Decolonise science

April 5, 2018 6:42 AM

Decolonise science – time to end another imperial era. An article in the Conversation by Rohan Deb Roy.
posted by tavegyl (16 comments total)

७
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:50 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

Before knee-jerking against this (I know I almost did), worth reading the entire FA.
posted by lalochezia at 7:30 AM on April 5, 2018 [1 favorite]

And break with hallowed MeFi tradition?
posted by Sangermaine at 8:13 AM on April 5, 2018

It seems like the view that "science is the product of white European men" is more a gross distortion of the history of science than of the science itself.
posted by SPrintF at 8:20 AM on April 5, 2018

I have no problem with correcting the historical narrative or their being other ways of knowing. Or even other those other ways of knowing calling themselves science. All I ask is clear labelling so I know what I'm consuming (right, anti-GMO folks?). Don't want to be using "other-ways-of-knowing" science when the recipe calls for "empiric" science.
posted by fraxil at 9:58 AM on April 5, 2018

Setting out such a not just Western centric but Anglo-centric view of science is something of a straw man - at least it certainly isn't helping "decolonize science."

If you're going to have a painting of a bunch of guys in turbans representing non-Western science, maybe you could at least mention Ibn al-Haytham/Alhazen? Western science has a very long history before the age of colonialism. The implicit claim that "Western" civilization is the same as "white" civilization is honestly handing white supremacists an unneeded victory when the intellectual roots run heavily through the Muslim world into Greece and ancient Egypt.

It is definitely worth investigating how colonialism and imperialism have influenced science and research. But science is a broad array of disciplines. Those will have different relations with imperial power. A lot of focus here is on British medicine, and maybe the article would have done better just to explicitly focus on that as an example. Because that's going to have a lot of distinct problems from how militarism has driven development in chemistry and physics.

I mean there is a lot to think about, but this article, to me, doesn't really do a good job of getting at it. And I also feel like, there's a layer of separation between actual scientists and scientific institutions and the people on the street who are looking to decolonize science, in that their perceptions are mediated through a popular view of science, which is not perhaps the most accurate. And part of that inaccuracy is shaped by the glamor of science being used as propaganda to advance imperial interests. And that is even yet another layer besides how actual science and scientists have been affected by a legacy of imperialism.
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:01 AM on April 5, 2018 [9 favorites]

Aw yeah I bet this guy who has a doctorate in the history of science, every intro class to which is the history of Greek philosophy and its uptake through Islam and western Christianity, definitely hasn't heard of Alhazen, sure thing, man.
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 11:08 AM on April 5, 2018 [4 favorites]

The fact that he presumably knows that his strawman doesn't stand up to scrutiny doesn't make it better. Someone with his background probably should have anticipated that critique, so to not address it is... odd.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:11 PM on April 5, 2018

I thought this point was particularly important:

Various well-meaning efforts to bridge this gap have struggled to go beyond the legacies of colonialism. For example, scientific collaboration between countries can be a fruitful way of sharing skills and knowledge, and learning from the intellectual insights of one another. But when an economically weaker part of the world collaborates almost exclusively with very strong scientific partners, it can take the form of dependence, if not subordination. A 2009 study showed that about 80% of Central Africa’s research papers were produced with collaborators based outside the region. With the exception of Rwanda, each of the African countries principally collaborated with its former coloniser. As a result, these dominant collaborators shaped scientific work in the region. They prioritised research on immediate local health-related issues, particularly infectious and tropical diseases, rather than encouraging local scientists to also pursue the fuller range of topics pursued in the West. In the case of Cameroon, local scientists’ most common role was in collecting data and fieldwork while foreign collaborators shouldered a significant amount of the analytical science. This echoed a 2003 study of international collaborations in at least 48 developing countries that suggested local scientists too often carried out “fieldwork in their own country for the foreign researchers”. In the same study, 60% to 70% of the scientists based in developed countries did not acknowledge their collaborators in poorer countries as co-authors in their papers. This is despite the fact they later claimed in the survey that the papers were the result of close collaborations.

My science is field-work based, and by necessity it's almost entirely based in the "global south." It's currently mostly produced by American and European scientists, sometimes with local collaborators, sometimes with local field assistants. In Cote d'Ivoire, there are really very few requirements for collaboration and so I didn't work closely with Ivorian scientists; there are also very few labs in the country to do the sorts of analyses I am interested in, so we export a lot of samples and it's very easy to do. In Indonesia, the permit process is expensive and bureaucratic and a real hassle - but Indonesian scientists and labs are deeply embedded in the research process and have much more power to control who does what parts of the science, and who receives the credit for it. I enjoyed working in Cote d'Ivoire much more, but the experience in Indonesia makes me want to work much harder to involve and credit Ivorians (and Ivorian women in particular) in my science.
posted by ChuraChura at 12:31 PM on April 5, 2018 [4 favorites]

This is a collection of incendiary hooks tied to a milquetoast conclusion.

