Navigating Shomoyscapes: Time and faculty life in the urban Global South

2021 ◽  
pp. 0961463X2110580
Author(s):  
Riyad A Shahjahan ◽  
Nisharggo Niloy ◽  
Tasnim A Ema
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Global South ◽  
Temporal Constraints ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
University Politics ◽  
Global North ◽  
Faculty Experience ◽  
Temporal Agency

We aim to decenter the Global North knowledge production about time in higher education (HE) by introducing and applying a culturally sustaining concept of shomoyscapes. While the Bengali word “shomoy” literally means “time,” it goes beyond “clock time” and also refers to memories, present moments, feelings, a particular duration, and/or signifier for a temporal engagement. A shomoyscape entails a complex temporal landscape of different temporal categories, constraints, agencies, and to various degrees, embodies hybrid times (i.e., modern time coexisting with non-linear local/traditional time). Drawing on interviews and participant observations with 22 faculty in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we demonstrate the efficacy of shomoyscapes by illuminating how faculty experience, contest, and manipulate their time(s) amid rapid socio-economic transformations of Dhaka, an urban, Global South mega city. We show how shomoyscapes manifest as faculty experience temporal constraints, such as (a) traffic, (b) party-based university politics, and (c) caring for others. We suggest that Bangladeshi faculty experience and navigate shomoyscapes that are constituted by both larger temporal constraints (spatial, structural, or relational) and their temporal agency in response to these same constraints. Using a temporal lens, we contribute to a more in depth understanding of the experiences of faculty working and living in an urban, Global South context, highlighting how life “outside the academy” spills over into working “inside the academy,” rather than vice versa. We argue that shomoyscapes offer a useful temporal heuristic to help contextualize human/social relations in different arenas of social life that would otherwise remain invisible.

scholarly journals Encounters with borders

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-75
Author(s):  
Priya Dixit
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Global South ◽  
Research Opportunities ◽  
Academic Subject ◽  
Visa Application ◽  
Global North ◽  
Limit Access

This article examines (im)obility in the global visa regime through the experiences of a Global South academic working in the Global North. Drawing on an autoethnographic account of a visa application, this article outlines the ways in which the global visa regime negatively affects a Global South academic’s life. Visa regulations constitute a particular Global South academic subject in the Global North, one whose academic career is characterised by uncertainty and anxiety, as visas can limit access to promotions and to fieldwork and research opportunities. Visa experiences can thus contribute to alienation and non-belonging of Global South scholars in academia, while impacting knowledge production and teaching.

scholarly journals The University as Utopia

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-105
Author(s):  
Nivedita Menon
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Indian Academy ◽  
Global South ◽  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Global North ◽  
The University ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract This article addresses three interrelated themes: the institutional transformations of Indian universities since India's independence, debates in India over the assumed universality of Western modes of knowledge production and transmission, and the overarching philosophical question of knowledge as such. It argues that the question of power and prejudice acquires a different dimension when we consider the university of the Global South. If our struggle is to recover knowledges buried by history, to subvert existing knowledge formations, and to generate new knowledges out of local histories and practices, then we cannot be training ourselves merely to enter existing fields of settled knowledges that have emerged from the history and location of the Global North. The article concludes with a look at some attempts that have been made to decolonize knowledge in the Indian academy, which draw on resources from the Global South, while opening up both “Western” and “Indian” knowledges to interrogation.

Theorizing alternatives to capital

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry K Gills ◽  
James Goodman ◽  
S A Hamed Hosseini
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Global South ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Political Program ◽  
Global North ◽  
Systems Of Domination ◽  
New Framework

We are living in an era of multiple crises, multiple social resistances, and multiple cosmopolitanisms. The post-Cold War context has generated a plethora of movements, but no single unifying ideology or global political program has yet materialized. The historical confrontation between capital and its alternatives, however, continues to pose new possibilities for social and systemic transformations. Critical analysis of ideological divisions among today’s diverse emancipatory and transformative movements is important in order to understand past and present shortcomings, and many continuing difficulties in imagining crisis-free alternative futures. Inspired by a multiplicity of responses from the Global South and the Global North, and by furthering Delanty’s critical cosmopolitanist approach, this article aims to create a new framework for interpreting ‘transformative visions’ that challenge systems of domination embedded in capitalist social relations. The framework is designed to enable the evaluative analysis of such visions, as well as the exploration of embedded ideological obstacles to dialogue and collaboration among them.

Global patterns in the publishing of academic knowledge: Global North, global South

2016 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran M Collyer
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
International Study ◽  
Global South ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Global North

Much is made of the persistent structures of inequality that determine the production and distribution of goods and services across the world, but less is known about the inequalities of global academic knowledge production, and even a smaller amount about the nature of the publication industry upon which this production process depends. Reflecting on an international study of academic publishing that has been framed within the lens of Southern theory, this article explores some of the issues facing those who work and publish in the global South, and offers an analysis of several of the mechanisms that assist to maintain the inequalities of the knowledge system. The focus then moves to an examination of some recent developments in academic publishing which challenge the dominance of the global North: the building of alternative transnational circuits of publishing that provide effective pathways for the distribution of academic knowledge from ‘inside the global South’.

scholarly journals Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case study of Khayelitsha township

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Emma Barolsky
Keyword(s):  
Violence Prevention ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Global South ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Global North ◽  
Urban Upgrading

