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- Convenors:
-
Chandni Basu
(Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany)
Shahnaz Rouse (Sarah Lawrence College)
- Stream:
- I: Rethinking development and development research
- Location:
- G1
- Start time:
- 28 June, 2018 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The issue of circulation of knowledge within the Social Sciences brings forth implications of connection and disconnection as intrinsic features of knowledge production. What this entails in terms of relational ontology among Social Science researchers therefore remains to be interrogated.
Long Abstract:
The issue of circulation of knowledge within the Social Sciences brings forth implications of connection, disconnection and connectivity as intrinsic features of knowledge production. Within the paradigm of circulation and production of academic knowledge this entails explorations on the idea of 'connection' and 'disconnection', both as metaphor and as concept. This further involves issues of identity and power dynamics among Social Science researchers in terms of their everyday practices and strategies of connections (or disconnection). In this direction, intentions and expectations of Social Science researchers remain important towards their formulation of claims. In this scheme, the role of mediators comes forth to facilitate processes of connections/
disconnections. It foregrounds a relational ontology to explicate conceptions and practices of connections/ disconnections among concerned actors along with paving the way towards newer modes of (re)connections necessary to strive for alternative strategies.
This panel attempts to highlight the dynamics of academic knowledge production within the Social Sciences. A global inequality lens facilitates in explicating on issues of power dynamics among Social Science researchers along with foregrounding the structural inequalities impacting their performativity within academic knowledge production. Recognition of the throbbing tension related to universalism further on directs towards the significance of focussing on alternative strategies within academic knowledge production. Does the recognition of global structural inequality in academic knowledge production within the Social Sciences therefore create the need for a methodological revamping? How can connectivity be increased in terms of situated knowledge production within the relational dynamics of the global and the local?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Caroline Hughes (University of Notre Dame) Behrooz Morvaridi (University of Bradford)
Paper short abstract:
Concern to promote knowledge economies in the Global South has led to the globalization of knowledge production through knowledge value chains. This paper explores the politics of knowledge value chains and their implications for radical and modernist notions of academic freedom.
Paper long abstract:
The shift away from international best practice to locally embedded solutions in thinking about development and security issues has changed the kinds of knowledge required to underpin both development policy and practice and private investment decisions. Concern to foster "knowledge economies" has prompted a shift in the geography of knowledge production, characterized by processes of offshoring, industrial clustering and value chain construction familiar in other kinds of industries. Public and private research funders and research producers - most prominently universities - in the Global North are increasingly both partnering and competing with knowledge producers in the global south, in increasingly complex architectures of knowledge production. The status of knowledge and its relationship to power, makes the question of power distribution across knowledge production value chains politically fraught. This paper examines the implications of the changing political geography of knowledge production for an emancipatory vision of "local knowledge" as expressed in radical critiques of both the modernist "public good" and the neoliberal "private good" research paradigms. How does globalization of research, the emergence of new relationships of funding and accountability and perceptions of the increased significance of "local knowledge" affect researchers in the Global South and aspirations to democratize knowledge as a resource for "speaking truth to power" in support of oppressed populations? This paper explores this question through examination of recent struggles over academic freedom in three "knowledge economies": Hongkong, Turkey and Thailand.
Emanuela Girei (Liverpool John Moores University) Arun Kumar (University of York) Loice Natukunda
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores inequalities in knowledge production by focusing on insider/outsider dynamics when doing research in Sub-Saharan Africa. It aims to contribute to research practices that foster reciprocity while being sensitive neither to reproduce nor silence rooted inequalities and asymmetries.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores inequalities in knowledge production by focusing on insider/outsider dynamics when doing ethnography in organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on our experiences as management researchers working with African organisations and on face-to-face interviews with insider and outsider researchers, we explore issues around researchers' identities, focusing especially on divergences and intersections with the identities of the research participants.
Our contribution builds on three key assumptions. Firstly, we understand the insider/outsider status as both precarious and shifting according to the various encounters we make along the research process. Secondly, we acknowledge that we all have multiple intersecting identities and positionalities, including multiple outsider and insider status. However, and thirdly, we also believe that constructions such as race/ethnicity/blackness/whiteness significantly contribute to the shaping of our insider/outsider status, especially when we do research in the field of international development and more specifically in sub-Saharan Africa.
Drawing on these assumptions, we aim to engage with experiences and reflections of 'insider' and 'outsider' researchers so to highlight differences, unpack intersections and builds conceptual and practice-based bridges. In this sense, this paper aims to enlighten how researchers have dealt with these dilemmas so to contribute to advance our understandings of research practices that foster reciprocity and cooperation while being sensitive neither to reproduce nor silence rooted inequalities and asymmetries.
Barbara Riedel (Unversity of Freibrug)
Paper short abstract:
This paper recounts one concrete case in the relationship between connected and disconnected circuits of knowledge. It elaborates on the different stories of the Kunjali Marakkars, 'pirates' on the southwest coast of India in the 16th century, and on the different perceptions of this story.
Paper long abstract:
While for centuries the Kunjali Marakkars were considered pirates and criminals in the eyes of official historians, the local Muslims praised them as their heroes of resistance against the Portuguese in their epics and ballads. For centuries, there were two totally disconnected circuits of knowledge. This chasm in perception changed thoroughly in the last 60 years. The paper follows the changes of perception through the last 60 years in different fields of knowledge: in academics, in the public sphere and in popular culture. As the starting point for this change, the paper considers a monograph in English on the Kunjali Marakkars, first published by an Indian author in 1955: O.K. Nambiars Portuguese Pirates and Indian Seamen. Nambiar was also the first author to take up the oral tradition of the Mappila Muslims.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed