Social Science Research Council

NAVIGATING 'REALITIES,' ILLUSIONS, AND ACADEMIC IMPULSES: DISPLACED SCHOLARS AT LARGE
By Peyi Soyinka-Airewele

Displacement:
Nouns -- misplacement, dislocation, transposition; disestablishment; fish out of water;
Verbs -- displant
Adjectives -- unsettled; out of place; out of its elements;

The challenge appeared quite unambiguous. In a simple and compelling statement, Itty Abraham and John Tirman wrote in the first newsletter of the Global Security and Cooperation program:

The SSRC has been, for the last few years, redefining its core mission. In particular, the Council has sought to make internationalization a defining feature of all its work, at the same time as we see parts of our world being increasingly shaped by the competition of different kinds of knowledge- including the academic, scientific and technological, tacit and practical, commercial, statist and subaltern. What does this mean in practical terms? At the very least, it means that we are trying to come to terms with our concern that the academy, around the world is increasingly an also-ran in producing the kinds of knowledge that people use to make critical decisions. When we consider the realm of security-human, national, environmental, etc.-we are forced to recognize that all too often, events and decisions are driven by understandings that do not derive from the intellectual product of the university. The human rights activist, humanitarian relief worker, and development consultant have, over time, drawn from independent bodies of knowledge and codes of interpretation that often bear little resemblance to corresponding bodies and codes of the seminar room and the academic journal. It reminds us that some of what we teach and learn in the classroom is long overdue for a reality check, and simultaneously, it points to the grave dangers of making decisions based on data and assumptions that have not been critically scrutinized and vetted by a responsible and credible group of peers. We could go on but you get the point. (GSC Newsletter, No 1, Winter 2001)

It appears that there was much sympathy within the academy for this sentiment, as a large number of scholars and practitioners applied for the first GSC grants cycle and implicitly committed to the founding principle of the program: "to seek to cross-fertilize the knowledge held by the academic and the practitioner to produce a new kind of thinking and understanding that embodies the best of both worlds." (Ibid.) But, at the GSC conference in Belfast in September 2001, it became apparent that the challenge was more involved than many had acknowledged-it tugged at the entire apparatus of academia, demanding a re-envisioning of the goals and audience of scholarship.

Clearly there would be multiple struggles ahead for several participants, including: the ramifications of professional and geographic dislocation for the identity of the researcher, the quest for a mutually respectful and productive ('cross-fertilizing') collaboration with local scholars and practitioners, particularly in marginalized communities, and finally, the challenge of interpreting field experiences towards enhancing the contents as well as the structures of academia. Thus, amidst the pleasure of anticipated scholarly innovation in 'the field,' fellows (or more specifically, scholars), cautiously expressed concerns about the implications of operationalizing this 'reality check,' this redefinition of the traditional scholar-centered research agenda, and this challenge to the rigidity of academic expectations and the valuation of research products.

Since scholarly concerns and paradigms dominated discussions of collaboration, as Sophia Woodman, GSC fellow and human rights activist decried, it was "all too easy to assume that all GSC fellows faced the same set of dilemmas and were being displaced in a similar direction." Such an assumption certainly reinforces the marginality of the activist perspective within the community designed to highlight it. Activists experienced the process of collaboration and engagement, very differently from scholars, as they confronted reverse directions for transplantation. Unfortunately, the issues discussed in this opening conversation, only touch on a limited aspect of the diverse experiences of displaced scholars and activists. It reflects a scholar's view, but aims at provoking dialogue for a better understanding of the experiences of both scholars and practitioners/activists.

John Tirman and Itty Abraham had rightly discerned the gulf in goals, audience, language and rewards between the worlds of the scholar and the activist/practitioner, which they presented, in a manner of speaking, as a gap between an arena of increasingly disconnected academic constructs (delusions?) of reality and the world of 'real reality.' In this light, the GSC program offered, speaking at a personal level, a much awaited opportunity to conduct research situated at a richer interface of 'scholar-practitioner' realities, and to transfer my assumptions regarding memory and communal catharsis from the realm of intellectual exhortation into working practice.

