Negotiating with the North: How Southern-tier intellectual workers deal with the global economy of knowledge

Abstract

This article examines a group of intellectual workers who occupy a peripheral but not powerless position in the global economy of knowledge. How do they handle relations with the global metropole, especially in new fields of research where established hierarchies are in question? Three new domains of knowledge – climate change, HIV/AIDS and gender studies – are studied through interviews with 70 active researchers in Southern-tier countries Brazil, South Africa and Australia. A pattern of extraversion, involving active adoption of paradigms from the metropole, is widespread and institutionally supported. Major alternative knowledge formations have not emerged in these domains. However contestations of more specific kinds are frequent. Paradigms are adapted, criticism is offered, activism is engaged, capacities are developed and allegiances sometimes changed. The valorization of local knowledge, which goes beyond the abstractions of universalized paradigms, is particularly significant. Not stark subordination, but a complex collective negotiation characterizes the response of intellectual workers in the Southern tier.

Analyzing Biographies of Foreign-born Academics in Slovakia: Why Highly Skilled Employees Decide to Choose a Peripheral Country

“…This is another circumstance showing that the global academic system uses peripheries instrumentally (see e.g. Connell et al 2017). International scholars visit the country, use its resources and then just move further without any obligation, and with a limited sense of belonging to a local academic world.…”

“…From this perspective, peripheral countries act as reservoirs of a cheap workforce. The hegemony of western academic systems has been thoroughly investigated in the context of original Wallersteinian ideas elsewhere (Alatas 2003;Rodriguez 2014;Connell et al 2017), so here it suffices to say that one epiphenomenon of "academic imperialism" is that non-central countries are understudied, even though they are successful enough to attract some scholars. This paper tries to fill the gap regarding academic employees outside of global academic centers.…”

Live streaming at international academic conferences: Cooling down the digital optimism

“…To what extent can we speak of one "global academic community"? The most obvious difference between global metropoles located in the Northern hemisphere and peripheries is old-fashioned geographical distance forcing scholars in the Global South to "participate at a distance" (Connell et al 2018). It is rather clear that the center of the world's research -due to financial expenditures -is in the US, Western Europe, and some Eastern Asian countries (Marginson 2008), while the other parts of the world constitute peripheries of global knowledge production (Rodriguez Medina 2014).…”

“…However, there are geopolitical superpowers such as the US, along with the UK, Germany, Switzerland, which are without a doubt academic centers. (2) the lack of interest of metropolitan institutions in the knowledge from non-metropolitan institutions, often theorized as "asymmetrical translation" ( Rodriguez Medina 2014), or "the claim of universality," "reading from the center," "gestures of exclusion," and "grand erasure" (Connell 2006;Connell et al 2018). The former benefit from their privileged position and export the outcomes of their research.…”

“…The latter, in turn, are doomed to be recipients of those "products" as their own research is not seen as innovative and competitive. In some cases, peripheries are just "laboratories" for Northern researchers, where the fieldwork is done, because the political and social reality of a periphery can be inspiring (Blagojević 2009: 76;Connell et al 2018; Ergin and Alkan 2019).…”