Abstract:As the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) has moved toward more inclusive perspectives, the use of decolonial frameworks has increased rapidly. However, TPC scholarship designed using decolonial frameworks lacks a clear, centralized definition and may overgeneralize and/or marginalize Indigenous concerns. Using a corpus analysis of TPC texts, we assess the ways that the field uses "decolonial" and propose a centralized definition of "decolonial" that focuses on rematriation of Indigenous l… Show more
“…In adopting this perspective, I slightly depart from Indigenous scholars who treat the repatriation of land as the primary goal of decolonization (see Tuck & Yang, 2012). Literacy scholars who adopt the latter orientation argue that decolonial writing should focus on writing about land and gaining the community's sovereignty against settlers (see Itchuaqiyaq & Matheson, 2021). However, others come with a different positionality in communities, which have pushed back the settlers and gained political independence.…”
This article discusses how academic writing pedagogies for multilingual students can be transformed by the literacy traditions that these students bring to North American classrooms. This is an embodied and personal rendition, situated in the author's South Asian literacies as illustrative of Global South traditions, and draws from his own empirical research and teaching practices for writing instructors in TESOL. Informed by developments in decolonization, the article highlights the principles of embodiment and relationality as significant for Indigenous and Southern communities, and contrasts them with texts being treated as autonomous and instrumental in the European tradition. It reviews the different pedagogical models in the disciplinary field of “L1 composition,” which also influence academic programs labeled as “L2 composition,” to demonstrate how recent revisions to accommodate social and material influences are still influenced by Eurocentric epistemological values of logocentrism, cognitivism, and individualism. After reporting from the author's study of scientific research writing to illustrate how its entextualization demonstrates the distributed practice of diverse social networks, material resources, and semiotic repertoires across expansive space and time, the article recommends an ecological writing pedagogy that draws from situated learning and embodied apprenticeship as practiced by Southern communities. (Translations of abstract in https://www.iris‐database.org/details/rV5zj‐95Z8L).
“…In adopting this perspective, I slightly depart from Indigenous scholars who treat the repatriation of land as the primary goal of decolonization (see Tuck & Yang, 2012). Literacy scholars who adopt the latter orientation argue that decolonial writing should focus on writing about land and gaining the community's sovereignty against settlers (see Itchuaqiyaq & Matheson, 2021). However, others come with a different positionality in communities, which have pushed back the settlers and gained political independence.…”
This article discusses how academic writing pedagogies for multilingual students can be transformed by the literacy traditions that these students bring to North American classrooms. This is an embodied and personal rendition, situated in the author's South Asian literacies as illustrative of Global South traditions, and draws from his own empirical research and teaching practices for writing instructors in TESOL. Informed by developments in decolonization, the article highlights the principles of embodiment and relationality as significant for Indigenous and Southern communities, and contrasts them with texts being treated as autonomous and instrumental in the European tradition. It reviews the different pedagogical models in the disciplinary field of “L1 composition,” which also influence academic programs labeled as “L2 composition,” to demonstrate how recent revisions to accommodate social and material influences are still influenced by Eurocentric epistemological values of logocentrism, cognitivism, and individualism. After reporting from the author's study of scientific research writing to illustrate how its entextualization demonstrates the distributed practice of diverse social networks, material resources, and semiotic repertoires across expansive space and time, the article recommends an ecological writing pedagogy that draws from situated learning and embodied apprenticeship as practiced by Southern communities. (Translations of abstract in https://www.iris‐database.org/details/rV5zj‐95Z8L).
