Growing discomfort with uncritical applications of generic universal ethics to community-based re... more Growing discomfort with uncritical applications of generic universal ethics to community-based research, prompted us to (1) problematize a decontextualized application of ethics; (2) apply two heuristic constructssituatedness and relationality-to a community-based project; and (3) propose revised guidelines for researchers in this field. The we-DELIVER project illustrates our processes for obtaining data from older (60+) South Africans to inform the development of a technology-based ecosystem, Yabelana, which gives them access to service information. In three phases (planning, implementation, and dissemination), we present the situatedness of researchers (including student fieldworkers) and communities. Drawing on relationality, we first expanded older participants' capacity to engage by offering choices and by involving student fieldworkers who shared the same background as the participants to facilitate the use of the technology; and, second, we facilitated optimal interactions by being clear about the nature of the data being collected and by applying social engagement strategies to relate and interact optimally. An optimal interpersonal context preceded technology introduction. The chapter concludes with a plea for reconsideration of current universalized and decontextualized ethical protocols that too often perpetuate situational and relational ignorance. We propose, instead, ethical guidelines for community-based research that engages relationally with participants and best suits their contexts.
Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language ... more Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language and rendering them into another. While the process of translation may be perceived as a form of empowerment that brings to the greater public experiences that would otherwise remain in the private, it should also be acknowledged that the shift in voice through this process can be a form of silencing. This paper re-asserts the importance of taking the role played by language seriously in our meaning-making processes and understanding of the world. In particular, the paper engages the role of translation as violence in our research endeavours. The paper further points to the need to strive towards acknowledging how realities may be understood through multiple lenses, i.e., the pluriversal notion of knowing and being and the critical role that African languages can play towards re- defining the academic project.
Debate on the need for more fairness in academic research collaborations between actors in Africa... more Debate on the need for more fairness in academic research collaborations between actors in Africa (or the ‘Global South’, broadly) and counterparts in the Global North has intensified in recent years, while practice-oriented frameworks and efforts to foster more equitable partnerships have proliferated. Important approaches to recognise and undo asymmetries in concrete collaboration arrangements – division of labour, decision making, access to rewards, capacity building – have been identified. In this provocation we draw on African and other postcolonial, decolonial and feminist scholarship, as well as systems thinking and global science data to argue that such ‘equitable partnerships’ efforts at best sidestep the urgent need for a much more profound rebalancing of the positioning of Africa and ‘Global North’ in the worldwide science and research ecosystem as a whole. We consider why such wider rebalancing is an imperative for both Africa and the global community, propose that resea...
This paper features the process whereby an experimental Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) program ... more This paper features the process whereby an experimental Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) program fostered a critical learning community around peace and security across 13 countries and with 40 women. It addresses the epistemological questions of doing research in collective ways (with and among activists/scholars), the axiological challenge of recognizing and embracing counter-expertise, and the possibilities for incorporating values and practices of care as well as non-extractivism in producing and disseminating knowledge. By articulating the core ethical principles that emerged from this experience, the paper suggests a critical feminist epistemological commitment in taking seriously grassroots women's knowledge in peace and security processes, rather than what is often done in both policy and academy: prescribing their needs from above, interpreting their knowledge from the outside, and advising what problems to tackle and how to live.
The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most not... more The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most notably psychological theory and approaches to research methodology. In this article, we focus on how decoloniality can reshape approaches to teaching and learning. We present a case study of how we recurriculated, from 1999 to 2020, three community psychology modules using a decolonial lens. We describe three phases in the development of community psychology teaching at a university in South Africa—“Little Oxford in the veld,” “Going walkabout,” and “New voices.” In each case, we detail the “course content,” our pedagogical approach, and how students responded, and try to identify what lessons can be learnt for a more explicitly decolonial mode of teaching and learning. We conclude by asserting that to foster decoloniality among students, we have to be cognizant of the ways in which they have for a long time been taught using Euro-centric lenses and frames of knowing and therefore the proc...
In this article, we contribute to the current discussions and debates on decolonising Psychology ... more In this article, we contribute to the current discussions and debates on decolonising Psychology by discussing some critical dimensions of decolonisation as it pertains to the explicit, hidden, and null curriculum. We also discuss the nuances of engaging a decolonised Psychology curriculum as members of staff in residential and open distance e-learning institutions. This includes issues of contact within and outside the classroom, language, and intersections of gender, race, and class. The multi-layered nature of the curriculum demands that we interrogate and tackle the idea of the curriculum as more than written text but must include the psycho-social biographies of both students and staff. Finally, we discuss some of the ways in which a decolonised Psychology curriculum may be envisioned as part of re-imagining the curriculum.
Growing discomfort with uncritical applications of generic universal ethics to community-based re... more Growing discomfort with uncritical applications of generic universal ethics to community-based research, prompted us to (1) problematize a decontextualized application of ethics; (2) apply two heuristic constructssituatedness and relationality-to a community-based project; and (3) propose revised guidelines for researchers in this field. The we-DELIVER project illustrates our processes for obtaining data from older (60+) South Africans to inform the development of a technology-based ecosystem, Yabelana, which gives them access to service information. In three phases (planning, implementation, and dissemination), we present the situatedness of researchers (including student fieldworkers) and communities. Drawing on relationality, we first expanded older participants' capacity to engage by offering choices and by involving student fieldworkers who shared the same background as the participants to facilitate the use of the technology; and, second, we facilitated optimal interactions by being clear about the nature of the data being collected and by applying social engagement strategies to relate and interact optimally. An optimal interpersonal context preceded technology introduction. The chapter concludes with a plea for reconsideration of current universalized and decontextualized ethical protocols that too often perpetuate situational and relational ignorance. We propose, instead, ethical guidelines for community-based research that engages relationally with participants and best suits their contexts.
Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language ... more Many scholars have argued that translation is more than just understanding words in one language and rendering them into another. While the process of translation may be perceived as a form of empowerment that brings to the greater public experiences that would otherwise remain in the private, it should also be acknowledged that the shift in voice through this process can be a form of silencing. This paper re-asserts the importance of taking the role played by language seriously in our meaning-making processes and understanding of the world. In particular, the paper engages the role of translation as violence in our research endeavours. The paper further points to the need to strive towards acknowledging how realities may be understood through multiple lenses, i.e., the pluriversal notion of knowing and being and the critical role that African languages can play towards re- defining the academic project.
Debate on the need for more fairness in academic research collaborations between actors in Africa... more Debate on the need for more fairness in academic research collaborations between actors in Africa (or the ‘Global South’, broadly) and counterparts in the Global North has intensified in recent years, while practice-oriented frameworks and efforts to foster more equitable partnerships have proliferated. Important approaches to recognise and undo asymmetries in concrete collaboration arrangements – division of labour, decision making, access to rewards, capacity building – have been identified. In this provocation we draw on African and other postcolonial, decolonial and feminist scholarship, as well as systems thinking and global science data to argue that such ‘equitable partnerships’ efforts at best sidestep the urgent need for a much more profound rebalancing of the positioning of Africa and ‘Global North’ in the worldwide science and research ecosystem as a whole. We consider why such wider rebalancing is an imperative for both Africa and the global community, propose that resea...
This paper features the process whereby an experimental Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) program ... more This paper features the process whereby an experimental Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) program fostered a critical learning community around peace and security across 13 countries and with 40 women. It addresses the epistemological questions of doing research in collective ways (with and among activists/scholars), the axiological challenge of recognizing and embracing counter-expertise, and the possibilities for incorporating values and practices of care as well as non-extractivism in producing and disseminating knowledge. By articulating the core ethical principles that emerged from this experience, the paper suggests a critical feminist epistemological commitment in taking seriously grassroots women's knowledge in peace and security processes, rather than what is often done in both policy and academy: prescribing their needs from above, interpreting their knowledge from the outside, and advising what problems to tackle and how to live.
The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most not... more The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most notably psychological theory and approaches to research methodology. In this article, we focus on how decoloniality can reshape approaches to teaching and learning. We present a case study of how we recurriculated, from 1999 to 2020, three community psychology modules using a decolonial lens. We describe three phases in the development of community psychology teaching at a university in South Africa—“Little Oxford in the veld,” “Going walkabout,” and “New voices.” In each case, we detail the “course content,” our pedagogical approach, and how students responded, and try to identify what lessons can be learnt for a more explicitly decolonial mode of teaching and learning. We conclude by asserting that to foster decoloniality among students, we have to be cognizant of the ways in which they have for a long time been taught using Euro-centric lenses and frames of knowing and therefore the proc...
In this article, we contribute to the current discussions and debates on decolonising Psychology ... more In this article, we contribute to the current discussions and debates on decolonising Psychology by discussing some critical dimensions of decolonisation as it pertains to the explicit, hidden, and null curriculum. We also discuss the nuances of engaging a decolonised Psychology curriculum as members of staff in residential and open distance e-learning institutions. This includes issues of contact within and outside the classroom, language, and intersections of gender, race, and class. The multi-layered nature of the curriculum demands that we interrogate and tackle the idea of the curriculum as more than written text but must include the psycho-social biographies of both students and staff. Finally, we discuss some of the ways in which a decolonised Psychology curriculum may be envisioned as part of re-imagining the curriculum.
This collection, edited by Rozena Maart from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, is ... more This collection, edited by Rozena Maart from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, is composed of an introduction, seventeen articles by eighteen authors, two opinion pieces, two roundtables by eight authors, two of whom have articles in the collection, three interviews and three book reviews, and as such contain the work of twenty-eight contributors. Critiques of racism, definitions of decolonisation and decoloniality, histories of enslavement, coloniser – colonised relations, the coloniality of language, the colonial teaching practices of empire colonies, Black and racialised bodies as sites of racism and colonisation in the afterlife of apartheid, the recolonised economy, and the European colonial curricula that continue to support such practices, especially in law schools in South Africa, run between and among the work in this collection.
Uploads
Papers by Puleng Segalo
eighteen authors, two opinion pieces, two roundtables by eight authors, two of whom have articles in the collection, three interviews and three book reviews, and as such contain the work of twenty-eight contributors. Critiques of racism, definitions of decolonisation and decoloniality, histories of enslavement, coloniser – colonised relations, the coloniality of language, the colonial teaching practices of empire colonies, Black and racialised bodies as sites of racism and colonisation in the afterlife of apartheid, the recolonised economy, and the European colonial curricula that continue to support such practices, especially in law schools in South Africa, run between and among the work in this collection.