectives of others.
Mahbub Amin 