Tag Archives knowledge production

Amid increasing disinformation and the silencing of speech, scholars must strive towards speaking truth

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With the rising assault on free speech and with disinformation being used as an instrument by states to undermine dissent, the role of researchers has become pivotal. Scholars need to transcend their role of complicit impartiality and should seek to reveal and tell the truth as cognisant political agents, writes Haris Zargar.

Last year, the Israeli government formally labelled several Palestinian rights outfits “terrorist organizations”. These Palestinian human rights organizations, including the prominent rights outfit Al-Haq, have been working in the West Bank. Many who have closely worked with Al-Haq believed that the banning of the Palestinian rights groups occurred not only because of their credible work on documenting the rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, but also for setting an impeccable standard in research, documentation, and advocacy.

Weeks after the ban, I happened to speak to a Palestinian friend and former colleague at SOAS who works at Al-Haq – a word which in Arabic literally means ‘the truth’. I wanted to enquire about his wellbeing and how the ban was impacting their work. “We are terrorists for them, you know, for speaking the truth,” he told me, and added: “They are all afraid of the truth. Speaking the truth is now terrorism.” For us, the ‘they’ and ‘them’, left unidentified by my friend, explicitly meant the Israeli government in his context, and in a not so obvious way in my context the Indian government that has likewise criminalized all forms of dissent and have jailed human rights defenders, scholars, and journalists on terrorism charges.

My friend’s ‘metaphorical’ words arguably echoed a larger reality and perhaps the peril of our times – an era of disinformation, a period in which documenting and speaking truth is equated with terrorism. And this criminalization of truth is done not just by authoritarian regimes, but even by those states who project themselves as custodians of free speech and freedom of expression. We live in an era where misinformation and fake news is pursued as state policy to cripple people’s perceptions of reality and truth. Twitter’s takeover by a billionaire represents just another example of that reality in which the ruling political and corporate elites are seeking to choke perhaps the few remaining alternatives spaces that have provided a platform for ground-up perspectives on events in real time. ​

Having said that, I do not want to claim that social media platforms have safeguarded free speech or absolve them of responsibility for the dissemination of disinformation. In fact, these platforms have been at the forefront of censoring political dissidents and have worked closely with authoritarian regimes to polarize societies and push right-wing narratives, conspiracy theories, and misinformation.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed a growing assault on civil rights groups, human rights defenders, academicians, scholars, journalists, artists, whistle-blowers, and those who have merely sought to speak the truth. These assaults include direct attacks ranging from assassinations, incarceration, criminal and terrorism charges to physical assaults, exiles, and indirect threats/intimidations including travel bans, cyber bullying, etc. There is an apparent concerted effort to criminalize all legitimate forms of dissent and expression.

Scholars, activists, and journalists everywhere are facing violence. The case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has been in Egyptian prison on spurious charges of spreading false news, is one glaring example. Similarly, a prominent Kashmiri human rights defender, Khurram Pervaiz, has been in prison under a draconian anti-terror law. Khurram is the chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), a rights organization that investigates forced disappearances in Asia. He also leads the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a group that has published scathing reports on rights violations committed by armed forces in Kashmir.

In India, authorities have illegally detained and prosecuted scholars and students under anti-terrorism laws for simply expressing views that contradict those of the current ruling party. Last year, Iranian authorities arrested three professors from Poland on charges of espionage. The state in Hong Kong has used its  , leading to prosecutions and dismantling of student unions from various universities. There has been an intensifying crackdown on free speech in Turkey. Central Asian states are often not spoken about and the situation in these places remains gloomy.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to rest of the world – Western Europe and America remain complicit and guilty of the same infringements. In fact, Western Europe and America are culpable of not only enabling and emboldening these authoritarian regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America but remain the main precursor in censoring civil rights activists. In recent times, we are seeing the silencing of Palestinian voices in Germany and the UK. The Goethe-Institute decision to de-platform Palestinian activist Mohammed el-Kurd or Berlin’s police banning several Nakba Day protests are just a few examples.

In the US, many states have introduced bills that would direct what students can and cannot be taught about the role of slavery in American history and the ongoing effects of racism in America today. France has doubled down on their perpetual smear campaign against French Muslims and migrants. Italy’s new regime is doubling down its attack on migrants coming from Africa and elsewhere as well as criminalising NGOs. We witnessed police brutality directed at migrants and non-Europeans even during the emergency times like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian conflict. The chargesheet is long and exhaustive.

What I am alluding to and what I want to highlight is that our job and responsibility in these bleak times as scholars has become even more important, especially in holding up the mirror to those in positions of power and upholding the truth – which is often subjective. Truth is unlike a bare fact, which, devoid of context, is often used in disinformation campaigns. Most of us are engaged in work that we are passionate about, be that issues of women’s and gender rights like the ongoing women’s protests in Iran or struggles for abortion rights in the US, Poland, or labour rights in China, West Asia, Africa, the imminent environmental and climate change crisis that is impacting the poorest of the world, rising authoritarianism and ultra-right-wing populism, and the stifling of people’s self-determination movements, be that in Palestine, Western Sahara, West Papua, or Kashmir.

We are not just academics but citizens and an integral part of global political and social systems. It is imperative that we work towards the betterment of this world. As states pursue their direct assault on civil rights groups and launch disinformation campaigns to discredit activism and those who strive for justice, we must carry the responsibility of upholding truth and preserving it. I must emphasize, as I often tell myself this as well, that different forms of oppression are interlinked and therefore the resistance to these oppressive systems must be collaborative. We must stand in solidarity with each other to preserve, uphold, or speak the truth in whichever way we can. There can be no selective resistance or single cause to fight for.

The world we knew is fading and the new emerging world must be built on the foundations of freedom, justice, and egalitarianism – not in a Western neoliberal framework. We must envision a world where there is no place for racism, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, or misogyny. That new world cannot be a reality if our hearts are not stirred by the torrents of revolution in which truth and justice is the central motif. My speech this evening reads like a political manifesto, and it should be taken as such, for our responsibility to uphold al-haq (the truth) is not just a moral obligation but should be our political stance as scholars.

I conclude with the words of poet-Philosopher Allama Iqbal, also known as the poet of the East, who wrote:

Does your heart tremble from the fear of the impending storm? Know that you are the sailor, you are the ocean, you are the boat, and the destination.

This article was first presented in the form of a speech and is posted here with the permission of the author.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Haris Zargar is doctoral candidate at ISS focusing on political Islam, social movements and agrarian change. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade writing on the intersection of politics, conflict and human security and has degrees in Journalism and Development Studies.

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Transformative Methodologies | Listening differently, hearing more clearly: a decolonial approach to fostering dialogue between plural knowledges

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Recent debates on decolonising research have highlighted the importance of accounting for plural knowledges by seeking to foster a dialogue between them. Yet, a dominant modern rationalist approach informing how we understand the knowledges we encounter and produce through our research is impeding this objective. A diversity of languages is used to share and represent knowledge – and not all of them can be captured and understood by modern rationality, writes Agustina Solera.

