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- Convenors:
-
Carmel Rawhani
(Wits University (Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab))
Lucas-Andrés Elsner (Technical University of Berlin)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- African researchers in the European academic system
- Location:
- Room 1228
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 8 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
How can we constructively confront knowledge production asymmetries in Afro-European collaborative research and the larger academic environment? Here we reflect on co-production's key challenges in North-South and South-South academia through the lens of Urban Studies.
Long Abstract:
Sustainable development scholarship (where a majority of academic funding lies) in African cities has inherited numerous concepts from the bodies of knowledge and policy rooted in Europe. However, as African and European scholars of the Global South, we often find these concepts lacking in fit and applicability. Interrogating this reality reveals significant asymmetries underlying the knowledge, policies and practices which scholars of and from the South are faced with, and it is in this context which co-production has been presented as a potential solution. However, co-production finds itself not only impacted by, but often a reproducer of these very same inequities. Thus, before we can begin rectifying knowledge production asymmetries we need to understand them, and it is that exciting task which this panel proposes to tackle.
This panel looks at African urban studies and related fields as critical examples of the manifestation of these knowledge asymmetries and the potential for hyper-localized non-reciprocal perspectives, and invites contributions rooted in critical theoretically-informed or practice-based approaches to tackle two key interrelated problems:
1) The hierarchical political economy of research production (power imbalances and their impact on who sets the table, and who gets a seat ranging from co-authorship, to mobilities, to the perceived value assigned to working at particular universities and publishing in particular spaces within North-South and South-South cooperation)
2) developing the visibility of African voices in co-productive spaces beyond mere participants (including the need to move beyond the superstars of the research world, both European and African)
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 8 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Using examples from cities in the African continent, this paper highlights the dangers of the ‘urban’ rhetorical approach of the New Urban Agenda in African cities. It reveals how the text is internally conflicted and is far from the serenity of any definite meaning.
Paper long abstract:
The New Urban Agenda (NUA) is the document agreed upon at the Habitat III cities conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. The document seeks to guide the efforts to foster urban transformation by a wide range of actors for the next 20 years through a pro-urban policy consensus. In the process, it has asserted an urban-centric agenda and presented development as a function of city-centrism. However, Barnett and Parnell (2016, p.94) have argued that the assertion of the ‘urban discourse’ is “heavily dependent on stylized interpretations of North American and Western European experiences.” This paper adopts deconstruction as a method of analysis for the NUA. Deconstruction is a way of reading any text and thereby exposing the instability of meaning which the text tries to cover up. In this regard, using examples from cities in the continent, the paper explores the “interiority” and “exteriority” of African cities in relation to the NUA. Therefore, this paper highlights the dangers of the ‘urban’ rhetoric, the essentialism and the "organismic" approach of the Agenda in African cities. It reveals how the text is internally conflicted and is far from the serenity of any definite meaning. While the gravitas of the NUA is rhetorically undeniable, the paper argues that the NUA still remains highly rhetorical for much of the urban whims, mosaics, patchwork, heterogeneity, fluidity, and transitory configurations of the African cities.
Paper short abstract:
This article analyses the psychological & socio-economic implications of the 'research profession' for Congolese researchers in their confrontation with violence, precarity, and stress. We reflect on how to revalue the role of those pushed into periphery of scientific knowledge production.
Paper long abstract:
Current debates on social justice in knowledge production show the difficulties that researchers from the Global South face in field research. This article highlights the psychological and socio-economic implications of the 'research profession' for Congolese researchers. These researchers participate fully in the construction of knowledge, but as a result of their experiences in the field, they are also exposed to nightmares, insomnia, stress and anxiety. These dimensions merit in-depth socio-anthropological investigation and reflection, and require a fundamental rethinking of our research practices in order to revalue the crucial role of those who are pushed into periphery of scientific knowledge production.
From a methodological point of view, the article focuses on the experiences of researchers from the DRC engaged in research commissioned by organisations, foreign /local academic institutions, and international /national NGOs. We combine information from several initiatives: 1) We analysed the blogs that came out of a collective process among 40 researchers on ethical and emotional challenges in research, published as the #BukavuSeries (we are among the coordinators of this process). 2) We organised a seminar with #BukavuSeries researchers and others. In January 2020, about thirty people engaged in a participatory theatre experience around field research challenges. The participatory exercise allowed us to observe and interpret the actors' gestural messages about their own field situations and problems, and to gather feedback from other researchers in the collective discussions that followed the performances. 3) We conducted 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Congolese researchers, focused on the core theme of this paper.
Paper short abstract:
To understand the asymmetries of scientific co-production of knowledge across the Global South/North divide, I propose a reflexive stance of the involved researchers in terms of methodology, epistemology and positionality.
Paper long abstract:
Following the postulation of a reflexive turn as a reaction to a crisis of representation in different disciplines (e.g. anthropology in the 80s or most recently migrations studies), we can identify different areas of research where reflexivity helps to see (power) asymmetries. These include methods, epistemologies, the research goals, or the positionality of the involved researchers. On the one hand the semantic modalities of representation are subject to critique and on the other there is the issue of positionality (who can legitimately speak for whom). These problematizations of asymmetries cannot be solved in a unidimensional way, because this would create new inequities. To understand the asymmetries of co-production of knowledge across the Global South/North divide, we should adopt a reflexive stance that opens up a meta-framework for reflecting and relating the diversity of different forms of knowledge production without having to synthesize them. This means embracing the methodological and epistemological pluralism that exists within the Global South/North and also across. I exemplify this by analyzing the difficulties that arose in the trans-university preparation of a seminar on 'Urban Transformations'. Actors from different European and African universities were involved, some of whom pursued very different agendas. The most important asymmetry concerned the epistemological-methodological approach regarding the goal of the seminar (more oriented towards science or applicability), its relation to practice and subsequent the adequate methods. The solution was no attempt to dissolve these differences but rather to appreciate the disparities as equal perspectives enriching each other in a pluralistic way.