Videos by Epifania Amoo-Adare
A keynote talk entitled "(Un)Thinking, Decolonial Loving & Becoming: Critical Literacies for 'Pos... more A keynote talk entitled "(Un)Thinking, Decolonial Loving & Becoming: Critical Literacies for 'Postnormal' Times", which was given at the Trier Summer University on 8 June 2017. 5 views
Books by Epifania Amoo-Adare
DIO Press, 2024
Through a multiplicity of voices and journeys, this anthology highlights the everyday lives, expe... more Through a multiplicity of voices and journeys, this anthology highlights the everyday lives, experiences, energies and spirits of non-conformist wom!n (i.e., women, womyn, womxn—however, self-identified) from around the globe. While recentering stories of transformation through non-conformism, these narratives explore what is so hard, but also so good, about being a wom!n—especially in a century mired by deep contradiction, yet rife with unparalleled hope. Using diverse mediums from poetry, essays and interviews to artwork, photography and illustration, the collection presents stories from perceived ‘margins’—what we like to describe as, the sharp edge of going against the grain.
The stories also metaphorically represent the mobility, multiplicity, intersectionality and dynamism of female identity. In all cases, identity-making and/or -breaking is viewed as the result of each wom!n’s agentic determination, no matter how seemingly small her act of resistance might be. At the same time, each wom!n, may also well defy conventional categories of what being a ‘rebel’ would entail, or even reject the term outright.
Taken together, these collective voices relay visions, strategies, and hopes about what it means to take on, discard, or subvert gendered categorizations simultaneously inflected by ‘race’, ethnicity, class, language, sexuality, religious affiliation, generation, and other forms of intersectional identity markers. They do so across diverse contexts, from agricultural fields and marketplaces to medical spaces, exhibition galleries, the halls of academia, and more.
Routledge, 2021
The biomedical crisis of COVID-19 has opened up a floodgate for other kinds of crises like commun... more The biomedical crisis of COVID-19 has opened up a floodgate for other kinds of crises like communal violence, racial discrimination, geographical hierarchies, socio-political hegemonies, academic exclusivities, etc. These crises are catalyzing massive geo-political shifts of the various epistemological and ontological frameworks of knowledge production across the globe. The shifts are bound to influence patterns of thinking and doing in a post-COVID era. This book series will focus on various forms of academic, social and political transformations that are expected to take place in a, post-COVID world, with respect to the various crises. The advent of COVID-19 has resulted in major shifts, affecting pedagogical frameworks, curricular structures, institutional infrastructures, evaluation patterns, international policies, political ethics, communal relations, gender existence, racial connotations, mental health and physical well-being. These are transformations that will continue to take place in a post-COVID era. Keeping these shifting scenarios at the forefront, this book series will critically analyze various forms of transformation that take place in academic, social and political systems across the globe.
An Anthology of Non-Conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways and Wonders , 2021
This is a call for submissions for a unique anthology on non-conformism that will be published by... more This is a call for submissions for a unique anthology on non-conformism that will be published by DIO Press. Through this anthology, we the co-editors—Epifania Amoo-Adare and Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa—intend to share diverse accounts of non-conformism, illustrating what is so hard—but also so very good—about being a rebel wom!n.
More specifically, we seek to highlight the lives, experiences, energies and spirits of non-conformists, who also just happen to be wom!n; i.e., women, wemoon, womyn, and womxn—however self-identified.
We intend to use a range of media and literary forms to answer the fundamental question: "What does it mean to be a rebel (i.e., non-conforming) wom!n in today’s world?"
To this end, we would love to receive offerings from you that tell us your own story, or that of other rebel wom!n. So ask that you read through the attached call for submissions, and then send your abstract to us at [email protected] by 30 September 2020.
We welcome contributions from anyone irrespective of gender identification.
This book makes a case for an urgent praxis of critical spatial literacy, especially for women of... more This book makes a case for an urgent praxis of critical spatial literacy, especially for women of African descent. It does so by providing an analysis of fifteen Asante women's negotiation of the politics of space in Accra and beyond; hence, demonstrating how they critically read the postmodern world in order to make place within it. Ultimately, the author discusses her development of a feminist, 'renegade' architectural project that reveals these contemporary women's critical literacy of space to be that in which they perceive and respond to the significant socio-spatial effects of akwantu, anibuei ne sikasem: that is, travel, 'civilization,' and economics.
Book Chapters by Epifania Amoo-Adare
Kontradiktorische Diskurse und Macht im Widerspruch, 2020
In this book chapter, I make a case for an urgent process of (un)thinking science. I advocate (un... more In this book chapter, I make a case for an urgent process of (un)thinking science. I advocate (un)thinking, especially for us researchers, as a mode of deepening our engagement with the chaos, complexity, contradictions and uncertainties of our current times. I describe this (un)thinking as a kind of “conscious practical work” that enables us to move beyond Cartesian binary thinking toward more critical “in-between” readings and re-writing of our highly entangled and mobile world – be that its texts or contexts. In this vein, I argue that (un)thinking must also become a type of borderland praxis that forces us to negotiate the many “in-betweens” of knowledge, as well as all the power that accrues in the formation of epistemologies and philosophies about life, which are often contradictory. Moreover, in doing this kind of (un)thinking, we should also work to foment social and cognitive justice, while we simultaneously transgress knowledge boundaries in order to co-construct “threshold theories”. With such an endeavor, we would contribute to the many necessary decolonial projects, which seek to reconstitute a pluriversal world of (situated) knowledges that reflect the multiple and diverse ontologies on planet earth.
