Paper short abstract:

Drawing from the notions of habit and disruption the paper critically analyses a process of producing an edited volume in collaboration between the European and African academics.

Paper long abstract:

One of the most frequently mentioned manifestations of the asymmetrical relationships in research collaboration between African and European academics is a failure to produce joint international publications. The paper critically reflects a process of co-authoring an edited volume on practices of citizenship in development research to be published by one of the most renowned publishers by the end of 2019. The edited volume reports findings of a collaborative research project of Tanzanian, Ugandan and Finnish academics. The project draws from philosophical pragmatism and especially John Dewey's ideas concerning learning as reformulation of habits. Consequently, the critical learning narrative draws from the pragmatist notions of habit and disruption, and analyses how the prevalent habits of asymmetrical knowledge production emerge in practice in the different stages of the process - from initiating the research idea to its implementation - and especially in co-authoring an edited volume. It also discusses the practical attempts such as employing African postdocs and conducting joint writing retreats through which we tried to present disruptions to the prevailing habits exercised by all participants in the process, and reflects what kinds of reformulation of habits took place during the process. Based on the self-reflective learning narrative the paper proposes that addressing the attempt to 'decolonize' academic knowledge production, in addition to political goals, one has to scrutinize the everyday practices and often institutionalized, challenges of academics both in global north and south.

Paper short abstract:

This paper highlights certain cultural factors that tend to construct strange(r)ness into a capital for western academics conducting research in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Paper long abstract:

It is not uncommon to hear faculties in Nigerian universities complain about western academics having easier access to government offices, traditional palaces, and important fieldwork sites that are otherwise closed on home-based scholars. Interestingly, fieldwork narratives, particularly those bordering on qualitative research, highlight the challenges the outsider or the insider-outsider faced in gaining access to the field-site or securing cooperation of informants. How is positionality and identity of Western scholars deployed for research access? And in what ways is the Western identity of scholars entwined with notion of authenticity of intellectual production? In this paper, I draw on my fieldwork experiences in Nigeria's Delta region to illustrate how ideas of strange(r)ness feed into questions of research access. I argue that scholars' position in relation to the field-site is structured not only by North-South asymmetries, but also by the social distance between the researcher and the field, and cultural constructions bordering on being strange. By strange(r)ness, I do not have in mind a notion of an 'objective outsider' advanced by colonial anthropology or the question of how postmodern anthropologists engage with their subjects. Rather, I show as important factors in the access Western scholars may have, cultural sentiments compelling assistance to strangers, positioning of the stranger vis-à-vis local power politics, notions of an economy of friendship forged with a stranger, and of fieldwork research as outsider driven.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will examine to what extent new dynamics of knowledge production between Africa and Turkey illumines (dis)continuities and ruptures in the traditional scheme of knowledge hierarchies between Africa and Europe.

Paper long abstract:

High-skills trainings have been widely explored in Europe or even North America. On the other hand, South-South formation mobilities, particularly internal ones or even towards emerging countries such as Turkey or the BRICS, remain relatively poorly known despite the symbolic but also quantitative importance of these flows. With the travel restrictions and the recent shifts in European visa and border-outsourcing policies, the new emerging countries are trying to attract more African students. Over the last decade, Turkey shifted from a country of emigration for high-skilled individuals to a country of immigration - a surge largely driven by the unparalleled number of African students now seeking Turkish degrees .

By analyzing the African students mobility to Turkey, this paper intends to examine how new models of knowledge hierarchies can emerge, be producted, reinforced and circulated between various areas. How local and international dynamics are driving the knowledge production between Africa and Turkey? To what extent new dynamics of knowledge production between Africa and Turkey illumines (dis)continuities and ruptures in the traditional scheme of knowledge hierarchies between Africa and Europe?

Paper short abstract:

The South African call for decolonising the curriculum and universities more broadly has brought about a renewed interest in the question of the relationship between knowledge and power. In this paper I investigate different accounts of the relationship between knowledge and power.

Paper long abstract:

The student protests in South Africa, under the banner of #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall have called for the decolonisation of the university and of the curriculum. The call for decolonising the curriculum has brought about a renewed interest in questions about how knowledge is entangled with power. Some of the debates on this call for decolonising curriculum invites us to relook and rethink the ways in which knowledge practices within the university and the university itself as a knowledge institution are embedded in social systems that influence and shape them in complex ways. This paper grapples with the relationship between epistemology and politics through understanding the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and power. My aim is to explore different accounts of the relationship between these concepts, and to investigate how power enters into knowledge and whether it must necessarily enter into knowledge. I do this by considering two accounts: the decolonial account and the account from social epistemology. My hope is that this investigation into the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and power will shed light on how we understand knowledge engagements between entities that have unequal power between them, and help us better think about how to structure knowledge engagements when there is a power imbalance.

Paper short abstract:

To what extent does research carried out according an approach of reverse anthropology result in 'decolonisation' of knowledge generation? A case study and qualitative analysis of the dynamics of a current research and exhibition collaboration by three African and European Museums.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2015, three museums in Kampala and Mbarara in Uganda, and in Zurich in Switzerland, have undertaken an unusual collaboration: They engage in joint research in Uganda and in Switzerland following an approach of 'reverse anthropology', and co-create exhibitions in dialogue. At the same time questions of present and future functions of ethnographic museums in Europe and in Africa were continually debated, and cooperation has become increasingly important, not least in the light of the discussions on colonial collections and the need and potential forms of restitution and ownership of museum artefacts outside of their areas of origin. Each of the three museums involved are entangled in specific economic and political contexts. Divergent conditions determine each partners' opportunities to promote their own interests, decisions and interpretations within the cooperative project. There is always the risk that historically evolved, internalised and unconscious relations of dominance take effect. The collaborative activities have to be assessed in a context in which globalisation - worldwide movements of ideas, persons and objects - technically facilitates communication and brings about greater connection, but, simultaneously, often creates also disruption and fragmentation, experiences of being left behind, of missing matches and of friction. This paper provides insights into the dynamics of the collaboration process between the three museums. It addresses the challenges of collaborating at an equal footing striven for in a transcontinental project framed by structural inequalities: What can, what should this look like, and is it possible to integrate all points of view and interests?