Contribution short abstract

Diasporic methodologies are an invitation to take seriously one’s capacity for commitment and multi-territorial belonging, and to critically engage with positionality. These questions are crucial in resisting the extractivist logic of academia and instead embracing relationality and reciprocity.

Contribution long abstract

A question which emerged as the fundamental ethical and political consideration surrounding my research on resistance to lithium mining in Serbia is: How to conduct research on extractivism without reproducing the extractivist logic of academia?

While critical and decolonial approaches have sought to challenge the "objective" distance as a Western and colonial mode of knowledge production, it remains dominant even in works that recognise the extractivism of research. Methodologies that orient themselves away from extractivism, on the other hand, require deep embeddedness, rootedness and community building, as well as serious engagement with one's positionality.

I describe my personal position as coming “originally” from Serbia, but being born and raised in the Czech Republic and receiving the privilege of an EU passport. For my PhD research that I am currently finishing, I "returned" to Serbia to focus on resistance to lithium mining and green extractivism more broadly. Serbia occupies a specifically liminal position of being in Europe, but not in the EU, often described as a European periphery and sometimes considered a Global South country according to some economic metrics.

I highlight my diasporic identity as capturing some of the tensions between an insider and an outsider, and “home” and the “field." I suggest that the notion of a diaspora offers a way to think through some of the tensions between rootedness, embeddedness, distance and estrangement in research. These insights are relevant for all the researchers who "return" and who navigate the privileges and issues between different places which they occupy.