This paper argues that there is a growing need for scholars and their students to actively engage... more This paper argues that there is a growing need for scholars and their students to actively engage in postdisciplinary ventures in order to adequately study much of today’s phenomenon, all of which require consideration of the complexity and inherent fluid dynamism of everyday life. Furthermore it is posited that taking such a radical and all-embracing approach to research, necessitates a form of teaching to transgress, which includes a reflexive praxis of nurturing within oneself, and in others, an ability to cross beyond the boundaries around and within given epistemological and ontological borders. Additionally, it requires epistemic disobedience, border consciousness, and a conscious positionality to engage in the co-construction of knowledges from, within and on the many contested in-betweens, so full of promise and ambiguity.
This piece in J. Hobson (Ed.) "Are All the Women Still White: Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminism... more This piece in J. Hobson (Ed.) "Are All the Women Still White: Rethinking Race, Expanding Feminisms" (pp. 75-88), SUNY Press, is an excerpt from a chapter entitled "Feminist Positionality: Renegade Architecture in a Certain Ambiguity" in the book "Spatial Literacy: Contemporary Asante Women's Place-making" (2013, 2016).
In this paper, I argue for the development of a womanist ethnographic project that constructs a c... more In this paper, I argue for the development of a womanist ethnographic project that constructs a critical spatial literacy on how Asante women’s socio-spatial environments have changed in Ghana’s rapidly urbanizing capital city. By critical spatial literacy I refer to the ability to read codes embedded in the urban built environment in order to understand how they affect social life. To this end, I document and analyze spatial effects, caused by rapid urbanization, on Asante women living in Accra, Ghana; for example, Asante women’s household transformation from communal matrikin households to nuclear conjugal households as a consequence of migration to Ghana’s capital and the subsequent changes in spatial understandings of what is family and how it manifests in one’s household. This includes the kind of spatial understandings these women have about the ideal family configurations required to successfully live in Accra’s urban spatial politic. In presenting my work, I describe the significance of a womanist positionality, the spatio-temporal construction of social life, and the importance of a critical literacy of space for women of African descent. In addition, I define critical spatial literacy and describe how it can be both a domain and the theoretical framework in my study; thus, providing the context from which I argue for this critical spatial literacy.
This is a chapter in an anthology entitled The Womanist Reader: The First Quarter Century of Womanist Thought by Layli Phillips (2006). It is in Part 3, Womanist Theory & Praxis: Womanism in the Disciplines, under subtitle Architecture/ Urban Studies (pages 347-360).
In this paper, I will present my dissertation research in which I argue for critical spatial lite... more In this paper, I will present my dissertation research in which I argue for critical spatial literacy as an important political womanist ethnographic project for documenting and analyzing the spatial effects of rapid urbanization on Asante females living in Accra, Ghana (e.g., changing socio-cultural practices as a consequence of migration to Ghana’s capital and their subsequent household transformations). This includes the strategies and knowledge bases used by Asante females to successfully negotiate the Accra’s urban spatial politics. In presenting my work, I will define critical spatial literacy and describe how it can be both a domain and the theoretical framework in my study. In addition, I describe the significance of a womanist positionality, the spatio-temporal construction of social life, and the importance of a critical literacy of space by women of African descent, thus, providing the context from which I argue for this critical spatial literacy.
This is a chapter in an edited volume entitled "Gendered World Series: Women's Studies: Research, Conceptual Developments and Action" by Nite Tanzarn (2005) of Makerere University, Dept. of Women & Gender Studies. The volume is comprised of selected presentations from the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in 2002 in Kampala, Uganda.
Papers by Epifania Amoo-Adare
Irish Journal of Sociology, 2024
This is the introduction to a special issue that has its origins in a symposium (held at Maynooth... more This is the introduction to a special issue that has its origins in a symposium (held at Maynooth University on 27–28 October 2022) in which participants made urgent socio-political demands for academia to become more equitable, relevant, and transformative.
