Being turned inside out: researching youth, morality and restitution from the global South

Abstract

This article maps my journey as a scholar engaged in the research of youth morality (located in the Global South); as a beneficiary of injustice having grown up as a white South African; as a navigator of complex personal histories (discovering my mixed race family origins); and arriving at restitution as a career research focus. It reflects on the experience of being turned inside out through examining personal and political locatedness in moral research and how these change as new discoveries are made. It also explores feelings of professional exclusion despite being the recipient of a privileged Northern hemisphere education and shows how the topic of restitution addresses some of the inherent tensions in my personal life, whilst offering potential for redemptive North-South partnerships. Moreover, researching restitution in global contexts of moral injustice, across the Global North South divide, has the potential to expand the internationalisation of scholarship on morality and moral education.