Interesting article on 'decolonising research'. I may have misunderstood the article but it made me think, just how far can (university-based) research be truly 100% 'decolonised'? The concept of universities began, where? - back centuries ago, universities were places where groups of scholars taught, very informally by today's standards, in paces such as Mediaeval European monasteries, and students turned up to listen and maybe debate and question too (no assignments or TEF survey then). Before that we had the Islamic universities, before that the Classical Greek learning fora, Rabbinical seats of learning (referred to in the Bible), similar in historic India to Classical Greece also. I don't think there was the same tradition further east in China or SE Asia- may be wrong here, welcome any more info here if so. So the whole concept of universities, and by extension university / academic journal based research has strong roots in Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture, from SW Asia and western Europe (not even eastern Europe, as likewise the university tradition did not begin in the Slavic, Russian, Siberian, lands either). There were no 'universities' as such in the Inuit culture to which this 'decolonising research' article refers to, or in the rest of the pre-Columbian Americas, or (so far as I know) in Africa either. So the Inuit languages will have no original words for common research terms such as 'anthropological' or 'quantitative' or ''correlation' - only borrowed terms from European languages?
So any academic-based research into these peoples and cultures will inevitably be a bit 'colonial' in the underlying architectonic structiure of the research methodology and the actual descriptive and analytical terms that are being used. Or can we truly 'decolonise' the research from these terms too? Or am I missing a research methodology that is truly separated from these concepts? (What's the Inuit term for 'methodology'? - as different from 'method' or 'practice')
Dr Hillary J. Shaw
Visiting Fellow - Centre for Urban Research on Austerity
Department of Politics and Public Policy
De Montfort University
LE1 9BH
www.fooddeserts.org
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From: Sean Wang <
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Sent: Fri, Aug 17, 2018 8:25 pm
Subject: ACME: Vol 17 No 3 (2018) published!
*apologies for cross-postings*
Dear colleagues,
We are delighted to announce the latest issue of ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies!
Vol 17 No 3 features a 'Requiem for Neil Smith', 'Post-Weinstein Academia', 'Biodiversity Offsetting and the Construction of "Equivalent Natures"', and a themed section on 'Concrete Ways to Decolonize Research'. The amazing cover artwork is by Lianne Marie Leda Charlie.
- Sean Wang on behalf of the ACME Editorial Collective