Aasim Sheikh discusses the IGDC PGR students webinar in February 2024 where they discussed decolonial research in a digital age.
With an agenda to promote conviviality within research, post-graduate researchers in Global Development at York have organised a seminar series, Breaking Disciplinary Barriers: Towards Interdisciplinary Horizons. Dr Hameed Chughtai, senior lecturer from Lancaster University Management School, was invited to present his recent work on ‘Doing Interdisciplinary Decolonial Research in a Digital Age’
Facets of, and evasions from, Decolonial thought
Different facets of decolonial thought were emphasised throughout the seminar. This included Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s idea of decoloniality which focuses on recovering, healing and reclaiming erased knowledges and promoting Indigenous knowledges; and Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò who differentiates between ‘decolonisation1’ (political and economic, standing for self-governance and former colonies having their futures under their own direction); and ‘decolonisation2’ (epistemological, referring to residual cultural and ideational colonial influence). This latter akin to the decolonial historical epistemic lens proposed in Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s book chapter, ‘Rethinking Development in the Age of Global Coloniality’. Tuck & Yang’s seminal 2012 paper was cited to highlight decolonial evasions, such as the easy adoption of decolonisation “as a metaphor” in universities and scholarly discourses, instead of considering restitution of land and rights and knowledge to the Indigenous population as central aims of any decolonisation project.
The White Gaze in policy research tools and generative artificial intelligence
While qualitative researchers are trained to ‘see things’, Linda Tuhwai Smith suggests they must be wary of what bell hooks refers to as the ‘white gaze’, or interpreting an oppressed situation from the view of the oppressor. This can be especially pertinent in terms of policy decisions. Policy tools carry traces of values, which sometimes exude colonialism, racist ideology, or unconscious biases. They may be used by academics and policymakers of oppressed populations, exacerbating injustices. Chughtai drew on the example of the water shut-off policy decisions in the US during the Covid-19 pandemic to illustrate this issue. Water shut-offs for defaults on utility bills were still imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic in low-income communities in fifteen Republican States in the US. This situation owed itself to policy positions that did not consider the conditions and concerns of those communities. Reflecting on Dell et al.’s study of marginalised people’s preferential responses to the use of digital artefacts provided by foreign researchers, it was apparent that the ‘white gaze’ is a problem not exclusive to Western white researchers.
Regarding more modern digital tools such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), Chughtai discussed his concerns over their misuse by students and professionals who may not account for the complexity of qualitative data and the limitations of using AI to analyse qualitative data. This includes racial biases in these tools, developed through centuries worth of innovations. According to Davison et al., “generative-AI based analysis can contribute to the colonisation or marginalisation of other modes of knowledge, cultures, or values, by privileging a certain perspective on the data analysis process.” As the discussion of Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933) illustrates, this is not a new problem. Tanizaki suggests that, if the pen had been invented in Ancient Japan, it would have had different characteristics and been accompanied by a distinct type of paper, reflecting the needs of those writing in Japanese script – and so promoting contemporary Japanese thoughts over those set down in Roman Script. This insight extends to understanding underlying values in technology – Stroustrup (1994) for example alludes to his decisions in designing C++, an object oriented computer programming language, rooted in Kierkegaard’s passionate concern for individual decision-making autonomy.
A potential interdisciplinary agenda
Chughtai put forward his perspective on a potential interdisciplinary agenda for researchers:
- He calls for researchers to examine colonial differences in physical, digital or virtual space. This is because many digital technologies are frequently developed in the west, but are used radically differently in postcolonial contexts.
- Researchers must also explore the problems related to epistemic responsibility, which involves being accountable to the evidence. Here ‘evidence’ is understood as relationally constituted (and digitally mediated) between the researcher and those researched.
- Next, researchers should take a pluriversal view and perform epistemic delinking in their work. This would involve thinking from within the local knowledge horizon and adopting border thinking strategies.
Finally, he calls to extend Linda Tuhiwahi Smith’s broader questions in interdisciplinary contexts:
- for whom is this study (or technology) worthy and relevant? Who says so?
- to whom is the researcher (and their artefacts) accountable?
Reflections from discussants
The discussion session was led by Dr. Judith Krauss, Lecturer in Politics, and Luqman Muraina, PhD researcher at the Department of Politics and International Relations.
Judith Krauss reflected on whether interdisciplinary investigation is more fruitful than transdisciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches, given the IGDC PGR collective’s commitment to interdisciplinarity. She argued that disciplines themselves are a colonial idea, citing Gurminder Bhambra and Robbie Shilliam who identified the inherent colonial mindset of some disciplines. Various authors including Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Francis Nyamnjoh, Achille Mbembe, Walter Mignolo, and Catherine Walsh have argued for overcoming disciplines. Krauss asked us to consider whether we must work within disciplines or work across them as a pragmatic approach, or get rid of them altogether.
While reflecting on the call to turn thinking into decolonial action in the university context, Krauss offered a number of challenges: how should we apply decolonisation or decoloniality to the actions that we take, given the various perspectives including ‘decolonisation2’ as conceived by Taiwo, the recovery and reclaiming of Tuhiwai Smith, or Nelson Maldonado-Torres’s decoloniality of overcoming mindsets. In referring to Tuck & Yang and the risk of ‘decolonisation’ becoming meaningless words without action, she asks us to propose how cooptation can be prevented in universities. Reflecting on research practice, she asked the audience to consider the relationship between epistemic responsibility, good research practice, and decoloniality – and whether these are entirely different, overlap, or are subsets.
Krauss also noted that both technology and academia bear values in their design, but also hold cross-reinforcing biases surrounding the subjective concepts of ‘knowledge’, ‘technology’, ‘innovation’ or ‘knowledge holders’. Andrea Jimenez and Stevienna de Saille at the University of Sheffield have worked on how ideas of ‘innovation’ and ‘technology’ can perpetuate colonial ideas and are, for example, not welcoming of low-cost, grassroots, collective innovation, that innovation is premised on commercial viability, being patentable, and/or there being wealthy end users. With respect to our own actions, how can we stop these biases from reinforcing each other?
Luqman Muraina asked to what extent can a true decolonial, interdisciplinary university be created in the context of neoliberal, 21st-century education and research policy environments. For PhD students in particular, how can we go beyond interdisciplinary research to collaborative and convivial PhD studies? Could we imagine group-oriented PhD programs in the social sciences and active partnerships with communities?
Furthermore, Muraina asked how we can move beyond ideas of collaboration and partnerships with the Global South, to true knowledge exchange of languages and Indigenous understandings with local communities, characterised by attribution and co-authorship. What funding models can we formulate theoretically, construct mediums and institutions for, and use in practice, to take into account social justice and decolonial arguments?