[Last modified: October, 24 2024 08:22 AM]
Reflexions on my position in the academic field and far beyond: operating in a world shaped by coloniality
As I don’t yet have a clear research topic to reflect on, I want to explore the broader question of how to conduct research in environmental anthropology in a world shaped by colonial power relations.
Anthropology, across all its subfields, must always confront the ethical issues it raises. The fact that people are the object of study inherently brings asymmetrical and sometimes problematic power relations. However, anthropologists conducting research in the Global South face a dual burden. They encounter both interpersonal imbalances (between the researcher and the people rendered the object of study) and a historical, colonial imbalance. Since environmental anthropology often focuses on ‘environments’ outside the Global North, I find myself constantly questioning my place and role in this discipline and in the academic world more broadly.
Part of reflecting on positionality is recognizing that, as a white European, I am privileged in many ways. It is crucial to question how that impacts our research—how it is situated, what story it tells, and how it is inherently flawed, never fully objective or neutral. Of course, other factors come into play as well: being a (young) woman, having Belgian nationality, being heterosexual, being ‘healthy,’ having no disabilities, and so on. Yet the aspect that strikes me most is not these identity features but the fact that, as a researcher, I operate within a framework of authority—specifically, an epistemic authority. The knowledge I produce is listened to and is often more highly valued than the knowledge of the people I interact with.
As a researcher, you inhabit two worlds, and it is up to you to account for the differences in meaning between them. In other words, you are the authority who gets to translate a community’s worldview, practices, stories, and values. Reflecting on how we translate these worldviews is what we strive for, and in our reports, we aim to include reflections on this. But I still wonder if this compensates for the wide gap between the lifeworlds of the people we study and the publications that result. More so, because policy is often based on the institutionally recognized discourse that we produce. Sometimes it feels as though science dogmatically insists that ‘knowing is better than not knowing’ in order to improve the world. This ‘knowing,’ however, is highly exclusive, and by perpetuating epistemic power relations, science risks becoming the very materialization of contemporary colonialism.
In conclusion, I suggest that reflections on positionality are, if anything, the necessary condition for conducting ethical research, but they are not sufficient. I believe that, on a broader scale, we should reflect on science as a matrix of power practices in order to critically understand our position in the world and in academia.
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