“The people (el Pueblo)[1] do not speak the same language that we do. Their alphabet doesn’t have letters; only shapes, movements, gestures.
And it is not that the people are illiterate, but that they want to say things that we no longer say.”[2]
Rodolfo Kusch, 1966, Indios, Porteños y dioses

In the chapter ‘La Zamba y los Dioses’ (‘Zamba and the Gods’) from his 1966 book Indios, Porteños y Dioses (Indians, Porteños and Gods), Argentine philosopher Rodolfo Kusch contemplates the ritual meaning of Zamba, a traditional Argentine music genre and folk dance that is performed in pairs and with handkerchiefs in hand. In the colony, Zamba was the term attributed to the mestizo descendants of indigenous and black people, arising during the independence process as a show of affection for the mestizos. Kusch, recognised as a key antecedent for decolonial thought thanks to his in-depth research on indigenous and popular Latin American thought, in this work wonders which senses are evoked through Zamba – which meanings emerge through the movement of bodies, the rhythms, the gazes, the cadence, or the energetic swishing of handkerchiefs.

Kusch’s examination of this form of expression sets the scene for my discussion of the link between languages and transformative methodologies. It is clear that Zamba is a form of non-verbal communication that is used in popular culture to say those things that cannot be expressed orally or in writing – or that its adherents do not wish to say in any other way than through music or dance. And, as the ethnographic research I did with the Mapuche community near the city of San Martín de los Andes in Patagonia, Argentina in pursuit of my PhD showed, trying to render these forms of expression meaningful by assuming a rational lens results in the failure to capture the sensitivity and spirituality of such ways of communicating. Zamba, like other forms of cultural or social expression, must be understood in ways not based solely on a modern rationality.

From the modern-Western knowledge perspective, a dialogue of knowledges becomes possible only when the exchanges coexist within a framework of modern rationality; exchanges can only occur when communities share the same language. By language I mean any system of expression used to represent meanings. From this perspective, the senses that cannot be expressed through the resources considered genuine in knowledge production become insignificant and subsidiary (Palermo, 2004). This is inherently problematic, first and foremost because the untranslatable is ignored – those things that are inexpressible in logical-rational terms, precisely because they come from other logics and other ways of seeing, feeling, and making sense of the world. If in the immense universe of meanings present in the encounter with others, those ones that cannot be translated to the specific understanding of rationality, are excluded, then what is the point of opening up our research process toward other ways of knowing? Aren’t those ‘insignificant’ senses – the ones that have been able to survive continuous domination and impositions – the ones that have transformative potential?

Different representational resources are needed for dialogue across different ways of knowing; these are rooted in transformative methodologies. Such methodologies would be transformative since they would challenge not only the privilege attributed to one valid form of knowledge (modern-Western) over others, but also the superiority attributed to the resources considered valid to represent life experiences.

Resistance and re-existence

Mignolo (1992) denounces the colonisation of language and memory in Latin America, enabled by introducing the Roman alphabet and the discursive genres (or frames) associated with it to this region. Alphabetic writing was imposed as a way to preserve that which was previously transmitted through glyphs, pictograms, and oral stories. According to him, the graphic languages used before the conquest to share knowledge could be silenced by alphabetic writing.

Yet, the languages spoken with the body could not be completely colonised. All those who keep alive indigenous languages up to the present are proof that knowledge can still survive when shared in non-written ways. Zulma Palermo (2012) argued that not only expressions of resistance, but also expressions of re-existence emerge through languages that confront the canonical principles of modern rational knowledge. From a critical perspective of what has led to refusal and self-ignorance, the processes of re-existence refer to ways of re-elaborating life, of revaluing what has been denied (Albán Achinte, 2013).

Let’s go back to Kusch and the endless meanings that can be found in Zamba. He cannot translate into words what’s so fascinating about Zamba, nor can anyone who has witnessed this form of expression. The argumentative reasons are difficult to be found; the fascination seems inexplicable: “In the end, it is something very simple; it is only a dance that takes place in a special moment of any popular celebration. … A man and a woman… braid a circle while flipping handkerchiefs to the rhythm of guitars and a kick drum, and that’s it. And yet, the Zamba fascinates us …  Why? Is there something else in it? … Have we put in it what we have forbidden ourselves to show?” (Kusch, 2007: 287-289)[3]. And it is acceptable not to understand that which is not expressed in a modern rationalist manner. Dialoguing, accessing, or even noticing the colorful fabric of cultural plurality will hardly become possible through a monochromatic canonical gaze.

Representational resources are a primary part of methodological procedures, since they are the rationalities in which the meanings that constitute a scientific investigation are sustained (Peyloubet & Ortecho, 2015). Languages are part of the tools used to represent, interpret and translate the meanings that emerge in the encounter with others. Hence the importance of reflecting on languages when thinking about transformative methodologies, as well as the importance of reflecting on the scope of the resources that scientific institutions consider valid for producing knowledge and the possibilities that other-than-verbal-centered languages may create.

References

Alban Achinte, Adolfo (2013). Más allá de la razón hay un mundo de colores. Modernidades, colonialidades y reexistencia. Casa del Caribe y Editorial Oriente.

Kush, Rodolfo (2007). Rodolfo Kush: Obras completas. Tomo 1. Fundación Ross. Rosario, Argentina.

Lugones, María & Price, Joshua (2010). Translators’ introduction. In W. Mignolo, I. Silverblatt & S. Saldívar-Hull (Ed.), Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América (pp. lv-lxxii). New York, USA: Duke University Press.

https://doi-org.eur.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780822392514-004

Mignolo, Walter. (1992). “La colonización del lenguaje y la memoria. Complicidades de la letra, el libro y la memoria”. Coord. Iris M Zavala. Discursos sobre la ‘invención’ de América. Ed. Amsterdam, Holanda.

Palermo, Zulma (2012). “Mirar para comprender: artesanía y re-existencia”. Otros Logos. Revista de estudios críticos. Nº 3. 223-236. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Neuquén, Argentina.

Palermo, Zulma (2004). “Ricardo J. Kaliman, Alhajita es tu canto. El capital simbólico de Atahualpa Yupanqui”. Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana. Nº 60. pp. 392-394. Lima.

Peyloubet, Paula & Ortecho, Mariana Jesús. (2015). Desafíos empíricos, crítica semiótica y una apuesta por la introducción a nuevos lenguajes. Signo y Pensamiento, 34(66), 14-27. https://doi.org/10.111447javeriana.syp34-66.decs

Solera, Agustina (2018). Movimientos decoloniales en la Patagonia Andina. Reflexiones para una conversación desde el territorio. (Decolonial Movements in Andean Patagonia. Thoughts for a conversation based on the territory). Doctoral dissertation. Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

[1] Pueblo points not to ‘‘the people’’ as an abstraction, but to the concrete, disoriented human manyness that contains the possibility of community. (Lugones & Price, 2010: Ixi).

[2] Author’s own translation.

[3] Author’s own translation.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Agustina Solera is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for Prince Claus Chair in Equity and Development at ISS.

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Transformative Methodologies | On ‘being with’ and ‘holding space’ as transformative research tools in anthropology

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Despite advances made in the field of anthropology to address some of its problematic practices, anthropologists still conduct research in the same ways as they always have, their comings and goings based on the amount of data they have acquired. The decolonisation of anthropological studies may benefit from a different approach in which researchers spend time ‘being with’ studied groups, hold space for their stories, and are responsible for the stories they as researchers then put forth, writes Aminata Cairo.

