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Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century – review
In Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, Portia Roelofs critiques conventional Western ideas of “good governance” imposed in Africa, and specifically Nigeria, through fieldwork and historical analysis. Stephanie Wanga finds the book a grounded and nuanced argument for alternative, locally shaped and socially embedded models of governance.
Good governance: a phrase laden with meaning and history. Good governance in Africa? Even more trouble at hand. Colonial and neocolonial projects in Africa have been justified in the name of good governance. However, to assume a sense of foreboding when one hears the phrase “good governance” is also to assume – and even to locate – its meaning in a particular provenance. This is exactly what Portia Roelofs, in her book Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century, wants to trouble.
The author wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions.
Roelofs, a lecturer in politics at King’s College London, has spent time in Nigeria, including undertaking research in the universities of Ibadan and Maiduguri. It is from her fieldwork in Nigeria that she wants to draw out a re-conception of good governance: namely, as conceived of by everyday people rather than, say, the World Bank or other institutions whose projected definitions come with immense repercussions. To do so, this work “places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats…[theorising] ‘socially embedded’ good governance.” Using this method, she defends the argument that “power must be socially embedded for it to be accountable”, in opposition to those who cast social embeddedness as sullying politics and leaving room for all the varied forms of corruption that may hinder good governance.
If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption […] the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power.
Indeed, Roelofs extends Peter Ekeh’s erudite analysis (in Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa) of a “third space” that defies the binaries of political science’s beloved public and private spheres. Ekeh presented a space from which Nigerian (and wider African) politics could be more fruitfully analysed, a space that was “neither absolutely rational-bureaucratic public authority [nor]…patrimonial authority conceived as the personal or individual authority of a Big Man’s private household”. Roelofs presents evidence that “points towards the existence of more social forms of governance which are neither personalistic […] nor ethnic, but speak to a more general sociality”, which provides the basis for the notion of governance that is “both public and yet includes some social elements and the further possibility that this may constitute good governance”. If society and social demands might be seen as an enabler of corruption (something that is not, the author reminds us, a uniquely African problem), the necessary flip side is that it can also represent a constraint on the actions of those in power. In fact, the insistence on detaching the state from its societal embeddedness increases the opacity and unaccountability of the state.
Roelofs’ methodology may be controversial to those devoted to hyper-abstraction, but for those of us who theorise as we live rather than save theory for the books, good governance must always be socially embedded. However, Roelofs is engaging with real biases that run deep in both political theory and development studies, and that have had immense consequences. As she writes, “While personal contact between voters and politicians is pathologized in scholarly analysis of Africa, it is celebrated by political scientists working in Western democracies.” Social-embeddedness has been a kind of dirty word in a lot of the mainstream writing on African politics – it is this entanglement of the political with the social that causes diagnoses such as “the cancer of corruption” and other terms that pathologise African politics every which way.
This is a book that is quite close to me in terms of method, as a person who roots herself primarily in political theory but believes ardently in the ways other methods and sources, including history and fieldwork, must educate political theory. Along with this, the book is supposed to demonstrate “the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics”. One might question the extent to which this book rigorously engages this latter goal, but it continues in the tradition of thinkers including Thandika Mkandawire (to whom the book is dedicated) and others like Ndongo Samba Sylla and Leonce Ndikumana.
Roelofs contests the dominant World Bank discourse on good governance that is projected as universally accepted and uncontroversial. She proposes an alternative mode of governance whereby the people decide for themselves the terms of engagement – something that the World Bank has in multiple, egregious ways denied the continent. This very act is noteworthy – the “problem” of African politics has been repeatedly deemed “too embedded in social and material relations”, leading to the oft-cited ills of neopatrimonialism, corruption, etc.
Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made.
However, though this goal of challenging what good governance means is named explicitly at the outset, it would have been useful to see the precise ways in which the book operates as a (potentially) decolonial act. Roelofs is self-conscious of her position as a white woman trying to turn the tables on colonial, trope-filled discourse and asks for thoughts on how such a move might be more conscientiously made. Indeed, many have questioned how “Africanists” – often white, often working outside the continent – have positioned themselves at the centre of changing tides in African political discourse. The racial blindspots (or worse) underlying African Studies must be called out alongside those of the financial institutions; the neocolonial project is a concert of efforts.
The author hints at this issue, but often in diplomatic terms. As Robtel Neajai Pailey writes, one needs to “speak into existence the proverbial elephant in the room of development: race”. However, one must balance this move with the recognition that all of us, including white academics, are responsible for taking the decolonial bull by the horns – that one must not shirk responsibility via the false generosity of “making space” for “people of colour”. The hard work of taking responsibility and being responsible must be consciously and explicitly engaged.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world.
Another danger the book sometimes falls into is to play up the narrative of what Africa can teach the world. This viewpoint is problematic in that it may suggest a need to peg the meaningfulness of work done in Africa to its importance for the Big Bad West (and elsewhere). The greater purpose may instead be to unearth meanings that only have value locally, to study Africa for its own sake, and not for the West’s education. The question of where meaning should be focused relates to Toni Morrison’s observations on racism as a distraction. This burden leaves a person desperately trying to prove that they, too, are worthy; that they, too, have important things to show the world, unaware that by that very token they are upholding a particular standard of worthiness.
Despite this, Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa. Roelofs keenly dissects several key historical moments in Nigeria to tease out how they theoretically shape contemporary understandings of good governance.
Roelofs’ book serves as both rigorous, extended analysis of the good governance discourse and a worthwhile historical introduction to the troubles that have besieged state-making in Africa.
To this end, she writes about how good governance in Nigeria is often tied to the person (and myth) of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, who, to some, was the best President Nigeria never had. However, there is more to the picture than the “modernising, elite-led, progressive” elements that epitomise notions of good governance in Nigeria and that Awolowo represented. Working through the contested ideas that surround good governance, Roelofs comes up with what she calls the “Lagos model”. This is a homegrown approach, made of a shared set of reference points acting as a yardstick against which governance is evaluated. Roelofs names the reference points as “an epistemic claim to enlightened leadership, a social claim to being embedded in one’s constituency and a material claim about the sharing of resources”. Roelofs shows that the ideas of good governance grounded in epistemic superiority were in tension with more populist visions that emphasised the need for satisfying short-term economic desires and connecting with leaders. From this dialectic “a full and rounded picture of legitimate leadership as containing epistemic, social and material aspects” emerges. The struggle to balance each of these three aspects is what produces good governance, and the gaps in managing the give and take across the three is what gives various kinds of actors, nefarious and otherwise, entry to “fix” what appears broken.
