Esson et al 2017 AREA LUPIN.pdf (375.06 kB)
The 2017 RGS-IBG chair’s theme: decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality?
journal contribution
posted on 2017-06-20, 12:14 authored by James Esson, Patricia Noxolo, Richard Baxter, Patricia Daley, Margaret ByronThe theme for the chair’s plenaries at the 2017 Royal Geographical Society (RGS) with the Institute of British Geographers (IBG) Annual Conference is ‘Decolonising geographical knowledges: opening geography out to the world’. This commentary explains why this pursuit of critical consciousness via decolonial thinking could do more harm than good. We show how the emphasis on decolonising geographical knowledges rather than structures, institutions and praxis reproduces coloniality, because it recenteres non-Indigenous, white and otherwise privileged groups in the global architecture of knowledge production. It is argued that an effective decolonial movement within geography must recognise the intersectionality of indigeneity and race, and necessitates that the terms on which the discipline starts debates about decolonisation and decoloniality are determined by those racialized as Indigenous and non-white by coloniality.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
AreaVolume
49Issue
3Pages
384-388Citation
ESSON, J. ...et al., 2017. The 2017 RGS-IBG chair’s theme: decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality? Area, 49 (3), pp. 384–388.Publisher
© WileyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Esson, James; Noxolo, Patricia; Baxter, Richard; Daley, Patricia; Byron, Margaret (2019): The 2017 RGS-IBG chair’s theme: decolonising geographical knowledges, or reproducing coloniality? Area, 49(3), pp. 384-388, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12371. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived VersionsAcceptance date
2017-06-14Publication date
2017-08-07ISSN
1475-4762Publisher version
Language
- en