scholarly journals Decolonising knowledge production on Africa: why it�s still necessary and what can be done

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s1 ◽  
pp. 21-46
Author(s):  
Gordon Crawford ◽  
Zainab Mai-Bornu ◽  
Karl Landstr�m
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Scholarly Journals ◽  
Kwame Nkrumah ◽  
Global North ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
African Writers ◽  
North And South ◽  
Practical Level

Contemporary debates on decolonising knowledge production, inclusive of research on Africa, are crucial and challenge researchers to reflect on the legacies of colonial power relations that continue to permeate the production of knowledge about the continent, its peoples, and societies. Yet these are not new debates. Sixty years ago, Ghana�s first president and pan-Africanist leader, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, highlighted the importance of Africa-centred knowledge. Similarly, in the 1980s, Claude Ake advocated for endogenous knowledge production on Africa. But progress has been slow at best, indicated by the enduring predominance of non-African writers on African issues within leading scholarly journals. Thus, we examine why decolonisation of knowledge production remains so necessary and what can be done within the context of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. These questions are addressed at two levels, one more practical and one more reflective . At both levels, issues of power inequalities and injustice are critical. At the practical level, the asymmetrical power relations between scholars in the Global North and South are highlighted. At a deeper level, the critiques of contemporary African authors are outlined, all contesting the ongoing coloniality and epistemic injustices that affect knowledge production on Africa, and calling for a more fundamental reorientation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches in order to decolonise knowledge production.

Conclusion: lessons, implications and recommendations

2020 ◽  
pp. 291-298
Author(s):  
Christina Horvath ◽  
Juliet Carpenter
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Qualitative Evaluation ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South ◽  
Practical Recommendations

The conclusion reflects on the different approaches that researchers, activists, practitioners and artists from the Global North and South have developed to Co-Creation. It identifies key themes emerging from to previous chapters’ contributions to conceptualisation of Co-Creation in theory and practice. These include the approach’s core objectives, relations to power holders and the state, the management of power relations within Co-Creation, the different roles and positionalities participants can take, the different processes of knowledge production and their tangible and intangible outcomes, space and place that enable Co-Creative processes and are produced by them, the methodology’s impact on communities and the challenges to evaluate and measure it and contexts in which Co-Creation can be an effective method. The authors highlight new, emerging directions for further investigation, which could include exploration of different positionalities and their impact on Co-Creation processes, and qualitative evaluation of the impacts taking into account the methods developed by the epistemologies of the South. The chapter ends with a series of practical recommendations for activists, researchers, artists, and practitioners interested in pursuing Co-Creation initiatives.

scholarly journals Decolonising the Rainbow Flag

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pia Laskar ◽  
Anna Johansson ◽  
Diana Mulinari
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Boundary Object ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Ethnographic Approach ◽  
Peripheral Location ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South ◽  
North Sweden

The aim of the article is to explore the location and the meaning given to the rainbow flag in places outside the hegemonic center. Through three case studies in the global North and South, held together by a multi-ethnographic approach, as well as a certain theoretical tension between the rainbow flag as a boundary object and/or a floating signifier, we seek to study where the flag belongs, to whom it belongs, with particular focus on how. The three case studies, which are situated in a city in the Global South (Buenos Aires), in a conflict war zone in the Middle East (the West Bank) and in a racialised neighbourhood in the Global North (Sweden), share despite their diversity a peripheral location to hegemonic forms of knowledge production regimes. Central to our analysis is how the rainbow flag is given a multitude of original and radical different meanings that may challenge the colonial/Eurocentric notions which up to a certain extent are embedded in the rainbow flag.

Can literary events use Co-Creation to challenge stigmatisation?

