Decolonising higher education: creating space for Southern knowledge systems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i1.138Keywords:
decolonising higher education, sociologies of emergence, global South, epistemologies of the South, Southern theoryAbstract
The complexity and scale of the globe’s current environmental and social problems requires genuine dialogue between all the world’s diverse knowledge systems. At present, despite decades of postcolonial, Indigenous and feminist research, higher education remains dominated by Northern, scientific knowledge. Northern knowledge continues to claim universality across time and space in many academic disciplines and continues to ignore calls for what de Sousa Santos calls ‘epistemic justice’. If we are to generate genuinely democratic approaches to knowledge production in higher education, a great deal of work needs to be done to decolonise teaching, learning and research in higher education. Decolonising higher education involves creating space for Southern knowledge systems. In this paper, I draw upon postcolonial/decolonial theories and historical transcultural understandings of deep, slow, ancient time to make a case for the importance of creating space for Southern, transcultural and Indigenous knowledge systems. I illustrate that decolonisation requires both quiet and gentle reflection as well as deep listening and courageous radical action. Finally, I highlight instances of what de Sousa Santos terms the sociology of emergences, within doctoral education from the global South.
Key words:
decoloniing higher educaiton, sociologies of emergence, global South, epistomologies of the South, Southern theory
How to cite this article:
Manathunga, C. 2020. Decolonising higher education: creating space for Southern knowledge systems. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. v. 4, n. 1, p. 4-25. April 2020. Available at:
https://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=138
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Manathunga, C. 2011. Moments of transculturation and assimilation: post-colonial explorations of supervision and culture. Innovations in Education & Teaching International. 48(4): 367-376.
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Manathunga, C. 2018. Decolonising the curriculum: Southern interrogations of time, place and knowledge. SoTL in the South, 2(1): 95-111.
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Massey, D. 2005. For space. London: Sage Publications.
Matias, C. and Mackey, J. 2016. Breakin’down whiteness in antiracist teaching: introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. Urban Review. 48: 32-50.
Mbembe, A. 2016. Decolonising the university: new directions. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. 15(1): 29-45.
Nakata, M. 2006. Australian Indigenous Studies: a question of discipline. Australian Journal of Anthropology: 17(3): 265-275.
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Nepe, T. 1991. E hao nei e tenei reanga te toi huarewa tupuna: Kaupapa Ma¯ori, an educational
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Nyamnjoh, F. 2015. Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the currency of conviviality. Journal of Asian and African Studies. DOI: 10.1177/0021909615580867.
Nyamnjoh, F. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa.
Qi, J. 2015. Knowledge hierarchies in transnational education: staging dissensus. London: Routledge.
Rose, D. 1996. Nourishing terrains: Australian aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.
Sheehan, N. 2011. Indigenous knowledge and respectful design: an evidence-based approach. Design Issues. 27(4): 68-80.
Singh, M.; Manathunga, C.; Bunda, T. & Qi, J. 2016. Mobilising Indigenous and non-Western theoretic-linguistic knowledge in doctoral education. Knowledge Cultures. 4(1): 56-70.
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Zerubavel, E. 2003. Time maps: collective memory and the social shape of the past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Andreotti, V., Stein, S., Ahenakew, C. & Hunt, D. 2015. Mapping interpretations of decolonisation in the context of higher education. Decolonisation: Indigenity, Education and Society, 4 (1): 21-40.
Assié-Lumumba, N’D.T. 2006. Higher education in Africa: crises, reforms and transformations. Dakar: Codesria.
Atkinson, J. 2000. Trauma trails, recreating song lines: the transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia. Melbourne: Spinifex Press.
Banda, D. 2008. Education for all (EFA) and the African indigenous knowledge systems (AIKS): the case of the Chewa people of Zambia. Unpublished PhD thesis, Nottingham University, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Barcan, R. 2013. Academic life and labour in the new university. Surrey: Ashgate.
Bhattacharya, K. 2016. The vulnerable academic: personal narratives and strategies of de/colonializing of academic structures. Qualitative Inquiry. 22(5): 309-321.
