This session will look at the politics of knowledge production and discuss the ways in which the establishment of the dominant discourses of legitimate knowledge relied upon the concomitant marginalisation of ‘other’ sources of knowledge. Mainstream approaches to the philosophy of social science have not, for the most part, been particularly concerned with the effects of epistemology on the racialized/ethnicized and/or the non-Western and non-white. This is because the West, as the location from which the majority of these viewpoints have been constructed, has either implemented a universalistic image of the world which proposes that it can be all encompassing, or because it has more directly ignored the world beyond Europe and the West. This session will critically discuss the emergence of ‘postcolonial studies’ and its positioning of the subaltern as the vantage point from which to critique these dominant discourses, as well as attending to the various problems present in such an undertaking, as identified in the writings of Spivak. It will also look at the problems of doing social research with or on ‘Other’ (non-white, non-Western) groups. We shall examine the problems of paternalism, tokenism, objectivism, victimisation and the intended or unintended abuses of power that can arise out of sensitive and highly politicised research situations. We also ask what a philosophy of social science would look like if it was purposefully dedicated to acknowledging the injustices borne of racism and colonialism and redressing them.

1. Philosophy of
Social
Science
Anti-racist &
Postcolonial
critiques
Week 10

2. Questions
What is meant by the decolonial epistemic shift?

3. Questions
What scientific practices are challenged
by anti-racist / anti-colonialist
epistemology?
What is meant by the decolonial epistemic shift?

4. Questions
What scientific practices are challenged
by anti-racist / anti-colonialist
epistemology?
How is language used to construct scientific
categories?
What is meant by the decolonial epistemic shift?

5. Questions
What scientific practices are challenged
by anti-racist / anti-colonialist
epistemology?
How is language used to construct scientific
categories?
What problems are raised by doing
specifically anti-racist research?
What is meant by the decolonial epistemic shift?

6. Questions
What scientific practices are challenged
by anti-racist / anti-colonialist
epistemology?
How is language used to construct scientific
categories?
What problems are raised by doing
specifically anti-racist research?
What is an anti-racist / anti-colonialist
standpoint for research or theory?
What is meant by the decolonial epistemic shift?

7. Anthropology

8. Frantz Boas, 1895

9. Benjamin Disraeli

10. UNESCO

11. “Current biological knowledge does
not permit us to impute cultural
achievements to differences in
genetic potential. Differences in
the achievements of different
peoples should be attributed
solely to their cultural history.
The peoples of the world today
appear to possess equal biological
potentialities for attaining any
level of civilization.”!
UNESCO Statement on Race & Racial
Prejudice 1950

12. Satpal Ram
victim of prison harassment

13. Subject of physical anthropology
(1840-55)

15. “groups of mankind possessing well-
developed and primarily heritable
physical differences from other
groups… national, religious,
geographical, linguistic and
cultural groups do not necessarily
coincide with racial groups.”
Juan Comas, 1961: 304.

20. Claude L evi-Strauss

21. Lisu ethnic group, China

23. Frantz Fanon

25. Hurricane Katrina aftermath

27. Civilizing mission

32. Black Skin, White Masks

36. Can the subaltern speak?

37. Orientalist art

38. Indian nationalism

42. Gayatri Spivak

43. 39

44. Zapatista Woman
40

45. 41