“…It will take extensive systemic action within and beyond academia to even begin to address epistemic and environmental injustice, but academia is well positioned to take big and small steps toward more ethical research practices. While we heed the caution about not using the term decolonisation as a metaphor to broadly describe changes we wish to see in academia and society (Itchuaqiyaq & Matheson, 2021;Tuck & Yang, 2012), for example, decolonising research, we do join calls for academic institutions to pay urgent attention to the production and distribution of scientific knowledge in and about the Caribbean. We echo Chaudhury and Colla's (2021) charge to researchers to actively work toward decolonising their institutions by expanding their understanding of the history of their disciplines and knowledge production within those disciplines so that they can 'begin the process of rooting out white supremacy from epistemologies and methodologies' (p. 2).…”
“…(p. 1420)It will take extensive systemic action within and beyond academia to even begin to address epistemic and environmental injustice, but academia is well positioned to take big and small steps toward more ethical research practices. While we heed the caution about not using the term decolonisation as a metaphor to broadly describe changes we wish to see in academia and society (Itchuaqiyaq & Matheson, 2021; Tuck & Yang, 2012), for example, decolonising research, we do join calls for academic institutions to pay urgent attention to the production and distribution of scientific knowledge in and about the Caribbean.…”
Researchers from institutions of higher education who conduct studies in the Caribbean often rely on local knowledge and support to produce scientific publications that could inform resource management. However, such research remains largely inaccessible to local communities because of the proprietary nature of the current knowledge ecosystem in academia. This commentary proposes knowledge repatriation as a means of advancing decolonial research efforts within higher education. First, we highlight the intersecting features of epistemic and environmental (in)justice with examples from the Caribbean context and discuss how knowledge repatriation efforts can counter extant environmental and epistemological exploitative practices. Second, we identify how academic institutions are specially positioned to challenge traditional research practices and advance knowledge repatriation. Third, we explore one example of how knowledge repatriation can unfold within a Caribbean context and some related challenges.
“…When non-marginalized researchers study marginalized communities, they must be very critical of their own standpoints and their position within the 'colonial matrix of power' (Quijano, 2007). 5 I follow the suggestion made by the community-engaged researcher Caroline Lenette, namely, that '[d]ecolonial research must start by addressing power differences to avoid reproducing colonial relations where the interests of western institutions and researchers are prioritized above the interests of multiply 3 When referring to processes in which researchers 'actively decenter the Western academy as the exclusive locus of authorizing power that defines research agenda' (Mutua & Swadener 2004: 4), many scholars speak of 'decolonial frameworks', 'decolonial frames', or the 'decolonial option' (see Rogers and Swadener, 1999, Itchuaqiyaq and Matheson, 2021, Lenette, 2022, or Mignolo, 2008. 4 Following Maurice Stierl, I use this notation to counteract the equation of Europe and the EU and not to reduce the EU-European project to EU institutions.…”
Section: Collaborative Research Practices In Forced Migration Studiesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…However, it is important to remember that the interests and resources of researchers and research partners may not be the same. This said, it is important that we should always evaluate the appropriateness of a decolonial frame for our work (see Itchuaqiyaq and Matheson, 2021), and if it does not have any significant benefits to marginalized stakeholders and communities (in the case discussed here, to refugees), then maybe we should place it inside another ideological frame that links to feminism, social justice, anticolonialism, critical race theory, de-canonization, or de-Eurocentrization.…”
Section: Lessons and Hopes In Working Towards Decolonizing Knowledge ...mentioning
A critical engagement with representation, positionality, and power inequalities has become increasingly common in research and publication projects in the field of forced migration studies. Indeed, the field has drawn on decolonial frameworks to move towards more inclusive perspectives. Nevertheless, the challenge in decolonizing knowledge production is to consider the rich spectrum of knowledges and knowledge production, while remaining aware of complexities and tensions, to avoid further marginalizing already-marginalized actors. This article stimulates a discussion that critically reflects on the structures and power relations in which collaboration processes form. I draw on forms of collaboration applied in my research, primarily co-authorships with refugee research partners, to reflect on methodological challenges and questions of legitimacy, from positions of hegemonic academic knowledge production. An epistemic decolonization through collaborative knowledge production can only occur if researchers practise emancipatory and ethical scholarship that revalues marginalized actors’ perspectives and agendas, while also actively decentring the western hegemonic academy.
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