Decolonizing Science: Where Have We Gotten To? - II

Abstract

The global trajectory of scientific innovations seems to be both interrupted and regenerated by the rise of the Rest. The ascent of China and India as serious contenders for global scientific leadership, thriving pockets of excellence in South America, and an emerging attentiveness to promoting pan-African research excellence, call into question the validity, authority and even relevance of a Western-dominated epistemic vision of what ‘good science’ is. A heightened and widened awareness to decolonise science among both the Global South and the Global North has led to genuine attempts at reshaping the production and delivery of knowledge. Yet such efforts and their impacts cannot be taken for granted. Some have argued that while the world is not flat, there is an observable trend of the ‘cosmopolitanization of science’, where stakeholders in the Global South capitalise on the concepts of risk and give rise to new ways of science governance. Others have cautioned against an intrinsic irony underlying ‘subaltern ethicality’, whose path to international recognition may re-enact existing hegemonic logic and reinforce scientific hegemony rather than decolonize it.

More importantly, we need to look not only outwards at the struggle of the previous marginalised Global South, but also inwards at how initiatives to break new grounds within the Global North meet resistance. We invoke Spivak’s classic question: To what extent can the Subaltern speak (and be heard) within existing scientific hegemony? What are the incentives and hinderances to decolonizing science in practice? How does this inform us about the organisation and governance of science for the public good?

Chair

• Joy Zhang, University of Kent

Individual Presentations

• Professionalisation of Science in Britain: Role of Indian Experience - Sneha Sinha, Jawaharlal Nehru University

• Social Studies of Science in a Brazilian Post-Graduate Program: The Many Dimensions of Subalternity - Maria Cristina de Oliveira Cardoso, UFRJ - HCTE; Claudia Santos Turco, HCTE-UFRJ / FIOCRUZ; Juliana Coutinho Oliveira, HCTE-UFRJ; Denise Cristina Alvares Oliveira, Federal University oh Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ; Eduardo Nazareth Paiva, EDUARDO NAZARETH PAIVA; Marcos Fialho Carvalho, UFRJ - HCTE; Flavia Ernesto de Oliveira da Silva Alves, Scholars; Ana Lúcia Faria da Costa Rodrigues, UFRJ/NCE

• Decolonising Knowledge from Within: The Case of UK Medical Cannabis - Michael Barr, Newcastle University

• In Terms of Czech and South Korean Search Engine Technologies: Revisiting Googlobalization from Indigenous Perspectives - Yoehan Oh, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

• Internationalizing Social Sciences: On Personal Bonds - Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Universidad de las Americas Puebla

Session Organizer

• Michael Barr, Newcastle University