Southern Theory Research Articles

Research without researchers: southern theory critique of research practices

Research without researchers: southern theory critique of research practices

Crip translingualism

Abstract Forms of immobility both limit unqualified human agency and enable diverse channels of mobility. In this sense, mobility and immobility work together. Certain philosophical movements such as Southern theories and disability studies treat constraints, sedentariness, and boundaries as needing to be respected and accommodated in any inquiry. This article draws from these schools to theorize disruptions and constraints as resources in the circulation of languages, texts, and meanings. To index this generative role of constraints in communication, I adopt the term “crip” from theorizations in disability studies. “Crip” invokes the paradoxical reality that while being crippled poses disruptions in mobility, this rupture also generates new knowledge and possibilities into the flow of life (McRuer, 2006). This article explains how crip translingualism would treat ruptures, constraints, and boundaries as resourceful for meaning making. This is a corrective to certain previous theorizations that have treated translingualism as based on unrestricted flows and fluidities, influenced by dominant orientations to mobility. I illustrate from a classroom literacy interaction where the ruptures posed by the heritage languages of multilingual students motivated everyone to adopt creative strategies to expand the meaning of “meaning,” redefine literacy as negotiated, and develop ethical dispositions to collaborate in communicating across language boundaries. I argue that the incomprehensions and vulnerabilities created by language diversity actually motivate everyone to develop strategies to creatively read and write. In this manner, constraints don’t stifle the text or students, but mobilize new flows of meanings and interactions.

Invisible innovation: Intellectual labour on regional university campuses in Australia

In Australia, regional university campuses occupy a geographically and institutionally peripheral position in a metrocentric higher education system. We argue that the concentration of research funding and capabilities at metropolitan campuses devalues the intellectual labour of academics working on regional university campuses. The authors use collaborative autoethnography to explore a common theme of ‘gap filling’, that is, mobilising scarce resources to create unique solutions for local issues, and draw on Southern Theory to theorise the implications for our work in the location-based power relations of the Australian knowledge production economy. In this context, we utilise Eversole's concept of ‘invisible innovation’ to theorise how the important place-based knowledge work associated with ‘gap filling’ on regional university campuses is rendered invisible by the metrocentric geopolitics of knowledge production within Australia. The research reveals that the place-based knowledge work of regional academics fills gaps in regional services and resources through innovations largely unrecognised within the higher education system.

How many Kirulapana Canals are there in Colombo? Reading everyday imageries and imaginations using southern theory

Urban imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations are always plural and illustrate the formation of knowledge hegemonies. In this article, we engage with the problematic of reading infrastructures with a southern theory lens. We explore multiple imaginations, imageries and conceptualizations of the Kirulapana Canal in Colombo via everyday practices. Analysing the geographical imaginations of the state officials and residents, we illustrate (i) how varied imageries draws from the same hegemonic register, and (ii) how this process reinforces and correspondingly in-turn constructs hegemonic imageries. Using these illustrations, this article will broaden the southern theory discussions via analysing the everyday formation of the metropolis (concentration of knowledge and power) and knowledge hegemony.

Latin America at the margins? Implications of the geographic and epistemic narrowing of ‘global’ health

ABSTRACT To explore the narrowing of the concept of ‘global’ in global health, this article traces how Latin America has held a place of both privilege and power as well as marginalisation in the field. We employ a modified extended case method to examine how Latin America has been ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ in understandings of global health, underscoring the region’s shifting role as a key site for research and practice in ‘tropical medicine’ from the mid-nineteenth century through World War II, to a major player and recipient of development assistance throughout the ‘international health’ era after World War II until the late twentieth century, to a region progressively marginalised within ‘global health’ since the mid-1980s/1990s. We argue that the progressive marginalisation of Latin America and Southern theory has not only hurt health equity and services, but also demonstrates the fundamental flaws in contemporary ‘global’ thinking. The narrowing of global health constitutes coloniality of power, with Northern institutions largely defining priority regions and epistemic approaches to health globally, thus impoverishing the field from the intellectual resources, political experience, and wisdom of Latin America’s long traditions of social medicine and collective health.

Southern theory, knowledge production and Russia’s war in Ukraine: An interview with Raewyn Connell

This is an interview with Raewyn Connell held through email in April 2023 and has been later updated in October 2023. It consists of the following three sections: ‘Southern Theory and Its Enemies’; ‘Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Global Field of Knowledge Production’; ‘The position of Russia in the North-South dichotomy’. It includes a variety of ideas, that is, southern theory, subaltern empire, Global East, post-socialist coloniality, sanctions, appropriation of anticolonial narratives by Putin, North and South in sociology, and so on. The main aim of the interview is to demonstrate how the ideas of Raewyn Connell relate to a current configuration of knowledge production in sociology, especially in the state of war and its possible influence on international sociology.

