Decolonial science: Towards more equitable knowledge practices

Critique alone does not address university problems. Concrete actions are also needed if we are to interrupt received systems and redress a global hierarchy that equates south with underneath.

In a recent paper in Nature, Ecology and Evolution entitled ‘Decoloniality and Anti-Oppressive Practices for a More Ethical Ecology’, my colleagues Christopher Trisos, Madhusudan Katti and I develop five concrete interventions for shifting practice in the production of scientific knowledge.

These shifts are neither comprehensive nor proscriptive, but represent one step in a nuanced journey towards more equitable knowledge practices around the globe.

The paper is the result of an ongoing dialogue between friends that began in response to the #RhodesMustFall student movements of 2015 in South Africa.

As young scholars, we did not want to simply replicate old systems, but how to change practice has often been quite unclear. The paper comes from a three-year working conversation.

The interventions we propose are a start, not a checklist, and could and should be nuanced to ensure that they are fit for purpose in different fields and institutional contexts.

These interventions are of relevance to African higher education because they represent examples of the kinds of changes that, not only disciplines, but institutions, can and must increasingly demand for equitable research relationships and outputs.

Political vs scientific constructs

Our paper begins with an acknowledgement of the emergence of ‘ecology’ as a field and a discipline within European knowledge systems closely enmeshed with colonialism and empire.

We reflect on how forms of research practice that we now take for granted today were, in fact, integral to the process of European domination of global knowledge systems.

The diagram we include of the naming of birds after Europeans illustrates our argument that colonisation was so ubiquitous as to have become invisible in the systems around us.

That the far right in Canada, the US and elsewhere has seized this map on social media and gone to considerable efforts to ‘correct’ it by flipping it so that North is again ‘on top’ shows the sensitivity and fragility around received systems of knowing that are imbued with power. In space, there is no ‘north’ – that ‘north’ is on ‘top’ is a political, not a scientific, construct.

In the paper, we lay out some of the implications of this mixture of world view, power and capitalism to argue that the well-being of the majority of the planet has been compromised by the dominance of one culture of knowledge and knowing.

The five interventions that we call for in the discipline of ecology could easily be applied to other fields: decolonisation of the mind, knowledge of histories, the decolonisation of data, the decolonisation of expertise, and working in inclusive teams.

I provide a brief summary of these points before elaborating on their larger implications.

Decolonisation of mental spaces

Firstly, a decolonisation of mental spaces. By this, we mean a recognition of the extent to which almost all of us currently working in higher education have been shaped by received notions of excellence and disciplinary expectations.

This ‘mental colonisation’ makes it difficult for us to see what other ways of approaching research questions might be possible.

Researchers are typically ‘quantitative’ or ‘qualitative’ depending on the histories of their disciplines. They receive and perpetuate ideas of what count as ‘good’ sources and reproduce conventions of research question, answer and output that, in many cases, are out of touch with societal needs and expectations.

Mental decolonisation requires recognising that all knowledge is political and based as much on exclusion as on inclusion. Exploring those exclusions is an important first step towards more inclusive and responsive work.

Knowledge of history

Secondly, we call for knowledge of history to be critical for ecology, and also beyond. We argue that no system of knowledge can afford to operate without awareness of both dominant and contesting histories of place, space and relationship.

Events take place in context, and those contexts must be carefully understood. For example, no analysis of South Africa’s Kruger National Park can be complete without an understanding of who lived on the land that is now ‘protected’ and when?

How did it become ‘empty’ of people, and what might the communities who now live around it and are often lambasted for poaching reflect on rights to territory and sustenance?

History helps researchers make sense of how and why their research questions came to be questions in the first place.

Access

Thirdly we take on the challenge of access, which is of particular importance in the African academic space.

We argue that, unless access to outputs, but also to servers, technologies, research sites, materials and conferences, is made more inclusive. If not, we effectively condemn scientists and scholars in under-resourced areas to remain outside critical research processes, or when accessing copyrighted material in expensive paywalled journals, to habitually break the law. This is needed just to stay up to date with current research.

Here, African universities could play a much harder ball game than they currently do. It is up to us not to request, but to require, inclusion and access at all stages of the research process. This includes conceptualisation, undertaking and dissemination as critical pre-conditions of knowledge sharing and research participation, especially from Western scholars parachuting in for research projects in countries that continue to welcome them.

We need to demand that data is stored where and in ways that our researchers and students can access it.

We must require that conferences and research proceedings only take place in locations where we can all meet – particularly given the likely long-term effects of COVID-19 and vaccine nationalism.

