Feminist and self-reflexive anthropological and postcolonial researchers have offered critiques of unequal power dynamics in research for decades. Much lip service is given to these kinds of critique that increasingly have been taken up by academics and international organizations alike. After the murder of George Floyd (1973-2020), the language of decolonization has even been used by banks and businesses and has entered the lingo of joint social research projects. Many funding organizations profess to value local knowledge, local leadership, local ownership of knowledge, and to want to promote decolonizing research and research methods. Yet, how much is changing in the field? In this paper I draw on my experience as an academic working at a Jordanian university and conversations with Jordanian colleagues in academia and civil society organizations to suggest that despite the discourse on decolonizing research, little has changed on the ground. In practice, unequal relations continue to be enshrined in funding regulations, university bylaws, and everyday interactions between local researchers and researchers from the global north. Local partners are often treated merely as sources whose knowledge and stories can be taken on without mention or credit of authorship. In this reflection on the politics and ethics of social research in Jordan, I start with the dynamics between individual researchers and then turn to the politics and policies of data ownership in funded projects. Both the power relations between individual researchers as well as those between foreign donors and local researchers indicate who is considered the producer and who the owner of knowledge. I draw on personal experiences from my work in Jordan to think through what this means in terms of power/knowledge structures on the ground and what can be done to resist, and transform, these dynamics.