This would involve my displacement, to an area of protracted conflict, of sharply opposed mythico-histories and deep political polarizations. Surely, not a particularly difficult undertaking, since I had the advantage of personal, cultural, and linguistic familiarity with the location. Not for me the "fish out of water," "displanted" and "out of its elements" experience, so chillingly defined in Rogets handy thesaurus. Nevertheless, in the first week of fieldwork, I had the distinctly disturbing experience of being categorized as a safari intellectual by a good friend and senior colleague, despite the fact that I had studied, lived and taught in this same community less than a decade ago. Interestingly, the heated debate that ensued, centered on my part, on my professional identity and integrity as a non-resident Western-based researcher (here this year, gone the next), and on his part, bespoke a legacy of anger and frustration at the incompetence and superficiality of Western Africanists who jaunted into town and made their reputations by recoding ill-understood local issues for the oft-arcane world of western academia.

Thus, a central challenge for the displaced researcher, in my opinion, is that of negotiating one's identities as an alien professional (the non-resident scholar) and of painstakingly cultivating a meaningful, mutually beneficial and context-relevant collaboration. The enterprise of field research often resembles a refined Hobbesian impulse-short-lived, self-centered, impatient of collaboration, focused on publication goals, certainly somewhat brutish. Thus, the subtle but vital distinction between the collaboration envisaged by the GSC and the deep seated academic impulse to view and use the field as a laboratory with pliable theory-supporting subjects, all too easily eludes the scholar. This is particularly relevant when it comes to the study of security issues in marginalized regions. For instance, Celestin Monga (1996), economist and political scientist, raises disturbing questions in his detailed critique of the scholarship on Africa, which I will cite at length:

The World's Indifference and Intellectual Safaris.
It is easy enough to call into question Fukuyama's (1992) ludicrous vision of the end of history. Nevertheless, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, there has been a radical shift in the way the international community…views and conceptualizes history. The marginalization of Africa is a part of this shift, which was stimulated by increased global competition for volatile, scarce and expensive capital…. The new world order that came into being after the disintegration of the Soviet Union does not include Africa within its world geography. More troubling is that the indifference of "money makers" appears to have determined the general attitude toward Africa. Despite the success of numerous missions in Africa, the UN is trying to forget the trauma of Somalia and Angola and has thus paid less attention to issues of human rights and democracy. Western governments that used to proclaim their "duty to intervene" in countries where the standards of universal morality were blatantly transgressed have become reserved.

This new attitude has rubbed off on Western intellectuals. Among Africanist political scientists, it translates into a lack of rigor in their treatment of the continent… When it comes to Africa, one can afford to indulge in approximations, generalizations, even illiteracy. Africa's overall image is so negative that only the most pessimistic types of discourse conform to the logic that governs understanding of the continent. Publications as "prestigious" as the Financial Times, Der Speigel, or Time, can publish cover stories and surveys built upon falsehoods and factual errors without stirring up a storm of protest, no doubt because "experts" on Africa know that rebuttals will not damage their professional reputations. (1996: 38-39).

Having been brutally involved in sociopolitical turmoil in my country, Cameroon, and having worked and traveled extensively in various other African countries, where I became connected to different social networks, I felt frustrated by most of the literature on the determinants of a successful process of democratization, the exact role of civil society in the current changes, and the political behavior of African people. The more I read, the more frustrated I became, because I could perceive in the political historiography of Africa the same contempt and disconnection I described… neither the academics nor the journalists were able (or willing) to capture what was the very essence of the social phenomena and the political movements that I had witnessed for years: the determination of people at the grassroots level to engage in the political arena, at any cost, in order to bring about some positive changes in the way they had been ruled for several centuries. Working as a chief economist for a commercial bank, I did not expect to write a political analysis of the events…I was concerned about my capacity to explore a field that was outside my area of professional specialization… (viii-ix)

