What counts as knowledge, and Whose knowledge counts? - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

What counts as knowledge, and Whose knowledge counts?

Liz Brosnan on behalf of EURIKHA

PI: Diana Rose Team: Alison Faulkner, Jayasree Kalathil, Akriti Mehta, Ruth Silverleaf, and Premila Trevidi

Service User Academy Symposium Melbourne 13th November 2018Slide2

What is EURIKHA?

A global survivor-research project, mapping: HistoriesResearch and Knowledges

Configuration of Research, Knowledge work, Activism & Alternative Practicesfrom movements of c/u/survivors/PwPSD around the world.Desk based research and mappingQualitative Interviews informed by Oral history with key figures (80 & 20)Focus Groups -key groupsLiterature review: including ‘grey’ literature, blogs and digital media

Archival analysisWebsite and public engagement International Collaborators Slide3

EURIKHA’s concerns

Challenging the dominance of Eurocentric knowledge and methods* Moving beyond these perspectives ​Experiential understandings of madness and distress ​

Alternative strategies for support/healing/coping.​Valuing other perspectives marginalised in elite Academic spacesInclusion and the Survivor movement ​Liminal space of Survivor research in Academy- looked on with doubt.Slide4

Problematising Eurocentric Knowledge

Eurocentrism -paradigm for interpreting a (past, present and future) reality that uncritically establishes the idea of European and Western historical progress/achievement and its political and ethical superiority, based on scientific rationality and the construction of the rule of law. A cannon of knowledge arising from the European Enlightenment privileging reason and the individual subject. All other forms of thought are ‘inferior’ – a White European ‘Enlightenment’ In regard to colonialism, the role of the scientist is to provide the intellectual basis for the subjugation of ‘other’ peoples.Blind to its bias – knowledge from everywhere else less credible – ‘Sociology of Absences’Privileges reason over emotion/senses/ imagination; Reason Unreason Male female and White black, etcSlide5

Hegemony of ‘Psy

’ ResearchClinical Academic Knowledge –individualising, pathologising

 ​Claims to objectivity and neutrality, ​RCT, Big DataSo retains power to define methods to generate knowledge, to determine what questions/outcomes matter,And renders invisible its own standpoint and values in privileged knowledge​What knowledge and whose knowledge is visible? What is omitted and invisiblised/absented?Slide6

EURIKHA’s Theoretical Base

Initially informed by feminist epistemology theories, questioning the objective, value-neutral persona of scientists and their researchAlso by Critical Theories (including Black Feminisms, Post-Colonial, and Intersectional) therefore explicitly political.e.g. Still We Rise; racialised, situated and indigenous knowledges

Developing Intersectional Survivor Situational StandpointSlide7

Situated Knowledges

All knowledge is situated, local, culturally informed and specific. Seeking the commonalities in situated knowledges.Formed in relations of power and privilege,Who determines what is valid?

White privilege We seek to surface mad knowledges that have been marginalised and absented, codified through community practice, through reflection, through collectively working together​Using Critical, Social Justice informed methodologies  ​​Slide8

Critical Lens re Knowledge Production

Uncovering Power Relationshow do u/c/s/PwPSD conceptualize, position, resist discourses of power? Identify how these discourses silence the lived experiences of ‘madness’ Highlighting our voices and discourses and alternatives we produce

Eurocentric discourses, discursive whiteness and other intersectional positions. What and who is absent? Countering individualized, pathologizing, Psy discourses with our own practices and narratives How are viable alternatives such as safe spaces, peer support, and indigenous healing practices envisioned?Slide9

User/Survivor Researchers in Academy

Experiential base of our knowledge, challenging ‘psy’ knowledge- supposedly objective knowledge about what is wrong with us, and how to fix us.Radically devalued as knowledge producers, always ‘collaboration’ rather than control

Culture shift needed in academy​https://www.ryerson.ca/news-events/news/2017/10/a-culture-shift-in-academia/Racialised experiences with MH System unacknowledged - beyond the academy- in user movement and user research as well Jayasree Kalathil, Nadia Kanani, Louise Tam, Essya Nabbali​, Bhargavi Davar Slide10