Helicopter anthropologists

“For every Indian, there was an anthropologist.” So joked the Native population with me as I was visiting the Navajo reservation to conduct research. There were plenty more jokes about the scientists who, in the name of science, came and went and excavated their stories, only to misrepresent them and never be heard from again. Similarly, when I went to my first national anthropological conference in the US as a graduate student, I attended a session with the Native American cohort where I learned about the concept of ‘helicopter anthropologist’ – those who come and ‘hover’ to extract what they need and then leave without a trace.

Those jokes and lessons have stayed with me. As an anthropologist, I have always felt strongly that in order to do right, we should heed the guidance of those that have been affected the most by these practices. In American anthropology, that would be the Native American population.

I have been trained as an American anthropologist, and as much as I love the discipline, something never felt right. I switched from clinical psychology to anthropology because it was a different way of dealing with people’s stories. Anthropology allowed me to help people give voice to their own stories.  And yet there was something about it…

Anthropology was born out of a very specific colonial history,[1] after all. Yes, it was about people’s stories, but those stories were studied so people could be dominated, exploited, or classified as ‘less than’ in support of white supremacy. I am well aware of its past. The approach has changed since its early beginnings, but the means to extract the stories have basically remained the same. We are still helicopter anthropologists.

Yet things could be different. At that same anthropology conference, I met a Native American elder who told me that “the community should be better off for the anthropologists having been there.” It is the teaching that has stayed with me and set me on my path to study indigenous approaches to knowledge.

Researchers as stewards of knowledge

After reading the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith[2] and Shawn Wilson,[3] my approach to knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge changed forever. According to Wilson, we can never be owners of knowledge. Knowledge is all around us, and we stand in relationship to it. Ultimately, we can only be stewards of knowledge. This approach brings with it a certain humility, an understanding that engagement with indigenous peoples and the gaining of insights is a privilege, not an entitlement.  Tuhiwai Smith acknowledges the colonial foundation of research practices and advocates for an approach to research that is decolonising and treats research populations with respect.

Reliable accountability and holding space

My approach to research now is totally different from how I was initially trained. Now, I start with the premise that we are all connected and that for a short period of time, I would ‘be with’ and join a community in order to unearth a story or stories that can be a benefit for all of us. I follow Wilson’s mandate of ‘relational accountability’ represented in the three ‘R’s’: respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. In addition, I use my own concept of ‘holding space’ in which I am not entitled to the story or stories, but must earn the right to experience those stories through being with, displaying care, and building trust. Through joining and collectively being touched and transformed by the story or stories, they will come to light.

The key is that this journey is a respectful collaboration, rather than the standard data extraction pursuit of traditional research. Even in anthropology’s method of participant observation, the ultimate goal is for the researcher to walk away informed and enriched. In this endeavour, the goal is for the researcher and the (research) community to have learned something that will be of benefit to both and potentially useful to transform the space.

In our most recent research project, where we joined a marginalised community within The Hague to explore solidarity in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, we engaged in a journey with the community. What started as a pursuit for counternarratives to the existing negative public stories shifted and became an exercise in holding space for all the stories that existed in this community, whether positive or negative. It was the community members, after all, that reminded us that they didn’t have anything to prove, and that in fact they had earned the right to just be. Through joining and ‘being with’, we then shifted course and learned about how people hold space for each other – a far more valuable lesson.

I understand that some of my colleagues might frown upon my approach to research. However, in my world of inclusion, there are many different approaches to knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge. My way of doing knowledge is just fine. What matters is that I can contribute to knowledge and communities and feel good about what I do. All of it. That is the best reward and my incentive to keep going.

[1] Lews, D. (1973) ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology 14(5): 581-602.

[2] Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd.

[3] Wilson, S. (2008). Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Winnipeg: Fernwood.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Aminata Cairo is the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Team at the International Institute of Social Studies.

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EADI ISS Conference 2021 | Questioning development: What lies ahead?

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Development Studies requires “an epistemological and ontological change”, write Elisabetta Basile and Isa Baud in the introduction to the recent EADI volume ‘Building Development Studies for a New Millennium’. The planned sequel of the book will take this analysis one step further and explore viable ways to build on both the critique of development as such and the growing demand to decolonise knowledge production. During a plenary session titled ‘Questioning Development – Towards Solidarity, Decoloniality, Conviviality’ that formed part of EADI’s recent #Solidarity2021 conference, four contributors discussed the upcoming book. Christiane Kliemann summarised the discussion.

The need to critique development has become urgent as global inequalities increase and the need for the decolonisation of knowledge to redress knowledge production asymmetries becomes greater. “We have been much better at critique than at changing things”, quipped Uma Kothari during a panel session titled ‘Questioning Development – Towards Solidarity, Decoloniality, Conviviality’ of EADI’s recent #Solidarity2021 conference that she recently chaired.

Kothari is also one of the editors of a forthcoming book with the working title ‘Questioning Development Studies: Towards Decolonial, Convivial and Solidaristic Approaches’ that will be a sequel to the already-published EADI volume titled ‘Building Development Studies for a New Millennium’. During the panel session she asked four panellists who contributed to the book to discuss their own practices towards challenging the classical ‘development’ paradigm and possible ways forward. Their diverse and insightful arguments are captured below.

Integrating indigenous understandings of relationality

Yvonne Te Ruki-Rangi-O-Tangaroa Underhill-Sem, Associate Professor in Pacific Studies, Te Wānanga o Waipapa, University of Auckland, New Zealand, started the discussion with an interesting example from New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as she calls it by its Maori name, where the Maori concept of Manaakitanga has even influenced the way in which research is done in the whole country. Manaakitanga, as Underhill-Sem explained, is all around caring for the ‘Mana’ of people we relate to – ‘Mana’ itself being understood as anything we relate to, be it other people, land, or whatever is meaningful to us. “We’ve been working very closely between New Zealand Maori and Pacific scholars to begin to infuse and embed this concept in one of the major research policy platforms in Aotearoa that control the funding of research and the definition of what is excellent research”, she explained.

As a very tangible example for encouraging research based on a much broader understanding of knowledge, she referred to the Toksave Research Portal which has drawn its name from one of the languages of Papua New Guinea and started as a “process inviting a whole range of different knowledge-makers around the region and the Pacific to submit their work”, be it a poem, a thesis, or an NGO report.

Lauren Tynan, Trawlwulwuy woman from Tebrakunna country in northeast Tasmania, who is currently doing her PhD on aboriginal burning practices at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, also views the issue of decolonising knowledge and knowledge production through a lens of relationality. She aspires to hold herself accountable to all relations she has; her recent paper ‘Thesis as kin: living relationality with research’ explored how she relates to her research.

At times, this understanding can be quite challenging to the concept of research she had been initially taught, which she finds “quite a colonising way of researching”. For example, it doesn’t take into account her responsibilities as a mother of small children, which prevent her from traveling back and forth for her research: “Part of that relationality is to see that I shouldn’t feel that as a limitation but as part my responsibilities and obligations to my family and my wider family which is also my research relationship”.

