Back at the kitchen table: Reflections on decolonising and internationalising with the Global South socio-legal writing workshops

Abstract

It has been three years since we held the Feminism, Legality and Knowledge (FLaK) seminar to respond to our developing frustrations and excitement around feminist legal studies and academic publishing. In the wake of our 25th anniversary in 2018, we critically reflect further on our original intention to stock up on decolonising techniques to mix feminism, legality and knowledge whilst building on previous consideration of our self-proclaimed 'international' status. These reflections are prompted by editorial board members' experiences as participants in the Cardiff Law and Global Justice Centre's British Academy-funded Global South Socio-Legal Writing Workshops in Accra (Ghana), Nairobi (Kenya) and Recife (Brazil) in 2018. Following an explanation of the concerns with academic publishing that have prompted this reflection, we provide a narrative of our experiences in each of the three workshops exploring the lessons learned and their impact on our practice as editors and scholars in feminist legal studies. We finish with a renewal of our commitment to decolonise our minds and practices by continuing to struggle to earn the label 'international' for the journal now and in future. A brief introduction to the contents of this issue of FLS follows the reflection.

Open Access, Plan S and ‘Radically Liberatory’ Forms of Academic Freedom

“…Much more needs to be done to promote academic freedom for the global precariat of scholars without access to stable employment, and to ensure that scholars from outside the global North have a true and equal place as both producers and consumers of knowledge. The policy makers behind Plan S would be wise to learn from initiatives outside Europe that do foster a progressive and holistic vision for open access around the world, such as the Latin American experience described by Debat and Babini (2019) or the attempt by the Feminist Legal Studies editors to actively nurture a globally just publishing programme (Naqvi et al, 2019).…”

Editorial: Valuing housing in the normalised crises: Resistance, fatigue and lexicons of struggle

“…In this work of valuing the knowledges produced from marginalised sites of housing research and struggle, we recognise our role as editors in processes of exchange in academic currency and in the organisation and visibilization of the labour involved. Inspired by the reflections of the Feminist Legality & Knowledge seminars (Naqvi et al 2019), we start by addressing the 'occult economy' of publishing work. As a small gesture of gratitude, we have begun to publish the list of all RHJ peer-reviewers whose unremunerated work is absolutely central to the journal.…”

A Wench’s Guide to Surviving a ‘Global’ Pandemic Crisis: Feminist Publishing in a Time of COVID-19

“…The current paradigm, however, provides us with another opportunity to look at the mode of production operating in journal publishing, one that we at FLS are implicated in and have long been critical of (Fletcher et al 2016(Fletcher et al , 2017. Our insistence that academic publishing, and feminist publishing in particular, be seen as a political endeavour drives a lot of our editorial policies including an emphasis on the importance of Global South scholarship, employing decolonising techniques in our editorial practice, our involvement in the recent Global South writing workshops (Naqvi et al 2019) and our continuing support for early career researchers (ECRs), particularly those from marginalised or minoritised communities. 4 We remain troubled, however, by the insidious ambivalence of the neoliberal university as it lumbers on, undeterred and uninterested in the new lives we are all trying to adjust to.…”

“…In this editorial we think through some of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and state responses to the spread of the virus in the context of our ongoing efforts to employ decolonising techniques and deploy wench tactics (Fletcher et al 2017 ; Naqvi et al 2019 ). In doing so, we seek to make sense of our new lived realities, although in many ways, just this attempt to make sense of the effects on our existence is both bewildering and revealing.…”