Why it matters how we construct “knowledge” and “expertise”
When a Canadian philanthropic foundation I previously worked with published an “equity” report in which the authors objected to an “overemphasis” on lived experience of racism as a form of expertise in organizational decision-making, I was concerned.
Conversations with leaders at the organisation demonstrated that there was instead a preference for prioritizing expertise derived from “qualifications”, aka, education, training, and work experience at Eurocentric institutions. In this context, it appeared to me that knowledge derived from Black, Indigenous, and racialized peoples’ oral traditions, spirituality and culture, and their individual and familial experiences of racism, was viewed as inherently less valuable in the fight against racial discrimination in society.
The way expertise was defined in this setting was important because it formed the criteria determining which organizations and community leaders would receive access to the foundation’s resources and support. This definition also determined which staff would have the power to make decisions about how said resources and support were allocated in service of a mission to address discrimination in society. As a result, even when resources and support were allocated to organizations led by Black, Indigenous, and racialized people, it seemed to me that those leaders and organizations which did not adhere to Eurocentric norms were excluded. Like Irfan (2021), I define Eurocentric norms in this context as white norms of “professionalism” (external link) , overreliance upon written and codified information, demonstrating “impact” in specific ways, being conversant in the terminology used by foundations, and being part of the same elite social networks.
The allocation of expertise, which can define the strategic direction organizations take, flies under the radar because it is coded practice, and hence not overtly discriminatory. However, it has impact, because it can be used to perpetuate the exclusion of peoples whose knowledges and expertise have been historically delegitimized. This delegitimization was an integral part of European colonization of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australasia, a process which began in the 15th century.
Experiences like this one ultimately led me to the doctoral program in Policy Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University, where I have had the opportunity to work on the Decentering Migration Knowledge (DemiKnow) project. The project has introduced me to a community interested in challenging, or decentering, the dominant ways we think about who has the authority to produce and transmit knowledge and expertise, which are informed by a Eurocentric worldview.
In my literature review exploring how we produce knowledge about migration today, and whose expertise matters in migration policymaking, I’ve examined over a hundred English language publications. Most of these works are published through Eurocentric academic institutions or journals, which is an important limitation to note because it confines the scholarship and discourse we have access to. It excludes those who are not affiliated with and endorsed by the Eurocentric academic ecosystem, and so does not allow us to fully challenge Eurocentricism in knowledge production. Yet these works still provide some historical context behind how knowledge was constructed at this foundation and can also help us understand why many of the underlying assumptions are harmful. Below, I summarize some findings from the literature I’ve reviewed so far.
- The current dominant approach to knowledge, known as the liberal/scientific approach, is not universal. It arises from specific social relations in Western Europe in the Middle Ages (5th-15th century), which culminated in the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Under this approach, knowledge must be secular, neutral, objective, and a single, timeless and contextless truth, arrived at by observation and reason. It also should be codified and institutionalized.
- Knowledge in other contexts in contrast, among the Zulu and Shona peoples of precolonial Zimbabwe and South Africa, for instance, was understood as connected to history, identity, values, and belief systems. Truth and knowledge were viewed as context dependent, produced in dialogue between actors, and could be orally transmitted informally from one generation to the next. It was therefore considered “local” knowledge, by European colonizers, devoid of reason, and of little use to others.
- European colonization—an expansionist enterprise aimed at expropriating the land and resources of Black and Brown peoples in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australasia—reshaped knowledge in these contexts in fundamental ways. It accomplished this by creating a new body of knowledge about colonized peoples which firstly, presented them as universally inferior, and secondly, displaced and attempted to eradicate local forms of knowledge as they did not comply with the liberal/scientific approach. Both impacts are explored more below.
- As Fanon (1995), Du Bois (1947) and Said (1978) note, colonization created a body of supposedly objective “knowledge” used to justify European political, economic and administrative control over the colonies. This included fixed and unchanging representations of the white, European “Self” as superior, and Black, racialized, and Indigenous “Others” as inferior, barbaric, and intellectually deficient, and hence incapable of self-governance, or of producing their own knowledge. Archeology, anthropology and the creation of colonial museums and archives were all central to these representations. The task for the objective, neutral and scientific Europeans was to discover and study Black, Indigenous and racialized people, and to create knowledge about them.
- Colonization also attempted to eradicate diverse local approaches to knowledge. As Fanon (1995), Said (2014) and Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021) claim, to further the goals of colonization, existing knowledge systems, language, culture, and history in the colonies were classified as non-knowledge due to their unscientific nature and their connection to local value systems, and eradicated by colonizers. Local knowledges were replaced by European systems of knowledge, language and culture. This was all part of a power struggle to impose colonizers’ worldview upon local populations to make them more compliant. It included the establishment of colonial education systems and higher education institutions, where colonizers’ view of the world could be reproduced.
- The types of knowledge that are valued in our society today reflect the liberal/scientific view of knowledge. We now value knowledge that is obtained through Eurocentric academic institutions like mainstream universities. This knowledge adheres to European institutional norms, is secular, disconnected from local identities, value systems and spirituality, and codified in written form. Oral traditions, context specific, traditional, and spiritual knowledge continue to be marginalized.
- Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021), de Sousa Santos (2018) and others have argued that viewing knowledge produced through Eurocentric or colonial institutions as the only valid form of knowledge perpetuates “cognitive empire”, or ongoing colonization of the mind.
As a result, when we recognize that lived experience of marginalization constitutes an important form of expertise, we challenge the exclusion of diverse knowledges, especially those held by Black, Indigenous and racialized peoples. We further reclaim colonially displaced and delegitimized approaches to knowledge. We also address the historic focus on codified, Eurocentric and institutionalized knowledge.
Other efforts to challenge Eurocentric approaches to knowledge mentioned in the literature include decolonizing universities which retain settler/colonial practices by reconfiguring their structures and departments, processes and operations, curricula, teaching styles and grading criteria. The literature also argues for making resources and supports like direct, multi-year funding available to Black, Indigenous and racialized scholars who are engaged in localized research outside of Eurocentric institutions.
In sharing my experiences and providing an overview of the English language academic literature on the topic, I hope I can provide a template of approaches to avoid for philanthropic foundations and academic institutions, which shape the knowledge production agenda. I also hope this can inform how we think about expertise and qualifications within organizations moving forward.
References
de Sousa Santos, B. (2018). The end of the cognitive empire: The coming of age of epistemologies of the South. Duke University Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1947). The World and Africa: An Inquiry Into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History. Oxford University Press.
Fanon, F. (1995). Wretched of the Earth. Penguin Books.
Irfan, F. (2021). Neo-colonial philanthropy in the UK. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, e1726. https://doi.org/10.1002/nvsm.1726
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2021). 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, 42(5), 882-901.
Chicago
Said, E. W. (2014). Orientalism reconsidered. In Postcolonial criticism (pp. 126-144). Routledge.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books.