For example, instead of the parochial understanding of science as the work of lone geniuses, we could insist on a more cosmopolitan model. This would recognise how different networks of people have often worked together in scientific projects and the cultural exchanges that helped them – even if those exchanges were unequal and exploitative.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:45 PM on April 5, 2018

Yeah, well. Those looking for a more nuanced (and well-documented!) POV on the topic might want to have a look at the PDF (linked to in Roy's article) links titled Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. This is the (28pp) introduction to a book by Kapil Raj. (Worldcat details)
posted by Twang at 7:17 PM on April 5, 2018

Apparently I read a different article than SPrintF, fraxil, Zalzidrax, Kadin2048, Sebmojo, et. al.
posted by eviemath at 2:04 AM on April 6, 2018

The article I read, for example, talks about "modern Western science" starting from the colonial era:

But science at this time was more than just a practical or ideological tool when it came to empire. Since its birth around the same time as Europeans began conquering other parts of the world, modern Western science was inextricably entangled with colonialism, especially British imperialism. And the legacy of that colonialism still pervades science today.

It goes on to call for the not-very radical proposal of "remov[ing] the inequalities promoted by modern science while making sure its huge potential benefits work for everyone".

As a result, recent years have seen an increasing number of calls to “decolonise science”, even going so far as to advocate scrapping the practice and findings of modern science altogether. Tackling the lingering influence of colonialism in science is much needed. But there are also dangers that the more extreme attempts to do so could play into the hands of religious fundamentalists and ultra-nationalists. We must find a way to remove the inequalities promoted by modern science while making sure its huge potential benefits work for everyone, instead of letting it become a tool for oppression.

And all this within the first section/six paragraphs!

The article I read talks about the earlier, longer history of science a bit later on, but acknowledges that the actual history of science already includes much more diversity than the modern Western science whose intertwining with colonialism is the main topic of the article.

But if scientists and historians are serious about “decolonising science” in this way, they need to do much more to present the culturally diverse and global origins of science to a wider, non-specialist audience. For example, we need to make sure this decolonised story of the development of science makes its way into schools.

An example of this history is illustrated with an image of possibly Arabic or Persian scientists working away and sciencey things pre-1800s. It should be noted, however, that since the article that I read focused on modern, colonial- and post-colonial-era science, it used "Western" in the modern sense, which is a socio-political definition that excludes the Middle East and is kind of shakey on including some regions that are technically European even. Turkey, for example, is usually considered more Middle Eastern than Western in the modern, socio-political usage of "Western". Anywhere in Africa, including Mediterranean northern Africa, is usually excluded from the definition of "Western". Indigenous cultures in North and (especially) South America are also typically excluded from the socio-political category of "Western."

In other words, it's not the linked article that set up a straw man here.
posted by eviemath at 4:17 AM on April 6, 2018

And Sebmojo, your comment is an incendiary hook tied to... absolutely nothing, as near as I can tell. What even are you talking about? Is it that you find the suggestion that we recognize networks more than lone geniuses in science incendiary? Or is that the conclusion (which is, well, one of a number of co-equal recommendations, not a conclusion of the article per se) that you find milquetoast? (Which, I mean, it seems like a pretty straightforward and shouldn't-be-controversial proposal to me as well, I guess.) In which case, what is it that you find "incendiary" about the article? It's all pretty standard and not exactly obscure history - stuff I learned about in university almost 20 years ago. Colonialism sucked, that's true, and reading about how it sucked can sometimes make me feel angry, but this article didn't even describe any of the most terrible parts of colonialism. The article also doesn't get into any of the epistemological critiques of science eg. from feminist philosophy of science, and in fact describes other epistemological critiques of science as potentially "dangerous". In that sense, it perhaps skews too milquetoast overall for an article that attempts to critique. I'm really not seeing the "incendiary" parts.
posted by eviemath at 4:28 AM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

"With the exception of Rwanda, each of the African countries principally collaborated with its former coloniser. As a result, these dominant collaborators shaped scientific work in the region. They prioritised research on immediate local health-related issues, particularly infectious and tropical diseases, rather than encouraging local scientists to also pursue the fuller range of topics pursued in the West."

I think there is a really big thing here being left unsaid. With the notable exception of countries like Egypt and South Africa where a lot of high quality science does get done on local dimes, it is for the most part various kinds of money from each of the specific former colonizers paying the bills for science in Africa. There is precious little governmental support for the researchers in Nigeria, DR Congo, and Kenya that I collaborate with. I definitely don't want to discount the role of structural racism in the individual interactions between western researchers and their African counterparts in creating exploitative relationships, and its something that I see and think about a lot. However, until national economies develop to the point where African researchers can be hired by and spend African money, all we'll really be talking about is making the western priorities that come with western money less overtly shitty.

In my own work I have tried to be careful to be a resource for the growing community of bacteriophage researchers in Africa, for sequencing and annotating phages isolated in Africa, rather than using them as a resource. As the article alludes to, it is structurally really easy in a lot of ways to fall into dynamics where what should be made to be an academic collaboration simply becomes a fee for service when one party has all the money and especially when there isn't affiliation with academic institutions.
posted by Blasdelb at 1:46 PM on April 6, 2018

Incidentally, the phages I am sequencing and annotating are being isolated through the framework of a project that I think is kind of relevant here, Phages for Global Health. Given that the vast majority of bacteriophage researchers working on this technique as a way to address antimicrobial resistance are in the western world, but more than 90% of deaths from antibiotic resistance will be in Africa and Asia, the goal is to build up phage expertise and product pipelines in Africa.
posted by Blasdelb at 12:33 AM on April 7, 2018