Global Im-Possibilities, 2021
Global Im-Possibilities Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities, 2021
Popular imaginings of the contemporary metropolitan 'waterfront' embody a number of ambivalent an... more Popular imaginings of the contemporary metropolitan 'waterfront' embody a number of ambivalent and oppositional narratives. On the one hand, they stand to symbolize trajectories of urban rejuvenation and socio-spatial revitalization, as abandoned derelict sites such as docklands and harbours are transformed into open, vibrant communal spaces for public use. On the other, waterfront developments in the past have often encompassed megaprojects of top-down state and private investment-led planning ventures. The waterfront therefore, also stands as an embattled leitmotif-a promised site of urban spectacle, leisured consumerism, and of neoliberal gentrification. We start with the premise that socioenvironmental change often bears down disproportionately on the world's poor (Agyeman, Bullard & Evans 2003), and that meanings of what counts as 'sustainable' and socioecologically just, are inherently cultural, as much as they are place bound and historically contingent (Agyeman 2013). At first glance waterfront development-whether marine, estuarine or riverineparticularly across capital cities and metropolitan spaces stand as potent emblems of national development, of cultural production and of cosmopolitan identity-making, taking for example
Ufahamu a Journal of African Studies, 2004
Postdigital Science and Education, 2020
In this commentary, I argue that the current global pandemic is a significant opportunity for the... more In this commentary, I argue that the current global pandemic is a significant opportunity for the decolonization of current modes of academic knowledge production, especially scientific approaches mired in a language of hierarchical Cartesian binaries. Basically, I call for scholars to understand the current onslaught of Covid-19—and its many negative effects—as a result of such binary thinking, one in which culture is privileged above nature; thus, resulting in the misuse of the latter in service of the former. For this reason, I suggest the need for our engagement in an art of (un)thinking; that is, our participation in postdiciplinary efforts to move beyond knowledge production processes that support neoliberal agendas, which are mostly geared toward a rather linear narrative of growth and civilizational progress. Ultimately, it is because of this kind of extractive materialism that we fail to acknowledge the spiritual adage that says ‘Enough!’ is indeed a feast.
Wagadu, Jan 1, 2004
The power of spatial configurations in our everyday social practices and ideological construction... more The power of spatial configurations in our everyday social practices and ideological constructions of place and identity cannot be denied. When it comes to issues of power and socio-physical space, women of predominantly African descent were and still are at the bottom of the barrel (at which level classism, racism, and sexism violently intersect). This phenomenon is evident in various forms and degrees all over the world, especially within the urban context. Thus you will find that women of African descent are often in the majority at the bottom of the urban power hierarchy in Third World cities, such as Accra, as much as in diasporic cities, such as Los Angeles. The unequal development of urban space is clearly represented in the low spatial positioning of these women. This positioning also has grave implications for their struggle for place in the social construction of spatiality, their understanding of their urban social practices, and their identity construction.
In this paper, I problematize France Twine's (1998)
argument that Brazilian non-elite's racial se... more In this paper, I problematize France Twine's (1998)
argument that Brazilian non-elite's racial sense-making
is narrowly defined as compared to US understandings
of racism and antiracist politics. First, I review literature
that provides parts of the complex and complicated picture
of how racism is experienced and contested by Afro-Brazilian
women in particular. Second, I argue for
recognition of race and racism as floating signifiers,
which mutate according to specific geohistorical contexts.
In effect, all sociopolitical strategies must vary according
to the various particular and peculiar phenomena of
racism and its effects. Finally, I reiterate Chandra
Mohanty's (1997) caution about the use of western
scholarship and in this case activism too as the main
referent for evaluating Third World social, cultural, and
political practices.
Talks by Epifania Amoo-Adare
Welcome Address for the Creative Writing Academy Inaugural Graduation Ceremony in Accra, Ghana, ... more Welcome Address for the Creative Writing Academy Inaugural Graduation Ceremony in Accra, Ghana, on 24 January 2020.
Today, in postcolonial African cities such as Accra, one could rightly argue that we are living i... more Today, in postcolonial African cities such as Accra, one could rightly argue that we are living in the midst of a “neo-colonial gold rush”. This is one in which governments, civil society, the private sector, and everyday citizens—alongside international organizations and other sundry actors—engage in multiple (planned, speculative and unintended) interactions in order to catapult themselves, and the larger body politic, into a global marketplace, characterized by competition and a rather uneven distribution of capital, goods, technology, knowledge and other resources. In such a “free for all” landscape, many find themselves in the unpredictable throes of rapid urbanization that often feels slow to those negotiating the hardship of everyday hustles to do with a basic lack of reliable services, inadequate infrastructure, limited daily resource acquisition, and a system plagued by political and everyday corruption. It is a mutating and fragmented landscape, within which stratified populations often go about their daily business in parallel, without any regard for each other’s circles of influence. It is a place where many a person gets left behind, while the lucky few—with substantial social and cultural capital, both local and global—easily negotiate burgeoning economies focused on consumptive lifestyles.
This constantly unfolding political economy of “winners and losers”, is one in which “rights to the city” are determined differentially and as a consequence of intersectional identity markers such as ethnicity, gender, age, income, education, disability, sexuality, religious affiliation and other distinctions, which produce certain socio-spatial implications for each and every one of us. In such an urbanity, rooted (and routed) in a veritable “colonial matrix of power”, one must always ask the question: For whom, is (urban) civilizational progress, especially within the confines of uneven development? And how might a collective (urban) future be co-constructed, within landscapes that are perpetually embedded in the historicity of racist/sexist (post)colonial boundary-markers for living and working? A decolonial option is an imperative in such landscapes. The decolonial option tasks us to delink from a colonial historicity that can still very much be said to be in motion today. We can enact this option through (un)thinking and (un)learning everyday practices fueled by certain development policy and practice, which function to move us all uniformly into a rather linear (binary and unequal) notion of growth and civilizational progress. We must do so through a form of decolonial doing, knowing, loving and becoming that sets its sights on the murky “in-betweens”, as ambiguous locations from which we must strive toward social and cognitive justice.
