Methodology and academic extractivism: the neo-colonialism of the British university

Cruz, Melany; Luke, Darcy

doi:10.1080/23802014.2020.1798275

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…The swelling plasticity of models of extractivism has not gone without internal critique. As the conceptual extensions of work on extractivism are increasingly capacious (Cruz & Luke, 2020; Murrey et al, 2023), there are risks of extractivism becoming a metaphor for every process of removal and value‐making through exploitation – thus, losing some of its critical edge as a precise language for demystifying the specific processes, relations and logics it effects through place‐based (yet globally scaled) techniques. Within the environmental humanities, Szeman and Wenzel (2021), for example, have recently called for further probing of the analytic and political significance of the concept, raising the question of ‘what is lost and what is gained by taking such an expansive view of extraction and extractivism’.…”

Section: Decolonial and Black Geographies Against Extractivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Framing our collaboration as a South–South polylogue 2 within Black and decolonial geographies, we hope to provide insights on distinct, directed and specific conceptual widenings of extractivisms. It is vital that this broadened lens of extractivism does not de‐politicise the stakes and struggles within extractive paradigms, and that our academic practices do not mirror (through epistemic violence and knowledge imperialism) the very tactics and acts of extractive confiscation, amputation and dehumanisation that we critique (Cruz & Luke, 2020). A persistent emphasis on the material, concrete and tangible effects and consequences of extractivisms – that is, how the processes, logics, ideologies and relations of extractivism can recast ecosystems, bodies, lands, labours and more (Caretta et al, 2020) – helps to ensure the concept does not become figuratively empty and abstracted in politically/analytically debilitating ways.…”

Section: Decolonial and Black Geographies Against Extractivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extraction is not a metaphor: Decolonial and Black Geographies against the gendered and embodied violence of extractive logics

Murrey

Mollett

2023

Trans Inst British Geog

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We are witnessing a proliferation of new critical scholarship on the manifold forms of extractivism. Yet, there are risks associated with extraction being rendered a broad metaphor for innumerable forms of removal and value‐making through exploitation and misappropriation. Theorising within decolonial Black feminisms, we respond to the metaphorization of extraction by (re)asserting the need for persistent analysis on the material and embodied effects and consequences of extractivisms. That is, the specific processes, logics, ideologies, and relations of extractivism recast lands, labours, ecosystems, and bodies, and particularly the bodies of women of colour. This helps to ensure the concept does not become figuratively empty and abstracted in politically and analytically debilitating ways. Drawing on more than a decade of research with three communities entangled within and targeted through extractivism along the Chad–Cameroon Oil Pipeline and the extractive‐tourist coastline of Panama, we mobilise a conception of 'extractive logics' to refer to the unnamed, unquestioned, often contradictory, foundational epistemic frameworks that permit the seemingly‐permanent structures and relations of removal, destruction, and dehumanization. We analyse documents from the Chad–Cameroon oil consortium, which projected and then calculated the economic ‘costs’ of the pipeline's triggering of an increase in rates of HIV/AIDS in adjacent towns and cities, alongside the entanglement of capitalist extraction with the medical neglect of Black labourers in Panama. Doing so demystefies the ways that racial and gendered violence are sanctioned (and even premeditated) within extractive logics. We hope that this work challenges some of the methodological nationalism so common within extractive scholarship, and brings extractive processes across disparate South–South and black geographies into conversation, activating a cross‐fertilisation of research across otherwise distinct geographies and geographical refrains. We reflect on the imperatives for and (im)possibilities of decolonial research against extractivism.