[But] it is not at all surprising that Africa has often proved resistant to the assumptions of political scientists and does not fit into (Western) democratic theory. The analytic paradigms that social scientists persist in applying to these complex societies are obviously inapt. (40) As a result and despite the multiplication of sophisticated yet confused theories, the scholarly debate when it exists, on political transformations in Africa lacks vigor and impartiality. …

In recent years, the continent has become the El Dorado of wild thought, the best place for daring intellectual safaris, the unregulated space in which to engage in theoretical incest, to violate the fundamentals of logic, to transgress disciplinary prohibitions; in short, to give oneself over to all forms of intellectual debauchery - with impunity and in good conscience. (1996: 39).

Monga's incisive analysis of the failures of 'archaic instruments of analysis' is a fascinating albeit controversial study that takes the reader through an unrelenting critique of the dominant paradigms of western political science. His goals were clearly stated; to present a few tools for adjusting political science theories to the African context, to draw attention to ways of looking differently at the continents' sociopolitical dynamics, to observe and pay tribute to ignored struggles and counter-narratives and to interpret and produce understanding of the everyday, the banal and the invisible.

A tremendous undertaking indeed, weighed against the gravitational pull of the global socio-economic, political and intellectual core. The power of the media for instance, is often described in terms of its ability to ostensibly make visible. Yet this process of mediated visibility has a flip side, which is the simultaneous conferment of invisibility on those geographic regions, issues and persons, which lie outside the resultant centeredness of media trends and academic paradigms. Faced by the compelling sense of de-legitimization of the 'local,' scholars studying conflict and social transformations across the world often struggle to retain a hold of their perception of the relevance, 'reality' and visibility of the issues they study even when they are visually (or virtually?) locally contained. Marginalized communities and states are indelibly touched by the consequences of the choices, values and priorities of the media, geo-political and academic core.

Perhaps one of the most important contributions of the GSC program has been to support the construction of frameworks and networks for rendering visible the multiple transnational and thematic connections that enhance our search for security within a transforming system and for validating issues de-legitimized by the center. The nuances of social transformations are rarely captured by the all too powerful pull of social, economic and political core agencies, somewhat unified in their bid to create global discourse oriented around self.

September 11, the most recent vivid reminder, perhaps, of subjectivity and violence in the struggle for systemic security, also became testament to the compulsion to define 'the' global priority and 'the' global agenda. The undying identity problematic surfaced with sharp clarity, in the redefinition of the assumptions and privileges that accompany belonging, and the re-investment of meaning to the concepts of the citizen and the alien, the known and the unknown, the civilized and the pagan, the patriot and the terrorist. In the months that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, various parts of the global system raced to clarify and communicate the meanings of these dichotomies and to enhance the benefits of the one against the other. GSC grant recipients were thus taxed not only with the search for new understandings of the processes underway in different global locations; but with producing such an understanding through their own 'displaced identities' as scholars and practitioners, through their geographical dislocations and through the search for meaningful intersections within and between the visible and the invisible worlds, academic illusions and 'realities.'

By thrusting fellows into other orbits, the value of field collaboration became most critical in investigating and communicating the nature and implication of a range of issues. Scholars and practitioners were forced to navigate their repositioning as aliens, collaborators, imperialists or insiders in new geographic and professional zones. Such activities lend themselves to the production of new knowledge on the ways in which relocation enhances or diminishes our capacity to productively and imaginatively research, intervene or otherwise contribute to the discourse and action on security and cooperation.

Aside from navigating identity, the scholar-practitioner must increasingly consider the impact of the centering of particular issues and regions in determining what to study, when or how to study it. Several GSC scholars and practitioners have had an opportunity to consider their research interests from a distinctly altered perspective-'seeing' from within the community and not merely 'into it.' It would appear that an important step is to consider how such altered insights can affect the quality and direction of transnational scholarly or scholar-practitioner collaboration and how research outcomes can be used to enhance the quest for professional validation while maintaining the legitimacy and internal integrity of local issues and 'realities.'