Users/Survivors - Knowledge Production Slide11

Reflecting on Our Positionality

Team composed of people with different, and occasionally competing or contradictory, expertise and experience which brings a richness of possibilities but also concomitant tensions.Different relations to the Academy and Activism.Some of us white – some employed in Western academic institution, inadvertently reproducing whiteness, Some positioned as Deliberately Independent of Academy

​Some privileged in academia, Partake of the hierarchies of knowledge and status ​Yet positioned as the ‘Mad’, mainstream always deeply suspicious of usParadox of trying to surface subjugated knowledges from within, and without, that space​Slide12

EURIKHA’s WorkSlide13

Inclusion of Global South

Includes interviews with persons with psychosocial disabilities in the Global SouthContexts: No or minimal mental health systemsColonial psychiatry

Continued imperialism (for example, Movement for global mental health)Legal advocacy (e.g. colonial national mental health laws; international advocacy – CRPD)Widespread inequalities within and between countriesChallenges for the researcher:Need for a different lens and perspectivePlatforms for information are different – organising over internet; non-textual sourcesNeed to avoid pitfalls of research projects based in global north exploring the global southSlide14

Emerging findings

Terminology used to self-identify – Diversity of terms: service user, survivors, persons with psychosocial disability, activist with lived experience, fighter Sometimes a pragmatic choice (for example, to access legal protections, form alliances with other groups)Identity may not be central to the work

Sites of knowledge generation outside of academia Navigating national and international networks – differing priorities, power imbalances between north and south, continued efforts to prioritise situated local knowledgesImportance of alliances – cross-disability, broader human rights organisation, women’s movements, sustainable livelihoods, etcSlide15

‘Still We Rise’

Methods:Preliminary survey identifying key figuresInterviews ~20

Case studies of key moments, groups, events and campaignsCompilation of a public archive of historical records and materials as currently none existObjectives:“Making opaque the whitening process” in knowledge making and historiesWork against the marginalisation and mythologisation of minority histories into the terms of a mainstream worldview.

Aims:

Mapping the history of activism and advocacy of user/survivors from African, African Caribbean and Asian backgrounds in the UK

History at the intersection of ‘race’ and ‘mental health’

Map collaborations and conflicts with the mainstream survivor movement and anti-racism movements

Address ‘racism’ and ‘

sanism

’

Whiteness and Eurocentrism in user/survivor knowledge creation

Sanism

and mental health discrimination in anti-racism historiesSlide16

History in Global North

CommonalitiesConcern re systemic abuse and stigma, Seek to Empower, and emancipate from trad. role of ‘mad person’Reclaim ownership of experiences, capabilities and voice

Improve the lot of others in MHS Change the operation of MH services and treatment optionsDiversity of positions, Entry via soc

/political awareness Via MHS treatment experiences, share value of ‘finding voice”, creates understanding and builds knowledge. Segregation by race and ethnicity, despite some efforts

Social Movement arose as a

response

to treatment within MH System:

Evolution –impact of neoliberal policies & audit culture –

SUI led to shift from SM orgs into

governmental,policy

and research effortsSlide17

Global North

Early focus on UK survivor research and Public Patient InvolvementShift to focus on knowledge work (research exclusionary)Some survivors now in Academy (perspectives easy found)Marginalization – Whiteness and exclusion from elite sites of Knowledge production (Academy, policy development and NGOs)

Shift to ‘Invisiblised’ groups and their collective knowledges EuropeEastern- State Incarceration still live; Western – Racialised and minority communities, Roma, Travelers & Gypsies, Sami in the far North. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA.First Nations peoples, Racialised communities, other marginalised groups.Slide18

Thank you for listening!

?Questions/comments welcome

Contact Us:Liz.brosnan@kcl.ac.ukOthers using first.name @kcl.ac.ukeurikha@kcl.ac.ukTwitter @EURIKHA_And on our discussion forum on www.eurikha.org