Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2021.1911448
C. Adonis, F. Silinda
Apartheid left in its wake a South Africa characterized by social inequalities that are embedded and reflected in all spheres of social life, including the higher education system. While the post-apartheid government has made efforts to transform the higher education system it inherited, the pace has been slow and has fallen significantly short of what many regard as modest expectations. This paper interrogates why transformation has remained elusive in the higher education sector in post-apartheid South Africa, particularly with regards to the institutional culture at historically white universities (HWUs). Focusing on the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) campaign at the University of Cape Town (UCT), and Luister, a documentary film at the University of Stellenbosch, it employs critical race theory (CRT) as a conceptual framework and analytical tool. Using CRT identifies the centrality of racism in shaping the slow pace of transformation in general and concerning the institutional culture at HWUs in particular. The paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of this lack of transformation, particularly in a time where poverty is endemic and unemployment rampant.
种族隔离留下了一个以社会不平等为特征的南非，这种不平等嵌入并反映在社会生活的所有领域，包括高等教育系统。虽然后种族隔离时代的南非政府努力改革其继承的高等教育体系，但改革步伐缓慢，远远达不到许多人所期望的适度水平。本文探讨了后种族隔离时代的南非，高等教育部门的转型为何仍然难以捉摸，尤其是在传统白人大学(hwu)的制度文化方面。影片以开普敦大学(UCT)的Rhodes Must Fall (RMF)运动和Stellenbosch大学的纪录片《Luister》为重点，采用批判种族理论(CRT)作为概念框架和分析工具。使用CRT确定了种族主义在总体上形成缓慢转型的中心地位，特别是在hwu的机构文化方面。本文最后反思了这种缺乏转型的影响，特别是在一个贫困普遍存在、失业猖獗的时代。
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Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2021.1884106
Josh Platzky Miller
This paper offers an approach to understanding dramatic social change, entwined with belief revision and shifting knowledge. It explores the interplay between rapidly changing material and ideological conditions through the concept of a rupture. Ruptures are breakdowns in existing social and epistemic practices and relations: periods which call into question what is normalized, such that something else can grow through the cracks. Ruptures do not guarantee any particular replacement, but rather facilitate the emergence of new practices and understandings of the world. Ruptures thus create conditions of possibility for people to explore new social relations and ideas. To develop this idea, this paper draws on Franz Fanon's writings on the Algerian anti-colonial revolution (1954–1962), as a paradigmatic rupture, as well as two smaller-scale ruptures: the student-worker movements over 2015–2016 in South Africa (#FeesMustFall) and Brazil (the primavera secundarista). In their respective contexts, each movement has substantively challenged prevailing practices and understandings that had been hegemonic.
{"title":"A Fanonian theory of rupture: from Algerian decolonization to student movements in South Africa and Brazil","authors":"Josh Platzky Miller","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2021.1884106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1884106","url":null,"abstract":"This paper offers an approach to understanding dramatic social change, entwined with belief revision and shifting knowledge. It explores the interplay between rapidly changing material and ideological conditions through the concept of a rupture. Ruptures are breakdowns in existing social and epistemic practices and relations: periods which call into question what is normalized, such that something else can grow through the cracks. Ruptures do not guarantee any particular replacement, but rather facilitate the emergence of new practices and understandings of the world. Ruptures thus create conditions of possibility for people to explore new social relations and ideas. To develop this idea, this paper draws on Franz Fanon's writings on the Algerian anti-colonial revolution (1954–1962), as a paradigmatic rupture, as well as two smaller-scale ruptures: the student-worker movements over 2015–2016 in South Africa (#FeesMustFall) and Brazil (the primavera secundarista). In their respective contexts, each movement has substantively challenged prevailing practices and understandings that had been hegemonic.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":"10 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88943768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-02DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2021.1886136
Shahana Rasool, Linda Harms-Smith
Both students and scholars have identified the critical imperative to prioritize decolonization and pedagogical and curriculum transformation in South African higher education institutions. The ongoing context of coloniality, persistent race-based inequalities and hegemonic Western-centric epistemologies led to the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall protests by students at South African universities. As a result of the questions raised by students during these protests, the Department of Social Work at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) embarked on a process of working towards decoloniality in their social work programme. This paper describes the unfolding critical participatory action research process toward decoloniality undertaken by this department. Various theoretical perspectives, including communicative action, reflexivity and ‘decolonising the mind’ informed the process of decoloniality that began at the UJ Department of Social Work. The process of critical reflection, dialogue, analysis, development of methodologies and initial implementation of changes that were used in this department may offer useful insights for working towards decoloniality in other academic settings.
