Description
This paper addresses how the routine application of theories decoupled from the realities and epistemologies of global south context in framing global south research derail efforts to ensure equality, diversity, and inclusivity in international studies. This is against the backdrop that scholars instinctively advance or borrow theories elsewhere in interpreting and constructing meanings of data from international studies. Thus, I ask whose theories are being taught, frame research, contribute to, and are employed to interpret raw data from the global south? And how does this constitute gatekeeping in knowledge production? I employ data (course outlines for development of theories from six major universities in the global south and global north (the selection is based on the 2023 QS World University Rankings), and other extant data to address the questions. Employing course outlines is crucial because most foundational theories of traditional subjects such as Sociology, Economics and Psychology, found on the outlines are mainly Western theories and these outlines rarely acknowledge theories empirically grounded in the global south. Additionally, new researchers are often discouraged from theory construction from the contextual data they construct. Consequently, theories from the global south remain marginal in relation to other perspectives that frame research in international studies. The paper acknowledges and examine how this practice leads to the suppression of meaning in the interpretation of data, and the power relations and gatekeeping inherent in signposting new researchers to theories external to the context of their studies in reviews and assessment practices. It recommends that reviewers and accessors engage in reflexivity that recognizes and considers personal biases of theories that might stem from their situated knowledge when accessing research outputs. Such reflexivity should also re-imagine power relational dynamics in the accessor-accessed context that structures the adoption of theories. Institutions are also urged to encourage researchers to theorize themselves, formulating their own original theories from the insights, findings, and implications of their work in the global south whilst considering how theories from global south can be normalized into framing everyday research in international studies.