Overall, the book is accessible and unpretentious, even while quite history-heavy. Though it may lack the poetry and passion of a Mudimbe or Mbembe, its appeal to democratise understandings of good governance demands the reader’s engagement reckon. It is a refreshingly democratic take on what it means to govern well, by rooting the definition in what everyday people in a specific context truly seek.
Note: This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Tolu Owoeye on Shutterstock.
The Coalitions Presidents Make: Presidential Power and its Limits in Democratic Indonesia – review
Marcus Mietzner‘s The Coalitions Presidents Make examines Indonesia’s political transition, focusing on power-sharing arrangements and their impact on democratic reforms post-2004. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, Mietzner both sheds light on Indonesia’s particular case and reflects more broadly on coalition politics in emerging democracies, writes Yen Nie Yong. This post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
The Coalitions Presidents Make is a welcome contribution to the analysis of the processes of political change in the emerging economies of East Asia and Southeast Asia, especially in light of Indonesia’s recent parliamentary and presidential elections.
Post-Suharto Indonesia is often portrayed as an era that ushered in the birth of a new presidential democracy in the country. However, the transition from a decades-old strongman regime – specifically one that bookmarks the turbulent period of postcolonial social and economic development and Suharto’s fall – was messy and remains incomplete. It is from this incompleteness that Mietzner began his comprehensive study on the coalition presidentialism of Indonesia from the year 2004 to its current state.
Mietzner utilis[es] data from over 100 qualitative interviews with not only the former and current presidents of Indonesia, but also various actors who are directly and indirectly involved in the process of coalition-building.
This monograph is aimed at readers familiar with the literature of coalition presidentialism within the field of Political Science and Indonesian Studies. However, as a researcher who primarily focuses on Malaysian companies in the postcolonial era, I found this book to be a page-turner, largely due to Mietzner’s adept narrative-building skills throughout the book. This is hardly surprising, as Mietzner offers details gleaned from more than two decades of observing the country’s democratic transition from a close-up view. Mietzner’s approach is also ethnographic, by utilising data from over 100 qualitative interviews with not only the former and current presidents of Indonesia, but also various actors who are directly and indirectly involved in the process of coalition-building. The amount of qualitative data accumulated is commendable, as access to the presidents’ inner circle generally requires years of effort in relationship-building, as well as the researcher’s discernment in knowing the difference between the true internal workings and smokescreens of Indonesia’s politics.
How have Indonesia’s presidents post-2004 managed to survive the perils of presidentialism, and what is the price for it?
Mietzner’s key research questions are fascinating – how have Indonesia’s presidents post-2004 managed to survive the perils of presidentialism, and what is the price for it? Indonesia, he argues, achieved more success in transitioning from an unstable presidential regime in the early post-Suharto period into a democracy that is among the world’s most resilient. This is mainly because of the informal coalitions with non-party actors who enjoy or covet political privileges such as the military, the police, oligarchs and religious groups. These actors require as much courting and co-opting as political parties and legislators, a key finding which current studies have ignored or downplayed. In each chapter, Mietzner explains the collective power of a political actor, and utilises a case study to link the phenomenon with his analysis, which I found to be compelling and clear. The locked-in stability created by the broad coalitions under Yudhoyono’s and Widodo’s presidency, nevertheless, had dire consequences in terms of stagnating reforms and democratic decline. Mietzner argues that Indonesia is a prime example of this phenomenon and ought to be a valuable lesson to be studied by those interested in presidential democracies globally.
Through reading this book, my impression is that the power-sharing arrangements between the president and his diverse coalition partners are akin to a prisoner’s dilemma. Mietzner argues that the incumbent president and his predecessor opted for this particular kind of accommodation because of perceived and imagined fears of what might happen to them if they were to choose the path of taking down these coalition partners. The coalition partners also appear to have taken a similarly defensive stance, thus perpetuating existing political arrangements among the actors at the expense of democratic reforms. This, Mietzner explains, is grounded in history, as both sides remain committed to upholding the image of the Indonesian presidency as the key provider of political stability. Many of the politicians and coalition partners lived through the Suharto years and learned how to “do politics” during that era, thus internalizing the appeal of working with presidents in power rather than working to overthrow them.
One element which Mietzner could have expanded upon in the book is how […] historical pathways have impacted on the current accommodation style between the president and non-party actors.
One element which Mietzner could have expanded upon in the book is how these historical pathways have impacted on the current accommodation style between the president and non-party actors. The relationship between the president and the oligarchs is particularly instructive in this regard, as Mietzner shows that in post-2004 coalitions, the oligarchs’ participation in coalition politics became “more direct, formal and institutionalized” (194). What happened during the transition years post-1998 that had enabled the oligarchs such access which was not available to them before? This context can help clarify if the pre-1998 accommodation between the president and capitalists were thoroughly dismantled, and if so, led to expansion of coalitions to other non-party actors after 2004. As history has shown, past strongman leaders in Asia (especially those who fought against colonialism) do not fade easily. The nostalgia for Suharto’s rule was also highlighted by the media during the 2014 presidential elections, elucidating how historical baggage constrains presidents from embarking on meaningful political reforms in this country.
The Indonesian case is an ideal one to expand conceptual boundaries in comparative studies of coalition presidentialism.
Does the specific context of Indonesia’s coalition presidentialism make this case an outlier and thus inapplicable to other democracies? Mietzner emphasises that the Indonesian case is an ideal one to expand conceptual boundaries in comparative studies of coalition presidentialism. As the bulwark of democracy in Southeast Asia, perhaps Indonesia may offer valuable insights beyond coalition presidentialism. As a novice reader on the conceptual theories of coalition presidentialism, I am also curious about whether this can also be relevant to other democracies in Southeast Asia, especially in the context of their shared postcoloniality. After all, the multiplicity of non-party actors in Indonesia’s context should also be situated in the diverse cultural identities of these actors and the postcolonial unsettledness of the nation’s identity. In his proclamation of Independence in 1945, Sukarno had famously used the acronym “d.l.l., or etc. in the Bahasa, which author and former journalist Elizabeth Pisani highlighted in her book Indonesia Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation.
In Mietzner’s concluding chapter, he writes, “the more pressing challenge is to explore how coalitional presidentialism can work without sucking the oxygen out of democratic societies (245).” This is a conspicuous issue confronting not only Indonesia, but also its neighbouring democracies in the region. The revolving door of party and non-party actors in Indonesia highlights the precarious nature of the development of civil society in Southeast Asia. One can also see the parallels drawn in Malaysia’s coalition party politics, its longstanding stability, and the inclusion and exclusion of civic groups that have undermined the nation’s political progress for decades.