Braudel, F. 1980. On history. Translated by S. Matthews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bunda, T.; Qi, J.; Manathunga, C. & Singh, M. 2017. Enhancing the Australian doctoral experience: Locating culture and identity at the centre. In A. Shahriar & G. Syed (eds.) Student identity and culture in higher education. London: IGI Global. 143-159.
Cakata, Z. 2019. Response to de Sousa Santos. Presentation in Johannesburg, October 2019.
Centro Interdisciplinario PROEIB Andes. 2020. Centro Interdisciplinario PROEIB Andes 2020. Available: http://www.proeibandes.org/. Accessed 2 April 2020.
Chakrabarty, D. 2007. Provincializing Europe. 2nd ed. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Chen, K.2010. Asia as method. Durham: Duke University Press.
Connell, R. 2019. The Good University: What universities actually do and why it’s time for radical change. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing.
Dados, N. & Connell, R. 2012. The ‘global South’. Context. 11(1): 12-13.
De Sousa Santos, B. 2012. The university at the crossroads. Human Architecture. 10(1): 7-36.
De Sousa Santos, B. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Boulder, USA: Paradigm Publishers.
De Sousa Santos, B. 2018. The end of the cognitive empire: the coming of age of epistemologies of the south. Durham: Duke University Press.
Devos, A. & Somerville, M. 2012. What constitutes doctoral knowledge? Australian Universities Review. 54(1): 47-54.
Escobar, A. 2007. Worlds and knowledge otherwise. Cultural Studies. 21(2-3): 179-210.
Ford, L. 2012. Reflecting on doctoral candidature experiences as an Indigenous Australian. In Denholm, C. & Evans,T. (eds.) Doctorates downunder. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. 145-152.
Grant, B. & McKinley, E. 2011. Colouring the pedagogy of doctoral supervision: Considering supervisor, student and knowledge through the lens of indigeneity. Innovations in Education and Teaching International. 48(4): 365-374.
Harding, S. 2004. (ed.) The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader. New York and London: Routledge.
Harding, S. 2011. (ed.) The postcolonial science and technology studies reader. Durham: Duke University Press.
Hobson, J. 2004. The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hountondji, P. 1996. African philosophy: myth and reality. 2nd edition. Translated by H. Evans. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Islam, M. and Banda, D. 2011. Cross-cultural social research with Indigenous Knowledge (IK): some dilemmas and lessons. Journal of Social Research and Policy. 3: 1-16.
Jackson, N. 2016. Review of Francis B. Nyamnjoh, #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa, Bamenda: Langaa, 2016. Antipode: a radical journal of geography, 8: 1-11.
Jansen, J. 2019. (ed.) Decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Keet, A. 2019. The plastic university: knowledge, disciplines and the decolonial turn. In Jansen, J. (ed.) Decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 202-216.
Kerfoot, C. & Hyltenstam, K. 2017. (eds.) Entangled discourses: South-North orders of visibility. Oxon: Routledge.
Khaldun, I. 1967. The Muqaddimah: an introduction to history. Translated by F. Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kitts, H. 2018. Speaking the unspeakable: the role of speech in a pedagogy of critical whiteness. Whiteness and Education. 3(1): 76-89.
Lange, L. 2019. The institutional curriculum, pedagogy and the decolonisation of the South African University. In Jansen, J. (ed.) Decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 79-99.
Luckett, K. & Naicker, V. 2016. Responding to misrecognition from a (post)/colonial university. Critical Studies in Education, DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2016.1234495
Lulat, Y.G-M. 2005. A history of African higher education from antiquity to the present. Westport: Praeger.
McLaughlin, J. & Whatman, S. (2011). The potential of critical race theory in decolonizing university curricula. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 31(4), 365-377.
Manathunga, C. 2007. Transcultural postgraduate supervision: ethnographic journeys of identity and power. In Palfreyman, D. & McBride, D. (eds). Learning and teaching across cultures in higher education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 93-113.