Migration as constitutive dimension of human existence

Samid Suliman, Lecturer on Migration and Security in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, brought in another important, but much-overlooked perspective. As he focuses much of his work on the relationship between migration and development, he started from the point that “mobility has been and continues to be colonised through development”, with the “entrenchment and hegemony of the nation state as the primary organising framework of human existence”. Although we are now living in a ‘hyper-mobile world’, he pointed out that the “state-centred way of understanding human mobility continues to be reproduced”, and migrants are looked at with fear and trepidation. One of his research questions therefore is: “How can we better understand migration and mobility as a constitutive dimension of human existence, rather than just an outcome of human activity?”

As one step forward, Suliman suggested to “think critically about the way in which we normalise certain assumptions and certain normative dispositions about the movement of human beings and resist the impulse to settle everyone in their place”. This would require finding new mechanisms, institutions and possibilities for convivial relations and forms of justice that go “beyond the national as the frame of reference for decision making and action on the governance of the moving of people”.

Hospitality as basic principle for societies beyond development

For Aram Ziai, Heisenberg-Professor of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel, Germany, it all starts with questioning the term ‘development’. He considers a simple redefinition of the term insufficient, as this could produce misunderstandings and a “beyond-criticism gambit”. If the term development continues to bear different meanings, from democratic industrial capitalisms to any type of positive social change, he said, “we are in fact obstructing the critique of development organisations by saying, ‘if something bad happened out of a development project, it was not really development’”.

He also made clear that ‘development’ cannot be seen independent of its historical context: “Development came into being as a new programme to legitimise a capitalist world order in the Global South at a time when the colonial ideology was losing credibility and a new framing of North-South relations was needed to maintain access to the raw materials of the South and the corresponding division of labour. So, development thinking was a new frame, but it was still linked to colonialism, to the idea of transforming geo-cultural differences into historical stages, so that the self is the norm, and the other is the deviant, deficient, other”.

How to move on? Less data, more stories!

All panellists agreed that big changes don’t occur overnight and that it takes everyone’s efforts in their specific places and fields to contribute to a systemic change that might still take years or even decades to gain full ground. In Suliman’s words, “We need to do all we can within our various roles and positions to push back on the research monoculture imposed from above”.

As one important step in this direction, Underhill-Sem called on the older and more advanced scholars to be much more audacious in their engagement with policy: “Are we seeing that audacity with obligation? Are we seeing active engagement in these key structural places, in terms of reviewing the way in which we do and fund research, the way in which we build ethics around research? Are we reaching in those spaces and doing the work there, or are we leaving these spaces for others to populate them?” According to Ziai, we are already moving in the right direction by “talking more and more about these issues and less and less about economic growth, productivity and other things that are increasingly questioned”.

Suliman thinks that it all boils down to the question of making ourselves known to each other in ways that don’t colonise, and in creating space for multiple meanings and exchanges between us: “I think we need to keep moving towards other ways of seeing and listening and knowing, so in short: less data, more stories.” And, Tynan observes, these stories are already there: “Wherever we are in the world there are peoples who have story and belonging to the land, it’s about knowing these stories and their full implications on ourselves as individuals and communities”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Christiane Kliemann Communications European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI)

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17th Development Dialogue | A call to end the ‘social distancing’ of the sciences – in the COVID-19 era and beyond

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The chasm that separates the different scientific disciplines remains deep as ever despite the evident need to address pressing global problems through transdisciplinary collaboration. C. Sathyamala and Peter A.G. van Bergeijk in this article show how close and intensive cooperation across the artificial borders between the sciences can be made possible and argue for a methodology acknowledging that only a combination of qualitative and quantitative research can create the type of knowledge that’s required to move forward together.

Hans-Peter Gauster (unsplash)

We start with a proposition: that both social and natural sciences are good at boxing, but not as good at wrestling. They ‘box’ by telling themselves stories about where they and researchers in the respective fields ‘fit’ into the scaffolding erected around the supposedly chiasmic divide of natural and social sciences. We all seem to know what side of this divide we want to be on, and a lot of time is invested in delineation, often drawing distinctions without differences. For too long, specialisation and deeper knowledge, both applied and theoretical, have been seen as the royal road to academic success.

But there are limits to what any science can do on its own. We’ve seen this during the current pandemic. As in any context, COVID-19-related health problems cannot be tackled from a purely medical angle; the exploitative social and economic structures that make people sick must also be challenged. Indeed, the validity of medical solutions to a large extent depends on social and economic conditions of time and place. The pandemic does not provide a new insight – it simply makes it clearer.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that by boxing in the disciplines and keeping them apart, we fail in a monumental way to ‘wrestle’ with multi-faceted problems, like global pandemics. We avoid the intellectual battle inherent in engaging with what the other side thinks. To deal with COVID-19 or to understand what is happening, we need less boxing and more wrestling! A mono-disciplinary perspective, however sophisticated, cannot help us design and evaluate policy interventions, or grasp the wider meaning and significance of COVID-19 in specific contexts. A lot of time is now being invested in delineation with other strands and lines of thought based on high principles of epistemology and ontology. Our point is that that energy would be better spend on truly working together.

A physician and an economist…

We write from different sides of a supposedly chiasmic divide, a divide we each try to bridge and straddle in our own ways. C. Sathyamala is a public health physician with a Master’s degree in Epidemiology who opted to do her PhD in development studies at the ISS. In the process, she developed a strong interest in class and state power and in the history of the biopolitics of food and hunger. As a medical doctor concerned with action for social justice, the Bhopal gas leak disaster proved a crucial turning point in her life as corporate interests in collusion with the state effaced people’s lives. The COVID-19 pandemic created similar tendency, displacing the migrant working class across India and subjecting them to what Giorgio Agamben has called ‘bare life’.

As an agnostic Dutch economist, Peter van Bergeijk is the first academic in a family of South Holland-based bakers, carpenters, and farmers. As a policy maker at the OECD, he was frustrated by the impossibility to engage major developing countries in discussions on environment and health. This motivated his move to the ISS, where he is equally happy to employ a neo-Marxist or a ‘empiricist’ framework as a toolkit, depending on what analytical toolbox is most suitable for the problem at hand.

…together critically examining the COVID-19 pandemic

Each of us has written on COVID-19 – on the urgency of communicating our concerns – in the form of  books or a range of Working Papers. Writing from different social and professional positions, we now also write…together. A common interest around COVID-19 has bridged our science-social science divide.

Primarily, we agree that if at all a silver lining is to be found in the COVID-19 situation, it is that we can learn a great deal, especially with mixed disciplinary backgrounds, with science, social sciences, and the arts (we have also worked together artistically: you will find Sathya’s poetry and Peter’s lithography alongside at the exhibition Broken Links).

And we both agree that we will only truly understand pandemics and their consequences, and what to do about protecting human societies from their fallout once social scientists and natural scientists stop practicing social and intellectual distancing by boxing themselves into their own disciplines.

This is more urgent than often recognised: the next pandemic is a certainty, only its timing is uncertain.

The WHO hopes to forge solidarity and encourage the sharing of knowledge across disciplinary and global divides. The purpose is to generate greater consensus around COVID-19.

