Study identifies how to adopt practices for decolonising science it-online.co.za - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from it-online.co.za Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Dr Chris Trisos, from the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Africa Climate and Development Initiative has co-authored the Decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology, a paper proposing five interventions to build a more anti-
Credit: Keren Cooper
Knowledge systems outside of those sanctioned by Western universities have often been marginalised or simply not engaged with in many science disciplines, but there are multiple examples where Western scientists have claimed discoveries for knowledge that resident experts already knew and shared. This demonstrates not a lack of knowledge itself but rather that, for many scientists raised in Western society, little education concerning histories of systemic oppression has been by design. Western scientific knowledge has also been used to justify social and environmental control, including dispossessing colonised people of their land and ways of life and discounting existing knowledge systems.