Dismantling intellectual imperialism

CAROLINE M. SCHÖPF

THE main focus of the current wave of academic decolonization efforts is on decolonizing the curriculum, and there is a lack of focus on the reasons behind the Eurocentric curricula.

This paper attempts to systematize and extend existing scholarship on the mechanisms creating Euro-centric knowledges, i.e. academic imperialism and academic dep-endency.1 I highlight how these mechanisms pressure Third World2 researchers into compliance with First World perspectives and exacerbate North to South flows of academic influence and knowledge while stifling the reverse flows.

I also formulate steps that global northern academics3 can take to achieve holistic decolonization. These steps encompass decolonizing one’s own scholarly praxis, engaging in activism, decolonizing journals, conferences, collaborations, one’s teaching, and graduate student training.

The seminal works on academic imperialism and academic dependency have been written by Syed Hussein Alatas and Syed Farid Alatas. S.H. Alatas has in 2000 provided an elaborate account of ‘academic imperialism’, which he defines as ‘domination of one people by another in their world of thinking’, and that he sees as characterized by exploitation, tutelage, an academic civilizing mission, and expectations of conformity and subordination.4

Syed Farid Alatas has formulated the most comprehensive theory of academic dependency, outlining its dimensions as: ‘(i) dependence on ideas; (ii) dependence on the media of ideas; (iii) dependence on the technology of education; (iv) dependence on aid for research as well as teaching; (v) dependence on investment in education; (vi) dependence of recognition; (vi) dependence on recognition in the knowledge powers; and (vii) dependence of Third World social scientists on demand in the knowledge
powers for their skills.5’ He also emphasizes how the academic core focuses on theoretical and comparative intellectual labour, while the academic periphery is relegated to empirical studies of the own country.6 Other important contributions in this field have been made by Altbach,7 Chew,8 Galtung,9 Hountondji,10 and Patel,11 among others.

The root cause of academic imperialism and academia’s core-periphery structure was colonialism. Europe’s conquest of almost the entire world enabled Europe to force miseducation and desocialization onto colonized people.12 It also allowed Europeans to label their knowledge as the only true knowledge, erasing
or devaluing non-European knowledges.13

Colonialism also installed ‘coloniality of power’.14 Through colonialism, Europe positioned itself in the top position of this matrix’ various global dimensions of power: economic, racial, political, linguistic, cultural/aesthetic, media informational, among others. This allowed Europe to manipulate the global flow of resources and the way resources are valued and recognized, creating North-South inequality in terms of the resources, privileges, forms of discrimination, and barriers that academics encounter.

Global academia has a core-periphery structure.15 The core has much greater academic power and prestige than the periphery. The core’s knowledge production is autonomous,16 it largely disregards peri-phery knowledge, and its knowledge is globally valued. Knowledge production in the periphery is heavily influenced by the core, and it faces grave difficulties establishing autonomous scholarly traditions, as Syed Hussein Alatas and Syed Farid Alatas explain.

Additionally, global academia is also stratified, and its reward structure is tied to the global ranking of journals, conferences, and the like.The First World being positioned at the top of global rankings, and the Third World being at the bottom of global rankings, means that Third World academics are being pushed to presenting and publishing in First World venues, and doing graduate training there, if they want to survive in academia. This allows the First World to designate its own standards – in terms of theories, concepts, literature, relevance, methods, data sets, writing style, and even language – as global standards, while forcing Third World academics into compliance with First World standards and interests, often at the expense of the needs of their own country’s population.17

The core-periphery structure and stratification of global academia leads to mechanisms that devalue southern knowledges, while increasing valuation of northern knowledges: (a) Valuation processes in journals, publishing houses, and conferences, (b) the global stratification of research degrees and academic training, (c) core-periphery inequalities in academic cooperation, and (d) the hegemony of English as global academic language. These mechanisms stifle periphery-to-core flows of influence and knowledge, while enhancing core-to-periphery flows.