But while lip service is paid to medical opinion, it is powerful political and economic elites that continue to call the shots.  State interventions provide selective care in the matter of making live and letting die, and even in making die in the Foucauldian biopolitical sense. Academics find themselves struggling to keep up in real time with the pace of the pandemic, with its spread, recurrence, changing pattern, and often its gross mismanagement.

Huge as the problem is, we are pleased to have started our own dialogue, right here at the ISS, and based on our own published and ongoing research on the subject. How COVID-19 affects us now, and what kinds of ‘pandemic futures’ we face, are questions all of us can contribute to answering once we learn to wrestle across our disciplinary divides.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

C. Sathyamala is a public health physician and epidemiologist with a PhD in Development Studies. She is currently a postdoc academic researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of interest include food security and politics of food, political economy of health, medical ethics, reproductive rights, and environmental justice. She has been active in both the health and women’s movement in India for some decades. She has authored and co-authored books and published in journals, peer-reviewed and otherwise, and in newspapers on wide-ranging topics. 

Peter van Bergeijk is professor of international economics and macroeconomics at the ISS.

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Knowledge is the missing link in the Dutch aid and trade agenda

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On the eve of the national elections set to take place on 17 March in the Netherlands, developmental issues are being debated and diverging solutions proposed by political parties running in the elections. A recent debate organized by SAIL on the role of knowledge in aid and trade relations indicated that even though not receiving much attention in pre-election debates, knowledge produced by Dutch knowledge institutes is considered vital in sustaining aid and trade relations between the Netherlands and its counterparts in the Global South, writes Linda Johnson.

On 12 February, in anticipation of the upcoming national elections, a debate was organized by SAIL, a platform for knowledge institutes such as the ISS that promotes international education and research for inclusive sustainable development in the Global South. The debate was intended to bring attention to the missing link of ‘knowledge’ in international relations and the role that knowledge institutes situated in the Netherlands wish to play in the post-election policy landscape.  SAIL feels strongly that international relations all too frequently are not sufficiently informed by knowledge produced by Dutch knowledge institutes. This means that a key source of knowledge and a wealth of connections between the Netherlands and the Global South remain largely untapped and underutilised.

Five members of parliament (MP) participated in the debate: Kirsten van den Hul (PvdA), Dennis Wiersma (VVD), Jan Paternotte (D66), Mustafa Amhaouch (CDA), and Tom van den Nieuwenhuijzen (GL). Thea Hilhorst, professor of humanitarian studies at ISS of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Marhijn Visser of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW) provided introductory and closing remarks on the theme. Over 200 participants followed the debate online. Marcia Luyten, a well-known Dutch publicist, led the discussions.

The debate was interesting because it made clear that there is a strong willingness on the part of politicians to engage with knowledge institutes with a view to shape future policy.

Partnerships that last

It is hard to overstate the case for ensuring that Dutch knowledge institutes become a key piece in the shaping and implementing of policy in relation to aid and trade with partners in the Global South. Ever since the early 1950s, the SAIL member institutes have been building and maintaining durable partnerships with countries in the Global South. Partnerships have been built at the level of individuals, many of whom were (partly) funded by the Dutch government to study toward a Master’s or a PhD degree in the Netherlands, and at the level of knowledge institutes by means of countless interventions and collaborations designed from the outset to co-create (academic) capacity in the Global South, and more recently to ensure global knowledge circulation to ensure mutual learning.

The tried and tested partnerships between knowledge institutes are key to this process. The combined expertise of staff of these institutes ensures that the specifics of the local needs are the basis for the work done. These individuals and teams know how best the needs of all parties can be met in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. Many of these partnerships date back decades. Trust has been established, friendships have flourished, and knowledge easily flows back and forth to the benefit of all participants in the process. It works so well that it seems effortless and herein lies the potential for mishap by oversight… It is indeed in many ways effortless, as it is born of years of investment in a process of mutual learning.

This is the time to make sure that the judicious investment of decades is not overlooked as policy is set and budgets allocated after the elections.  Political debates leading up to the elections have not yet shown much attention to such partnerships. However, at the SAIL debate  there was strong consensus across the political spectrum on the importance of the role of knowledge institutes as a linking pin, which led me to think that if the time was taken to explore these partnerships’ role in aid and trade relations, they would become evident to the new cabinet.

For example, at the debate, all five parliamentarians agreed that knowledge is vital for healthy trade and development. Kirsten van den Hul, for example, stated that “knowledge collaboration is essential to development.” The big problem, she said, is that “knowledge is unevenly distributed.” Dennis Wiersma: “A level playing field is important for trade”. Mustafa Amhaouch: “There is clearly nowhere near a level playing field at present […] It is a societal responsibility to share knowledge.” Jan Paternotte: ‘’The Dutch trade agenda should be linked to the knowledge agenda.”

This makes clear that the role of knowledge – and the institutes that produce it – is seen as important. But we need to take the discussion further once the elections have taken place. Two important points made during the debate were that knowledge institutes can help protect human rights in fragile states whilst also benefitting the Netherlands through strong alumni networks.

Knowledge institutes are vital in fragile states

Something that received particular attention in the debate was the role of knowledge institutes in fragile states, where the Netherlands is active. Knowledge institutes in fragile states are key in upholding a vision of a positive society and in speaking out for human rights. The Netherlands needs to keep on supporting relationships between Dutch institutes and their counterparts in fragile states. Fragility is increasing. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the cracks in the starkest possible way as the richer nations hoard vaccines. GL, PvdA and D66 spoke out strongly in favour of the need to finance COVAX (the WHO programme designed to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines) generously.

Sustaining aid relations through alumni networks

The word “alumni” also popped up frequently in the debate. The Netherlands has built up a huge network of alumni across the world, many of whom have moved into positions of influence in their home countries. All of the parties represented and the Federation of Industry and Employers concluded that these alumni were a key resource in building an equitable, sustainable, win-win agenda for Dutch aid, trade and knowledge policy in the wake of the upcoming elections.

Focusing on the alumni of knowledge institutes means moving beyond capacity building to viewing and engaging these alumni as potential change agents in their own countries. This will also benefit the Netherlands by ensuring that these warm, trust-based relationships can be the basis for both political and economic collaboration in the future.

A reason for cautious optimism?

There is much to be gained by enhancing the role of knowledge institutes in future collaboration and there is support for this approach across the political spectrum. Could this be a reason for optimism? Watch the political space and join in the debate, whether or not you have a Dutch vote to cast….

About the author:

Linda Johnson was the executive secretary of ISS, but has now retired. She is particularly interested in the societal relevance of research. In addition, she has done recent work on the safety and security of researchers and co-developed a course on literature as a lens on development.

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Revisiting ethnographic sites as an ongoing knowledge production practice

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Is it important for ethnographers to revisit the sites where they conduct their research once their projects have been completed? Returning to the site where I conducted my fieldwork six months later indicated that the answer is both yes and no. It makes me believe that ethnography practice is an ongoing knowledge production project, as people’s perspectives and practices are always evolving.

In January 2020, just before COVID-19 was classified a global pandemic, I made a journey to the site where I did my research six months prior. I had fruitful discussions with those I had engaged with for my research: about their definition of art as a form of activism (a main finding of my research), research as a knowledge production process where researchers and participants can work together, as well as about the dialogue between academic discourse and practices in the field.

