Epistemic injustice in geography. A commentary on Patricia Daley and Amber Murrey's ‘Defiant scholarship

Dismantling coloniality in contemporary African geographies’

Bibliographic Data

ID20153639
AuthorsMaano Ramutsindela (0000-0003-0918-5892, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science University of Cape Town South Africa, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume43
Issue2
Pages186-190
Publication date2022-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/sjtg.12426
OpenAlexW4229029684
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited18

The ongoing debate on the politics of knowledge, especially the dominance of Eurocentric epistemology at the expense of indigenous knowledge systems reveals multiple ways in which knowledge production takes place in universities, and how it is institutionalized. There is consensus among critical scholars of higher education that the European origins of the African university have implications for the project of decolonizing the university in Africa (Ndofirepi, 2014; Jansen, 2019). As knowledge production is always motivated, there is a need to uncover the interests and ideological foundations on which geographic scholarship is anchored and how they are defended by an epistemic community. Such a community would naturally seek to reproduce itself through various strategies. Hence, we witness the division of labour in the form of the knower and the collector of data, the theorist and the exampled, and the producer and consumer of knowledge. This categorization points to a broader process of epistemic injustice, which downgrades certain groups of people ‘in respect of their status as an epistemic subject’ (Frickler, 2017). Epistemic injustice manifests in various forms, including hermeneutical marginalization by which ‘a socially disadvantaged group is blocked ... from access to knowledge, or access to communicating knowledge’ (McKinnon, 2016: 441). It is worth pondering on Bhargava's (2013: 413) conception of epistemic injustice as ‘a form of cultural injustice that occurs when concepts and categories by which people understand themselves and their world is replaced or adversely affected by the concepts and categories of the colonisers’. Current work on decoloniality exposes this injustice but I would argue that it has not gone far enough in mapping possibilities for and forms of epistemic justice in geography. Daley and Murrey's (2022) paper adds to the critique of the coloniality of geographic knowledge and offers a starting point for working towards decolonial ‘African geographies’. Three important points in the paper drew my attention. The first is the notion of ‘African geographies’ and the assumptions underlying it. The second relates to the idea of defiant scholarship and its relation to other concepts and critiques in human geography and social science more broadly. The third point is on the relationships between African universities and geographic scholarship and curriculum. The concept of ‘geographies’ needs careful consideration because its meaning is derived from its use, and it has no clear boundaries. It is used to reflect on the plurality of geographic (sub)fields and inclusivity of perspectives, to expand the scope of geographic inquiry, to insert (human) geography to the wider social science, and to challenge conceptions and the content of geography. Non-geographers (in terms of disciplinary training) sometime use it to invite geographers to their conversation. At times, its use signals uncertainty about where to place the subject matter for scientific validation. It also shows creativity in capturing themes and experiences across disciplinary boundaries. ‘African geographies’ is an interesting concept that touches on assumptions of our knowledge about Africa. We gather our knowledge of Africa based on the prior existence of a phenomenon called Africa (Macamo, 2016), which has been constructed through various instruments over centuries (Mudimbe, 1988). Macamo (2016: 325) argues that there is no such thing as knowledge of Africa and asks a pertinent question: ‘what is it that people are studying when they state that they are studying the geography, history, economy, politics, or even culture of Africa’. We need conceptual apparatus to recover the Africa that has been erased by colonial discourses, representations, and western epistemologies. In this context, ‘African geographies’ should be understood as a project by which we (re)constitute Africa as an object of geographic inquiry. How we undertake this process will shape the kinds of questions our research should address, and the curricular transformation required for teaching and communicating geographic knowledge. We need theories, concepts and methods for the project of ‘African geographies’ not least because knowledge production takes place in ‘the theoretical frameworks, conceptual categories and methodological procedures that form the basis for the conditions of possibility of any knowledge at all’ (Macamo, 2016: 324). There are good examples of how dominant theoretical frameworks have been challenged and alternatives provided. These include (re)theorising African urbanism and the structure of African cities (Davies, 1976; Mbembe & Nuttall, 2004; Pieterse, 2010). Obeng-Odoom (2021) argues for placing just land at the centre of theories of cities as commons and as a research methodology. Such a methodology aids our understanding of the African conception of land necessary for decolonizing nature and for working towards solving ecological crises. Returning to the concept of ‘African geographies’, we need clarity on how it relates to associated concepts such as Africanization and Afrocentrism, and also how it helps position geographic scholarship to contribute to African studies. I find the concept of defiant scholarship interesting in so far as it foregrounds African intellectuals and their commitment to social, political, and economic change. Daley and Murrey suggest that African geographers should tap into this historical tradition of defiant scholarship. That tradition provides geographers with intellectual tools for disrupting the coloniality of geography on the continent. Thus, a new African