Description
Recognising the ways in which knowledge production is shaped by colonial, racial, geopolitical, and cultural hierarchies is a critical point of departure to engage with International Relations (IR) and trespass its boundaries simultaneously. This is even more important when approaching traditionally 'over-reserached communities and societies'. However, the study of these societies, often undertaken by scholars from Global North institutions, has shed further light on the existing power imbalances in knowledge production and the violence that is reproduced in the process. In fact, the same could apply to scholars from the societies in question, who are based at Global North institutions.
In that context, this roundtable will reflect on different ways of unlearning knowledge extraction: facing global hierarchies, recognising non-dominant knowledges and practices, and acknowledging the intellectual authorship of those whose livelihoods we study. A group of scholars working on/with the Global East from within Global North institutions will discuss the broad question: what role, strategies, and possibilities to engage in decolonial knowledge production and knowledge cultivation can we pursue while acting from without the spaces that provide the impetus for our work? In engaging with this question, we explore different strategies in practising decoloniality and resisting power relations (re)produced by colonial and imperialist settlements. In so doing, we highlight the importance of taking into account not only the different social positionings of those whose lived experiences we examine, but also our own positionings, as subjects actively involved in the process of knowledge production. Hence, this roundtable brings decolonial approaches into a methodological, political, and reflexive discussion of IR.