The academic core’s greater power, resources, and prestige cause its venues and media of research dissemination – journals, publishing houses and conferences – to be positioned toward the top of global rankings.18 Conversely, those of the academic periphery are positioned towards the bottom of global rankings. Core venues and media of research dissemination are more likely to have core scholars evaluate and select research, according to their own criteria. Thus, the globally important conferences and publishing houses are more likely to select research that reflects academic core – i.e. First World – problems, perspectives, approaches, and concerns.19

Research from the Third World is either excluded or pressed into tight compliance with First World standards and views, often distorting it in the process.20 Third World research thus gets undervalued, while First World research gets overrated, simply because it is a better ‘fit’ with globally prestigious venues and media of research dissemination. Hence, First World scholarship that from a global perspective is parochial, biased, irrelevant, or even oppressive may make it into globally top-ranked venues, while globally much more relevant scholarship from the Third World may be excluded. This way, a large amount of the academic work that is globally widely read and perceived as high standard ends up being from the academic core.

The globally top-ranked research degrees being in the academic core advantages core-origin graduate students and disadvantages periphery-origin ones. Also, by inflating graduate training in the core and suppressing it in the periphery,21 it strengthens theoretical lineages in the core and inhibits the formation of theoretic lineages in the periphery. Together, this strengthens core-periphery flows of knowledge, while creating barriers to the reverse flows.

Specifically, Third World students in First World graduate schools may face Eurocentric curricula22 and be ushered towards Eurocentric approaches by their supervisors. They often experience racism, lack of mentoring, low expectations, and condescending or paternalistic treatment, and face problems when trying to teach from subaltern viewpoints.23 These factors create substantial disadvantage for Third World students, while privileging First World students. They channel the next generation of academic core, especially White, academics towards the top of the global academic hierarchy, while pushing equally brilliant periphery students towards lower positions.

Core-periphery collaborations like joint research projects and co-authorships, research groups, joint programmes or branch campuses may also enhance core-to-periphery influence and stifle periphery-to-core influence,24centring First World knowledges and marginalizing Third World knowledges.

The core partner is likely to have more financial and symbolic resources and greater know-how on how to get published in core journals.25This often channels the core collaboration partner to a senior position and enhances their decision-making power. This can tempt core partners to impose their views in terms of research questions, bodies of literature and theories, concepts, methods, etc., often reducing the periphery partner to a mere research assistant.26,27 It also enables First World academics to exploit the language skills, cultural capital and connections of the periphery partner and establish themselves as an expert of the respective country without having to acquire local knowledge and language skills.

English’s status as the global academic language, rooted in British imperialism and US hegemony, facilitates the articulation of native English speaker’s thinking in its full sophistication, while creating barriers to the articulation and recognition of non-native English speaker’s thinking. Non-native English speaking academics need to invest much more time and resources into producing flawless English manuscripts than native speakers.28 Native English speakers may also dominate the writing process in North-South co-authoring, sometimes distorting the words of the southern collaborators.29

The combined effect of these processes is: Before research is globally recognized as ‘good’, it has to undergo scrutiny according to global northern viewpoints. This blocks the South-to-North influence that would exist if all academic work were evaluated equally, while exacerbating North to South influence. It cuts off corrective feedback from the academic periphery which could rectify Eurocentric biases in the academic core. This one-sided influence creates an inward orientation of core know-ledge production and an outward orientation of periphery knowledge production.30,31

As we can see, coloniality in academia is not solely a problem of Eurocentric curricula, but a problem of power relations and inequalities deeply embedded in global academia. Decolonization should entail dismantling all of these.

It is important to note that formulating the goals of decolonization is still an ongoing process. Previously suggested goals for academic decolonization include achieving autonomous regional social science traditions32 in the non-western world or building an anti-imperialist counter hegemonic sociology.33 As for the goal for overall decolonization, Agozino34 has suggested that it should be reparative justice, i.e. reparations for the ‘crimes against humanity orchestrated by imperialism through genocide, land theft, slavery, colonialism and apartheid.’It is highly likely that the globally most subalternized are still being excluded from the debate on the goals of decolonization, and that we are missing important perspectives. This translates into a need to carefully listen to those affected by various axes of oppression, especially voices from outside academia, and attune our strategies according to their demands.

I now outline some preliminary suggestions how First World scholars should go about decolonization. First, global northern scholars should re-educate themselves from a Third World perspective. We should read up thoroughly on various streams of southern theory and on the empirical realities in Third World countries, the history of colonialism, and contemporary exploitation of the Global South by the Global North.

