The Problem of "Colonial Science"

July 2, 2020 9:21 AM

The Problem of ‘Colonial Science’ (Scientific American): "This was my first experience with "parachute science" or, as some might call it, "colonial science" -- the conservation model where researchers from the developed world come to countries like mine, do research and leave without any investment in human capacity or infrastructure. It creates a dependency on external expertise and cripples local conservation efforts. The work is driven by the outsiders' assumptions, motives and personal needs, leading to an unfavorable power imbalance between those from outside and those on the ground. [...] If we acknowledged that working anywhere other than our own home country is a privilege and not a right, and if we all looked to learn and share equally and were equally equipped to do research based on the needs on the ground, then we would be better off than we are right now."
posted by not_the_water (10 comments total)

It's interesting to see this play out in fields like marine biology and in particular to see something like COVID-19 come along and reveal whose projects have well-planned transnational partnerships. In the social sciences, Diane Lewis called out similar issues in 1973 and came to similar, influential conclusions about decolonizing anthropology and encouraging local research. Incidentally, Lewis was a member of the Caucus of Black Anthropologists and an activist scholar (see also her obituary).
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:22 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yes please! I am trying to figure out how to incorporate this perspective into shifting the ways I currently conduct my research. It is a thorny problem but so very important.
posted by ChuraChura at 10:43 AM on July 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Reminds me of the lack of Bryde's whale research in the US, in the Gulf of Mexico. there's just little to no research unless New Englanders or Marylanders come down, and they come down thinking that Pensacola is Cape Cod.
posted by eustatic at 10:45 AM on July 2, 2020

The book Green Phoneix tells the story of conservation/restoration/research activity at Guanacaste National Park in Costa Rica, which was driven by an American scientist who put complete focus in building community investment. When I briefly worked with him he told me many times how much of a better model it was to have longterm research conducted by people who lived in the area permanently than by rotating grad students dropping in for a few years.
posted by little onion at 11:15 AM on July 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I saw a lot of this when I was working in Kenya... Lots of locally trained stats phds being used for data entry supporting grad students from ivy league schools in the US, and it drove me crazy. The group I worked with was focused on math education - explicitly working to build capacity. Here's a number of thoughts, in no particular order.

* Local scientists will ask better questions and bring better context. They are the right people to propose projects.

* However, they often don't have access to the conference track in NorthAm/Europe (see 'local funding' below). As a result, they may be absent from and/or ignorant of the 'big' conversations going on in a particular area of study. These big conversations are often what drives funding and attention in the richer countries. (Though IMO they are often pure fads: nice stories you can tell in a grant application, with lots of other people telling a similar story, so it must be good, right?) As a result, the ideas of the local scientist - literally working on the periphery - are easily ignored.

* The Harvards of the world have the opposite problem. All of the access to the horse race, but none of the local context. ie, they can afford the parachutes.

* On the flip side, there is real value in the conference circuit, as well: the fads eventually get dropped, and over the fullness of time, clearer theory emerges. And the whole networking side... finding people with similar problems from far away and being able to talk to them, even if it's not the stuff on the cover of Nature. And building up a base of support for these problems in the long run.

* Meanwhile, in-country investment in science is typically abysmal... Investment comes in two ways: funding and time. The funding part is easy to see: governments don't send enough scientists to the conference track, or invest in students. The 'time' part is related, but worse. In research universities, you typically have time set aside for research. (which, yeah, costs money indirectly, because you have to hire more people to cover the teaching load). The Kenyans I worked with - even the ones known to be the best - were generally sidled with completely insane teaching loads, even during graduate school. Research grinds to a halt under the weight of it.

* Oh man, and then you get 'delayed blast colonial research,' where all of the worst problems come together... Senior researchers who were educated in the richer countries say 30-40 years ago, with phds in areas that are now the dead fads. And since they haven't had time to stay current, they end up advising grad students in areas that are basically dead and pointless.

I'm seeing the 'no time investment' problem very directly with some grad students I've been working with this last year.... They've got an awesome project, but struggle to fit together a few hours every couple weeks to work on it, because of the crushing teaching loads. And then generally lose their 'working memory' in the downtime, and kinda restart from scratch again and again. A two-week sprint would probably be worth the last six months, honestly, but getting that kind of dedicated time seems extremely difficult.

So there's problems on both sides here, though I would guess that scientists in richer countries have a lot more leverage to fix that end of the problem... We need to be really investing in the people we work with. Instead of just writing time for data entry into the grant proposal, write in additional time that the in-country researchers can use to advance their own projects (and away from teaching). Make sure there's funding set aside to bring people for conferences. Of course, when you step back, this really just means treating in-country researchers like peers and colleagues, rather than cheap academic labor.
posted by kaibutsu at 11:28 AM on July 2, 2020 [15 favorites]

little onion, I think you may have mean to link to this book by William Allen, also titled Green Phoenix.
posted by DSime at 11:29 AM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thank you, very correct, I did not mean the SFF book that opens the Latium trilogy. I got the link correct on the first draft!
posted by little onion at 12:48 PM on July 2, 2020

This is really interesting. I'm a physical scientist in the US who often travels to Latin American institutions with much more limited resources than mine. It's definitely parachute science. (But, it's also science that probably couldn't be funded locally and pays a good salary to at least a hand full of talented local scientists and engineers. . . which isn't ideal, but is something.) We've been trying to set up a sustainable, bi-directional, postdoc/senior-grad exchange program for years. I'm not sure that helps much either, but it would benefit at least a few individuals on both sides every year. I should probably work harder on trying to make that happen. And on trying to find other ways to collaborate more completely. Thanks for the post.
posted by eotvos at 12:50 PM on July 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

"I'm not sure that helps much either, but it would benefit at least a few individuals on both sides every year."

Seriously, every bit helps! If you get this running, you can tailor your selection process to pick people more likely to pay it forward to increase the impact. For example, maybe ask everyone in the group who they go to for help, and then pick (or give a lot more weight to) the person whose name comes up the most... It indicates that they're both smart and helpful.

When I was working on math camps for secondary students, we did a similar thing, asking the schools to send students with lots of friends, not just the ones with the highest scores. (Inevitably, we would get a bit of each.) We taught math through games, and would regularly find that the kids with lots of friends went home and taught the games to all of their classmates, and sometimes started math clubs, or got the community together to fund a new computer lab. (seriously, that happened, after we sent the kid home with a DVD of math software and they had no computer to use it with.)
posted by kaibutsu at 1:51 PM on July 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Regarding the conference circuit, covid times have actually helped this problem a bit; the international conference I was supposed to be at this week (in South Africa) was instead done virtually, which means many more attendees (I think about 3 or 4 times the normal amount) have been able to "go" and participate. One of the organizers mentioned that he'd love to see this continue into the future even once we are able to have conferences in person.

Although if we want to have even somewhat effective participation by remote attendees then both technology and attitudes will have to be developed to make that possible (Why, Zoom, do you not have a "wander around the cocktail party" option for breakout rooms? Networking has to be organic to be functional, it's one of the main benefits of conferences, and if it worked more smoothly in a virtual setting it could be used to increase access!). Future venues will have to prioritize integrating virtual attendees with physical ones.
posted by nat at 2:57 PM on July 3, 2020 [1 favorite]