In this sense, Mietzner’s analysis of Indonesia’s coalition presidentialism is highly relevant for future research, as it presses upon researchers the important message to continue to investigate the undercurrents of other young, evolving and often fragile democracies in recent years.
Note: This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia.
The review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image: Joko Widodo, the President of Indonesia
Image credit: Ardikta on Shutterstock.
The Case for a Peer Review Market (guest post)
“The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it.”
So writes David Thunder, Research Fellow in Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra.
In the following guest post, he briefly identifies some of the problems with the current system of peer review, and suggests they can be remedied with a kind of referee marketplace in which editors can shop for—and purchase—referee services.
[detail of an artwork by Yau Hoong Tang]
The Case for a Peer Review Market
by David Thunder
The academic peer review system as it currently stands is frustrating and dysfunctional for many of those who participate in it. Below, I detail some of its most salient limitations, and afterwards propose an innovation that could mitigate these issues.
Limitations of the Current Peer Review System
1. Because peer review services are often pro bono or done for a nominal fee, they rely on the goodwill and sense of personal responsibility of each reviewer, not on an enforceable contractual obligation. Because of the pro bono nature of many reviews, the motivation for doing them is something like “duty to the profession,” unless a reviewer has a strong personal interest in a specifical manuscript. There is no enforceable contractual obligation to speak of. This has two negative consequences:
- First, reviews may be either half-hearted or submitted very late, which has negative knock-on effects for publishers and authors alike.
- Second, due to the limits of moralistic motives that are not remunerated, editors may have to spend months trying to secure a scholar willing to conduct a time-consuming review.
2. Because there is almost no form of public accountability for reviewers, and they know this, the quality of reviews is mixed. Some are excellent, others acceptable, and others based on personal prejudices or superficial readings of a text. In any case, the effect of a pro bono system, combined with the fact that reviewers’ work is not publicly evaluated or held accountable, is to create a class of gatekeepers who only answer privately to editors for the quality and timeliness of their work, and cannot realistically be pressured too much given that their work is pro bono.
Effects of the Current System for Authors and Publishers
1. Publishers are put in a difficult situation in which they subject authors to lengthy, career-damaging delays over which they have little control.
2. Publishers may find that their ability to bring work to the market efficiently is undermined by needlessly drawn out review times.
3. Authors may find articles and book manuscripts sitting under review far beyond the estimated review times. In the case of book manuscripts, these delays may be especially long (anywhere from 6 months up to 18 months), and have negative repercussions for a scholar’s career.
A Proposal for a Peer Review Market
I propose to create a virtual peer review market, through which both authors and publishers/editors can search for available peer reviewers and solicit their services on a competitive and professional basis.
The basic idea is that each peer reviewer compiles an online profile which may be independently vetted before it goes live. The profile would include name, educational background, publications, number of peer reviews conducted, average rating for their reviews, and a negotiable offer price and guaranteed turnaround time for reviews.
Editors and authors would also have an online profile in the system, and they could solicit peer reviewers’ services and indicate their required turnaround time. They could also use the system to rate the work done under different variables (e.g. quality, comprehensiveness, punctuality), and make payment for services rendered.
Benefits of a Peer Review Market
People who are paid for the work they do tend to give it a higher priority and feel a strong sense of duty to do it properly and on time. In addition, if reviewers know they will be rated publicly for their work, they are more likely to take is seriously. The end result of a marketized system is more peer reviews of a higher quality, and more peer reviews turned in on time.
A second advantage of a public peer review market is that editors and authors may search for eligible reviewers from a much larger database that includes important data about past experience and reliability as well as areas of specialization. When people know they can make money from reviewing manuscripts, they will have a greater incentive to up their game and develop an attractive portfolio of review experiences. This is a win-win for authors, editors/publishers and reviewers alike.
Challenges and Questions
A professional peer review market may pose certain challenges, especially at the start:
- Universities, journals and book editors would have to expand their budget for academic reviews if pro bono reviews are phased out.
- Some unscrupulous reviewers may try to “game” the system by getting paid for low quality reviews. But this should be discovered fairly quickly when their work is rated by editors and/or authors.
What do you think are the strengths and weakness of this proposal? Do you have any practical suggestions for the implementation of this or other reforms of our peer review system?
The post The Case for a Peer Review Market (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy – review
In Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy, Neil Lee proposes abandoning the Silicon Valley-style innovation hub, which concentrates its wealth, for alternative, more equitable models. Emphasising the role of the state and the need for adaptive approaches, Lee makes a nuanced and convincing case for reimagining how we “do” innovation to benefit the masses, writes Yulu Pi.
Professor Neil Lee will be speaking at an LSE panel event, How can we tackle inequalities through British public policy? on Tuesday 5 March at 6.30pm. Find details on how to attend here.
While everyone is talking about AI innovations, Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy arrives as a timely and critical examination of innovation itself. Challenging the conventional view of Silicon Valley as the paradigm for innovation, the book seeks answers on how the benefits of innovations can be broadly shared across society.
When we talk about innovation, we often picture genius scientists from prestigious universities or tech giants creating radical technologies in million-dollar labs. But in his book, Neil Lee, Professor of Economic Geography at The London School of Economics and Political Science, tells us there is more to it. He suggests that our obsession with cutting-edge innovations and idolisation of superstar hubs like Silicon Valley and Oxbridge hinders better ways to link innovation with shared prosperity.
Lee stresses that innovation doesn’t make a difference if it stays locked up in labs; it needs to be shared, learned, improved and used to make real impacts.
Innovation goes beyond the invention of disruptive new technologies. It also involves improving existing technologies or merging them to generate new innovations. In this book, Lee illustrates this idea using mobile payment technologies as an example, showcasing how the combination of existing technologies – mobile phone and payment terminals – can spawn new innovations. He argues that “technologies evolve through incremental innovations in regular and occasionally larger leaps” (23). Moreover, Lee stresses that innovation doesn’t make a difference if it stays locked up in labs; it needs to be shared, learned, improved and used to make real impacts. It is important to think beyond the notion of a single radical invention and recognise the contributions not only of major inventors but of “tweakers” who make incremental improvements and implementers who operate and maintain innovative products (25).
In challenging the conventional narratives of innovation, this book guides us to expand our understanding of innovation and paves the way for a discussion on combining innovation with equity. When we pose the question “How do we foster innovations?”, we miss out on asking a crucial follow-up: “How do we foster innovations that translate into increased living standards for everyone?”. Lee argues that the incomplete line of questioning inevitably steers us towards flawed solutions – countries all over the world building their own Silicon-something.