We need to lobby for equitable research visa laws, onsite analysis and open access results, for publication in local journals as a precondition of research, for inclusion in gatekeeping bodies.

Decolonising expertise

Gatekeeping is a critical point when it comes to discussions of expertise, and decolonising expertise is our fourth intervention.

The title ‘professor’ does not necessarily equate to wisdom, and a PhD does not imply compassion or care. As a planet, we need to understand that expertise comes in many forms and from many different journeys through knowledge systems. We cannot rely only on those whose intelligence has been stamped with a scroll.

There are many possible examples, but let me make it personal: I hold a PhD from Stanford University, a widely respected piece of global knowledge currency. According to Stanford and the knowledge system that upholds it, I am an ‘expert’ in Angola – the country where my doctoral research was based. Compared to many people outside of Angola, I do, indeed, know a lot, and my work has been evaluated by peers both inside and outside that country.

Yet, compared to most Angolans, despite my best efforts, I remain woefully ignorant in many important areas. Am I really an ‘expert’ or am I just someone the Western university system can listen to because I write in English? What if I could not write at all? Being a bridge is important, but we should recognise it for what it is, and see it as a link in a chain of connection, not the expertise itself.

If my expertise were in algebraic equations, I could and should still recognise the social systems in which my training was embedded.

Or, as in the case of ecology that we elucidate, knowledge of ecosystems might be transmitted through generations and outside of scientific papers, but it does not make that knowledge any less helpful. In fact, the opposite is true, because any knowledge that is relational rather than extractive is likely to be more durable in place.

Inclusive teams

Our final intervention is to call for the practice of ethical ecology in inclusive teams. By this, we mean diversity that does not only go skin deep, and that does not stop at bringing people into the same room.

Often ‘diversity’ initiatives fail in academia because they fail to address the deeper reasons for exclusion and inclusion. Outputs are a result of knowledge systems and, therefore, will change only if the systems are addressed at every level.

To really work across the scars of history, we need teams that are inclusive along intersectional lines. We must consider class, gender, race, body type, neurodiversity, physical ability, age, parenthood, and so much more.

Long-term commitments to the spaces of research are also important. As are friendships, histories and expectations of futures that present work will bring into being.

These are the interventions that our work calls for in the context of ecology, but their resonance goes far deeper into the knowledge systems that shape the core of contemporary society under late capitalism.

Collaborations needed

As scholars such as Frantz Fanon, Francis Nyamnjoh and Achille Mbembe have argued for decades, African universities and knowledge work has been crafted as, at best, ‘in dialogue’ with Euro-American intellectual canons and, at worst, inferior.

‘Local knowledge’ has tended to be relegated to low-status fields such as anthropology and simply ignored by most ‘scientists’ as irrelevant.

In the knowledge hierarchy of Euro-American late-capitalism, there is little place for relationship, care, and commitment to sustaining or improving the future.

The system is driven by recognition via algorithms placed in entities such as the H Index, Scopus, or Google Scholar that do not factor in the ‘slow work’ of humanity in relationship with the environment (never mind with other people).

African universities, like others, scurry to climb ranking tables without seeming to pause to reflect on what those ranking tables actually assess. Do they assess the qualities that we will need to survive the current century? What are we trying to better, when we improve our position on them? The needs of society? The people around us? Our students?

‘Decoloniality and Anti-Oppressive Practices Towards a More Equitable Ecology’ is not a solution to the troubles that face the academy.

We are profoundly aware of the manifold privileges (and ironies) that it required to have this paper appear in a Nature research journal in the first place.

Yet it also shows that, just because things are done a certain way, does not mean they have to be. It is absolutely possible to acknowledge this, behave differently, and ensure the expectations change for others.

African universities need to flex a lot more muscle and demand a better deal. Extraction of resources both intellectual and material happens because the knowledge ecosystem allows it, and that must now be stopped.

More respectful, sincere collaborations are urgently needed, but we can’t just criticise, we need to map out how.

The way forward my colleagues and I have presented for ecology is only one potential path, and only a footstep in a much longer journey.

If scholars, institutions and disciplines would like to think with us about how to map potential futures, we are open, and committed, to this dialogue.

The writer of this commentary, Jess Auerbach, is a senior lecturer in anthropology at North-West University in South Africa. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University in the United States. She is the author of From Water to Wine: Becoming middle class in Angola and the forthcoming Archive of Kindness: Stories from the other side of the South African pandemic. The co-authors of the paper itself are Christopher H Trisos, a senior researcher at the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and Madhusudan Katti, an associate professor in forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, US.