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Videos by Epifania Amoo-Adare
Books by Epifania Amoo-Adare
The stories also metaphorically represent the mobility, multiplicity, intersectionality and dynamism of female identity. In all cases, identity-making and/or -breaking is viewed as the result of each wom!n’s agentic determination, no matter how seemingly small her act of resistance might be. At the same time, each wom!n, may also well defy conventional categories of what being a ‘rebel’ would entail, or even reject the term outright.
Taken together, these collective voices relay visions, strategies, and hopes about what it means to take on, discard, or subvert gendered categorizations simultaneously inflected by ‘race’, ethnicity, class, language, sexuality, religious affiliation, generation, and other forms of intersectional identity markers. They do so across diverse contexts, from agricultural fields and marketplaces to medical spaces, exhibition galleries, the halls of academia, and more.
More specifically, we seek to highlight the lives, experiences, energies and spirits of non-conformists, who also just happen to be wom!n; i.e., women, wemoon, womyn, and womxn—however self-identified.
We intend to use a range of media and literary forms to answer the fundamental question: "What does it mean to be a rebel (i.e., non-conforming) wom!n in today’s world?"
To this end, we would love to receive offerings from you that tell us your own story, or that of other rebel wom!n. So ask that you read through the attached call for submissions, and then send your abstract to us at [email protected] by 30 September 2020.
We welcome contributions from anyone irrespective of gender identification.
Book Chapters by Epifania Amoo-Adare
This is a chapter in an anthology entitled The Womanist Reader: The First Quarter Century of Womanist Thought by Layli Phillips (2006). It is in Part 3, Womanist Theory & Praxis: Womanism in the Disciplines, under subtitle Architecture/ Urban Studies (pages 347-360).
This is a chapter in an edited volume entitled "Gendered World Series: Women's Studies: Research, Conceptual Developments and Action" by Nite Tanzarn (2005) of Makerere University, Dept. of Women & Gender Studies. The volume is comprised of selected presentations from the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in 2002 in Kampala, Uganda.
Papers by Epifania Amoo-Adare
argument that Brazilian non-elite's racial sense-making
is narrowly defined as compared to US understandings
of racism and antiracist politics. First, I review literature
that provides parts of the complex and complicated picture
of how racism is experienced and contested by Afro-Brazilian
women in particular. Second, I argue for
recognition of race and racism as floating signifiers,
which mutate according to specific geohistorical contexts.
In effect, all sociopolitical strategies must vary according
to the various particular and peculiar phenomena of
racism and its effects. Finally, I reiterate Chandra
Mohanty's (1997) caution about the use of western
scholarship and in this case activism too as the main
referent for evaluating Third World social, cultural, and
political practices.
Talks by Epifania Amoo-Adare
This constantly unfolding political economy of “winners and losers”, is one in which “rights to the city” are determined differentially and as a consequence of intersectional identity markers such as ethnicity, gender, age, income, education, disability, sexuality, religious affiliation and other distinctions, which produce certain socio-spatial implications for each and every one of us. In such an urbanity, rooted (and routed) in a veritable “colonial matrix of power”, one must always ask the question: For whom, is (urban) civilizational progress, especially within the confines of uneven development? And how might a collective (urban) future be co-constructed, within landscapes that are perpetually embedded in the historicity of racist/sexist (post)colonial boundary-markers for living and working? A decolonial option is an imperative in such landscapes. The decolonial option tasks us to delink from a colonial historicity that can still very much be said to be in motion today. We can enact this option through (un)thinking and (un)learning everyday practices fueled by certain development policy and practice, which function to move us all uniformly into a rather linear (binary and unequal) notion of growth and civilizational progress. We must do so through a form of decolonial doing, knowing, loving and becoming that sets its sights on the murky “in-betweens”, as ambiguous locations from which we must strive toward social and cognitive justice.
The stories also metaphorically represent the mobility, multiplicity, intersectionality and dynamism of female identity. In all cases, identity-making and/or -breaking is viewed as the result of each wom!n’s agentic determination, no matter how seemingly small her act of resistance might be. At the same time, each wom!n, may also well defy conventional categories of what being a ‘rebel’ would entail, or even reject the term outright.
Taken together, these collective voices relay visions, strategies, and hopes about what it means to take on, discard, or subvert gendered categorizations simultaneously inflected by ‘race’, ethnicity, class, language, sexuality, religious affiliation, generation, and other forms of intersectional identity markers. They do so across diverse contexts, from agricultural fields and marketplaces to medical spaces, exhibition galleries, the halls of academia, and more.
More specifically, we seek to highlight the lives, experiences, energies and spirits of non-conformists, who also just happen to be wom!n; i.e., women, wemoon, womyn, and womxn—however self-identified.
We intend to use a range of media and literary forms to answer the fundamental question: "What does it mean to be a rebel (i.e., non-conforming) wom!n in today’s world?"