While the San Francisco Bay Area is home to many successful start-up founders who have made billions, it simultaneously struggles with issues like severe homelessness.
While the San Francisco Bay Area is home to many successful start-up founders who have made billions, it simultaneously struggles with issues like severe homelessness. The staggering wealth gap is evident, with the top 1 per cent of households holding 48 times more wealth than the bottom 50 per cent. Other centres of innovation like Oxbridge and Shanghai are also highly unequal, with the benefits of innovations going to a small few.
The book introduces four alternative models of innovation – Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Taiwan – that suggest innovation doesn’t inevitably coincide with high-level inequality.
The book introduces four alternative models of innovation – Switzerland, Sweden, Austria and Taiwan – that suggest innovation doesn’t inevitably coincide with high-level inequality. Through these examples, Lee highlights the significance of often-neglected aspects of innovation: adoption, diffusion and incremental improvements. Take Austria, for instance, which might not immediately come to mind as a global hub of disruptive innovation. Its strategic commitment to continuous innovation – particularly in its traditional, industrial sectors like steel and paper – sheds light on the more nuanced, yet equally impactful, facets of innovation. (92) Taiwan, on the other hand, gained its growth from technological development facilitated by its advanced research institutions such as the Industrial Technology Research Institute and state-led industrial policy. Foxconn stands as the world’s fourth-largest technology company, while the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) accounts for half of the world’s chip production (116).
In all four examples, the state played a critical role in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, showing that policies on innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other.
Building on these examples, the book highlights the vital role of the state in both spurring innovations and distributing the benefits of innovation. In all four examples, the state played a critical role in creating frameworks to ensure that benefits are broadly shared, showing that policies on innovation and mutual prosperity reinforce each other. Taking another look at Austria, ranked 17th in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Global Innovation Index (99), its strength on innovation is accompanied by the state’s heavy investment on welfare to build a strong social safety net.
As the book draws to a close, it advocates for the development of a set of specific institutions. The first type, generative institutions, foster the development of radical innovations. These are heavily funded in the US, resulting, as British economist David Soskice claims, in the US dominance in cutting-edge technologies (169). The book shows a wide array of generative institutions through its four examples. For instance, in Taiwan, research laboratories play a crucial role in the success of its cutting-edge chip manufacturing, while the government directs financial resources towards facilitating job creation. On the other hand, Austria has concentrated its fast-growing R&D spending on the upgrading and specialisation of its low-tech industries of the past.
The second and third types, diffusive and redistributive institutions, aim to address issues of inequality, such as labour market polarisation and wealth concentration that might come with innovation. These two types of institutions offer people the opportunity to participate in the delivery, adoption and improvement of innovation. Switzerland’s mature vocational education system is a prime example of such institutions, “facilitating innovation and the diffusion of technology from elsewhere and ensuring that workers benefit.” (172)
Discussions about ‘good inequality’ where innovators are rewarded, and “bad inequality,” where wealth becomes too concentrated demonstrate the book’s strong willingness to call out inequality and tackle complex issues head-on.
Discussions about “good inequality” where innovators are rewarded, and “bad inequality,” where wealth becomes too concentrated demonstrate the book’s strong willingness to call out inequality and tackle complex issues head-on. (8) This integrity extends to Lee’s candid examination of the examples. Despite presenting them as models of how innovation can be paired with equity, he does not gloss over their imperfections. By recognising the persistent disparities in gender, race, and immigration status in all four of these examples, the book presents a balanced narrative that urges readers to think critically. Although these countries have made strides in sharing the benefits of innovation, they are far from perfect and still have a significant journey ahead to reduce these disparities. Take Switzerland, for example. Though it consistently tops the WIPO’s Global Innovation Index, maintaining its position for the 13th consecutive year in 2023, it grapples with one of the largest gender pay gaps in Europe. This gender inequality has deep roots, as it wasn’t until 1971 that women gained the right to vote in Swiss federal elections (71).
Lee warns against the naive replication of these success stories elsewhere without adapting them to the specific context. This frank and thorough approach enriches the conversation about innovation and inequality, making it a compelling and credible contribution to the discourse and a convincing argument for changing what we consider to be the purpose of innovation.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: vic josh on Shutterstock.
New Study on a European UBI
Financed by the European Parliament and written by three Catalonian economists, “The fundamental part of this research means to answer the following question: can UBI be financed by the EU? And more specifically, to answer the key question of how it can be financed, through three taxes: income tax, wealth tax and carbon tax.” To […]
200+ Doctor Who Scripts & More Available For You to Download for Free
Over 200 Doctor Who scripts (including the 60th Anniversary episodes) and many other BBC show scripts are available in the BBC Writers Room.
Philosophy’s Digital Future (guest post)
“The crucial question for any academic system is how filtering works. Information is cheap. What we want is some way to identify the most valuable information.”
In the following guest post, Richard Y. Chappell, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, discusses how new technologies could facilitate better publication and research systems.
(A version of this post first appeared at Good Thoughts.)
Philosophy’s Digital Future:
How technology could transform academic research
by Richard Y. Chappell
Our current system for academic publishing strikes me as outdated. The ‘filter then publish’ model was designed for a non-digital world of high publication costs. Online publishing removes that constraint, enabling the shift to a superior ‘publish then filter’ model. What’s more: future advances in AI will make it easier to “map” our collective knowledge, identifying the most important contributions and highlighting gaps where more work is needed. Putting the two together yields a vision of a future academic system that seems far better suited to advancing our collective understanding than our current system.
Mapping the Literature
Imagine having access to an accurate synthesis of the academic literature, viewable at varying degrees of detail, mapping out everything from (a) the central positions in a debate, and the main arguments for and against each candidate position, to (z) the current status of the debate down to the n-th level of replies to replies to sub-objections. Such a comprehensive mapping would be far too much work for any human to do (though the high-level summaries of a debate offered in “survey” papers can be very helpful, they are inevitably far from complete, and may be tendentious). And current-generation LLMs don’t seem capable of reliably accurate synthesis. But presumably it’s just a matter of time. Within a decade or two (maybe much less), AIs could produce this mapping for us, situating (e.g.) every paper in the PhilPapers database according to its philosophical contributions and citation networks.
You could see at a glance where the main “fault lines” lie in a debate, and which objections remain unanswered. This opens up new ways to allocate professional esteem: incentivizing people to plug a genuine gap in the literature (or to generate entirely new branches), and not just whatever they can sneak past referees. This in turn could remedy the problem of neglected objections (and general lack of cross-camp engagement) that I’ve previously lamented, and encourage philosophical work that is more interesting and genuinely valuable.