geographic scholarship should be founded on the work of African intellectuals and African experiences. After reading this concept carefully, I was left wondering what it adds in relation to traditions of critical or radical geography, or postcolonial geography (see Sidaway, 2000; Timar, 2004; Sidaway et al., 2014) or attempts to Africanize the geography curriculum (Ogden, 1982). The concept of defiant scholarship reads like an amalgam of critiques of the colonial matrix of power and its consequent epistemic violence. Earlier attempts at such an amalgam in geography appeared in the form of a critical imaginary when the journal ACME was established as an avenue for critical geographic scholarship with a critical praxis (Moss et al., 2002). What I find missing from the concept of defiant scholarship in the context of geography is a reflection on how geographers themselves have engaged with the critiques that Daley and Murrey raise. For example, human geographers have long critiqued the relationship between geography and empire (Godlewska & Smith, 1994), and the centrality of geography to colonial models of theft, subjugation, and hegemony (Blaut, 1993; Timar, 2004). The concept of African development through which African intellectuals exposed colonialism has been used by one of Africa's leading geographers, Akin Mabogunje (1980) to critique the development process and to demonstrate how it unfolds in an African context. It would be helpful to systematically examine the extent to which the work of radical African intellectuals might have influenced geographic thinking as a starting point towards uncovering the histories and trajectories of geographic scholarship on the continent. The authors could engage with the limitations of a critical geographic scholarship. Has this scholarship remained embedded in coloniality, and if so, how? What are the limits of postcolonial geography for the emergence of ‘African geographies’ being proposed? These questions are important for grounding the project of ‘African geographies’ within the wider field of geography. Daley and Murrey remind us of the persistence of epistemic injustice that manifests in lack of recognition of African geographers in the field and within departments, in geographical societies, in the validation of knowledge through the politics of citations, and in the production of knowledge more generally. In the most recent conversation I had with co-authors of a proposed book chapter, I was intrigued by the comment that we should not include Africa in the title because it would not appeal to the global readership. We need to understand how African geographers participate in their own marginalization (Ramutsindela, 2007). Defiant scholarship points to the need to interrogate the relationships between universities and the geography programmes they offer(ed). It speaks to concerns with the colonial foundations of the university in Africa and the rise of neoliberalization as some of the major limitations for launching a progressive geography curriculum. But care is needed not to fall into the trap of overgeneralizing the university in Africa, based on examples from a few institutions. Universities in Africa have diverse histories and played dissimilar roles, some of which influenced geographic scholarship. For example, geographic inquiry in South Africa was influenced by universities that hosted geography departments, the responses of universities to the apartheid project, and their international networks (Maharaj & Ramutsindela, 2022). Before 1994, universities in South Africa were classified into three broad categories: English-speaking, Afrikaans-speaking, and Black (African, coloured and Indian). English-speaking universities were generally considered liberal and were critical of the apartheid state. Geography departments in some of these universities espoused this liberal tradition and developed a critical scholarship. However, in a democratic South Africa, the categories of universities became blurred, especially with mergers that resulted in incorporating some historically black institutions into historically white universities. This happened at universities such as the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, North-West and Pretoria. This process resulted in the relocation of geography departments, the merging of geography departments with related disciplines, and the spreading of geography programmes across or in different campuses of the same university. Regarding the geography curricula, the state-driven restructuring of institutions of higher learning led to some geography departments and associated research units refocusing their curricula to vocationally oriented programmes (Fairhurst et al., 2003). The process of decolonization in universities in democratic South Africa is uneven. Though student protests have been part of the broader anti-apartheid struggle in black universities, the decolonial project that gained momentum from the Rhodes Must Fall Movement in 2015 has its traction on historically white campuses. This unevenness points to different interpretations of colonial inheritances and conceptualizations of epistemic justice. The jury is still out on the extent to which the decolonial project could fundamentally transform the geography curricula in Africa. Daley and Murrey call for rethinking the curriculum for ‘African Geographies’ to address the sidelining and silencing of Africa and African geographers. The challenge remains to find appropriate curricula models for decolonizing geography and for resolving the epistemic tension between African and Eurocentric epistemologies. Mapping ‘African Geographies’ needs to confront the key question of whether the project involves adding African epistemological paradigms to Eurocentric frameworks, or rejecting all forms of Western knowledge, or re-centring African knowledge systems, or doing something else

Disadvantaged · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideology · Indigenous · Injustice · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Geography Education and Pedagogy · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Law · Philosophy · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access