We must ask ourselves: ‘From which location in the colonial divide are knowledges produced? Nationalist and colonialist discourses are thinking from a power position in the colonial divide of the modern/colonial world, while subaltern subjects are thinking from the subordinate side of the colonial difference.’35 Further, decolonization necessitates an inter-sectional lens. We must think in terms of multiple, intersecting forms of oppression, not just in terms of citizenship, but class, indigeneity, racialization, caste, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. Decolonization means dismantling all these forms of oppression.

As First World scholars joining the decolonization movement, we need to step to the side and to the back.36,37 Our main goals should be to amplify subalternized voices and to assist sub-alternized groups’ efforts to dismantle oppressive and exploitative power structures, within and outside of academia. We must avoid trying to take over, otherwise ‘it would be rewesternization disguised as dewesternization or decoloniality.’38 Our role in this movement of course also forbids ‘white saviorism’ or any other forms of patronizing treatment of Third World scholars.39

We must eradicate North-centrism in our own scholarship. This means reading and citing Third World journals – both theory and empirical studies. Besides enriching our own scholarship, this will also help dismantle journal rankings by more evenly distributing citations. Eradicating North-centrism also means thinking through our research interests from a perspective of the entire globe, as opposed to our own country.

We must fight against the notion present in a lot of global northern scholarship that the Global North is somehow ‘the real world’ or ‘the world that matters’ and that its problems are somehow more deserving of research. Phrasings such as ‘Social problem X is quite prevalent in country X compared to other developed countries’, if used repeatedly, can function to (re-) inscribe such notions.

We must cultivate strong relationships with Third World scholars and obtain regular feedback from them on our goals and strategies, while compensating them for their time. This feedback will be a vital corrective for our lack of understanding and biases. We must make sure to accept critique gracefully, without getting defensive or hostile.

We should attend conferences in the Third World on a regular basis, either in person or virtually. Our role there should be to listen and to understand, not to give keynote speeches as the ‘western expert’ telling the locals what to do, as Sajjad40 underscores. We should also arrange visits of Third World scholars as invited speakers to First World institutions and events.

As Sajjad argues, it may be necessary to work outside of the current system to dismantle it, building hierarchy-free spaces such as alternative scholarly communities, alternative publishing venues, etc., which can exist independently from western pressures. The role of northern scholars would then be to support and join such communities, but not to lead or dominate them.

We must not practice extractive research and must not use informants and communities only to further our careers. We must give credit to informants and collaborator’s contributions, and not represent their insights as our own. We should make sure our research is important and accessible to the communities that we research and give back to these communities. Of course, we must not join any projects that may harm the country we are studying while benefiting our country of origin. This could include military, political, economic, soft-power related, or other harm.41

I recommend that global northern scholars who are sincere about decolonization live at least one year in a Third World country, at average local living standards. This will have several important effects: It will shift ones perspective and eradicate a substantial part of Eurocentric biases that one acquired during ones socialization in the Global North. It will help you understand what it means to be at the receiving end of globally exploitative and oppressive relations, be they economic, ecological, political, and so on. It will also foster friendships with the locals and shift such forms of oppression from something that happens to an abstract set of people to something that happens to ones friends and loved ones. I also recommend learning the local language to experience the impacts of imperfect language skills on communication.42

It is also vital that we foster dialogue with global northern scholars and get them interested and involved in the decolonization effort.

We must also refrain from solely publishing on decolonization. Our goal should be to dismantle all discriminatory structures in our university, hiring and grant allocating committees, (graduate) student selection and treatment, conference organization, journals’ editorial boards, and the like.

We should try to dismantle the stratification and reward structure of academia, as Sanchez43 and Sajjad urge. We should educate deans, administrators, and policy makers about the negative effects of academic imperialism, and advocate to stop forcing scholars to pursue elite-dominated journals and projects and let them focus on scholarship with and for the marginalized. We should push for the dismantling of all forms of academic hierarchies, including university and journal rankings.