Publish then filter
Suppose that your paper gets “added to the literature” simply by uploading it to PhilPapers. The PhilAI then analyzes it and updates the PhilMap accordingly. So far, no referees needed.
The crucial question for any academic system is how filtering works. Information is cheap. What we want is some way to identify the most valuable information: the papers of greatest philosophical merit (on any given topic) that are worth reading, assigning, and esteeming. Currently we rely on hyper-selective prestigious journals to do much of this filtering work for us, but I think they’re not very good at this task. Here I’ll suggest two forms of post-publication filtering that could better help us to identify worthwhile philosophy. (Though let me flag in advance that I’m more confident of the second.)
- PhilMap influence
Right now, the main numerical measure of influence is citation counts. But this is a pretty terrible metric: an offhand citation is extremely weak evidence of influence,1 and (in principle) a work could decisively settle a debate and yet secure no subsequent citations precisely because it was so decisive that there was nothing more to say.
An interesting question is whether the PhilAI could do a better job of measuring a contribution’s impact upon the PhilMap. One could imagine getting credit based upon measures of originality (being the first to make a certain kind of move in the debate), significance (productively addressing more central issues, rather than epicycles upon epicycles—unless, perhaps, a particular epicycle looked to be the crux of an entire debate), positive influence (like citation counts try to measure, but more contentful) and maybe even negative influence (if the AI can detect that a certain kind of “discredited” move is made less often following the publication of an article explaining why it is a mistake).
If the AI’s judgments are opaque, few may be inclined to defer to its judgments, at least initially. But perhaps it could transparently explain them. Or perhaps we would trust it more over time, as it amassed a reliable-seeming track record. Otherwise, if it’s no better than citation counts, we may need to rely more on human judgment (as we currently do). Still, there’s also room to improve our use of the latter, as per below.
- Crowdsourcing peer evaluation
This part doesn’t require AI, just suitable web design. Let anyone write a review of any paper in the database, or perhaps even submit ratings without comments.2 Give users options to filter or adjust ratings in various ways. Options could include, e.g., only counting professional philosophers, filtering by reviewer AOS, and calibrating for “grade inflation” (by adjusting downwards the ratings of those who routinely rate papers higher than other users do, and upwards for those who do the opposite) and “mutual admiration societies” (by giving less weight to reviews by philosophers that the author themselves tends to review unusually generously). Ease of adding custom filters (e.g. giving more weight to “reviewers like me” who share your philosophical tastes and standards) would provide users more options, over time, to adopt the evaluative filters that prove most useful.
Then iterate. Reviews are themselves philosophical contributions that can be reviewed and rated. Let authors argue with their reviewers, and try to explain why they think the other’s criticisms are misguided. Or take the critiques on board and post an updated version of the paper, marking the old review as applying to a prior version, and inviting the referee to (optionally) update their verdict of the current version. (Filters could vary in how much weight they give to “outdated” ratings that aren’t confirmed to still apply to new versions, possibly varying depending on how others’ ratings of the two versions compare, or on whether third parties mark the review as “outdated” or “still relevant”.) Either way, the process becomes more informative (and so, one hopes, likely more accurate).3
Instead of journals, anyone—or any group—can curate lists of “recommended papers”.4 The Journal of Political Philosophy was essentially just “Bob’s picks”, after all. There’s no essential reason for this curation role to be bundled with publication. As with journal prestige, curators would compete to develop reputations for identifying the best “diamonds in the rough” that others overlook. Those with the best track records would grow their followings over time, and skill in reviewing and curation—as revealed by widespread following and deference in the broader philosophical community—could be a source of significant professional esteem (like being a top journal editor today). Some kind of visible credit could go to the reviewers and curators who first signal-boost a paper that ends up being widely esteemed. (Some evaluative filters might seek to take into account reviewer track record in this way, giving less weight to those whose early verdicts sharply diverge—in either direction—from the eventual consensus verdicts.)
One could also introduce academic prediction markets (e.g. about how well-regarded a paper will be in X years time) to incentivize better judgments.
PhilMap Evaluative Filters
Combining these two big changes: users could then browse an AI-generated “map” of the philosophical literature, using their preferred evaluative filters to highlight the most “valuable” contributions to each debate—and finding the “cutting edges” to which they might be most interested in contributing. This could drastically accelerate philosophical progress, as the PhilMap would update much faster than our current disciplinary “conventional wisdom”. It could also help researchers to avoid re-inventing the wheel, focusing instead on areas where more work is truly needed. So there seem clear epistemic benefits on both the “production” and “consumption” sides.
Summary of benefits
- The entire system is free and open access.
- Users can more easily find whatever valuable work is produced, and understand the big-picture “state of the debate” at a glance.
- Valuable work is more likely to be produced, as researchers are given both (i) better knowledge of what contributions would be valuable, and (ii) better incentives to produce valuable work (since it is more likely to be recognized as such).
- A small number of gatekeepers can’t unilaterally prevent valuable new work from entering “the literature”. (They also can’t prevent bad new work. But there’s no real cost to that, as the latter is easily ignored.)
- It offers a more efficient review process, compared to the current system in which (i) papers might be reviewed by dozens of referees before finally being published or abandoned, and (ii) much of that reviewing work is wasted due to its confidential nature. My described system could solve the “refereeing crisis” (whereby too much work for too little reward currently results in undersupply of this vital academic work—and what is supplied is often of lower quality than might be hoped), thanks to its greater efficiency and publicity.5
- Disincentivizes overproduction of low-quality papers. If publication is cheap, it ceases to count for much.
- It pushes us towards a kind of pluralism of evaluative standards.6 Currently, publishing a lot in top journals seems the main “measure” of professional esteem. But this is a terrible measure (and I say this as someone who publishes a lot in top journals!). Philosophers vary immensely in their evaluative standards, and it would be better to have a plurality of evaluative metrics (or filters) that reflected this reality. Different departments might value different metrics/filters, reflecting different conceptions of what constitutes good philosophy. If this info were publicly shared, it could help improve “matching” within the profession, further improving job satisfaction and productivity, and reducing “search costs” from people moving around to try to find a place where they really fit.
Objections
Are there any downsides sufficient to outweigh these benefits?
- Incentivizing reviews
In response to a similar proposal from Heeson & Bright to shift to post-publication review, Hansson objects that “it is not obvious where that crowd [for crowd-sourced post-publication review] would come from”:
Anyone who has experience of editing knows how difficult it is to get scholars to review papers, even when they are prodded by editors. It is difficult to see how the number of reviews could increase in a system with no such prodding.
