Inclusion from the Borderlands: a Border Thinking Praxis for Reorienting Marketing Research, Education, and Practice

This commentary emerges from an embodied experience of doing research from the borderlands. From this position, we problematize how marketing scholarship has sought to become more inclusive while continuing to reproduce exclusions. We argue that inclusion cannot be achieved solely through representation or by adding marginalized voices into existing frameworks; rather, it requires epistemic reorientation. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s writings on the borderlands and Walter Mignolo’s work on border thinking, we frame discomfort as an epistemic stance that unsettles Eurocentric, one-size-fits-all perspectives shaping the field. Building on these ideas, we propose a border thinking praxis for inclusive marketing that reorients marketing research, education, and practice from the margins of dominant epistemologies. Our contribution highlights how inhabiting discomfort, embracing tolerance for ambiguity, and critically engaging with positionality and privilege can enable a more inclusive marketing scholarship. Ultimately, we argue that reimagining marketing from the borders allows the field not only to include others, but to transform its very structures of knowledge production.