Linguistics in a Minor Key—Of Atmospheres, Voice(s), and Ethics

Abstract In this article, I reflect on the complexities of signification and suggest that the study of music allows us to push forward the radical project of dis-inventing language in applied linguistics (Makoni and Pennycook 2007). In thinking about language, music, and meaning, I focus on a song that has travelled around the globe and that has sounded the Black radical tradition: Aretha Franklin’s song Respect (1967). I explore the multiple significations of this song: the revolutionary atmosphere in which the song emerged and which it co-created, the voices that shape it, and the ethics that its words articulate. Throughout the text, I emphasize the importance of listening as a scholarly stance. Theoretically, the article draws on the ideas of minor theory (Deleuze and Guattari 1983) and disciplinary disobedience (Gordon 2014), two perspectives that are helpful when thinking about southern theory and decolonial scholarship. The aim is to see worlds in the grain of the voice (Barthes 1977), in the grain of a song, and to articulate expressive struggles.

Rethinking Pluriversal Theory in Globalization Research: Bringing Ontology In

Globalization is full of disjunctures and contradictions. Paradoxically, it is, on the one hand, a generalizing process and, on the other hand, associated with encounters and conflicts that accentuate, and even generate, multiplicities of difference. This article tracks developments in a broad set of approaches that have over the last few decades sought to deepen our understanding of these encounters and differences. These approaches can be collated under the notion of “pluriversal theory.” The first broad expression of this theoretical-activist movement, “pluriversal theory 1.0,” includes orientalism studies, southern theory, and the multiple modernities approach. This group of interventions suggests rightly that our gaze needs to shift from a singular Eurocentric viewpoint, but it is unable to account for the epistemological and ontological contestations that both ground the encounters and provide a means of acting otherwise. Pluriversal theory 2.0 moves to decenter both Europe and the global modernization process, while treating the disjunctures of global history as involving epistemological ruptures. Modern forms of knowing are treated as themselves colonizing. The Global South is described as not just a geographical or imperially generated place of difference but as region of diverse “ways of knowing.” Here, the nature of knowledge becomes analytically important, as does using comparative analysis of ways of knowing. This article builds upon the strengths of these earlier contributions to argue for what might be called pluriversal theory 3.0. This entails recognizing that “knowing” is only one of the many categories of being, and that disjunctures of ontological difference—“ways of being” or ontological formations in tension—are central to understanding processes of power and domination in our globalizing world.

Geography, pluriverse and ‘Southern Thought’: Engaging with decoloniality from the Mediterranean

This paper analyses the notion of Mediterranean ‘Southern Thought’ discussed by Italian philosopher Franco Cassano (1943–2021), through the lenses of critical geographical and geopolitical scholarship, drawing upon the concept of ‘costal indentation’ as addressed by one of its main interpreters, anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus (1830–1905). Southern Thought is increasingly associated with decolonial and post-development approaches, especially with notions such as degrowth, and the ‘pluriverse’. It is first and foremost understood as an anti-dogmatic philosophy that opposes all fanaticisms and narrow (political, cultural or ethnic) chauvinisms, including the dogmas of development, market, speed and productivity coming from (neo)colonial ‘Norths’ to foster pluralism and mutual listening. Connecting and putting into dialogue different strands of scholarship in critical geopolitics and decoloniality, I first contend that Southern Thought can help enlarging geographical notions of plural Souths to avoid essentialising any single notion of ‘Global South’, or ‘Southern Theory’, which would imply the risk of reproducing new dogmatisms. Then, I argue that Southern Thought can engage productively with geography, and especially with scholarship in critical geopolitics addressing global crises such as the migrant and refugees one, in learning from these plural ‘Souths’ (including Southern Europe and the Mediterranean) to find alternative models to that of the nation-state based on territorial sovereignty and bound to territorial ‘traps’.

Decolonising Disability in Contexts of Illiberalism and Social Abandonment: The Case for a Double-Edged Critique from the Postsocialist Margins

This paper explores the relevance of the decolonial approach for analyses of postsocialist disablement, taking as its test case the analytical tool of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’. The question we pose is how much decolonial critique can the analyses of postsocialist disablement embrace without becoming reactionary amidst growing illiberalism and social abandonment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? We provide an overview of postsocialist illiberalism, assess critically some central arguments in decolonial disability studies and outline the production of ‘southern bodies/minds’ as a key feature of social abandonment in CEE. We conclude that decolonising disability in the postsocialist region needs to go beyond the North versus South binary to account for the specific experiences of disabled people inhabiting the ‘poor North’. Given these considerations, the double-edged critique implied in the original formulation of the ‘postsocialist disability matrix’ as scepticism towards both the state and the market could also help embrace the decolonising imperative while remaining sceptical towards both Northern and Southern theory production in disability studies.