There is an obvious risk that the distribution of spontaneous post-publication reviews on sites for author-controlled publication will be very uneven. Some papers may attract many reviews, whereas others receive no reviews at all. It is also difficult to foresee what will happen to the quality of reviews. When you agree to review a paper for a journal in the current system, this is a commitment to carefully read and evaluate the paper as a whole and to point out both its positive and its negative qualities. It is not unreasonable to expect that spontaneous peer reviews in an author-controlled system will more often be brief value statements rather than thorough analyses of the contents.
An obvious solution would be to make submissions of one’s own work to the PhilMap cost a certain number of “reviewer credits”.7 Reviews of a particular paper might earn diminishing credits depending on how many reviews it has already secured. And they might be subject to further quality-adjustments, based on automatic AI analysis and/or meta-crowdsourced up/down votes. Perhaps to earn credits, you need to “commit” to writing a review of an especially substantive and thorough nature. It would be worth putting thought into the best way to develop the details of the system. But I don’t see any insuperable problems here. Further, I would expect review quality to improve significantly given the reputational stakes of having your name publicly attached. (Current referees have little incentive to read papers carefully, and it often shows.)
- Transition feasibility
Another worry is simply how to get from here to there. I think the AI-powered PhilMap could significantly help with that transition. Currently, most PhilPapers entries are traditional publications. The PhilMap doesn’t require changing that. But if/as more people (and institutions) started using evaluative filters other than mere journal prestige, the incentive to publish in a journal would be reduced in favor of directly submitting to the PhilMap. And I’d certainly never referee for a journal again once a sufficiently well-designed alternative of this sort was available: I’d much rather contribute to a public review system—I positively enjoy writing critical blog posts, after all! If enough others felt similarly, it’s hard to see how journals could survive the competition.
Of course, this all depends upon novel evaluative metrics/filters proving more valuable than mere journal prestige, inspiring people to vote with their feet. I think journals suck, so this shouldn’t be difficult. But if I’m wrong, the radical changes just won’t take off as hoped. So it seems pretty low-risk to try it and see.
- Other objections?
I’m curious to hear what other concerns one might have to the proposed system. There was some past discussion of Heeson & Bright’s proposal on Daily Nous, but I think my above discussion addresses the biggest concerns. I’ve also seen mention of a critical paper by Rowbottom, but my institution doesn’t provide access to the journal it’s in, and the author didn’t bother to post a pre-print to PhilPapers, so I can’t read their criticisms. (Further evidence that the current system is lousy!)
Notes
1. For example, my most-cited paper (on ‘Fittingness’) gets mentioned a lot in passing, but ~zero substantial engagement, whereas I get the sense that ‘Value Receptacles’ and ‘Willpower Satisficing’ have done a lot more to change how others actually think about their respective topics. (And, indeed, I think the latter two are vastly better papers.)
2. Either way, they should flag any potential conflicts of interest (e.g. close personal or professional connections to the author), and others should be able to raise flags when the reviewer themselves fails to do so. Mousing over the reviewer’s name could indicate relevant data about their track record, e.g. professional standing, average ratings that they give to others, etc.
3. Arvan, Bright, & Heesen argue that formal jury theorems support this conclusion. I’m dubious of placing muchweight on such arguments: too much depends on whether the background assumptions are actually satisfied. But their “replies to objections” section is worth reading!
4. As with reviewers, curators would need to flag any conflicts of interest (but could do whatever they want subject to offering that transparency).
5. The publicity might deter some grad students and precariously employed philosophers from offering critical reviews (e.g. of work by faculty who could conceivably be on their future hiring committee). But if fewer reviews are needed anyway, those from the securely employed may well suffice. The cowardly might also be mistaken in their assumptions: I’d expect good philosophers to think betterof candidates who can engage intelligently (even if critically!) with their work. (But who knows how many people on hiring committees actually meet my expectations for “good philosophers”. Reality may disappoint.)
A second effect of the publicity might be that everyone would be less inclined to write scathingly negative reviews, for fear of making enemies. But that’s probably a good thing. Scathing negative reports are often stupid, and would benefit from having the writers be careful of their reputations. It should always be possible to write an appropriately negative review in such a way as to cause no embarrassment from having one’s name attached to it.
Alternatively, the software might offer some way to anonymize one’s review (subject to checks to ensure that one isn’t abusing anonymity to hide a conflict of interests). Different evaluative filters might then vary in how much weight they give to anonymous vs. named reviews.
6. By this I mean a “descriptive” form of pluralism, i.e. about candidate You don’t have to think the standards are all equal; but you should probably expect other philosophers to disagree with your philosophical values. So I think it’s appropriate to have a plurality of candidate standards available, from which we can argue about which is actually best, rather than pretending that our current measure is actually reliably measuring anything in particular, let alone any shared conception of philosophical merit. (Maybe it generates a shared sense of social statusor prestige, which we all then value. But I take that to be a bad thing. It would be better for different subgroups to esteem different philosophers, who better merit it by the locally accepted standards. And for all this to be more transparent.)
7. If we want to reduce the pressure on grad students and the tenuously employed, they could be awarded a limited number of free credits each year, allowing them to submit more and review less. Conversely, the price per submission for senior faculty could increase, reflecting expectations that tenured faculty should shoulder more of the reviewing “burden”.
Related: “‘Hey Sophi’, or How Much Philosophy Will Computers Do?“
The post Philosophy’s Digital Future (guest post) first appeared on Daily Nous.
Art, Science and the Politics of Knowledge – review
In Art, Science and the Politics of Knowledge, Hannah Star Rogers challenges the traditional dichotomy between art and science, arguing that they share common approaches to knowledge-making. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies and using compelling examples, Star Rogers illuminates the overlapping characteristics – such as emphases on visualisation, enquiry and experimentation – of the two knowledge domains, writes Andrew Karvonen.
Art, Science and the Politics of Knowledge. Hannah Star Rogers. The MIT Press. 2022.
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Art and science are often described in oppositional terms. Artists engage in subjective, creative, right-brain activities to produce beautiful objects while scientists use their left-brain skills in objective and methodical ways to improve our collective understanding of the world. In Art, Science and the Politics of Knowledge (The MIT Press, 2022), Hannah Star Rogers challenges and disrupts these dichotomies through a detailed examination of how art and science intermingle and influence one another. She argues that we should set aside the long-standing assumptions about the differences between art and science, and instead recognise their common approaches to knowledge-making.