Further, a sincere effort to decolonize must seek to dismantle all forms of exploitation and oppression. As a global northern academic, it is important to realize that we have been benefiting from historical and contemporary forms of exploitation and oppression. These have translated into material wealth and other forms of privilege for us. Hence, we must realize that we owe reparations, for colonialism, for genocide of indigenous people, for slavery, and for contemporary exploitation of the Third World.

We should therefore actively try to redistribute our own resources, and institutional resources that we may have access to. We should also engage in activism and join Third World-led fights for social justice. As Sanchez urges, we should fight for genuine asset redistribution from the First World to the Third World and from the privileged to the marginalized, for land return to indigenous people, and for the end of all forms of oppression and exploitation globally. True decolonization cannot be achieved without this.44

As journal editors or reviewers, we must determine relevance depending on the readership of a journal, not where it’s based. Failing to do so runs the risk of excluding globally pervasive and pressing social problems concerning a majority of the earth’s population from being published in the globally important journals, only because these happen to be based in the Global North.

When Third World scholars submit papers, the majority of reviewers selected should be from the Third World and marginalized along similar axes of oppression, to avoid reviewers forcing their biases into the paper.

Papers from Third World authors should not be forced to use western theories or concepts. They may rightfully judge that these concepts are a bad fit for local realities. Conversely, articles on the Global North should be encouraged to review global southern literature.

If we insist on methodological standards that are unattainable on southern budgets, we inscribe northern biases into the literature.

We should be open to different writing styles. Insisting on particular writing styles that are only taught at western elite universities excludes anyone who could not attend these.

We should work to dismantle English language hegemony. Language issues in an otherwise promising papers should not be a reason to reject it. We should also try to organize English language editing grants.

It is vital for Third World countries that scholarship is written in language accessible to the majority of the locals. Otherwise, it becomes an elite project useless for most of the population.45 One path could be journals offering translations and print papers both in the native language of the author and as a translated version.

We must make sure not to reject or trash papers due to ‘White fragility’ or ‘Imperial fragility’: If we feel upset or hurt about a paper that critiques Whites or the Global North and notice that our reaction may be more about our personal feelings than about the quality of the paper, we must let someone else handle this paper.

Similar to journals, major western conferences double as main global conferences, having global influence and setting agendas globally. As organizers, we must see these foremostly as global conferences, not national ones.

We should avoid First World-centric conference or session themes. We should offer true ‘open call’ submissions and invite academics based in the Global South to co-organize the conference.

Conferences must be accessible for academics on a Third World budget. We should vary conference fees based on participants’ actual incomes and offer grants if possible. Also, it is vital to allow digital presentations, since intercontinental plane ticket fees and visa discrimination can make it quite difficult for many Third World scholars – except elites – to attend First World conferences.

Data collection must also be decolonized. According to Sanchez,46 studies undertaken by global northern scholars in global southern countries often produce half-baked knowledges, with interpretations influenced by a western lens. One problem is, according to Sanchez, that northern scholars tend to conduct too few interviews and focus overly on interviewing power holders in a given setting. Sanchez states that it is mandatory to get the representation of the most common voice, not the elite voices, to also interview those marginalized, and to aim for 100 or more interviews to include a broad range of voices. This is especially relevant for research that influences local communities, such as policy-related research. Policies should be forged and approved by local communities, not bestowed from ‘above’. Collaborating with business-funded think tanks has a high risk of creating policies that are not in the best interest of the locals.

Sanchez also states that global northern scholars, especially White ones, are often not mindful enough of power dynamics when conducting research. A White person is highly likely to be read as powerful or important in southern settings, will distort the field during participant observations, and may intimidate interviewees. According to Sanchez, a White person interviewing an individual from the Global South is prone to creating highly skewed power dynamics. Interviewees may feel vulnerable, confronted, ashamed, or worry that their words may not be accepted.

As Sanchez argues, local cultures of silence or ambivalence, especially when talking to people higher in hierarchy, may impact the interview, and these issues may lead global northern scholar to misinterpret interviewees’ statements and even come to misleading conclusions. To avoid silencing participants, Sanchez recommends conducting interviews in assemblies or other big groups, where participants will hesitate less to voice their true opinions.

