Paper short abstract:

This paper tells the story of producing rodent science at a university research center in Tanzania. Using ethnographic and historical methods, this paper examines refusals by Tanzanian scientists to "decolonize science" and to focus instead on producing "global" knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Recent histories of Africa have focused on the production of scientific knowledge, whether as part of continental-scale colonial schemes for specimen, knowledge, resource, and labor extraction (Tilley 2011; Osseo-Asare 2014). These histories implicitly -- and sometimes explicitly -- raise the question of what meanings terms like “African science” or “decolonizing science” may bear (see edited volume by Mavhunga 2017). This paper tells the story of producing rodent science at the Sokoine University in Morogoro, Tanzania, globally recognized for its contribution to rodent taxonomy, ecology, and zoonotic diseases. Using ethnographic and historical methods, this paper examines refusals by Tanzanian scientists to "decolonize" in terms of generating "African science." Instead, they focus on the material inequalities that condition scientific research. The paper analyzes practices of science making in an African context to consider how global narratives and movements for decolonizing knowledge are "emplaced" within the personal and everyday experiences of Tanzanian scientists. This paper argues that discussions about scientific research in the global South often reproduce claims for universality, even as scientists struggle with material, technological, and financial inequalities produced by the colonial concentration of knowledge in Euro-America. The paper therefore challenges decolonial anthropology by contending with the aspirations for global (and Western) recognition of knowledge produced by a group of scientific professionals, and asks how we (academics from the global South, based in Euro-American institutions) reflect on our own knowledge making practices.