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Section: Decolonial and Black Geographies Against Extractivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Decolonial and Black Geographies Against Extractivismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction is not a metaphor: Decolonial and Black Geographies against the gendered and embodied violence of extractive logics

Murrey

Mollett

2023

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…As Tuck and Yang (2012) articulated as "settler moves to innocence," the appropriation of decolonization in this reductionist lens serves to "relieve the settler[s] of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power…without having to change much at all" (p. 10). Our missing the point inside the colonial seats of power that we are situated within also makes us ignore the ongoing challenges in former colonial States in their actual decolonizing work within the bounds of education (Bhambra et al, 2018;Kester et al, 2021;Mahabeer, 2020) while also avoiding the academic extractivism of forms of research in neocolonial universities of the former colonizing force (Bhambra et al, 2018;Cruz & Luke, 2020). By no means am I suggesting that the idea of "decolonizing" a curriculum, course, and syllabus are settled bad teaching from those instructors outside the United States, but I am saying that the context of colonialism, anticolonialism, and thus actual decolonialization in postcolonialism is lost to us in the common form of reductionist appropriation.…”

Section: Unpacking Transgressively Dismantled Antiracist Decolonizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Monsters

Mowatt

2022

JoSoTL

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Instructors have critically sought ways to embody the theories and ideals espoused in radical texts and work to better force changes in the type of students we produce. What is presented here is an honest reflective dialogue, based on a reflexive critique of 17 years as a professor and the students I have encountered. But more importantly, this is also based on an equal set of years studying the aftereffects of White supremacy, the “candy wrapper” left on the ground at a campsite that informs someone was present, insinuates what may have been done, and eludes a sense of disregard while foreclosing any understanding of what it will go on to do next. Those candy wrappers are the “mild” subjects of the legacy of lynching, colonialism, and state-sanctioned violence. So, in the context of being a faculty member engaged with students, I pose a question to you, for us, from me: What if instead of “transgressing” White supremacy, we are in fact maintaining it? Many of us in higher education have come to an understanding that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is insufficient for college teaching and student learning to positively move forward through the 21st century. If we are to understand White supremacy not as a societal add-on that has corrupted the world around us but instead as the actual world around us, how do we properly contextualize this in a course or class? How do we foster experiences that deepen an understanding of a systemic reality? This essay challenges reductionist understandings of White supremacy as a matter of privilege that are reflected in DEI, culturally responsive teaching, dismantling, antiracist, invisible-knapsack-based approaches. Could it be that through this reduction we are instead producing “monsters”?

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“…These include the rise of new forms of 'epistemic injustice' by more privileged academics who exploit, appropriate and repackage indigenous knowledge to advance their own careers (Ndofirepi and Gwaravanda, 2019). Cruz and Luke (2020) highlight the gap between theory and practice leading to academic extraction. The structural power imbalances also show up in recognition and reward for those groups outside the academy that co-produce knowledge (Morreira et al, 2020).…”

Section: Conductmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonising the curriculum beyond the surge: Conceptualisation, positionality and conduct

Moghli¹,

Kadiwal²

2021

London Review of Education

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In recent years, there has been increased interest in, and work towards, decolonising the curriculum in higher education institutions in the UK. There are various initiatives to review university syllabuses and identify alternative literature. However, there is an increasing risk of turning ‘decolonisation’ into a buzz term tied to a trend. We fear that decolonisation within academia is becoming an empty term, diluted and depoliticised, allowing for superficial representations that fail to address racial, political and socio-economic intersectionalities. In this article, we examine several initiatives to decolonise the curriculum with a focus on the field of education as a discipline and medium. Based on our analysis, we engage with three main themes: conceptualisation, positionality and conduct. The article concludes that decolonisation cannot happen in a vacuum, or as an aim disconnected from the rest of the structure of the university, which leads to diluting a wider movement and turns into a box-ticking exercise. We argue that there needs to be a deconstruction of asymmetrical power relationships within academic spaces to allow for meaningful decolonisation in practice. This requires a real political will, a change in the structure, and in the hearts and minds of those in decision-making positions, and a shift in the practices of knowledge production.

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Methodology and academic extractivism: the neo-colonialism of the British university

Cited by 12 publications

References 14 publications

Extraction is not a metaphor: Decolonial and Black Geographies against the gendered and embodied violence of extractive logics

Extraction is not a metaphor: Decolonial and Black Geographies against the gendered and embodied violence of extractive logics

Making Monsters

Decolonising the curriculum beyond the surge: Conceptualisation, positionality and conduct

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