The concept of social cohesion is increasingly being utilised in local and international policy discourse and scholarship. The idea of collective efficacy, defined as ‘social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness of intervene on behalf of the common good,’ has been posited as having an important protective effect against violence. This article investigates the relevance of international framings of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which have largely been conceptualised and tested in the global north, to the conditions of social life and violence prevention in a city in the global south. These circumstances are interrogated through an ethnographic study conducted in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, where a major internationally funded and conceptualised violence prevention intervention, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), has been implemented. The ethnographic material contests some of the key assumptions in international discourses on social cohesion and the manner in which social cohesion has been interpreted and effected in the violence prevention initiatives of VPUU.  

scholarly journals Rethinking Masculinity in the Neoliberal Order: Cameroonian Footballers, Fijian Rugby Players, and Senegalese Wrestlers

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 839-872 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niko Besnier ◽  
Daniel Guinness ◽  
Mark Hann ◽  
Uroš Kovač
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Global South ◽  
Professional Athletes ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
The World ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
Global North ◽  
Rugby Players

AbstractIn the Global South since the 1980s, when economic downturns under pressure from the forces of neoliberalism eroded social relations, sport and athletes’ bodies have become major loci where masculinity is constituted and debated. Sport masculinity now fills a vacuum left by the evacuation of traditional forms of masculinity, which are no longer available to the new generations of men. For them, the possibility of employment in the sport industries in the Global North has had a transformative effect, despite the extremely limited probability of success. During the same period of time, the world of sport has become commoditized, mediatized, and corporatized, transformations that have been spearheaded by the growing importance of privatized media interests. Professional athletes have become neoliberal subjects responsible for their own destiny in an increasingly demanding and unpredictable labor market. In Cameroon, Fiji, and Senegal, athletic hopefuls prospectively embody this new gendered subjectivity by mobilizing locally available instruments that most closely resemble neoliberal subjectivity, such as Pentecostalism and maraboutism. Through the conduit of sport, the masculine self has been transformed into a neoliberal subject in locations where this is least expected. What emerges is a new approach to masculinity that eschews explanations based on the simple recognition of diverse and hierarchically organized masculinities, and instead recognizes masculinity in its different manifestations as embedded, scalar, relational, and temporally situated.

scholarly journals Vehicle for Southern African Knowledge? Men and Masculinities and Research from South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-43
Author(s):  
Robert Morrell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Publication Record ◽  
Global North ◽  
Men And Masculinities

Knowledge production is dominated by publications in and from the global North. This has given rise to a concern that certain perspectives and agendas have global prominence whereas others, from the global South, are marginalized. Analyzing the publication record of Men and Masculinities with respect to articles authored by scholars from, or working in, South Africa, I argue that the journal, despite being founded, based and published in the United States, has a very good record of providing space for Southern gendered perspectives to emerge.

scholarly journals Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case study of Khayelitsha

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Emma Barolsky
Keyword(s):  
Violence Prevention ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Global South ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Global North ◽  
Urban Upgrading

The concept of social cohesion is increasingly being utilised in local and international policy discourse and scholarship. The idea of collective efficacy, defined as ‘social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness of intervene on behalf of the common good,’ has been posited as having an important protective effect against violence. This article investigates the relevance of international framings of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which have largely been conceptualised and tested in the global north, to the conditions of social life and violence prevention in a city in the global south. These circumstances are interrogated through an ethnographic study conducted in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, where a major internationally funded and conceptualised violence prevention intervention, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), has been implemented. The ethnographic material contests some of the key assumptions in international discourses on social cohesion and the manner in which social cohesion has been interpreted and effected in the violence prevention initiatives of VPUU.  

Engaging the Academy

2021 ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Brian Ekdale
Keyword(s):  
Public Engagement ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Global South ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Structural Nature ◽  
Global North

We are witnessing a global turn toward ethno-nationalism and xenophobia that raises important questions about what those who are engaged in scholarly knowledge production are doing to implicitly or explicitly perpetuate ethnocentrism. This chapter focuses on the problem of Eurocentrism, and Americentrism more specifically, in journalism and mass communication studies. Although public engagement typically focuses on sharing scholarly knowledge with audiences outside of academia, scholars need to be open and responsive to critiques of our own professional practices. This chapter first documents inequities in scholarly knowledge production between the Global North and Global South, and then offers a brief contextualization of the structural nature of these inequities. Finally, the chapter recommends specific practices journalism scholars based in the Global North can do to become better allies of their colleagues in the Global South, and highlights recent efforts to engage the academy around the issue of inequities in scholarly knowledge production.

scholarly journals (Re)integrating Feminist Security Studies and Feminist Global Political Economy: Continuing the Conversation

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. 710-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Chisholm ◽  
Saskia Stachowitsch
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Global South ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Global Political Economy ◽  
Global North ◽  
Critical Perspectives

Considerations to integrate feminist security studies (FSS) and global political economy (GPE) were first systematically reflected in the Critical Perspectives section of the June 2015 issue of this journal. That collection presented engaging essays on how the divide between the two fields has evolved and ways we can seek to overcome it—or, indeed, whether we should attempt to bridge the divide. This debate has gained momentum in workshops and conference panels attempting to build bridges between the two feminist subfields. Given the richness of scholarship associated with the two fields, we aim to continue this productive conversation by bringing new voices and ideas into the debate and by engaging in further possibilities for theoretical, methodological, and empirical advancement that allow for a more comprehensive approach to global gendered inequalities and hierarchies—one that is not disciplined by academic boundaries. With this, we hope to challenge the constructed and sometimes violently sustained borders between public and private, domestic and international, political and economic, Global North and Global South, as well as disciplinary “camp structures” (Parashar 2013) that too often shape academic, and also feminist, knowledge production.

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