Abstract
Several research fields have developed during the last decades that align with Hountondji’s calls for scientific independence and thus enable expanding his analysis and critique of scientific dependency and the call for the re-appropriation of endogenous knowledge. This chapter gives an overview of contemporary discussions in the social studies of sciences that connect to the indicators that Hountondji developed in his observations of scientific dependency. Furthermore, we link his work with recent debates under the umbrella notion of “Southern theories”, normative concepts such as epistemic and cognitive justice and discuss the calls for pluralizing sources of knowledges or de-linking from the global system of knowledge production as possible remedies. The chapter concludes by delineating the meaning of decolonization of academic spaces in Africa and beyond with reference to the RhodesMustFall-movement, that started in South Africa in March 2015. This example helps to illustrate many of Hountondji’s concerns.
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Notes
- 1.
The indicators of scientific dependency have been extended by Hountondji from four to thirteen over the course of several articles on this topic. They include structural, institutional and individual factors, for example, the dependency on technical equipment from the North, the fact that African publishing houses and libraries, as well as universities and research centres, are under-resourced, and that African scholars, therefore, need to be “scientific tourists” to the North in order to participate in high-quality research environments more than their travelling Western colleagues, leading to a higher prevalence of the so-called brain drain (Hountondji 1995; cf. Chapter 4).
- 2.
Bibliometric analyses are limited by the databases used, e.g. Thompson Reuter and Scopus. Both databases register scientific publications that mainly appeared in journals. There are strong biases towards Anglophone journals, with many so-called high-impact journals edited at Northern institutions. Among other factors, African journals are not always registered in these databases, because of the definitions of strict quality protocols. Therefore, not all the publications of African researchers, especially those of local and regional importance, are represented in these bibliometric analyses.
- 3.
Miranda Fricker has subsequently responded to this criticism, and has extended her concept from the virtuous individual to the virtuous institution, which has a moral obligation to guarantee public access to minorities and the silenced (2013).
- 4.
On 9 March 2015, a postgraduate student threw human faeces on the statue of Cecil Rhodes as an artfully staged protest. Commentators pointed to this symbolism as underlining a protest against poor sanitation in Cape Town that was a salient problem for many inhabitants at that time. The student also wore a mine-helmet, with which he referred to the recurrent conflicts at South African mines, and, especially, to the death of mine-workers in the 2012 Marikana killings.
- 5.
Cf. https://rmfoxford.wordpress.com/, accessed 3 May 2018.
- 6.
For further details see the campaign’s website, https://rmfoxford.wordpress.com, 3 May 2018.
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Dübgen, F., Skupien, S. (2019). New Approaches to Scientific Dependency and Extraversion: Southern Theory, Epistemic Justice and the Quest to Decolonise Academia. In: Paulin Hountondji. Global Political Thinkers. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01995-2_6
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