{"title":"Towards decoloniality in a social work programme: a process of dialogue, reflexivity, action and change","authors":"Shahana Rasool, Linda Harms-Smith","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2021.1886136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2021.1886136","url":null,"abstract":"Both students and scholars have identified the critical imperative to prioritize decolonization and pedagogical and curriculum transformation in South African higher education institutions. The ongoing context of coloniality, persistent race-based inequalities and hegemonic Western-centric epistemologies led to the Rhodes and Fees Must Fall protests by students at South African universities. As a result of the questions raised by students during these protests, the Department of Social Work at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) embarked on a process of working towards decoloniality in their social work programme. This paper describes the unfolding critical participatory action research process toward decoloniality undertaken by this department. Various theoretical perspectives, including communicative action, reflexivity and ‘decolonising the mind’ informed the process of decoloniality that began at the UJ Department of Social Work. The process of critical reflection, dialogue, analysis, development of methodologies and initial implementation of changes that were used in this department may offer useful insights for working towards decoloniality in other academic settings.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"47 10 1","pages":"56 - 72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80610308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-07DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1850303
Van Wijngaarden
The narrative of evolutionist modernity is a former scientific theory which has fuelled and legitimized deeply harmful imperialist hierarchies, but increasingly influences how Maasai make sense of modernity. Borrowing from narratology and building on twelve years of intermittent ethnography in East-African Maasailand, I respond to recent calls for cognitive justice. Firstly, I contribute to insight in how Maasai, as Indigenous Southern people, conceptualize key scientific concepts such as modernity, as to further the availability of their understandings as partners in the dialogue of theory building. I especially regard continuities and shifts in their uses of nature/culture and Culture/culture dichotomies. Secondly, I disclose, question and deconstruct the continued centralization of Eurocentric narratives and modernist assumptions in academic sense-making, as this unreflexively denies the gradual difference and continued entanglements of scientific, ex-scientific and non-scientific narratives, and the need to include Southern experiences and knowledges to make science a truly global knowledge system.
{"title":"Maasai perspectives on modernity: narratives of evolution, nature and culture","authors":"Van Wijngaarden","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1850303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1850303","url":null,"abstract":"The narrative of evolutionist modernity is a former scientific theory which has fuelled and legitimized deeply harmful imperialist hierarchies, but increasingly influences how Maasai make sense of modernity. Borrowing from narratology and building on twelve years of intermittent ethnography in East-African Maasailand, I respond to recent calls for cognitive justice. Firstly, I contribute to insight in how Maasai, as Indigenous Southern people, conceptualize key scientific concepts such as modernity, as to further the availability of their understandings as partners in the dialogue of theory building. I especially regard continuities and shifts in their uses of nature/culture and Culture/culture dichotomies. Secondly, I disclose, question and deconstruct the continued centralization of Eurocentric narratives and modernist assumptions in academic sense-making, as this unreflexively denies the gradual difference and continued entanglements of scientific, ex-scientific and non-scientific narratives, and the need to include Southern experiences and knowledges to make science a truly global knowledge system.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"197 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75121911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-04DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1850304
Kira Erwin
Making accessible research findings through forms of storytelling is a useful method for activist and public scholarship. This article explores these possibilities through a project on migration and gender in the city of Durban, in South Africa. The research project collected oral histories of migrant women’s experiences in the city, and, in collaboration with artists, wove these narratives into a theatre performance titled The Last Country. The Last Country used an anti-essentialist politics to complicate, disrupt and make messy exclusionary hegemonic narratives on migration and gender that circulated within the contemporary social fabric. Storytelling as a political act is made visible through a reflection on the storytelling processes in the project. Building a chorus of voices, not just in the stories performed but in the design, data collection and analysis stage of a research project, is a productive and critical method for developing storytelling as an intentional political act. Public storytelling, such as The Last Country, used counter-hegemonic narratives to disrupt, disarticulate and expand dominant storylines, so that we may reimagine anew alternative ways of seeing and being in the city.