Towards critical translanguaging pedagogy – new ways of raising and answering questions from a Global South perspective

ABSTRACT The concept of translanguaging has disrupted the dominant discourses about bilingualism and bilingual education that are based on European and North American language ideologies. It has also enabled people to find alternative ways of thinking about and talking about bilingualism and bilingual education that make sense to them in their specific socio-political context. This is another important sense of translanguaging that the studies in this special collection aim to promote. This commentary highlights the intrinsic connections between translanguaging as a practical theory of language and Southern Theory or Southern theorisation, both of which advocate a practice-theory-practice approach and the need to attend to the socio-political particularities of the individuals and the communities that are being studied.

Coloniality and the State: Race, Nation and Dependency

It is of concern that, until now, Western and Southern theories have not been able to provide a full conceptual understanding of the complicity of the elites and states of former colonies outside the West with the political domination they suffer from their Western counterparts. Decolonial thought, by exploring global epistemic designs, can fully explain such political dependency, which, for Aníbal Quijano, results from the local elites’ goal to racially identify with their Western peers (self-humanization), obstructing local nationalization. We explore why the racially dehumanized local elites believe they can humanize themselves. Our claim is that this happens because of modernity’s pretense that everyone can become civilized and, thereby, human, hiding the fact that hu(man)s are only heterosexual men that are simultaneously Western, white and Christian. Only by focusing on the enunciation of Western knowledge, instead of on its enunciated content, can we make that argument.

Critical Historical Criminology in the Antipodean: Unthinking History and Criminology in the Global South

This paper makes a call for a critical historical criminology of the antipodean and the Global South. It makes a preliminary argument for a critical historical criminology that is against method and in favour of political alliances with critical perspectives that can enrich historico‑criminological understandings in an antipodean and Southern context. In particular, this paper explores the potential for a politico-academic alliance between critical historical criminology and postcolonial studies, Southern theory and Indigenous research. Such politico-academic alliances reveal that critical historical criminology is best understood as a negation of both criminology and history and that historical criminology does not have to be understood as a new sub-discipline and academic specialism at the intersection of history and criminology. On the contrary, this paper argues that historical criminology can be approached as a critical attempt to ‘unthink the social sciences’ and to ‘de-discipline ourselves’.

Smart city planning and the challenges of informality in India

Smart city initiatives are mushrooming across the Global South, yet their implications for urban informality – a distinct challenge of planning in the cities of the Global South – remain overlooked. Using the Indian case as a focus and drawing upon empirical studies in three cities of Bhubaneswar, Pune, and Chennai, which are among the first 20 smart cities prioritised for implementation in the Smart Cities Mission, we show how informality challenges the understanding of the smart city. We analyse how this phenomenon is framed in smart city planning, focusing on the three domains of affordable housing, infrastructure services, and citizen engagement. We argue that using informality as a lens of critical analysis offers a new perspective on the ‘Southern theory’ of smart cities. In doing so, we highlight the disregard of informality at the cost of socio-spatial division – as a significant challenge for smart city development in India.

Youth in the Global South, Southern Theory and Global Youth Studies: Howard Williamson in Conversation with the Editors of The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies

Youth in the Global South, Southern Theory and Global Youth Studies: Howard Williamson in Conversation with the Editors of The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies

From Silence to Silencing? Contradictions and Tensions in Language Revitalization

Abstract Language revitalization is imbued with tensions, and while it often is emancipatory, reclaiming a language can be a painful, silencing experience. Processes of colonization have led to epistemological absences (Santos 2012), which may be conceptualized as manifestations of silence. Understanding how and why silences come about and linger today is important for overcoming challenges those engaging in language reclamation may face. Therefore, paying attention to silences and emotional aspects of revitalization processes is important. In order to explore the inherent tensions of revitalization processes, I investigate lived experiences of language reclamation, focusing on emotions and silences in revitalization processes of Sámi in Northern Norway. European nation states colonized not only in the global South, but also ‘at home’. Thus, the South, in the form of silenced and marginalized populations, also exists in the global North (Santos 2012). Drawing on perspectives from Southern Theory and Gordon’s (2017) sociology of haunting, I investigate silences, emotions and tensions in language reclamation to shed light on how our colonial past may re-emerge in processes of language reclamation.

Reimaging reflexivity through a critical theoretical framework: Autoethnographic narratives on becoming a (de)colonised researcher

The theory and practice of reflexivity need to be reimagined. In the increasingly globalised world of medical education research, critical perspectives and methodologies for honest, powerful, and just reflexivity are needed. Autoethnography offers a compelling methodological approach to reflexivity, for it interrogates self and interpersonal interactions within socio-cultural contexts through retrospective autobiographical storytelling. Southern theory, decoloniality, and intersectionality together framed critical reflections on power inequalities at personal, contextual, and epistemological levels, throughout the qualitative research process. Reflective questions informed by these theories are included to practically guide individuals in their reflexivity. We are collectively responsible for epistemically- and socially-just research, which means the disruption of normative and hegemonic (i.e., White, Western, Eurocentric, and colonial) research and reflexivity practices; and the development of ethical research that does not reproduce inequalities but welcomes and amplifies other ways of knowing, doing and being.