When I conducted fieldwork for my Master’s degree at ISS in Pemenang village in Indonesia in July 2019, my ethnographic objective was to explore how a small art community called Pasir Putih navigated life after an earthquake devastated Lombok, the island on which the village is situated, in 2018. I immersed myself in the community for a month, stayed in their houses in order to observe their daily life activities, and conducted semi-structured interviews with them. I consider my study a mini-ethnography because while one month was quite short and what I did cannot be considered an exhaustive ethnography, I did more than interviewing the Pasir Putih artists. I did participant observation to investigate “the strange in the familiar” in the artist’s everyday lives—and to help me understand what’s beyond the things the research participants explicitly mentioned in the interviews.

As an organization, Pasir Putih strongly values knowledge production and knowledge-sharing activities, and so the initial agreement was that because they let me to stay with them for a month, I had to come back and share the research results with them. They often asked me, “What does the outsider think of us? About our conceptions of the arts?” Furthermore, for them it was important to have a conversation about the research that involved them as participants. As Sibawaihi, one of Pasir Putih artists, told the other people in community before I presented the research results, he believed that research would help them to reflect on their position as artists in the village community.

Pasir Putih is a small art community formed in January 2010 by five undergraduate students in Pemenang village and now comprising 13 active members, of which only two are women. Most of the research community members have a Bachelor’s degree in different fields, such as communication and education studies, and none of them have attained an art degree through formal education. They have attained their skills in art by doing. When I was in the field, the artists also contributed to the community as teachers for extracurricular art subjects in junior high schools in North Lombok. On their website, Pasir Putih define themselves as an “…organisasi nirlaba egaliter berbasis di Kecamatan Pemenang, Lombok Utara, Nusa Tenggara Barat oleh pegiat kultural, aktivis media dan seniman sejak tahun 2010” (“an egalitarian non-profit organization initiated and run by cultural and media activists and artists in Pemenang District, North Lombok since 2010”).[1]

After discussing my research with the community, they told me they felt my research encouraged them to define what it is that they do as artists. Sibawaihi mentioned that being involved in the research and hearing about the findings has made them realize that what they do as artists is important for people around them. I saw their work as ‘art as activism’, while the community used art as a way to express their value in the society around them. This idea of ‘art as activism’ was based on the theories I had engaged with during my Master’s research, and it differed from the idea the research participants had of themselves. Yet they found it an interesting observation. For them, art is what they do—not just for the village community, but also from and by the village community. They rejected the term ‘activist’ to avoid being considered superior to other people in the village.

They were also interested in how research could be seen as a part of the “documentation of knowledge” that might be useful now or in the future. They saw my research as “an archive for what we do that can be consulted in the future”. Interestingly, they were curious about what my lecturers at my university thought of art. “Did your teachers agree with our definition of art?” one asked. In other words, Pasir Putih artists were engaged in knowledge production not only during the research process, but also after that.

Oka, one of the artists who was a research participant as he initiated a film screening project to re-engage village communities after the 2018 earthquake, said that he was interested in the term ‘ethnography’. He related the methodology to what they do as community artists, such as staying in different villages to screen films. From Oka’s perspective, living in communities for several months is key to an ethnographic research methodology, because it helps the researcher to understand the research subject by regarding their daily practices as well as through daily conversations. Yet he felt that my stay should have been longer for me to be able to get a better grasp of their activities.

From my perspective, it was fascinating to have follow-up discussions with the research participants and to learn that they also benefited from (if I can use this term) the exchange of knowledge during the research project. As some of them expressed in the discussion, the findings of the research help them to reflect more on their perspectives and practices as artists/activists in the community. In addition, they saw my research as “archiving initiatives” related to what they had been doing, although the language barriers (I wrote the thesis in English) meant most of them could not access what I wrote. I saw the discussion that emerged about their art perspectives and practices among the Pemenang village community when I revisited the site as an interesting dialogue between academic research and practices in the field. Furthermore, ‘revisiting the site’ can be seen as an attempt to create more equal relations between researchers and the research participants in the field.

If I think back to the fieldwork, however, I realize that it was difficult to make the artists fully engaged in the research and vice versa. Given the time constraints, it was difficult for me to be fully involved in their projects. The data mostly came from semi-structured interviews rather than informal conversations with the artists. This means that my initial plan to create more equal relations with the participants was not fully successful. Despite that, the observations of the artists’ daily activities enriched the findings from the interviews.

[1] http://pasirputih.org/tentang-organisasi/, accessed on 27 September 2019

Image: Lize Swartz

About the author:

Daya Sudrajat is a researcher and policy advocate in inclusive education issues based in Jakarta, Indonesia. She has a strong interest in knowledge production in marginalized communities and this led her to write a thesis about art as alternative development practice in North Lombok, Indonesia. She holds a MA degree from ISS Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

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Creative Development | Art and Knowledge Production: Sense, The Senses and the Struggle for Control by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú and Cathy Wilcock

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What is the relationship between art and knowledge production? Does art only contribute to the aesthetics or does it have any role to play in production and even in control of knowledge? This article explores these questions through an example of ‘immigration’. It is a version of the presentation given by Aoileann Ní Mhurchú at the recent ISS workshop ‘Moving Methods’, funded jointly by the CI and D&I groups.   

Across the social sciences, the study of ‘art’ is being understood broadly as the study of ‘creative endeavour’ (Danchev and Lisle 2009: 776).  Here, art is understood not only as finished products such as paintings or novels, but as ‘activities that produce aesthetic responses, critiques and affirmations’ Rosario-Ramos et al (2017: 221). This moves our focus beyond ‘high art’ and towards a variety of cultural processes such as graffiti, rap music, cartoons, and film.  Furthermore, it moves us beyond the intentions of the artist as the source of meaning, and it opens up the idea that art’s relationship to knowledge production is rooted in its activation of responses, critiques and affirmations.

Much work has already shown how popular culture can provide frames of reference about cultures and people which influence how they are ‘known’. For example, by orientalizing the colonized as victims, exotic and/or to be feared (Semmerling 2006).

In relation to the topic of immigration, there has been rich discussion around representations of the ‘good verses the bad immigrant’. In the dystopian video game ‘Papers Please’, the player is asked to assess the claims of immigrants as ‘dubious or genuine’ based on their collection of paperwork. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM&frags=pl%2Cwn An archetypal ‘immigrant’ identity has been shaped by such artistic products, which are themselves emergent responses to the same cultural milieu to which they contribute.

What has also been explored is how popular culture can challenge dominant ways of knowing the world (Magallanes-Blanco 2015). For example, on immigration, art works such as the murals along the USA-Mexico border by Mexican artist Lalo Cota have been praised for directly challenging the harmful dominant narrative of the ‘good/bad migrant dichotomy’. In a darkly humorous tone, his surrealist and satirical works play with the notion of ‘illegal alien’ by depicting sombreros in the shape of UFOs.

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Image by Lynn Trimble

Therefore, art is about power relations: it raises questions about dominance and resistance and, is linked to struggles over control of knowledge between the margins and the centres.

