Decolonising spaces of knowledge production

Mpala research centre in Laikipia County, Kenya

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4922017
AutoresMark Griffiths (0000-0002-2284-4533, Newcastle University, autor correspondente), Fridah Mueni (Zoological Society of London (Kenya), Mtito Andei, Tsavo, Kenya), Kate Baker (0000-0003-2986-0584), Kate C Baker (0000-0002-5518-2994, University of Exeter), Surshti Patel (0000-0001-9419-8182, Zoological Society of London)
Ano2023
Volume6
Fascículo4
Páginas2340-2357
Data de publicação2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486231156728
OpenAlexW4320730534
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas2
Referências citadas50

In this article we discuss Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia County, Kenya as a distinctly colonial space. Drawing on historical materials, fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews, we build an account of British colonial expropriation of land, European and American modes of enclosure, and the development of a prominent site of knowledge production in the fields of ecology, conservation and evolutionary biology. Mpala is product and productive of colonial relations, ones where land use serves mainly Western interests in ways that sustain and entrench categories of coloniser/colonised. We support this claim by identifying three ways in which colonial legacies endure at Mpala in terms of (i) ontology, or the particular ways in which land is made landscape; (ii) race and the organisation of space and labour and (iii) silence (and silencing) as a mechanism that sustains colonial power relations. We further argue that turning to such a nameable site of contemporary academic extraction enables a shift from postcolonial critique to decolonial praxis. By naming Mpala in specific terms, the possibility of politics opens out from critical analysis towards a project of undoing the epistemological and material legacies of colonialism

Colonialism · Decolonization · Environmental ethics · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Sociology · Undoing · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law