QUT Centre for Justice Theme Leader Professor Kerry Carrington will provide a keynote address as the (on-line) British Society of Criminology Conference 2021.
Kerry will speak on “De-colonising criminology through the inclusion of epistemologies of the south”
de Sousa Santos reminds us that the task of de-colonising knowledge is complex, gigantic, and in some (but not all) contexts, born of struggle against capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism (2020; 220-27). He argues there are two main projects of de-colonising knowledge – one negative and one positive. The negative championed by decolonial theory is to deconstruct and root out ethnocentric and anglocentric biases of knowledge systems. This journey has many champions. The positive and more challenging, according to de Sousa Santos, is the constructive work of the epistemologies of the south (de Sousa Santos, 2020: 226). The plural is deliberate as the key to disrupting the hegemony of northern epistemologies is to build diverse epistemologies. This journey has fewer champions. In this keynote I reflect on the journey of the emergence of criminologies of the south, how these epistemologies have only just begun the long arduous work of constructing new knowledges, methods and theories. This approach to de-colonising criminology is not in principle an oppositional project. It seeks to bridge global divides, reorient and correct hegemonic biases, to expand the repertoire of criminological knowledges beyond their heavily laden northern gaze. As a theoretical project it seeks to generate theory and not just apply theory imported from the Global North. As an empirical project, it seeks to harness and cultivate knowledges of and from the Global South that have been relatively invisible (Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo 2016; Carrington et al. 2019). As a political project is seeks to democratize knowledge, pluralise epistemologies, and disrupt the hegemony of criminological theories until recently, institutionalised in universities of the global north.
More information about the conference can be found here: Conference 2021 (britsoccrim.org)
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