Manathunga, C. 2011. Moments of transculturation and assimilation: post-colonial explorations of supervision and culture. Innovations in Education & Teaching International. 48(4): 367-376.
Manathunga, C. 2014. Transcultural Postgraduate Supervision: reimaging time, place and knowledge. London: Routledge.
Manathunga, C. 2018. Decolonising the curriculum: Southern interrogations of time, place and knowledge. SoTL in the South, 2(1): 95-111.
Manathunga, C.; Bunda, T.; Qi, J. & Singh, M. (forthcoming). Indigenising the Higher Degree Research Space: Ampere tyerrtye-areye apurte-irrentye akngerre. Tyerrty-arey-ae antartaremele mwarre anetyeke. In K. Trimmer, D. Hoven and P. Keskitalo (eds). Indigenous postgraduate education: transcultural perspectives. Place: Publisher forthcoming.
Manathunga,C.; Qi, J; Bunda, T. and Singh, M. 2019. Time mapping: charting transcultural and First Nations histories and geographies in doctoral education. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of Education. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2019.1603140.
Massey, D. 1997. A global sense of place. In T. Barnes & D. Gregory (eds.) Reading human geography (pp. 315-323). London: Arnold.
Massey, D. 2005. For space. London: Sage Publications.
Matias, C. and Mackey, J. 2016. Breakin’down whiteness in antiracist teaching: introducing critical whiteness pedagogy. Urban Review. 48: 32-50.
Mbembe, A. 2016. Decolonising the university: new directions. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. 15(1): 29-45.
Nakata, M. 2006. Australian Indigenous Studies: a question of discipline. Australian Journal of Anthropology: 17(3): 265-275.
Nakata, M. 2007. The cultural interface. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 36: 7-14.
Nepe, T. 1991. E hao nei e tenei reanga te toi huarewa tupuna: Kaupapa Ma¯ori, an educational
intervention system. Unpublished MA Thesis, Education Department, University of Auckland, Australia.
Nunn, P. 2018. The edge of memory: ancient stories, oral traditions and the post-glacial world. London: Bloomsbury Sigma.
Nyamnjoh, F. 2015. Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the currency of conviviality. Journal of Asian and African Studies. DOI: 10.1177/0021909615580867.
Nyamnjoh, F. 2016. #RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa. Bamenda, Cameroon: Langaa.
Qi, J. 2015. Knowledge hierarchies in transnational education: staging dissensus. London: Routledge.
Rose, D. 1996. Nourishing terrains: Australian aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness. Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission.
Sheehan, N. 2011. Indigenous knowledge and respectful design: an evidence-based approach. Design Issues. 27(4): 68-80.
Singh, M.; Manathunga, C.; Bunda, T. & Qi, J. 2016. Mobilising Indigenous and non-Western theoretic-linguistic knowledge in doctoral education. Knowledge Cultures. 4(1): 56-70.
Smith, L.T. and Reid. P. 2000. Māori Research Development: Kaupapa Māori principles and practices – A literature review. Wellington: Te Puni Kokiri.
Soudien, C. 2019. Testing transgressive thinking: the ‘learning through enlargement’ initiative at UNISA. In Jansen, J. (ed.) Decolonisation in universities: the politics of knowledge. Johannesburg: Wits University Press. 136-154.
Steyn, M. 2005. “White talk”: white South Africans and the management of diasporic whiteness, in A López (ed.). Postcolonial whiteness: a critical reader on race and empire Albany: State University of New York Press. 119-136.
Ungunmerr-Baumann, M.R. 2002. Dadirri: inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. Available: http://www.miriamrosefoundation.org.au/about-dadirri/dadirri-film. Accessed 1 April 2020.
Whatahoro, H. 2011. Translated by S. P. Smith. The lore of the Whare-wānanga or teachings of the Māori College of Religion, Cosmogony and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zerubavel, E. 2003. Time maps: collective memory and the social shape of the past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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2020-04-28
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Manathunga, C. (2020). Decolonising higher education: creating space for Southern knowledge systems. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, 4(1), 4–25. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i1.138
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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