Linking art to struggles over knowledge is a useful but broad endeavor. Ranciére helps narrow this down by theorizing this struggle by way of the senses. Ranciére associates art with a process of struggle over knowledge through ‘determin[ing] the relationship between seeing, hearing, doing, making and thinking’ (Ranciére 2013). Ranciére points to the role of art in engaging the senses to invoke visibility, audibility, saying ability, thinkability, do-ability of certain ideas/possibilities over and in contrast to others. The result is that art is posited as political, rather than something which can merely comment on politics.

To explain: the political nature of, for example, F.Lotus – Ai Weiwei’s installation of 1,005 life jackets floating in the pond of the Belevedere museum in Vienna – can be understood not only for its commentary on the migration crisis, but for the ideas and identities that are made visible and audible when they act on the senses of the audience.

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As such, we need to situate such arguments within post and de/colonial literature. This has a long history of exploring how knowledge ‘has been grounded in the suppression of sensing and the body’ (Mignolo 2011b: 275; hooks 1989). In doing so, it allows us to think about the active suppression of ways of being linked to the senses under modernity (which is seen as the other side of coloniality rather than its opposite).

To go back to our example of ‘Papers Please’, a post/decolonial angle propels us to delve deeper and to ask how and in whose interests was the knowledge of the ‘good/bad immigrant’ produced in the first place?

Such literature helps us to look beyond art as a struggle over senses which can merely ‘add to’ our existing knowledge of social sciences. Instead, it draws attention to harder epistemological questions about the nature of the ‘academy’ and ‘reality’ itself. For example, it points to how a focus on the senses (re)shapes what is known as ‘creativity’ by linking this to vulnerability and the margins (Ní Mhurchú, 2016).  Additionally, it forces us to (re)evaluate as a colonial move (Mignolo 2003) the separating out of art as interpretive knowledge (grounded necessarily in the humanities) from questions about practical societal knowledge (grounded necessarily in the social sciences).

The ideas sketched here gesture towards a conceptual framework to approach the analysis of art for knowledge-production in the social sciences. Situating Ranciere’s sensory approach within the post/decoloniality literature, allows us to recognize art as a struggle for control over knowledge through the senses. While doing so, we are urged to recognize that knowledge-producing institutions are part of, and not above or outside of, those struggles.

On 22 May 2019, ISS Associate Professor of Childhood & Youth Studies Roy Huijsmans along side Assistant Professor Katarzyna Grabska and Academic Researcher Cathy Wilcock will hold a seminar regarding their joint research on ‘Migration and Musical Mobilities’. Find more information here. 

This article is part of a series on Creative Development.

About the authors:

Aioleann Ni MuruchuAoileann Ní Mhurchú is a lecturer in International Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research interests lie in the areas of critical citizenship studies, international migration, sovereignty and subjectivity, and theories of time and space. She recognises the limits of existing frameworks for understanding experiences of political resistance and participation from positions of marginality or ambiguity. And therefore engages with aesthetic forms of meaning and representation in literature and vernacular music and language.

CW bw

Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Children as experts: rethinking how we produce knowledge by Kristen Cheney

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Children in the rain

Most research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights is adult-led and adult-centred, not only ignoring young voices but denying diversity amongst young people. But a new project co-led by Kristen Cheney of the ISS departs from the premise that young people are the experts of their own lives, giving children and adolescents the chance co-create knowledge. In this article, Cheney details the importance of youth-led participatory research and how this is done through the new project.

It is often assumed that social research is the domain of experts—and that those experts are necessarily adults. Most research on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (ASRHR) is adult-led and adult-centred, not only ignoring young voices but denying diversity amongst young people. Information about young people’s sexuality therefore often remains insulated within their peer groups, preventing innovation in ASRHR programming. This too often leads to a deficit or pathological perspective on adolescence in ASRHR research and intervention.

ISS departs from this premise in our latest youth participatory research project, Adolescents’ Perceptions of Healthy Relationships. The APHR project is funded by the Oak Foundation, with the objective to inform their child abuse prevention programming through greater attention to the broader societal, structural factors that provide an enabling environment for the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The project is led by ISS’ Kristen Cheney and involves Auma Okwany as East Africa lead researcher.

Instead of embracing prevalent adult-imposed models of adolescence, the APHR project departs from the premise that young people are the experts on their own lives. Indeed, we believe that young people are essential co-creators of knowledge, best suited to conduct research on their own thoughts and experiences. They have the best access to their peer groups where vital information is often kept locked away from adults’ gazes. So whenever possible, we conduct youth-led, participatory research. This way, young people become not mere objects of research but co-producers of knowledge about young people’s lives through greater disclosure of more authentic viewpoints.

Conducting research in Oak’s two main project areas, East Africa and Eastern Europe, ISS leads an international team consisting of partners from International Child Development Initiatives (Netherlands), Animus Association (Bulgaria), and Nascent Research and Development Organization (Tanzania). Together, they support young people in Bulgaria and Tanzania to participate in every step of the research, from designing quantitative and qualitative tools to data collection to analysis, dissemination and advocacy. This Circles of Support youth-centered approach provides training for adolescents as young as twelve years old to act as young peer researchers (YPRs), with support for research activities throughout the project—while always ensuring that young people’s considerations take precedence over adults’ opinions (Figure 1). Despite some adults’ concerns that young people might not be up to the task, we consistently find that young people are not only competent researchers, but also capable self-advocates.

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Figure 1. YPRs in Dar Es Salaam discuss important aspects to consider in research on adolescents’ perceptions of healthy relationships (2017). Their input is incorporated into the research design from the start.

Preliminary Findings

Having completed an extensive survey of nearly 2,000 adolescents aged 10-18 across Bulgaria and Tanzania, our approach has proven fruitful for getting at adolescents’ views on what constitutes healthy relationships. We are still collecting qualitative data that will both validate and deepen our understanding of the survey findings, but our preliminary observations from the survey revealed which characteristics and relationships adolescents value most in each setting.

In Bulgaria, responses indicated that adolescents generally value trust and respect most in their relationships. While they reported mostly positive relationships with family—particularly with their mothers—adolescents’ responses indicated that the more problematic relationships were those with peers and others in their school settings.

We are following up the survey to further unpack these results, in order to understand how adolescents define trust and respect, as well as to understand family and school dynamics.

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Figure 2. A YPR in Sofia, Bulgaria, shares her group’s qualitative questions with the group.

In Tanzania, adolescents also reported supportive relationships with their mothers. In addition, they found that religious leaders were important in guiding young people’s behaviour. They indicated that a large part of their understanding of being loved, in various relationships, is someone providing for their needs, both emotional and material. But preliminary survey findings also pointed to widespread abuses toward adolescents—from various people at home, school, or in the community. To some extent, their answers even pointed toward a normalisation of that violence; for example, some pointed out that there were high levels of bullying in school, yet they did not necessarily consider this a bad thing, depending on the circumstances. Some saw excessive discipline from teachers as concern for their learning, while others reported that fighting to defend a friend shows that you are loyal and is therefore ‘healthy.’ The TZ team is currently completing qualitative data collection (Figure 3), which we hope will help us further unpack these responses during analysis.

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Figure 3. A YPR in Tanzania interviews a classmate (2018).

