Why contexts matter for decolonising IR knowledge production
Beverley Loke and Catherine Owen discuss the key points from their new Review of International Studies (RIS) article. You can read the full article on the RIS website - ‘A Contextual Approach to Decolonising IR: Interrogating Knowledge Production Hierarchies'
In our latest article, ‘A Contextual Approach to Decolonising IR: Interrogating Knowledge Production Hierarchies’ recently published in Review of International Studies (RIS), we mount a challenge to the tendency to see the decolonization of university research and teaching in terms of a ‘tool-kit’ of universally applicable practices. We show that different contexts enable different narratives, theories and concepts to become dominant and, consequently we must develop differentiated and context-specific strategies to address and dismantle them. To do this, we present a theorisation of the term ‘context’ and bring it into conversation with 30 research interviews, which we conducted with IR scholars based in 14 countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, drawing out six dominant contexts that shape scholars’ epistemic practices.
‘Context’ is a term that has not received much systematic treatment in the IR discipline to-date. It is frequently mentioned as important, but questions pertaining to what precisely it refers to, why it matters, and how it shapes knowledge production are often left unanswered. In our article, we define context in IR knowledge production ‘as a specific set of conditions that shape knowledge production practices and emerge from the interplay of positionality and structure’. Our article shows that paying attention to contexts allows us to develop more nuanced approaches to dismantling hierarchical structures of knowledge.
The six key contexts, which we theorized inductively through close readings of our interview transcripts alongside academic literature drawn from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, are: material, spatial, disciplinary, political, embodied, and temporal. Contexts can be challenging to typify as they emerge in potentially limitless spheres of activity; however, these six were the most frequently mentioned by our respondents. Our article theorises each in turn, illustrating them with quotes from our interviews, and showing how they interact with and layer upon one another, entrenching inequalities and reinforcing dominant knowledge hierarchies.
First, material context refers to the political economy of higher education and the (unequal) distribution of resources, not only at the transnational and subnational levels but also within the same institution. It frequently underpins other contexts described below and compounds their effects. This profoundly affects knowledge hierarchies at each spatial level: institutions often replicate knowledge practices of wealthy/Western institutions, and precariously employed academics are afraid to challenge entrenched knowledge while the capacity to be critical is often only afforded to those with tenure. In addition, reliance on funding calls may channel knowledge production into narrow or instrumental framings.
Second, spatial context refers to the way in which geographical lenses structure, delimit and border IR knowledge production. These socially produced lenses separate the ‘core’ from the ‘periphery’, the ‘West’ from the ‘non-West’, distributing and denying material resources accordingly. We draw out three ways in which scholars’ spatial context impacts knowledge production. The first is academic mobility, with scholars based in the Global South facing many more hurdles to attend international conferences; second, the international branch campuses established by Western universities in the non-West raise questions about the level of control over knowledge production by the founders; and third the spatial inequalities within states demonstrates the subnational dimensions of the flow of knowledge.
Third, disciplinary context refers to the structuring and organization of knowledge into recognizable conventions and standards. The disciplines to which IR scholars find themselves attached has consequences both for material support but also discursive freedom, since some disciplines are more heavily regulated – and consequently more ‘conservative’ – than others. For instance, if IR is housed within Political Science or Law, the disciplinary norm tends to be more mainstream, while if IR specialists are part of an Area Studies community, they may be afforded more critical space.
Fourth, political context refers to the way in which higher education is managed and regulated by the government in a given country, with academics based in democratic states generally facing fewer restrictions on their research and teaching than scholars based in authoritarian states. In some authoritarian contexts, the production of knowledge has become bound up with a nativist project to produce a ‘national school of thought’, which binds social science to state-building and allows scholars to address Western epistemological dominance without reflecting on marginalized voices in their own communities. However, higher education in democratic states is not free of political interference: the decision to neoliberalise higher education has tied the viability of entire academic subjects to the demands of the market.
Fifth, embodied context refers to the social meaning inscribed onto scholars’ bodies, often relating to gender, age and ethnicity. Related to decolonial and feminist approaches, embodied context most closely dovetails with ‘situated knowledge’, a concept which overlaps with ‘context’ more broadly. In the universities in the Global North, it is often ethnic minorities who remain longest on precarious contracts, while white scholars in Global South institutions are often granted material and symbolic privileges. Women continue to struggle against institutionalized discrimination across universities.
Finally, temporal context refers to the way in which time structures human experiences, for instance through historicising, predicting, evolution, linearity, stagnation, cycles, dynamism, or contingency. Whether one views time as bringing change or continuity is often dependent on one’s positionality: for instance, some may see the status quo as ushering in long-term stability, while others see it as stagnation. Respondents talked about generational differences between scholars and the importance of the ‘tenure clock’, both of which linked temporality with access to resources.
These six contexts do not appear in isolation; rather they appear alongside each other, interacting with each other and compounding their effects. We intend them to be used as a heuristic tool that can help us think in more complex ways about three aspects of knowledge production. First, sensitivity to contexts can help understand the complexities of situated knowledges and the differentiated dynamics of knowledge production experienced by scholars. Second, it can aid understanding of why decolonial approaches may gain traction in some locations and not in others, as the contextual environment may be more or less conducive to critical scholarship. And third, it can help us to identify and develop specific tools to help us think of more appropriate tools to address context-specific hierarchies and structures of domination.
Overall, our article makes two key contributions to on-going debates in IR theory. First, by advancing a deeper investigation into the role of contexts in the production of knowledge, it mounts a challenge to any universalising ontology of ‘the international’. And second, while the political project to decolonise IR requires the ability to see beyond one’s own context, it does not necessitate a singular decolonial ‘tool-kit’ or set of practices. Rather, decolonising IR as an emancipatory epistemic framework must be located within the context-specific environments of scholars. A global decolonial project is possible, and indeed necessary, but we must be wary of a universalising approach. Our article demonstrates that identifying the multiple contexts that shape knowledge production can serve as a starting point to identify, challenge and dismantle local epistemic hierarchies.
Want to know more ? You can read the full article at DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210524000639
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