To this end, we would love to receive offerings from you that tell us your own story, or that of other rebel wom!n. So ask that you read through the attached call for submissions, and then send your abstract to us at [email protected] by 30 September 2020.
We welcome contributions from anyone irrespective of gender identification.
This is a chapter in an anthology entitled The Womanist Reader: The First Quarter Century of Womanist Thought by Layli Phillips (2006). It is in Part 3, Womanist Theory & Praxis: Womanism in the Disciplines, under subtitle Architecture/ Urban Studies (pages 347-360).
This is a chapter in an edited volume entitled "Gendered World Series: Women's Studies: Research, Conceptual Developments and Action" by Nite Tanzarn (2005) of Makerere University, Dept. of Women & Gender Studies. The volume is comprised of selected presentations from the 8th International Interdisciplinary Congress on Women in 2002 in Kampala, Uganda.
argument that Brazilian non-elite's racial sense-making
is narrowly defined as compared to US understandings
of racism and antiracist politics. First, I review literature
that provides parts of the complex and complicated picture
of how racism is experienced and contested by Afro-Brazilian
women in particular. Second, I argue for
recognition of race and racism as floating signifiers,
which mutate according to specific geohistorical contexts.
In effect, all sociopolitical strategies must vary according
to the various particular and peculiar phenomena of
racism and its effects. Finally, I reiterate Chandra
Mohanty's (1997) caution about the use of western
scholarship and in this case activism too as the main
referent for evaluating Third World social, cultural, and
political practices.
This constantly unfolding political economy of “winners and losers”, is one in which “rights to the city” are determined differentially and as a consequence of intersectional identity markers such as ethnicity, gender, age, income, education, disability, sexuality, religious affiliation and other distinctions, which produce certain socio-spatial implications for each and every one of us. In such an urbanity, rooted (and routed) in a veritable “colonial matrix of power”, one must always ask the question: For whom, is (urban) civilizational progress, especially within the confines of uneven development? And how might a collective (urban) future be co-constructed, within landscapes that are perpetually embedded in the historicity of racist/sexist (post)colonial boundary-markers for living and working? A decolonial option is an imperative in such landscapes. The decolonial option tasks us to delink from a colonial historicity that can still very much be said to be in motion today. We can enact this option through (un)thinking and (un)learning everyday practices fueled by certain development policy and practice, which function to move us all uniformly into a rather linear (binary and unequal) notion of growth and civilizational progress. We must do so through a form of decolonial doing, knowing, loving and becoming that sets its sights on the murky “in-betweens”, as ambiguous locations from which we must strive toward social and cognitive justice.
The presentation not only serves to give a general picture of the guide, but will also focus on key perspectives provided through the indigenous and decolonial turns. This includes a discussion on the contradictions inherent in trying to achieve a decolonial project within a westernized university; thus, including the paradox in writing an exploratory guide in order to promote a pluriversal world of knowledges. More specifically, the tensions embedded in the following questions will be contemplated:
1) How might one end up re-colonizing indigenous “relational epistemologies”, or embodied modes of learning, as a result of utilizing “logocentric and librocentric” (Burman, 2012) modes of instruction?
2) What are the dangers inherent in trying to “publish our way out of modernity” or “read our way out of epistemological hegemony” (Burman, 2012)?
3) How does one’s positionality prevent recognizing—or acting on—ideas such as there is an entanglement of the knower with the yet to be known (Burman, 2012), “entangled forms of knowledge” (Morreira, 2015), or “entangled systems of multiple hierarchies” (Grosfoguel, 2011)?
4) What are the obstacles to becoming a “critical border thinker” (Mignolo & Tlostanova, 2006), especially when socialized into specific schools of thought on which academic careers and funding lines depend?
5) How might we use the fact that “our academic privilege is our loss” (Spivak, 1995), as an enabling source of power for enacting a truly decolonial option on knowledge production?
References:
Burman, A. (2012). Places To Think With, Books To Think About: Words, Experience and the Decolonization of Knowledge in the Bolivian Andes. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 10 (1), 101-119.
Grosfoguel, R. (2011). Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of Political Economy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 1 (1), 1-37.
Mignolo, W. D. & Tlostanova, M. V. (2006). Theorizing from the borders: Shifting to geo- and body-politics of knowledge. European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2), 205-221.
Morreira, S. (2015). Steps Towards Decolonial Higher Educatzion in South Africa? Epistemic Disobedience in the Humanities. Journal of Asian and African Studies [online], 1-15.
Spivak, G. (1995). Can the Subaltern Speak? In B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths & H. Tiffin (Eds.). The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (pp. 24-28). New York: Routledge.
Link to Review: http://crossroads-asia.de/service/cross-blogging/cross-blogging.html
Link to Conference Program: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/cias/pdfs/IPGF_Politics-Entanglement_Program.pdf
Simply put, we wish to use this session to scrutinize a few significant writerly questions: What/Who am I? Why do I write? Where do I write from? And who do I write for? The view is to use this process of deep inquiry to explore our writing intentions and biases, as well as to develop various critical readings of both our inner and outer worlds. This process is meant to make us see how we each choose to re-present texts and contexts in very specific and fixed ways that might belie the ambiguous nature, and related amorphous possibilities, of both words and the world.