[Rogers] argues that we should set aside the long-standing assumptions about the differences between art and science, and instead recognise their common approaches to knowledge-making.
Rogers draws upon Science and Technology Studies (STS) theories and methods to interrogate the overlapping knowledge communities of art and science. Just as STS has been used to destabilise scientific and technological knowledge practices since the 1970s, she argues that it can also be directed towards art and art-science practices. Her social constructivist lens draws upon well-known STS concepts such as Trevor Pinch and Wiebe Bijker’s notion of interpretive flexibility, Geoff Bowker and Susan Leigh Star’s emphasis on the power of classification, and Bruno Latour’s immutable mobiles to reveal the multiple ways that art and science are indelibly intertwined. She follows scientists and artists in their laboratories, studios and exhibition spaces to develop ethnographic evidence of the commonalities and synergies between their knowledge practices.
Just as STS has been used to destabilise scientific and technological knowledge practices since the 1970s, she argues that it can also be directed towards art and art-science practices.
Rogers’ first two case studies are based on archival studies of artists who contributed to scientific knowledge production. From the 1880s to the 1930s, the father and son team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka used their artisanal expertise in glassmaking to represent wonders of the natural world, notably sea creatures and flowers. Rogers argues that these models were not simply representations of the natural world but contributed to scientific knowledge in substantive ways. As she writes,
To create three-dimensional, detailed representational objects, the Blaschkas had to do their own studies and observations, and in doing so they were creating new ways of knowing sea creatures that would otherwise have been represented by flaccid specimens in jars or two-dimensional drawings. The knowledge that these artisans created was a method of displaying the salient features of marine life to the satisfaction of the scientific community (47). In other words, the Blaschkas positioned themselves as co-producers of scientific knowledge and their models provided new ways of seeing and knowing the field of natural history.
The Blaschkas positioned themselves as co-producers of scientific knowledge and their models provided new ways of seeing and knowing the field of natural history.
The power of visualisation is reinforced in Rogers’ second case study of the renowned 20th-century photographer Berenice Abbott. In the 1940s, Abbott developed a photo-realist technique that could accurately depict physical science laws and principles. She worked in close collaboration with scientists to stage images of soap bubbles, magnetic filings, light traveling through prisms, and falling objects such as balls and wrenches. These images were prominently displayed in science textbooks and were used to inform the scientific literacy of the general public. The realist photos of Abbott and the lifelike glass sculptures of the Blashckas extend earlier STS scholarship by Latour, Michael Lynch, Steve Woolgar, and others on the centrality of images and models to scientific knowledge making while also highlighting their aesthetic achievements. These artefacts are simultaneously works of science and works of art.
The fourth case study of tactical media is an outlier in the book. Tactical media is a social activist movement that emerged in the 1990s as subversive individuals began to employ the World Wide Web for political messaging. Rogers describes various performative, ephemeral interventions to critique capitalism and challenge authority through disinformation, humour, playfulness, and creativity. The case study provides fascinating insights about how technical artefacts can be used to promote alternative ways of knowing, but the work of tactical media practitioners has tenuous connections to the art-science thesis in the rest of the book.
Bioartists shared laboratory space, techniques, and materials with scientists to do science while also critiquing it.
Rogers’ fourth case study returns to the art-science knowledge nexus with an ethnographic study of SymbioticA, a laboratory for the biological arts at the University of Western Australia in Perth. She shadowed the activities of bioartists who collaborate with biotechnologists to develop interactional expertise and expand the knowledge domain of biotechnology. The bioartists shared laboratory space, techniques, and materials with scientists to do science while also critiquing it. As she notes, “Bioartists have seen themselves not as the mediators of scientific knowledge to the public but as the producers themselves” (145). The case study provides vivid examples of how artists and scientists contribute to the hybrid field of art-science in novel ways.
[Rogers] makes a compelling case for using exhibitions in art galleries and libraries to promote STS ways of knowing and to frame research activities as a collective intervention.
In her final case study, Rogers transforms from observer to action researcher by curating an art-science installation titled “Art’s Work in the Age of Biotechnology: Shaping Our Genetic Futures” at North Carolina State University in 2019 and 2020. The exhibition included objects with accompanying videos to create an open-ended, iterative, and interactive space where scientists, artists, and the general public could come together in a shared dialogue on biotechnology and society. She makes a compelling case for using exhibitions in art galleries and libraries to promote STS ways of knowing and to frame research activities as a collective intervention. As she notes, “Curators create new knowledge around objects by analyzing the layers of meaning added to them in different context[s]” (245).
While Rogers’ description of the curatorial process provides a titillating glimpse on how STS ideas can be mobilised in new ways, it also raises important questions about the role of the public in knowledge production processes. In the case study, she frames the public as critics rather than pupils of art-science knowledge production, but her description of the curated exhibit includes no evidence on how the public contributed to this shared dialogue. This omission highlights the long-standing challenge of transcending the boundary between experts and non-experts to co-produce knowledge through more democratic forms of engagement.
Rogers provides a wealth of compelling examples to reveal the networked production of art-science knowledge that enrols people, artefacts, and ideas in studios and laboratories through complementary modes of questioning and experimentation.
Overall, the case studies in this book illustrate how art and science are distinct yet overlapping knowledge domains with multiple commonalities. Rogers provides a wealth of compelling examples to reveal the networked production of art-science knowledge that enrols people, artefacts, and ideas in studios and laboratories through complementary modes of questioning and experimentation. The findings make a compelling case for how an STS perspective can be used to deconstruct and critique knowledge domains that extend far beyond scientific and technological development.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
Image Credit: Museopedia on Wikimedia Commons.
In middle of Gaza genocide, 12 UK universities sign new research partnerships with Israel
Deaf ear to the suffering of Palestinian civilians as UK government gives away cash to incentivise partnering with Israel
Twelve universities across the UK have applied for and accepted government grants to undertake ‘a range of ‘mobility projects focussed on innovation and entrepreneurial skills development’ in partnership with Israeli universities.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is handing out the cash to pay for researchers to ‘hone their expertise via international collaboration’ with a focus on ‘entrepreneurship and Technology Readiness Levels’ (TRLs) ‘, according to the Universities UK website. The cash will also fund researchers to travel to Israel and will ‘further links with the Israeli ecosystem through existing research and innovation collaborations and open the door to new opportunities’.