Interviewing participants in English instead of their native language will exacerbate all the above problems, according to Sanchez. It will exacerbate Eurocentric lenses since the data has to be pressed into western concepts even at the state of its initial collection. Informants may also not feel comfortable, or feel less articulate, when speaking English, and it will increase the researcher-participant power gap even more. The best solution to this might be researchers acquiring proficiency in the local language before starting data collection. Another possibility might be to collaborate with local researchers, community organ-ization or institutions, and give them the main authority of interpretation, as Sanchez states.

When collaborating with southern research partners, these must be equally involved in the research design, including selection of the research question, theoretical frameworks, concep-tualization, and research design. If it’s hard to agree on these, consider pursuing two projects based on the data you’ll collect, one that speaks to local concerns and needs, and one that speaks to northern research interests. Make sure not to reduce your southern research partners to mere research assistants. Provide due credit and authorship.

We must be mindful of how power relations and resources impact the collaboration and invest effort into ensuring we communicate and collaborate as equals.

We must also seek to collaborate with scholars more senior or established than us and treat them with the corresponding respect.

We must not insist that things be phrased in a certain way and that we have the final say on the wording of the paper, just because we’re a native speaker. If our Third World co-authors are unhappy about a certain phrasing, we must make a strong effort to accommodate their preferences.

If you make use of the language skills, local knowledge, social capital, and other local resources of Third World scholars for your research, recognize the immense value of these scholars’ help and make sure to reciprocate! If you use their help to establish yourself as the main expert on their country, crowding out local voices, and don’t even give back, something is going majorly wrong!

Of course, we must also decolonize the curriculum. This starts with decolonizing theory courses. Different scholars, such as S.F. Alatas, Julian Go, Jose Itzigsohn, and Karen Kendrick,47 have advocated different strategies: To expand the theoretical canon, to teach southern scholars first and then teach the canonized scholars through their lenses, to abandon the notion of a canon altogether, or teach theory as a history of debates in which some voices are centred and others excluded. Meanwhile, a good decolonial theory textbook is Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon48 by Alatas and Sinha.

Not just theory, but everything that is taught should be checked for Eurocentrism. Are scholars and viewpoints from the Third World incorporated? Are cases from the Third World analyzed? Are the concept used global or Eurocentric?

We must also decolonize graduate student training. We should encourage Third World students to read southern theory and empirical work, and explain about academic imperialism, coloniality of knowledge, and the problems these phenomena cause, should they be unfamiliar with these issues.

We shouldn’t be too proactive suggesting theories, concepts, or bodies of literature for framing their research. Otherwise, we may inscribe a global northern bias into students’ research. We must give students the freedom to let their lived experience and southern theory inform their conceptualization and research design, and trust their judgement.

Some students may come from backgrounds where it’s very difficult to say ‘no’ to a professor. We must foster relationships that are pressure-free and relaxed, and make sure our students feel free to explore their theoretical and empirical interests without constraints.

We must ensure our graduate school and our own mentoring are anti-racist and anti-colonial. This also includes recognizing that students who come from non-native English speaking countries
and different cultures may need to work harder to achieve the same output.

We should try to find English language support for non-native English speaking students, including editing support and grant money for language related purposes.

We should try to offer other support mechanisms that balance out White and western students’ privilege in graduate school, and that counteract Third World graduate students being isolated, margin-alized, or under-mentored in the depart-ment. We should also spread awareness on these issues among our colleagues.

This essay aims to highlight the main mechanisms of academic imperialism and provide suggestions for First World scholars seeking to decolonize. As the field progresses, our understandings of academic imperialism and the various forms of oppres-sion entailed in coloniality of power will evolve with it. Educating ourselves to work in solidarity with the decolonization movement(s) must be an on-going project, and the most vital feature is to keep seeking feedback and keep learning.

Footnotes :

1. See also Caroline Schöpf, ‘The Coloniality of Global Knowledge Production: Theorizing the Mechanisms of Academic Dependency’, Social Transformations: Journal of the Global South 8(2), Nov. 2020, pp. 5-46.

2. I use the terms ‘Global South and Global North’ and ‘Third World and First World’ descriptively and interchangeably. With ‘Third World’/‘Global South’ I mean countries and populations that were colonized and continue to be oppressed by coloniality of power, and with ‘Global North’ and ‘First World’ I mean countries and populations that used to be colonizing powers and continue to wield and enjoy privilege by coloniality of power.