The situation is one in which, today, Ghana's apopofo, in particular, are being squeezed out of an aqua-cultural competition, which is set within a rather peculiar “colonial matrix of power” (Quijano 2000, 2007); that is, one in which they are held hostage to continued negative effects from the dark side of a European modernity project—saddled with historic maritime conquest, plus now also, the chinalization of a fishing industry that is undergoing rapid modernization at the expense of many of the indigenous practices and relationships within the industry.
This process of futuring the ocean and the industries (e.g., fishing, oil and so on) in its various territories, is one in which the othering of the apopofo, fish mothers and their fishmongers is palatable and can be seen in the many narrations and enactments of yet (an)other modernity, which has no panoptical time for anyone’s supposedly anachronistic spatial tendencies (McClintock, 1995). Interrogating such a scenario, means beginning to respond to a significant question, which is: who rules the waves along Ghana’s shoreline? And answering such a question is tantamount to also understanding who directs the (national) wave of a modern Ghanaian future; i.e., one in which there are several strange bedfellows—accrued from across borders—and thus, coming to agreements that do not necessarily include several of the country’s own citizens - especially those who do not fit neatly into ideologies about urban waterfront development and, very specifically, neoliberal economic progress.
The presentation also shows how the utilization of CSL as a theoretical framework for researching Asante women’s lives means that we cannot take the women’s everyday practices for granted, as they assert ownership over the contemporary spaces that change dynamic ‘traditional’ ways of living. Instead, a dialogue is necessary to discuss the consequences and implications of the transformative power of contemporary space—such as Accra’s urbanity—on African women’s subjectivities. In doing so, an analysis is made of how the continued dismantling of traditional notions of spatiality affect conceptions of identity, and social practices, as women pit against the racial, gender, and class-based terms of Western capitalist architectural designs and ideologies for contemporary living.
The presentation also elaborates on how this study is the development of a feminist, ‘renegade’ architectural project; in that, as feminist practice, it acknowledges and comprehends transnational cultural flows (linked to the movement of capitalist social relations) so as to understand the material conditions that structure women’s lives in different locations. This is in order to plan effective opposition to the capitalist economic and cultural hegemonies that are taking new global forms, and revealing themselves in gendered spatial relations. This presentation describes this important feminist pedagogical process of spatial literacy, which is further presented in the book, Spatial Literacy: Contemporary Asante Women’s Place-making.
According to the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Sports for Development and Peace, “Sports offers a cost-effective tool to meet many development and peace challenges, and help achieve the MDGs.” (2003, p. 4). It is this belief in the power of sports for development objectives that has led to the establishment of the Task Force in 2002; the passing of UN resolution 58/5, in 2003, on the role of sport to promote health, education, development and peace; the launch of the Sports for Development and Peace International Working Group (SDP IWG) in 2004; and the declaring of 2005 as the UN International Year of Sports and Physical Education (IYSPE). Additionally, since 2009, the SDP IWG has been working to promote and support national governments in their adoption of policies and programs that utilize sports as a tool for achieving development objectives. As a consequence, the use of sports as a tool in development, and also as a tool for the development of children and youth, is gaining traction; however, greater evidence is required to clearly determine the pedagogical benefits of utilizing sports especially within educational programming. For example, how does incorporating sports in educational programming support learning objectives? How can sport contribute to the quality of education in a post-emergency context? Can sports in education programming serve to increase educational access?
Preliminary findings from a desk review suggest that to date, sport is used for a multitude of purposes in development (Harnessing Power of Sport, 2010; Literature Reviews on Sports, 2007). Most often, it is used for peace building, reconciliation, and conflict management initiatives within the development context. Sports has also been used as part of humanitarian response during emergencies (e.g., for psychosocial support), as well as in post-emergency or post-conflict contexts. Additionally, sports is utilized in a more conventional sense as physical education within schools, i.e., noted for its ability to promote the development of physical capacity, physical health, motor skills, and psychosocial benefits. Sport is also seen as useful for awareness-raising to encourage character building, life skills, positive values, and active citizenship. Furthermore, sports programs are implemented in order to deal with social exclusion (e.g., working with disabled, gender-excluded, and at-risk populations) and consequently it has served as a tool for advocacy (e.g., for promoting gender equity and social inclusion). The inclusion of sports programming is also said to have economic development implications due to the development of sporting infrastructure and the supply of sports goods and training, plus related job creation. As can be seen, sport is understood to have wide reaching articulations and benefits within the development context.
The qualitative research study intends to further elucidate on the pedagogical benefits of sports, as well as the limitations to its use, for educational purposes in post-conflict and post-emergency contexts. In doing so, the study will also include an analysis of ROTA’s contributions to sports-in-education programming in order to improve education quality and access. A better understanding of how sports contributes to educational objectives is important, especially as sports initiatives continue to gather momentum in the Global South; be that at the community level through specific sports-in-education or sports development projects, or at the global level such as in the education advocacy of the 1GOAL campaign or in the hosting of the Olympics in Brazil (2016) and the World Cup in Qatar (2022).