At a time when students and activists around the world are demanding a boycott of Israeli products, services and institutions, the universities below have taken the cash – some of them twice:
- Aston University – Weizzman Institute of Science and Bar-Ilan University
- Edge Hill University – Tel Aviv University
- Queen Mary University of London – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University
- Royal Veterinary College – Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Teesside University – Tel Aviv University
- UCL – Tel Aviv University
- University of Exeter – Tel Aviv University
- University of Greenwich – Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- University of Kent – Technion
- University of Leeds – Tel Hai College
- University of Plymouth – Technion
- University of Surrey – Bar-Ilan University
The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement has described Israeli universities as working closely with the Israeli state to develop weapons and systems that can be used to oppress and kill Palestinians:
Israeli universities are major, willing and persistent accomplices in Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
They are involved in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel’s recent war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza, justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, rationalizing gradual ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians, providing moral justification for extra-judicial killings, systematically discriminating against “non-Jewish” students, and other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law.
To end this complicity in Israel’s violations of international law, Palestinian civil society has called for an academic boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions. Refusing to normalize oppression, many academic associations, student governments and unions as well as thousands of international academics now support the academic boycott of Israel.
As Skwawkbox revealed yesterday, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week promoted – and visited in 2022 – an Israeli data company with close links to the Israeli military that is processing NHS test results. The founder of the firm is a ‘tech entrepreneur’ who has spoken and written about the importance of technology in fighting ‘terrorism’. Yet another occasion where the ‘Labour’ front bench is completely aligned with the views and behaviour of the Tories they are supposed to be opposing.
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My experience with geopolitics of knowledge in political philosophy so far
Geopolitics of knowledge is a fact. Only few (conservative) colleagues would contend otherwise. Ingrid Robeyns wrote an entry for this blog dealing with this problem. There, Ingrid dealt mostly with the absence of non-Anglophone colleagues in political philosophy books and journals from the Anglophone centre. I want to stress that this is not a problem of language, for there are other centres from which we, philosophers from the “Global South” working in the “Global South”, are excluded. In political philosophy, the centre is composed of the Anglophone world and three European countries: Italy, France, and Germany. From my own experience, the rest of us do not qualify as political philosophers, for we are, it seems, unable to speak in universal terms. We are, at best, providers of particular cases and data for Europeans and Anglophones to study and produce their own philosophical and universal theories. I think most of you who are reading are already familiar with the concept of epistemic extractivism, of which this phenomenon is a case. (If not, you should; in case you don’t read Spanish, there is this).
Critical political philosophy is one of the fields where the unequal distribution of epistemic authority is more striking. I say “striking” because it would seem, prima facie, that political philosophers with a critical inclination (Marxists, feminists, anti-imperialists, etc.) are people more prone to recognising injustice than people from other disciplines and tendencies. But no one lives outside a system of injustice and no one is a priori completely exempt from reproducing patterns of silencing. Not even ourselves, living and working in the “Global Southern” places of the world. Many political philosophers working and living in Latin America don’t even bother to read and cite their own colleagues. This is, to be sure, a shame, but there is a rationale behind this self-destructive practice. Latin American scholars know that their papers have even lesser chances of being sent to a reviewing process (we are usually desk-rejected) if they cite “too many” pieces in Spanish and by authors working outside of the academic centre.
In many reviews I’ve received in my career, I have been told to cite books by people from the centre just because they are trending or are being cited in the most prestigious Anglophone journals, even if they would contribute nothing to my piece and research. I have frequently been told by reviewers to give more information about the “particular” social-historical context I am writing from because readers don’t know a lot about it. This is an almost verbatim phrase from a review I got recently. I wonder if readers of Anglophone prestigious, Q1 journals stop being professional researchers the instant they start reading about José Carlos Mariátegui or Argentina’s last right-wing dictatorship. Why can’t they just do the research by themselves, why should we have to waste characters and words to educate an overeducated public? This is as tiresome as it is offensive. When I cite the work of non-Anglophone authors from outside of the imperial centres (UK, USA, Italy, Germany, and France, no matter the language they use to write), reviewers almost always demand that I include a reference to some famous native Anglophone (or Italian / German / French, without considering gender or race; the power differential here is simple geographical procedence) author who said similar things but decades after the authors I am quoting. I’ve read all your authors. Why haven’t they read “mine”? And why do they feel they have to suggest something else instead of just learning about “our” authors? This is what I want to reply to the reviewers. Of course, I don’t. I dilligently put the references they demand. I shouldn’t have to, but if I don’t, I don’t get published. There’s the imperial trick again.
English is also always a problem, but not for everyone who is not Anglophone. In 2020 I was in London doing research at LSE. I attended a lecture by a European political theorist. They gave the talk in English. Although they work at a United Statian University, their English was poor. The room was packed. The lecture was mediocre. I was annoyed. “Why do they feel they don’t have to make an effort to pronounce in an intelligible way?”, I thought. When I speak they don’t listen to me like that, with concentrated attention and making an effort to understand me. The reason is in plain view: coloniality of power. If you come from powerful European countries, you don’t need to ask for permission. You don’t need to excel. You don’t need to have something absolutely original to say. You just show up and talk. If you are from, let’s say, Argentina, and you work there (here), you have to adapt to the traditional analytic way of writing and arguing so typical in Anglophone contexts, including citing their literature, if you want to enter the room in the first place. You are not even allowed to use neologisms, although the omnipresent use of English as a lingua franca should have already made this practice at least tolerated. One cannot expect everyone to speak English and English to remain “English” all the same. Inclusion changes the game, if it doesn’t, then it is not isegoria what is going on but cultural homogenisation. (Here is a proposal for inclusive practices regarding Enlgish as a lingua franca). The manifest “Rethinking English as a lingua franca in scientific-academic contexts” offers a detailed critique of the idea and imposition of English as a lingua franca. I endorse it 100 %. (Here in Spanish, open access; here in Portuguese).
In my particular case, I am frequently invited to the academic centre, sometimes to write book chapters, encyclopaedia entries, and papers for special issues, sometimes to give talks and lectures. Not once have I not thought it was not tokenism. Maybe it is my own inferiority complex distorting my perception of reality, but we know from Frantz Fanon which is the origin of this inferiorisation.
I used to be pretty annoyed by this whole situation until I realised that I don’t need to try to enter conversations where I am not going to be heard, understood, or taken seriously. The fact is that we don’t need to be recognised as philosophers by those who willingly ignore our political philosophy. And this is why it is hard for me to participate in forums such as this blog. I just don’t want to receive the same comments I get when I send a paper to an Anglophone, Q1 journal, to put it simply.
But I also want to keep trying, not to feel accepted and to belong, but because I do believe in transnational solidarity and the collective production of emancipatory knowledge. It is a matter of recognition, and a question of whether it is possible for the coloniser to recognise the colonised, to name Fanon once more.