3. As a white German, I don’t feel that I have the right or the knowledge to tell Third World academics which strategies to follow. Therefore, my focus lies on global northern academics.

4. Syed Hussein Alatas, ‘Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits, and Problems’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 28(1), 2000, pp. 23-45 p. 24.

5. Syed Farid Alatas, ‘Academic Dependency’, in Syed Farid Alatas, Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science: Responses to Eurocentrism. Sage, New Delhi, 2006. See also his article in this issue.

6. Syed Farid Alatas, ‘Academic Dependency and theGlobal Division of Labour in the Social Sciences’, Current Sociology 51(6), 2003, pp. 599-613.

7. Philip G. Altbach, ‘Literary Colonialism: Books in the Third World’, Harvard Educational Review 45(2), 1975, pp. 226-36.

Philip G. Altbach, ‘Servitude of the Mind? Education, Dependency, and Neocolonialism’, Teachers College Record 79(2), 1977, pp. 187-204.

8. Matthew M. Chew, ‘International Cultural Influence and Problems of Knowledge Production in Cultural Peripheries: The Case of Modern Chinese and Japanese Philosophy.’ PhD diss., Princeton University,1997.

Matthew M. Chew, ‘How Global Academic Stratification Affects Local Academies: The Inflated Role of Knowledge Reception in the Philosophy Discipline in Modern Japan’, International Education Studies 1(3), 2008, pp. 52-59.

9. Johan Galtung, ‘Scientific Colonialism’, Transition 30, 1967, pp. 10-15.

10. Paulin Hountondji, ‘Scientific Dependence in Africa Today’, Research in African Literatures 21(3), 1990, pp. 5-15.

Johan Galtung, ‘Scientific Colonialism’, Transition 30, 1967, 10-15.

11. Sujata Patel, ‘Afterword: Doing Global Sociology: Issues, Problems and Challenges’, Current Sociology 62(4), 2014, pp. 603-13.

12. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, ‘The Cognitive Empire, Politics of Knowledge and African Intellectual Productions: Reflections on Struggles for Epistemic Freedom and Resurgence of Decolonisation in the Twenty-First Century’,Third World Quarterly, 2020, pp. 1-20.

Ngugi waThiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. James Currey, Oxford, 1986.

13. Ramon Grosfoguel, ‘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), 2011, pp. 1-37.

14. Aníbal Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’, International Sociology 15(2), 2000, pp. 215-32.

15. Philip G. Altbach, ‘Literary Colonialism: Books in the Third World’, Harvard Educational Review 45(2), 1975, pp. 226-36.

16. Syed Hussein Alatas, ‘The Autonomous, the Universal, and the Future of Sociology,’ Current Sociology 54(1), 2006, pp. 7-23.

17. Paulin Hountondji, ‘Scientific Dependence in Africa Today’, Research in African Literatures 21(3), 1990, pp. 5-15.

18. Syed Farid Alatas, ‘Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences’, Current Sociology 51(6), 2003, pp. 599-613.

19. Tamer M. Fouad, ‘Academic Dependency: A Postcolonial Critique of Global Health Collaborations in Oncology’, Medicine Anthropology Theory 5(2), 2018, pp. 127-41.

20. Vagisha Gunasekara, ‘(Un)packing Baggage: A Reflection on the “Battle Over Ideas” and Labour Hierarchies in Collaborative North-South Research’, The European Journal of Development Research 32, 2020, pp. 503-13.

21. Matthew M. Chew,‘International Cultural Influence and Problems of Knowledge Production in Cultural Peripheries: The Case of Modern Chinese and Japanese Philosophy’, PhD diss., Princeton University, 1997, pp. 128-136.

22. Eric Margolis and Mary Romero, ‘The Department is very Male, very White, very Old, and very Conservative’: The Functioning of the Hidden Curriculum in Graduate Sociology Departments’, Harvard Educational Review 68(1), 1998, pp. 1-32.

23. David L. Brunsma, Eric S. Brown, and Peggy Placier, ‘Teaching Race at Historically White Colleges and Universities: Identifying and Dismantling the Walls of Whiteness’, Critical Sociology 39(5), 2013, 717-38.

