Challenges and Paradoxes in Decolonising HCI: A Critical Discussion

Abstract

The preponderance of Western methods, practices, standards, and classifications in the manner in which new technology-related knowledge is created and globalised has led to calls for more inclusive approaches to design. A decolonisation project is concerned with how researchers might contribute to dismantling and re-envisioning existing power relations, resisting past biases, and balancing Western heavy influences in technology design by foregrounding the authentic voices of the indigenous people in the entire design process. We examine how the establishment of local Global South HCI communities (AfriCHI and ArabHCI) has led to the enactment of decolonisation practices. Specifically, we seek to uncover how decolonisation is perceived in the AfriCHI and ArabHCI communities as well as the extent to which both communities are engaged with the idea of decolonisation without necessarily using the term. We drew from the relevant literature, our own outsider/insider lived experiences, and the communities’ responses to an online anonymised survey to highlight three problematic but interrelated practical paradoxes: a terminology, an ethical, and a micro-colonisation paradox. We argue that these paradoxes expose the dilemmas faced by local non-Western researchers as they pursue decolonisation thinking. This article offers a blended perspective on the decolonisation debate in HCI, CSCW, and the practice-based CSCW scholarly communities and invites researchers to examine their research work using a decolonisation lens.

Research on Older Persons’ Access and Use of Technology in the Arab Region: Critical Overview and Future Directions

“…We also invite more innovative approaches to engaging with families that are the least intrusive, participatory, and navigate the social concerns particular to Arab Muslim cultures. This is in line with current global trends in human-centered interaction research that advocate for a more inclusive approach to design and the call for decolonization of the applied participatory research methods [40,44,45].…”

“…By 'decolonizing' research methods, we aim to promote the necessity of serious consideration of the interplay between who, where, to whom, and how research methods or approaches are not developed or adapted to the target end users or research participants. Previous research has shown that research methods in aging and HCI are not culturally universal, and that it is necessary to adapt methods or even develop new methods when conducting fieldwork with older persons in the Arab region [9,40].…”

Conceptualization and practices in digital health: voices from Africa

“…Guidance for the former is set in a variety of local, national and other structures, and includes so-called traditional structures. However, language dominance and enshrined Eurocentric institutionalisation, social practices and philosophies on practices, especially in the sciences, obscure Southern voices 9 , 139 .…”

A Critical Review of Mobile Learning: Phoenix, Fossil, Zombie or …..?

“…This not only espouses mobility and connectedness as the defining characteristics of our world and its societies but currently also lacks any significant learning dimension [73,74]. Other kindred and complementary communities are those advocates of critical pedagogies with digital interests [75,76], and researchers in the m4d, ICT4D [77] and HCI4D communities [78,79] with interests in learning and decolonisation [80,81], perhaps decolonising the curriculum, perhaps decolonising research methods. This resonates with our desire to see a mobile learning paradigm that makes no Eurocentric or Northern assumptions, and recognises the unique and universal place of mobile digital technologies, a counterbalance to the schools, state education systems and scaled corporate digital learning that are the strongholds of the established 'mobile learning' paradigm.…”