Scholar Activism

Our research team has been providing excellent support to our phenomenal young peer researchers (YPRs). Through our Circles of Support approach, the team in each country has been able to tailor training to the YPRs’ needs and abilities. To ensure that young people’s concerns predominate, we have consulted YPRs at every stage, while constantly checking our own tendencies to want to redirect research toward ‘adult’ concerns. As a result, we are seeing exceptional personal growth as well as group cohesion amongst our YPRs.

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Boy and girl YPRs in Magu, Tanzania, come up with research questions together (2017).

For this reason, we consider our participatory approach ‘always already advocacy’. ‘Protection’ is sometimes invoked to deny young people’s participation, but participation can be inherently protective, especially in ASRHR, where knowledge is power. Our training covers basic concepts that help empower kids to know their rights and develop their ASRHR competencies—which they then disseminate to others. Participatory research also fosters more interpersonal communication by modeling healthy relationships within the research process itself (Figure 4).

Headshot 02 17About the author: 

Kristen Cheney is Associate Professor of Children and Youth Studies at ISS. She is author of Crying for Our Elders: African Orphanhood in the Age of HIV and AIDS and co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Disadvantaged Childhoods and Humanitarian Intervention: Processes of Affective Commodification.

What can social scientists know from art and how? by Cathy Wilcock

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A recent workshop hosted collaboratively by the University of Manchester and the ISS sought to determine what knowledge can be derived from artistic work by asking ‘what can social scientists know from art and how?’ The workshop aimed to start conversations between those who make art and those who engage with art in their social science research. This blog article by ISS postdoctoral researcher Cathy Wilcock includes verbal and written reflections of the workshop proceedings and outcomes.

The intersection of art and the production of knowledge recently became the topic of discussion in a workshop co-organised by Cathy Wilcock of the ISS and Aoileann Ní Mhurchú of the University of Manchester (UoM). This discussion workshop was motivated by the questions: what knowledge can we derive from artistic work (defined as the product and process of any creative activity e.g. music, dance, painting, literature)? And how should we “read” artistic work in order to gain access to/play a part in producing the knowledge that inheres within it? Also, what can art offer for knowledge production that other forms of information cannot? Such questions are accompanied by an ethical question: should we treat artistic creations as potential sources of knowledge? 

Four ways of “using” art in social science

Of course, there are centuries-old traditions of academic research on the arts, but within social science disciplines this a more recent phenomena. As these traditionally realist—and initially economy-dominated—disciplines have become more open to social constructivist ontologies, concerns with representation, fictions, and the broader “aesthetic” have surfaced.

Art is being instrumentalised in social science research in four fundamental ways. First, modes of analysis developed in the arts are being borrowed into social sciences—for example, policy documents being analysed as “texts” or “narratives”. Second, artistic works are being used as data in social science studies—for example through the analysis of novels or photographs. Third, artistic methodologies are being employed during the research process—for example by asking research participants to produce creative works such as films or photos. Finally, in the era of research impact, art is being used as a dissemination tool, allegedly as a better way of communicating research findings to non-academic audiences. 

Translating methods?

This can only be a good thing, but the motivation behind holding this workshop was an uncertainty around whether we really know what we’re doing. Can the knowledge production practices developed in, and for, the arts be easily transferred to the social sciences? There are many epistemological and ethical questions to be raised about the instrumentalisation of art for knowledge production in the social sciences. And perhaps there is also a tendency to romanticise art; there are power relations involved in who gets to create art, who gets to distribute it, curate it, appreciate it, and observe it. How can we account for this in social science research?

With this problematic in mind, we asked four artists to reflect on their creative process—and to think about how making art helps them to produce knowledge, and also what and how their artistic work says to audiences. Through this artist-led discussion we went down some interesting avenues in our exploration of what we can know from art in the social sciences. 

Openness and opening up

One striking aspect of making art and interpreting it that came up in our discussion was how exposing it is. And, tied in with this, how the “knowledge” produced by it can be open and unfixed. In Michelle Olivier’s work (main image), which speaks back to prejudiced racial relations, it is an invitation to start a dialogue, rather than a direct exposition of a point of view. In being so exposed, you confess to your ambivalence, and admit to not having all of the answers. In many ways, the process of making art is a celebration of this. We are used to being goal-orientated in social science research and to strive for precision; there is little room for mess or mistakes, whereas art is often about playing, testing, and opening possibilities.

Related to this, making art came out in our discussion as an invitation to communicate. For some of our artists, the making process often began in a private realm, but it was being made with the public realm as its ultimate destination. The way that art is consumed is often a joint experience among the audience—for example, when music is performed, it is experienced collectively. One of Florence Devereux’s works involved her washing the feet of her audience (see below). In doing so, there is a connection made between the audience and the creator through the artistic process. Manoli Moriaty, a sound artist, also collaborates with a dancers and choreographers in his work.

Symbiosis - Manoli Moraity
Manoli Moriaty – Symbiosis

In each case, the collective experience was described as adding something—and often “tension”—to the work. I think, for this reason, it seemed that the art pieces themselves “exceeded the words” used to discuss them—and this would have consequences for those reading art as data for social science. Maybe the work itself is only half the story—a remnant.

Using and transforming codes

All of the art being made by the artists in our discussion to some extent relied on and also challenged codes. It is clear that we cannot escape codes—the meaning of words, phrases, and images are products of our situated knowledge. The symbol of the tea in Michelle Olivier’s Tea Map, and the symbol of feet-washing in Florence Devereux’s work, both speak to, and are drawn from, loaded and contested codes which have been developed in cultural contexts. The ideational and material resources available to artists cannot be free of those codes, but there is some agency—derived through the creative process—to subvert, ironise, or uphold them.

FloDevereux - feet washing
Florence Devereux – Feetwashing

It seemed through our discussion that this process of challenging codes is especially effective because of the potential of art to be “beautiful” or aesthetically amazing. This came through strongly in Michelle’s discussion of her piece, which refers to a racist limerick. She explained that expressing anger can be a way of shutting people down but “beautiful” art draws you in—the beauty of the piece makes you want to engage and to try to understand more. Being drawn towards it, rather than repelled from it, invites you to challenge the codes presented. In this way, perhaps art is equipped to “interrupt” understanding—something to think about in the age of academic impact and also in broader discussions around power and resistance.

Senses and sensations

Especially when discussing Manoli Moriaty’s work on sound, and also in my reflections on songwriting, the relationship between sense and affect came through strongly. Is hearing sound, with no semantic content attached to it, a pre-rational, pre-reflective form of knowing? And what happens when that sound is accompanied by the “readable content” in lyrics, as they often are in songwriting? Cathy Wilcock’s Go Golden is one example of how songwriting can be used as a form of expression.

These are recorded reflections on this exploratory discussion and there is more work to be done to link back to the original questions about what and how art can produce knowledge for the social sciences. In particular, in exploring the implications of the four key ways in which art is being used in social sciences.

The original article can be found here

Main image: Michelle Olivier – Tea Map

CW bwAbout the author: 

Cathy Wilcock is a postdoctoral researcher at the ISS, with a background in critical development studies. In her role at ISS, she is continuing her work on political belonging in the context of forced migration. In one project, which sits within the Vital Cities and Citizens project at EUR, she is looking at citizenship practices of migrants in home and host states.