Colonialist Ethnography Nightmares

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Biko Agozino

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Jun 7, 2019, 6:30:08 PM6/7/19
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Adeshina Afolayan

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Jun 8, 2019, 6:08:29 AM6/8/19
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This is a heavy review that I find quite interesting. I have read about observant participants who became too drawn into their research. But this is quite serious, a researcher who became felonous...wow!

But, Oga Biko, I wonder at your subject heading. Why "Colonialism Ethnography Nightmares"? Please enlighten me what is colonialist about either the review or Goffman's unethical practices?

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Biko Agozino

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Jun 8, 2019, 4:04:06 PM6/8/19
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Shina,

Ethnography was the privileged methodology for colonial intelligence reports and sociologists have adopted it uncritically even as anthropologists reflect on their complicity in the colonial project.

Do you think that Princeton University supervisors or the prestigious publishers would have missed this felony if she was an African woman volunteering to drive a gang in search of a white man to murder? I doubt it because colonialism presumes that Black Lives Do Not Matter..

If this came out from a Nigerian university, some Nigerians in the Diaspora would start shedding tears for the quality of the educational system that raised us and TEDTalk would not have honored it with a platform, nor would top scholars heap praise on it without reading it in depth.

Biko

Okey Iheduru

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Jun 8, 2019, 10:08:31 PM6/8/19
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Thanks Biko for sharing Lubet's review of Goffman. Folks may be interested in the following articles/web links about Ms. Goffman.

Okey
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++====

1. Alice Goffman’s First Book Made Her a Star. It Wasn’t Enough to Get Her Tenure.

By Marc Parry JUNE 06, 2019  PREMIUM CONTENT FOR SUBSCRIBERS. SUBSCRIBE TODAY

The decision represents a low point in the seesaw trajectory that has turned the ethnographer into a symbol of some of the thorniest dilemmas of academic life.

Read more: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alice-Goffman-s-First-Book/246453

2. Goffman denied tenure

  1. Sociologist
    1f9f 

    According to Wisconsin sociology prof friend of friend. What could possibly be next for her?

    5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 11 GOOD 6 NO GOOD!

  2. Sociologist
    f200 

    any other outcome would have been shocking.

    5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 28 GOOD 7 NO GOOD!

  3. Sociologist
    8a4a 

    I guess she will be on the run to find a new job.

    5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 66 GOOD 6 NO GOOD!

  4. Sociologist
    997e 

    Big if true.

Read more:  https://www.socjobrumors.com/topic/goffman-denied-tenure

3. Conflict Over Sociologist's Narrative Puts Spotlight on Ethnography

Narayan Mahon for The Chronicle
Alice Goffman's account of a Philadelphia neighborhood has set off a debate among sociologists about how she went about her research.
By Marc Parry JUNE 12, 2015

Late last month, what began as a book review in an obscure publication blew up into a major controversy that tarnished sociology’s most-buzzed-about young star. At issue: whether the sociologist, Alice Goffman, had participated in a felony while researching her ethnographic study of young black men caught up in the criminal-justice system.

Read more: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Conflict-Over-Sociologists/230883?cid=trend_right_a






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Adeshina Afolayan

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Jun 9, 2019, 5:27:02 PM6/9/19
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This gets interestinger and interestinger, to parody Alice in Wonderland. So, from the multitudes of reactions that trailed Goffman's book, are we still justified with the "colonialist" suspicion, Oga Biko? 

I raise this question because "colonialist" seems to have become a buzz slam charge against anything coming out of the West. When I read Lubet's review, I was deeply worried that there was an institutional blindness to the issues he raised against Goffman and her ethnographic license. Now, my worry is unfounded. Everything cannot be colonialist or racist. 

A deeper worry though: would such a book not have become an unmitigated super achievement of the sociological or ethnographic imagination in the third world, an intellectual space already ready for a triumphal intellectual reference against "colonialist" misrepresentations? 

Back to you, Oga Biko.


Biko Agozino

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Jun 10, 2019, 2:07:48 AM6/10/19
to 'Adeshina Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series
Shina bros,

No be me talk am. Western scholars are the ones saying that ethnography is a colonialist method that implicated Anthropology in imperialist logic. If in doubt, check out Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism and also his Orientalism which have been accepted by Westerners as valid texts. The social sciences emerged at the height of imperialism and many are beginning the work of decolonizing their disciplines and the universities that empowered them to seek control over others.

The mimicry of every fad from the West by Third World scholars should not always be celebrated. Instead, the indigenous knowledge systems and critical scholar-activism that emerged from the South should also be developed further to help combat against on-going methodologies of epistemicide and intellectual imperialism.

I agree with you that Alice in Wonderland cannot speak for every scholar in an Ivy League institution nor in the West generally. But we must be able to learn lessons of what not to do, not only of best practices,  in research even from the best universities in the world. We should also be willing to learn from epistemologies from the South. No palm is big enough to cover the sky.

Biko

Toyin Falola

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Jun 10, 2019, 8:40:18 AM6/10/19
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Biko:

This requires a longer response than I have the capacity to give. We must give credit to our South African colleagues for their insistence on this issue. The wide range on “decoloniality” has taken roots—in both intellectual and practical terms. One of the scholars we must celebrate is Sabelo, copied here, who began to insist on this from his PhD time in Zimbabwe. If there is any scholar whose entire work I have read—including the unpublished ones as he sends them to me-it his Sabelo. When we published his book by Routledge, we did it in paper, and I think the ASA has invited him to speak in Boston. Many workshops have been organized including how to rewrite precolonial history using indigenous knowledge system.

One good news—we have now passed the age of rejections and doubts. Santos, Mignolo and others have assisted in consolidating the approach.

 

The next struggle is that people should write their PhDs in Zulu, Yoruba, Idoma, etc. “It is how you describe your house,” says a proverb, “that others define it.”

 

As African scholars, we must admit that we must always include ourselves in the critique of Africa. African scholars have also underdeveloped Africa.

Best

TF

1.     Sociologist
1f9f 

According to Wisconsin sociology prof friend of friend. What could possibly be next for her?

5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 11 GOOD 6 NO GOOD!

2.     Sociologist
f200 

any other outcome would have been shocking.

5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 28 GOOD 7 NO GOOD!

3.     Sociologist
8a4a 

I guess she will be on the run to find a new job.

5 MONTHS AGO # QUOTE 66 GOOD 6 NO GOOD!

4.     Sociologist
997e 

Big if true.

 

3. Conflict Over Sociologist's Narrative Puts Spotlight on Ethnography

Image removed by sender.Narayan Mahon for The Chronicle

 

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Biko Agozino

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Jun 10, 2019, 4:55:15 PM6/10/19
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TF,

I will follow up on the work of the South African colleagues.

Archie Mafaje and Ifi Amadiume led the critique of colonial anthropology in the 1980s. My own work on Black Women and the Criminal Justice System (1997) was hailed as launching the decolonization paradigm in criminology and my Counter-Colonial Criminology: A Critique of Imperialist Reason (2003) consolidated the paradigm.

You are right that we should heed Ngugi's call to decolonize our minds by writing scholarly works in our indigenous languages. After all, no society ever industrialized by relying on a foreign language. I also support Achebe's take that we should continue writing in any language we can and leave the rest to translators.

Biko

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