References
-------- (2003). Sport as a tool for development and Peace: Towards Achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Geneva: UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Sport for Development and Peace.
------- (2007). Literature Reviews on Sport for Development and Peace. Toronto: University of Toronto and Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group (SDP IWG).
------- (2010) Harnessing the Power of Sport for Development and Peace: Recommendations to Governments. Toronto: Sports for Development and Peace International Working Group (SPD IWG) and Right to Play.
• The educational implications of the increasing youth bulge within the Middle East, which comes with concerns about substantial youth unemployment and education financing challenges for even stable, wealthy economies.
• The many factors contributing to low quality education provision in the Asian and Middle Eastern contexts in which ROTA works.
• The character and needs of the numerous out-of-school children and youth, especially in CAFS, which comprise mostly of young women and girls, IDPs, refugees, rural populations, persons with disabilities, and other minority populations.
In doing so, ROTA intends to better determine its future entry points for research, programming, policy-making and advocacy on the above and other issues, while also recognizing and planning for insufficient research and development on education that liberates.
The continued growth of cities and female-headed households in the developing world, especially the dramatic increases on the African continent, necessitate an increased development focus on humanitarian architecture and other built environment considerations as part of the global agenda to tackle poverty by addressing issues of gender inequality and women’s empowerment particularly within the urban context. Additionally, it begs for a nuanced approach to policy research on urban development and regeneration, which takes into consideration a gender perspective; including a specific focus on poor women’s spatial experiences. Such an approach would speak to what Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also describes, in the report, as the promotion of harmonious urbanization by supporting pro-poor, inclusive and equitable urban development. In further discussing the above, this paper makes a case for the importance of the built environment in any gender and social development agenda that seeks to work towards fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), especially the third goal (MDG3), while simultaneously working towards the fulfillment of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
More specifically we will look at the significance of the multiply-identified and mobile " research bodies, " as agents, interacting in various networks of relationships (and things) within, and beyond, a given society. We will utilize conceptual frameworks, derived from critical social theory, de-colonial thinking and being, feminisms, and geography to discuss questions such as: How does a spatially-oriented critical reading of the world inform our social construction of knowledge(s) on it? What is the relationship between spatiality, knowledge and power? How does (hegemonic) knowledge production arise as a consequence of struggles over (academic) place? How is the researcher implicated in appropriating, reconstructing and/or dismantling existing knowledge structures?
Here, we highlight the importance of positionality, threshold theories, and the open-ended becoming of researchers for better contestation of power-knowledge regimes that reify and universalize context-specific ontologies, cosmologies, ecologies, epistemologies, philosophies on existence, etcetera. Additionally, we will discuss critical perspectives, with a focus on border consciousness, positionality, the mobility paradigm, and decoloniality; all of which work to enhance our development of a more critically conscious research praxis. This will also include brief discussions on research method, as relates to questions of mobilizing and decolonizing methodologies, plus other modes for enabling the development of threshold theories as part of a process of (un)thinking hegemonic research practice and moving towards open-ended becoming(s), beyond the binaries of the researcher and the researched.
The environmental system that we live in increasingly suffers (largely human induced) environmental problems, resulting in a multitude of locally-induced and global environmental and climatic processes of change. The need to live with these changes as well as the urge to modify our own behavioral patterns in ways more conducive to our environment, has resulted in a shift within research and teaching towards interdisciplinary, partly even transdisciplinary approaches, placing the focus on the processes of interaction between humans and nature, instead of viewing the two ‘entities’ largely in isolation from another. Problem-orientation, rather than the guarding of conventional disciplinary boundaries, thus has become a core determinant in rethinking current modes of knowledge production, here research and teaching. This is mirrored in the emergence and conscious creation of a range of ‘sub’-disciplines within the social sciences that explicitly place human-nature interaction and the interplay of ecology and society at their thematic (as well as successively also conceptual and empirical) cores.
The here offered course follows this path of rethinking our disciplinary and interdisciplinary organization of research and teaching, encouraged by increasingly pressing environmental challenges. As such, the introductory session is followed by a session on global responses to pressing environmental challenges, as well as a session on their effects on the conventional modes of (academic) knowledge production. This sets the scene for moving into an overview over some of the ‘sub’-disciplines and thematic orientations that emerged, their underlying rationales and some of the core concepts, namely environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, political ecology, eco-feminism, as well as ‘the social side’ in agricultural innovation research (see below for details). The session before our closing session is designed to reflect on these specializations of the discussed ‘sub’-disciplines out of the perspective of the currently most pressing environmental change process, namely climate change. Is the interdisciplinarity and problem-oriented knowledge production pursued by ‘sub’-disciplines such as ‘environmental sociology’ or ‘environmental anthropology’ sufficient, to offer applicable, useful answers to climate change? Or should we rather abandon disciplines altogether and think about ‘postdisciplinarianism’? The seminar finally concludes with a session devoted to a review of the key learnings, a round of critically evaluating the seminar, lecturer-student interaction, the teaching, as well as the active participation of students and a final wrap up.