24. Johannes Maerk, ‘The Politics of Knowledge Production in Higher Education’, Megatrend Review 9(4), 2012, pp. 161-70.

25. Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela and Ana Luisa Muñoz-Garcia, ‘Decolonizing International Collaborative Work: Exploring New Grammars for Academic Partnerships in Chile’, in Lynne Gornall, Brychan Thomas, and Lucy Sweetman (eds.), Exploring Consensual Leadership in Higher Education: Co-Operation, Collaboration and Partnership. Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2018, pp. 171-89.

26. Tamer M. Fouad, ‘Academic Dependency: A Postcolonial Critique of Global Health Collaborations in Oncology’, Medicine Anthropology Theory 5(2), 2018, pp. 127-41.

27. Vagisha Gunasekara, ‘(Un)packing Baggage: A Reflection on the ‘Battle Over Ideas’ and Labour Hierarchies in Collaborative North-South Research’, The European Journal of Development Research 32, 2020, pp. 503-13.

28. Jongyoung Kim, ‘The Birth of Academic Subalterns: How Do Foreign Students Embody the Global Hegemony of American Universities?’ Journal of Studies in International Education 16(5), 2012, pp. 455-76.

29. Johannes Maerk, ‘The Politics of Knowledge Production in Higher Education.’ Megatrend Review 9(4), 2012, pp. 161-70.

30. Syed Hussein Alatas, ‘Intellectual Imperialism: Definition, Traits, and Problems’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 28(1), 2000, pp. 23-45.

31. Syed Farid Alatas, ‘Academic Dependency and the Global Division of Labour in the Social Sciences’, Current Sociology 51(6), 2003, pp. 599-613.

32. Syed Hussein Alatas, ‘The Autonomous, the Universal and the Future of Sociology,’ Current Sociology 54(7), 2006, pp. 7-23.

33. Julian Go, Personal correspondence, June 2021.

34. Biko Agozino, ‘Reparative Justice: The Final Stage of Decolonization’, Punishment & Society, June 2021, pp. p. 12 (1-18).

35. Ramón Gros foguel,‘Colonial Difference, Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Global Coloniality in the Modern/Colonial Capitalist World-System’, Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 25(3), 2002, pp. 203-24.

36. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epis-temologies of the South: Justice against Epis-temicide. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, 2014, p. 44.

37. Leon Moosavi, ‘The Decolonial Bandwagon and the Dangers of Intellectual Decolonisation’, International Review of Sociology, 2020.

38. Walter Mignolo, ‘Spirit Out of Bounds Returns to the East: The Closing of the Social Sciences and the Opening of Independent Thoughts’, Current Sociology 62(4), 2014, pp. 584-602, pp. 589-590.

39. Leon Moosavi, op. cit., fn 37.

40. Fatima Sajjad, ‘Doing Peace in the South: Unsettling the Coloniality of Being and Knowledge’, Manuscript under preparation.

41. Johan Galtung, ‘Scientific Colonialism’, Transition 30, 1967, pp. 10-15.

42. See https://blog.mahabali.me/uncategorized/how-do-you-decolonize/ for more on language skills and power dynamics.

43. Phoebe Zoe Maria Sanchez, Sociology 101, Class taught at University of the Philippines Cebu, Philippines, 2018.

Phoebe Zoe Maria Sanchez, Community interface, Bohor and Siquijor Islands, Philippines, 2018.

44. Eve Tuck and Wayne K. Yang, ‘Decolonisation is not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1), 2012, pp. 1-40.

45. More on this: https://lithub.com/mukoma-wa-ngugi-what-decolonizing-the-mind-means-today/

46. Phoebe Zoe Maria Sanchez, Sociology 101, Class taught at University of the Philippines Cebu, Philippines, 2018.

Phoebe Zoe Maria Sanchez, Community interface, Bohor and Siquijor Islands, Philippines, 2018.

47. Karen Kendrick, Theory for the Rest of Us. Manuscript under preparation.

48. Syed Farid Alatas and Vineeta Sinha, Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2017.

* I thank Daren Leung, Dominic Dinh, Fatima Sajjad, Phoebe Zoe Maria Sanchez, and the Global Social Theory Facebook group for feedback and suggestions.