{"title":"Storytelling as a political act: towards a politics of complexity and counter-hegemonic narratives","authors":"Kira Erwin","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1850304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1850304","url":null,"abstract":"Making accessible research findings through forms of storytelling is a useful method for activist and public scholarship. This article explores these possibilities through a project on migration and gender in the city of Durban, in South Africa. The research project collected oral histories of migrant women’s experiences in the city, and, in collaboration with artists, wove these narratives into a theatre performance titled The Last Country. The Last Country used an anti-essentialist politics to complicate, disrupt and make messy exclusionary hegemonic narratives on migration and gender that circulated within the contemporary social fabric. Storytelling as a political act is made visible through a reflection on the storytelling processes in the project. Building a chorus of voices, not just in the stories performed but in the design, data collection and analysis stage of a research project, is a productive and critical method for developing storytelling as an intentional political act. Public storytelling, such as The Last Country, used counter-hegemonic narratives to disrupt, disarticulate and expand dominant storylines, so that we may reimagine anew alternative ways of seeing and being in the city.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"87 1","pages":"237 - 252"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81209853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-17DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1810085
Garhe Osiebe
This paper centres on an alternative discourse of popular music culture in re-democratized Nigeria. Whereas much work has been done on state-minded protest music in Nigeria, studies have been reticent in appreciating the works of Fela's son, Femi; particularly within a framework of re-democratized Nigeria's equivalent of Fela's works which constituted a major alternative voice through military-ruled Nigeria. The paper is an attempt to make up this lacuna along the lines of Chris Atton’s 2006 alternative media theory. The analysis of the alternative media theory is complemented by an analysis of the texts of selected state-minded protest works from two crossover popular musicians – Blackface and Mr Raw – of re-democratized Nigeria, both of whose state-minded protest works have hitherto been unexplored by the academe.
{"title":"The alternative theory of state-minded protest texts in the music of democratic Nigeria","authors":"Garhe Osiebe","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1810085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1810085","url":null,"abstract":"This paper centres on an alternative discourse of popular music culture in re-democratized Nigeria. Whereas much work has been done on state-minded protest music in Nigeria, studies have been reticent in appreciating the works of Fela's son, Femi; particularly within a framework of re-democratized Nigeria's equivalent of Fela's works which constituted a major alternative voice through military-ruled Nigeria. The paper is an attempt to make up this lacuna along the lines of Chris Atton’s 2006 alternative media theory. The analysis of the alternative media theory is complemented by an analysis of the texts of selected state-minded protest works from two crossover popular musicians – Blackface and Mr Raw – of re-democratized Nigeria, both of whose state-minded protest works have hitherto been unexplored by the academe.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"213 1","pages":"216 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83610127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1810086
A. Okech
Decolonization as a pathway to transforming higher education institutions in the United Kingdom has led to quick fixes such as ‘diversity’ hires and reviewing syllabi thus sidestepping the fundamental structural deficits that demand these efforts. The Eurocentricism that continues to shape knowledge production and transfer processes sits at the heart of demands for decolonization. Therefore, decolonization projects require an attentiveness to how power travels within universities as sites that are argued to be arbiters of knowledge production. This article examines how decolonization projects in universities in the United Kingdom and South Africa ignore the invisible labour and penalties that accompany this work by illustrating the wider constellations of gender and racialized power operating within them. I draw on the experiences of feminist academics to offer emancipatory teaching praxis emerging from African feminist epistemic communities to rethink decolonization projects.
{"title":"African feminist epistemic communities and decoloniality","authors":"A. Okech","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1810086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1810086","url":null,"abstract":"Decolonization as a pathway to transforming higher education institutions in the United Kingdom has led to quick fixes such as ‘diversity’ hires and reviewing syllabi thus sidestepping the fundamental structural deficits that demand these efforts. The Eurocentricism that continues to shape knowledge production and transfer processes sits at the heart of demands for decolonization. Therefore, decolonization projects require an attentiveness to how power travels within universities as sites that are argued to be arbiters of knowledge production. This article examines how decolonization projects in universities in the United Kingdom and South Africa ignore the invisible labour and penalties that accompany this work by illustrating the wider constellations of gender and racialized power operating within them. I draw on the experiences of feminist academics to offer emancipatory teaching praxis emerging from African feminist epistemic communities to rethink decolonization projects.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"9 1","pages":"313 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80210068","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1788961
E. Sungusia, J. Lund, Y. Ngaga
Colonialism is in the past, yet its legacy lingers on. The widespread reliance across many post-colonial nations on scientific forestry principles that originate in 18th century Central Europe is an example of this. In this paper, we examine why these scientific forestry principles from a colonial past have persisted until the present, despite their demonstrated failures and contradictions when applied in contexts of complex socio-ecologies comprised by species-diverse multiple-use forests. We argue that the persistence is explained partly by how forestry curriculum and pedagogy tend to preserve, rather than disrupt, the core tenets of scientific forestry. We base this argument on a study of the forestry education at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania. Through curriculum review, observations, interviews, and personal experiences, we examine the forestry education curriculum and pedagogy. We find that the curriculum is characterized by an overwhelming flow of readings and an absence of contrasting ideas to the scientific forestry paradigm, and teaching and exam forms emphasise rote learning over reflection. These features of the education impart on students a scientific forestry habitus by, among other things, suppressing other forms of knowledge and limiting the scope for curiosity and critical questioning of the curriculum. In sum, the forestry education amounts to symbolic violence by imposing on foresters one particular way of thinking and doing forestry and enabling misrecognition of the violence wrought by the practices based on this imposed way of doing forestry. We end by outlining some central tenets of an alternative to scientific forestry and call for an urgently needed process of decolonizing the forestry academy in Tanzania and beyond.