• How does decolonial thinking (from critical, feminist and spatially-oriented perspectives) disrupt normative narratives of gender and development?
• What is the relationship between spatiality, knowledge and power?
• How does (hegemonic) knowledge production arise as a consequence of struggles over (academic) place?
• How is the researcher implicated in appropriating, re-constructing and/or dismantling existing concepts of knowledge and their related structures?
• How can decolonial options inform alternative social constructions of knowledge(s) on “developing” societies?
The premise of this class is that a critical pedagogy on gender and development, especially the forces involved in the production and reproduction of both, is a necessary condition for better comprehension of any society and the effects (physical, social, economic or cultural) of various development interventions in the quest for modernity. Consequently, we will deconstruct widespread understandings of gender as a given analytical construct for interrogating conditions in “developing” societies, which are in turn seen as set in specific places that are bound by fixed categories, e.g., the nation-state as a structure developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We will also look at how the “colonial matrix of power” (Quijano 2000, 2007) is highly implicated in these ideological processes. We contrast this with an understanding of “gender” and “development” as performative; i.e., as manifestations, as well as vehicles, of the productive relations of power by various bodies acting on, from, within and across (the interplay of) both these constructs.
The premise of this class is that a critical pedagogy on gender and space (especially the forces involved in the production and reproduction of both) is a necessary condition for a thorough understanding of all societies and the effects (physical, social, economic or cultural) of various development interventions in the quest for modernity. Space is here considered in its multidimensionality, namely physical and socio-cultural spaces and their different dimensions including place, territory, borders and boundaries, mobility, and positionality will be discussed. We will deconstruct widespread understandings of developing societies as being given and set in specific places that are bound by fixed categories such as nation-state; that is, a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We will also look at how gender, another socially constructed category, is highly implicated in these ideological processes. We contrast this with an understanding of space and gender as both a manifestation, as well as a vehicle, of the productive relations of power by various bodies acting on, from and within them. Consequently, we will investigate spatial relations, the making of inclusion and exclusion, centrality versus marginality, difference and similarity within the development context and our academic constructions of it.
The premise of this class is that a critical pedagogy on space (especially the forces involved in the production and reproduction of space) is a necessary condition for a thorough understanding of developing societies and the effects (physical, social, economic or cultural) of various development interventions in the quest for modernity. Space is here considered in its multidimensionality, namely physical and socio-cultural spaces and their different dimensions including place, territory, network, scale, positionality, mobility will be discussed. We will interrogate widespread understandings of developing societies in Asia as being given and set in specific places that are bound by fixed categories such as nation-state; that is, a structure that is developed for and not a context that is developed by society. We contrast this with an understanding of space as both, a manifestation as well as a vehicle of the productive relations of power by various bodies acting on and in it. Consequently, we will investigate spatial relations, the making of inclusion and exclusion, centrality versus marginality, difference and conflict. Framed as an exercise to better understand the spatial dimensions of development, we will discuss how individuals and their communities make use of mobility, spatial relations, and networks to mitigate and/or mobilize against life-constraining effects caused by conflict arising from large-scale development interventions.
1) Why is a gender-sensitive approach to development important?
2) How has the shift from WID to GAD transformed our understandings of international development issues?
3) What does awareness of gender issues in development mean for research design and its practice?
Ultimately, we will interrogate the gender and development landscape in order to have a critical understanding of the implications for local, national and international research agendas, including possibly our own.
GlobaLink-Africa curriculum provides a critical literacy of space that explicates four key concepts of globalization—Emergence, Interdependence, Dynamic Systems, and Time-Space Compression—as experienced by 16 fictional characters of African descent, whose narratives are research-based. Ideas raised in these 16 stories of globalization-in-action are further elaborated by comments, critiques and questions put forward by 2 fictional guide characters that take contesting positions on the many facets of the unfolding globalization phenomenon.
GlobaLink-Africa Teacher Guidelines provide descriptions of the purpose, rationale and best use of the online curriculum, which clearly illustrates the bi-directional, multiple and contradictory effects of transnational economic and cultural flows on local African socio-political relations and spatiality. GlobaLink-Africa is a fine example of curriculum as a spatial text
Practically speaking, through this guide, we pin-point an array of heuristic tools derived from the above postdisciplinary considerations; thus, intending to inform our current conceptual and methodological approaches; including how we engage in research praxis itself. Additionally, we provide reflexive guide-posts for un-thinking research; i.e., developing praxis for a pluriversal world. This includes a series of important metacognitive questions to ask when doing social science on figurations of human inter-actions, plus what we see as some key answers (e.g., perspectives, concepts, tropes, arguments, etc.) derived from various postdisciplinary approaches to science. We also provide insights into the kinds of critical pedagogy necessary for learning (and teaching) how to un-think research, not only as a response to the more dynamic, complex, chaotic and uncertain nature of contemporary phenomena, but also as a concerted effort to transform existing power-knowledge hegemonies by providing multiple epistemic, ontological and philosophical accounts of (and for) existence.