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- Convenor:
-
Divine Fuh
(HUMA-Humanities in Africa Institute)
Send message to Convenor
- Stream:
- Politics and International Relations
- Location:
- Appleton Tower, Seminar Room 2.07
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 12 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Critically engages with a political aspect of the knowledge production crisis that continues to confront research and dissemination in Africa. It asks questions about alternative models and epistemological frameworks that underpin knowledge production in Africa, with particular focus on funding.
Long Abstract:
This roundtable critically engages with a political aspect of the knowledge production crisis that continues to confront research and dissemination in Africa. It asks questions about alternative models and epistemological frameworks that underpin knowledge production in Africa, with particular focus on funding. This is a key question for African Studies in the continent, with respect to the funding cuts, austerity measures and regulatory frameworks that universities and research organisations are enforcing in order to better adjust themselves to the transformations and requirements of funding institutions? What consequences do these portend for knowledge production in/on/by the continent and what should be the response? What is the future of knowledge production in Africa? And how do funding and research trends influence the nature and trends in knowledge production in the continent? How and who should finance African knowledge production? What ethical considerations should guide knowledge production trends regardless of funding sources? What is the nature of the relationship between research financing and modes of knowledge production and dissemination in Africa? What models should be developed to challenge the hegemonies and agenda setting frameworks of external funding? Can and how should research funding be decolonised?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 12 June, 2019, -Suda Perera (SOAS)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reflects on the role of the fixer in producing research on Africa. Using the case of a fixer in the DR Congo, it reflects on how knowledge is 'bought,' used and consumed with relatively little power given to local producers over its final use.
Paper long abstract:
Many outside researchers working in conflict-affected states such as the DRC used local fixers to provide up-to-date security advice, access to difficult-to-reach populations, and gather information that they otherwise could not gain themselves. Despite these local fixers being highly skilled and highly trained researchers in their own right, their contribution to the production of knowledge is rarely recognised beyond financial renumeration for their time. As a result, once the in-field data has been collected, many fixers have relatively little knowledge of, and almost no power over, how their research is used and consumed. If this data is ignored or doctored by the new research "owner" to fit particular narratives, the fixer is often powerless to contest it. This paper reflects on this troubling power dynamic through the experiences of a Congolese fixer (Victor Anas) and his role in producing knowledge on and in the DRC. The paper argues that while international power dynamics make it easier for outside researchers to gain funding to research within Africa, and that their expertise is often considered of higher-value than local expertise, it is incumbent on these outside researchers to acknowledge the vital role that local fixers play as co-producers of knowledge and as a form of expert on whom their own expertise relies.
Stefan Skupien (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)
Paper short abstract:
I suggest using the analysis of "changing governance and authority relations" (Whitley 2011) to describe forms of "scientific extraversion" (Hountondji 1978). This approach links the knowledge production to negotiation-processes between different stakeholders in African contexts.
Paper long abstract:
Public and private, national and international donors design programmes and shape the directions research and knowledge production should take. This includes the provision for infrastructure but also aligning project grants and scholarships to specific performance goals. Funding can focus on curiosity driven long-term research in astronomy and high-particle physics or on development-oriented goals with short-term effects for public goods and commercial outputs.
In my contribution I propose to focus on the "changing governance and authority relations" (Whitley 2011) of public funding in African states as a process of negotiation to shed light on the politics of knowledge production. The approach has been developed to describe the change in public sciences in OECD-contexts and identifies a number of actors that negotiate the directions of funding and knowledge production. These include state bureaucracies, inter/national and scientific elites, and commercial stakeholders. I argue that changing authority relations can also be applied to describe African and other non-OECD science systems. Moreover, it helps to analyze the mechanisms of "scientific extraversion", which the Beninese Paulin Hountondji has carved out (Hountondji 1978, 1990).
Empirical examples of inter/national funding programmes illustrates the point of how state ministries set performance goals along national development plans and how international (African) scientific elites are attracting funds for scientific infrastructures to improve the opportunities for African researchers. The round table contribution should, however, help to transcend Whitley's approach and ask for the limits of its OECD-focus.
David Mills (University of Oxford)
Paper short abstract:
The discourse of scientific capacity building frames African doctoral education as a productivity challenge, contrasting with calls to decolonise and transform African higher education. This paper explores the limits of academography (Thorkelson 2015) and the importance of disciplinary difference.
Paper long abstract:
The claim that Africa 'needs' another million PhDs has both epistemic and material consequences for the continent's universities. It frames doctoral education as a productivity challenge for institutions, justifying asymmetric funding collaborations and the channeling of resources to a small cadre of elite African science research students. The policy focus on African 'capacity building' also downplays its relational dimensions, and the responsibilities of non-African research 'partners'. Deficit framings of Africa's research capacity are matched by oppositional calls from the social sciences and humanities to 'decolonise' and 'transform' African higher education. These different representations of the university are freighted with political and institutional interests (Bourdieu 1988). In response I make the case for models of academic practice and approaches to doctoral training that acknowledge the contradictory, multidimensional and relational nature of disciplinary research capacities (Burawoy 2004). I use ethnographic examples to argue for visions of African research futures that challenge overtly 'university-centred' analyses.