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-172
Author(s):  
Christina Horvath
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Rio De Janeiro ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Arts Festivals ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

This chapter takes a comparative approach to two initiatives developed by artists and cultural promoters from the Global North and South, to challenge clichés attached to French banlieues and Brazilian favelas as places devoid of the production and consumption of literary texts. The ‘Dictée des Cités’, a spelling competition promoted since 2013 in French banlieues by writer Rachid Santaki, and the ‘Literary Festival of the Urban Periphery’ (FLUP) curated in Rio de Janeiro since 2012 by writers Julio Ludemir and Écio Salles, are analysed through the lens of Co-Creation as examples of artist-driven initiatives to encourage large local audiences’ engagement with literary texts, transform literary institutions and canons and challenge stereotypes associated with urban peripheries. While the chapter seeks to evaluate the potential of large-scale literary events to change the perception of disadvantaged urban areas, it also explores differences between the Global North and South. The chapter ends with the conclusion that socially engaged arts festivals and Co-Creation events may promote similar aims, they however differ in their scale, approaches to knowledge production as well as in their strategies promoting engagement with creative methods.

Conditions for Mutuality and Reciprocity in Development Education Policy and Pedagogy

2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Hanna Alasuutari
Keyword(s):  
Education Policy ◽  
Critical Literacy ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Intercultural Learning ◽  
Development Education ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The North ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

This paper analyses policies that seem to promote mutuality and reciprocity in development education partnerships and pedagogy. It explores challenges to mutuality and reciprocity in global and development education pedagogy in countries in the Global North and proposes that critical literacy and ethical intercultural learning can be a way forward to a renegotiation of ideas of self and other and of power relations between the North and South.

Theorizing untranslatability: Temporalities and ambivalence in colonial literature of Taiwan and Korea

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 162 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Jean Chen
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Colonial Literature ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
A Site ◽  
Transnational Space

This paper theorizes and historicizes the ideas of modern language and translation and challenges the imperialist and nationalistic mode of worlding with the notion of ‘untranslatability’ that is embedded in the linguistic and cultural practices of colonial Taiwan and Korea. I redefine the notion of translation as a bordering system – the knowledge-production of boundaries, discrimination, and classification – that simultaneously creates the translatable and the untranslatable (i.e. the equivalence and incommensurability) in asymmetrical power relations. With this, I discuss how this ambivalence is embodied in the experiences of colonial writers Wu Yung-fu and Pak T’aewŏn and their novellas ‘Head and Body’ (1933) and ‘A Day in the life of Kubo the Novelist’ (1934). I illustrate two characteristics of the ambivalent untranslatability embedded in their novellas: the linguistic untranslatability and the experience of ‘unhomeness’. The linguistic untranslatability and unhomeness, I argue, result in the colonized’s dislocation in homogeneous time-space relationships, resulting to the incompletion of the modernization project through colonialism. At the same time untranslatability offers a site to explore the transnational space that crosses linguistic boundaries, and to caution against the legacy of colonialism.

Introduction: new economies North and South – sharing the transition to a just and sustainable future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter North ◽  
Molly Scott Cato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Sustainable Future ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

This chapter sets the scene for the edited collection which follows it, recounting the findings of an international conversation on the social and solidarity economies between participants from Europe and Latin America. It discusses problems and possibilities for learning and policy transference between different places, acknowledging the power relations involved between global north and south, centre and periphery. It introduces a four part conceptualisation of the social and solidarity economy sector between Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship; the inclusive Social Economy; the Solidarity Economy, working on conceptions of how we want to live in a climate constrained world, and the Antagonistic Economy, challenging pathological aspects of contemporary neoliberalism.

scholarly journals The Nature–Culture Distinction in Disaster Studies: The Recent Petition for Reform as an Opportunity for New Thinking?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon van Riet
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Potential Value ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Disaster Studies ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
Asymmetrical Power ◽  
Potential Opportunity ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractThis article constructively challenges the often cited distinction between the so-called hazard and vulnerability perspectives in disaster studies. In a context of increasingly intertwined, dense, and complex socioecological dynamics, disaster scholars often hold onto an apparently untenable distinction between nature and culture, manifested as either a hazard or a vulnerability approach. This article maintains that the typically undesired approach (the hazard approach) is inherent to the preferred (vulnerability) perspective. The article builds on Oliver-Smith’s (2013) critique of the magnitude of requirements placed upon practitioners given the full implications of the vulnerability perspective. Although critical of the vulnerability perspective, this article does not fundamentally disagree with the validity of its claims. Instead, by drawing on the pragmatist philosophy of Rorty (1989) and by demonstrating the potential value of posthumanism for disaster studies, I wish to argue for greater pragmatism within disaster scholarship. The article considers the recent petition or manifesto for disaster studies (Gaillard et al. 2019) for more inclusive disaster research as a potential opportunity to challenge the aforementioned nature–culture distinction in the field, as the petition signed by a number of disaster scholars outlines various concerns over the asymmetrical power relations between local and external researchers. These power relations have adverse consequences for the appropriateness of knowledge production in many contexts. I am primarily concerned with the very local level of disaster occurrence, where posthumanism might be most valuable.

scholarly journals Examining Alternative Knowledge Production

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Shahreen Shehwar
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Global System ◽  
Alternative Policy ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

Transnational alternative policy groups (TAPGs) are alternative think tanks that mobilize knowledge into social movements and community action. These social movement actors may hold vast potential in correcting inequalities that have, arguably, been prominent during the recent wave of neoliberalism. However, the study of TAPGs is new and thus they are only recently emerging within academic literature. Here, the author contributes to literature on TAPGs, by comparing two TAPGs, from the Global North and South respectively, in order to explore their potential as social movement actors situated within a neoliberal hegemonic global system.

scholarly journals ACADEMIC COLLABORATIONS IN THE AMERICAS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LEGAL KNOWLEDGE

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 648
Author(s):  
Daniel Bonilla Maldonado ◽  
Colin Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Free Market ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
The Third ◽  
Organizational Issues ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Creation ◽  
North And South

The article proceeds in three parts. The first, the articles’ analytical heart, considers the political economy of legal knowledge. It describes briefly the free market of legal ideas and the colonial model for the production of legal knowledge. It illustrates how these two models work using examples from our “South-North Partnerships” (SNP), that is, our collaborative practices in the creation of legal thought as they play out in the legal academies of the global North and South. The second part is both descriptive and reflective, focusing on four different SNP examples that illustrate challenges in the creation of truly collaborative legal knowledge production processes. It identifies common challenges in these endeavors, from surmounting basic organizational issues such as language barriers to jostling with fundamentals like conflicting academic calendars. Most importantly, the second part indicates how the dynamics of the political economy of legal knowledge played out in the SNPs described. It also highlights possible ways to equalize these relationships and activities, with an end to creating SNPs focused on truly collaborative legal knowledge production. The third part offers conclusions and recommendations. 

PARADIGMA KEILMUAN KPI DALAM PERSPEKTIF DAKWAH

1970 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 310-322
Author(s):  
Aan Herdiana
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Professional Competence ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Scientific Level ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
Activity Design ◽  
Practical Level

Islamic Communication and Broadcasting or commonly known as KPI, as one of the majors in Islamic colleges, must have an identity. Basically, the KPI’s scientific design can not be separated from two things, first, at the scientific level, the device is able to make science communication and science propaganda as the basis of activity design and the movement of Islamic broadcasting through various paradigmatic, theoretical, and methodological approaches. This is what is referred to as the ability of theoretical understanding (knowledge-based capability). Second, at a practical level, facilitating the growth of capabilities that could be the foundation undergraduate professional competence of KPI. Komunikasi dan penyiaran Islam atau yang biasa dikenal dengan KPI, sebagai salah satu jurusan di perguruan tinggi agama Islam, harus mempunyai identitas. Pada dasarnya desain keilmuan KPI tidak terlepas dari dua hal, Pertama, di level keilmuan, mampu menjadikan perangkat ilmu komunikasi dan ilmu dakwah sebagai basis dari desain aktivitas dan gerakan penyiaran Islam melalui berbagai pendekatan paradigmatik, teoritik, dan metodologis. Inilah yang disebut sebagai kemampuan pemahaman teoretik (knowladgebased capability). Kedua, di level praktis, memfasilitasi tumbuh kembangnya kemampuan yang dapat menjadi pijakan kompetensi profesi sarjana KPI.

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