Paper Short Abstract:

The paper explores and examines citational practices as a scholar from global south towards production of knowledge in anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

In academia the gaze that sees, understands the world and writes has historically been centred in the institutions of Europe and America, often considered the centres of knowledge production. As a global south academic in an institution in the global north, my gaze is that of a migrant person of colour from a former colony that comes alongside being Upper-caste, and middle-class. Doing academic work entailed navigating these multiple power structures.

My navigation and academic praxis further hinges on the fact that I am an Indian, who was researching counter-narratives to the Indian state located in the lifeworlds of Kashmiris living in Delhi. The writing of the PhD thesis entailed navigating the academic requirement of engaging with an “established canon” without decentering the scholarship coming from critical Kashmir studies. Drawing on my experiences of writing and teaching as a PhD researcher in an institution in the global north, in this paper, I question the practices of citation that impacts knowledge production. The paper seeks to explore the question: whose knowledge is knowledge? By exploring the implication of citations on the researched, the researcher and the body of knowledge