Engaged Theory: Collaboratively Weaving the Grounds of Global Justice

Abstract Engaging those who have been epistemically marginalized within academia can make for more robust, comprehensive, and nuanced theory. However, as a form of relationally accountable scholarship, the contributions of grounded normative theory (GNT) can be much further reaching—enacting an ethical form of theorizing-with that is foundational to justice locally and globally. In this chapter, the author argues that GNT can be used in ways that enhance theorists’ and their collaborators’ collective capacities for transformative change, while advancing epistemic justice. When foregrounding relationality as enacted by Indigenous and Indigenous feminist theoretical traditions, the grounded normative theorist can actively disrupt and challenge individualist, colonial, and extractive approaches to research. In this way, GNT as a tradition can open up pathways for “acting otherwise” that enable theorists to contribute to collaboratively weaving the grounds for global justice.