Emoção, silêncio e construção de sentido em translinguagem rumo à justiça social em Strangers

Abstract: This article is part of a project on social justice and its objective here is twofold: to present the partial results of an ongoing research, which started in September, in 2019, to show evidence that translanguaging is only mentioned once by one of the research participants, which reinforces the need to approach it in educational environment and to illustrate the place of emotion, silence and meaning making towards social justice, through the analysis of a short film, seeking to expand studies on translanguaging. This is also justified by the fact that, undergraduate students majoring in Portuguese and English languages, understand translanguaging as the uses of diverse languages, but do not recognize trans-semiosis, emotion and silence as entangled in meaning making. It borrows views from García; Alves ( 2019), García; Wei ( 2014), García ( 2020), Blackledge; Creese ( 2011), Canagarajah ( 2013), Makalela ( 2015, 2016, 2017), Makalela; Dhokotera ( 2021), Nkadimeng; Makalela ( 2015) in dialogue with decolonial perspectives by Grosfoguel ( 2013), Menezes de Souza ( 2021), Mignolo; Walsh ( 2018), Maldonado-Torres ( 2007), Quijano ( 2007) and Southern theories by Santos ( 2018). Views on emotion are supported by Barcelos (2005) and Aragão ( 2011). Concerning silence, it draws on localized and meaningful aspects, as argued by Granger ( 2004) and King ( 2013). The methodology is qualitative and interpretive, assuming my intersubjectivity ingrained in the aforementioned theories, which also inform my locus of enunciation to analyze the film in question. The participants are all volunteers chosen according to the sequence of their affirmative responses to want to become informants of this research. This group is formed of five professors, (under)graduate students of languages from public Brazilian universities. Working on and/or studying at public universities was crucial for the criterion concerning the invitations. The instruments to generate data include online individual interviews and questionnaires. One question of each of these modalities is sent to the participants via WhatsApp and/or email per term. This is the penultimate one. The partial results reveal that translanguaging might gain potentials for experimentation, setting emotion and silence into movements with religious, identitary, cultural and political issues, away from stability. Such movements embrace their own danger, relief and ambiguity, playing a crucial role in translanguaging for social justice.

Dwelling in epistemic disobedience: A reply to Go.

In Thinking Against Empire: Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory, Julian Go continues his vital work on rethinking and redirecting the discipline of sociology. Go's piece relates to his wider oeuvre of postcolonial sociology - found in works such as his Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016) as well as multiple journal articles on epistemic exclusion (Go 2020), Southern theory (Go 2016), metrocentrism (Go 2014), and the history of sociology (Go 2009). In this response article, my aim is to think alongside some of the central themes outlined in Go's paper rather than offering a rebuttal of any sorts. In particular, I want to think through how the recent work on 'decoloniality' may play more of a central role in Go's vision of sociology and social theory than he acknowledges. In doing so, I hope to engage in Go's prodigious scholarship through centering discussions of the geopolitics of knowledge, double translation, and border thinking. Before proceeding to this discussion, I will offer a brief review of my reading of Go's paper.

Bridging SoTL and Open Educational Resources/Practices (OER/P) Through Tagore’s Southern Theory in the Era of a Pandemic

In recent times, while Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and pedagogy enabled by open educational resources/practices (OER/P-enabled pedagogy) have become paramount in higher education, both have hardly been addressed jointly. Given that both aim to adopt, share, and reuse open resources by lecturers and their students in higher education institutions, it would have been expected that both are conjointly used to enhance student learning instead of being used separately. Additionally, while studies are ongoing from different theoretical stances, SoTL and OER/P-enabled pedagogy research are considered separately. Consequently, and through systematic review, the current study aims at bridging SoTL and OER/P-enabled pedagogy through Tagore’s southern theory in the era of a pandemic in the educational setting. Tagore’s southern theory can demonstrate and explain the tacit linkage between SoTL via OER/P. Accordingly, Tagore’s southern theory should be used in broadening and deepening our understanding and thus serve as a guiding principle to approach SoTL and OER/P-enabled pedagogy conjointly. One key implication is that while it is important to conceptualize the global design of teaching and learning, it is vitally important to take account of local histories. Thus, the culturally entrenched connotations and interpretations for inclusive education can be addressed by employing both SoTL and OER/P-enabled pedagogy simultaneously. The hope is that the research assists in grounding the future of SoTL via OER/P-enabled pedagogy exploration.