Epistemic disobedience–Undoing coloniality in global health research

Summary

For the sake of one’s children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion—and the value placed on the color of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion.

James Baldwin [1963]. The Fire Next Time.

Global health research takes refuge in the delusion that the value placed on Global North and Global South welfare is equal. Funding priorities, research agendas, methodology, research roles, outcomes and dissemination are based on Global North priorities and designed to reinforce Global North superiority. Coloniality in knowledge production is a problem inherited from when the colonial project took control of land, labour, and resources while enforcing the colonisers’ ways of living and thinking. Colonisers delineated criteria for being human in the colonisers’ own image–white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied and cisgender–placing the performance of that humanity at the zero-point, as the original and only legitimate perspective.

The colonial project is ubiquitous in the modern world as it is preserved by settler colonial governments. Previously colonised peoples consciously and unconsciously replicate colonialism through popular culture, education and knowledge production, albeit behind a façade of progress or modernity. Colonisation was achieved through physical violence for resource extraction, via the eradication of colonial subjects’ ways of being and thinking. Epistemic violence continues where knowledge systems are overwhelmingly dominated by Global North epistemology. Colonially enforced language and cultural norms still deprive women, people of colour and Indigenous researchers and communities from fully engaging in global health research. Colonially influenced education, resources, and research infrastructure produced the modern Global North-South disparities in research capacity. Global North researchers successfully publish in international journals through access to social capital, research agendas and funding opportunities. People from previously colonised regions are underrepresented in leadership roles in global health research, leading to weak Global South influence and participation in research.

Naidu T (2024) Epistemic disobedience–Undoing coloniality in global health research. PLOS Glob Public Health 4(4): e0003033. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003033