{"title":"Decolonizing forestry: overcoming the symbolic violence of forestry education in Tanzania","authors":"E. Sungusia, J. Lund, Y. Ngaga","doi":"10.1080/21681392.2020.1788961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1788961","url":null,"abstract":"Colonialism is in the past, yet its legacy lingers on. The widespread reliance across many post-colonial nations on scientific forestry principles that originate in 18th century Central Europe is an example of this. In this paper, we examine why these scientific forestry principles from a colonial past have persisted until the present, despite their demonstrated failures and contradictions when applied in contexts of complex socio-ecologies comprised by species-diverse multiple-use forests. We argue that the persistence is explained partly by how forestry curriculum and pedagogy tend to preserve, rather than disrupt, the core tenets of scientific forestry. We base this argument on a study of the forestry education at the Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania. Through curriculum review, observations, interviews, and personal experiences, we examine the forestry education curriculum and pedagogy. We find that the curriculum is characterized by an overwhelming flow of readings and an absence of contrasting ideas to the scientific forestry paradigm, and teaching and exam forms emphasise rote learning over reflection. These features of the education impart on students a scientific forestry habitus by, among other things, suppressing other forms of knowledge and limiting the scope for curiosity and critical questioning of the curriculum. In sum, the forestry education amounts to symbolic violence by imposing on foresters one particular way of thinking and doing forestry and enabling misrecognition of the violence wrought by the practices based on this imposed way of doing forestry. We end by outlining some central tenets of an alternative to scientific forestry and call for an urgently needed process of decolonizing the forestry academy in Tanzania and beyond.","PeriodicalId":37966,"journal":{"name":"Critical African Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"354 - 371"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74171635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1813413
S. Kessi, Zoe Marks, Elelwani L. Ramugondo
In this introduction to the special issue on decolonizing African Studies, we discuss some of the epicolonial dynamics that characterize much of higher education and knowledge production in, of, with, and for Africa. Decolonizing, we argue, is best understood as a verb that entails a political and normative ethic and practice of resistance and intentional undoing – unlearning and dismantling unjust practices, assumptions, and institutions – as well as persistent positive action to create and build alternative spaces and ways of knowing. We present four dimesions of decolonizing work: structural, epistemic, personal, and relational, which are entangled and equally necessary. We offer the Black Academic Caucus at the University of Cape Town as an example of how these dimensions can come to life, and introduce the contributions in this special issue (the first of a two-part series) that illuminate other sites and dimensions of decolonizing.
在这篇关于非殖民化非洲研究特刊的导论中，我们讨论了一些具有非洲高等教育和知识生产特征的经济殖民动态。我们认为，去殖民化最好被理解为一个动词，它需要一种政治和规范的伦理，以及抵抗和有意消除的实践——摒弃和拆除不公正的做法、假设和制度——以及持续的积极行动，以创造和建立替代空间和认识方式。我们提出了去殖民化工作的四个维度:结构、认知、个人和关系，它们相互纠缠，同样必要。我们以开普敦大学(University of Cape Town)的黑人学术核心小组(Black Academic Caucus)为例，说明这些维度是如何实现的，并介绍本期特刊(两部分系列的第一期)中的贡献，这些贡献阐明了非殖民化的其他地点和维度。
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Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/21681392.2020.1788400
J. Ssentongo
Research and publication are some of the practices that define university work and therefore are part and parcel of the key considerations for promoting university-based academics. Whereas this promotion standard is widely appreciated in view of the importance of knowledge production, it raises several questions about the subtexts of its practice and their implications for publication in Africa. Through an empirical qualitative study of two Ugandan universities, this paper examines how promotion policies shape publication outlet choices and Africa-based publication initiatives. I show that promotion processes in Ugandan universities are driven by complex quality checks that are sometimes characterized by rationalized malice against individual academics in settling personal scores and biases against publications from African outlets. With the partial aid of theories of (post)coloniality and Southern theory, I explain the root of Afro-pessimistic biases in promotion criteria and argue that both the genuine quality checks and other neo-colonial biases incentivise publishing in the West and lead scholars to avoid African options. This exacerbates the already challenging circumstances of African publishers, limits local access to marketplaces of knowledge, and shrinks space for epistemic pluralism.
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