As with much else, the complexities of displacement unfold gradually and should warrant our continuing attention. This article has not attempted to produce answers to a complex issue. Indeed, it simply raises very old questions, probes at unresolved dilemmas, and invites a renewed discourse of the 'realities,' experiences and options facing scholars, particularly those relocated in globally marginalized communities.

Over the past year, I have reflected on the various facets of this transnational and cross-professional collaborative undertaking (unavoidably so, since my project culminated in a major initiative to facilitate new academy-community modes of engagement in Nigeria). But most intrusive were the thoughts about how these various experiments in collaboration, in all their varying measures of success, were creating, in themselves, a rich crop of analyses, pedagogical approaches, understandings and perhaps transformative 'realities'?

But to quote Tirman and Abraham again, "… what then does this mean in practical terms?" If the academy is an 'also-ran in producing policy relevant and life relevant information and codes for understanding,' then we need to have on-going discourse on resolving the tensions between what is valuable in the 'real world' but unfashionable in the academy. Let me respond to their question in practical terms: It means, for example, that as a teacher of political science, I have just had my first major run-in with the logic of Western publishing. It recently took several phone calls and conversations to convince the Lynne Rienner Desk Copy representative, that my request for a desk copy of the text: Peace-building: A Field Guide, for my African Politics Course, was not a frivolous or ill-informed request. It took over 30 days to receive approval for desk copies of new texts which I had selected as a means of transforming my pedagogy to better reflect the interface of scholarship and practice in the 'real world'. Five texts considered 'unsuitable' were deleted from my list, including for instance, Post-Conflict Elections, Democratization and International Assistance and my payment posted back to me. In the mutilated copy of my request for desk copies which was returned with deletions clearly marked, I see scribbled in the margins, the efforts of the representative to understand my convoluted telephone explanations about bridging the gulf between academia and practitioners …… "left message to call me back……she's very interested in this book….section of IR course….. practitioners?"

The world of activist 'reality' is no less challenged. Activists need not tangle with bemused publishers' representatives and may have few concerns about tenure reviews and the intellectual hierarchy. Nevertheless, with the growth of the NGO machinery as a de facto player in global affairs and the tremendous economic power wielded by funding agencies, numerous activists and practitioners are also confronted with a need for constant 'reality checks.' The search for funding for worthy projects is a growing part of the work of most practitioners, and eventual acceptance into the increasingly sophisticated ranks of top notch local NGOs is a process that erects new barriers between activists and the communities they purport to serve. Indeed, despite the clichés of 'grassroots-ism' and 'bottoms-up' approaches to research and intervention, the level of technical sophistry, obfuscating lingo and endless bureaucratese required by major grant makers tend to guarantee that an overwhelming number of NGOs are directed by scholars who have undergone degrees of metamorphosis as practitioners. Thus, in Nigeria and several other developing nations, the emerging community of activists, comprises a new social class with its own hierarchy and international linkages. The donor community supports the new cadre of elite practitioners, with their own illusions of reality, conveyed in the rarefied air of "newly imported 4 wheel drive vehicles" (as a student griped), and envied from afar by the rank and file of scholars and activists.

If nothing else, we are compelled to avoid notions of simple scholar-practitioner, illusion-reality dichotomies. Perhaps the vision of cross-fertilization encouraged by the GSC should be seen as providing a window for encountering and grappling directly with the problems, challenges, successes and constraints of real social formations. The realities that are encountered through engagement and the 'acts' of peace-building, of conflict resolution, of community development and so forth, clearly illuminate the irrelevance of the academic cloister and elite activists removed from meaningful engagement. The search then, as Dr Jibrin Ibrahim suggested at the GSC Belfast Conference, should not be for a simple wholesale transmutation of the scholar into an activist or vice-versa, but a consolidation of qualitative and comprehensive collaboration between the scholar, the practitioner and the scholar-activist and the emergence of new means of validating that collaborative process in research, writing, teaching and field intervention.

Like I said, these are old dilemmas. But they are raised within a new context. To address the GSC vision is to find ways in which scholars and practitioners/activists are defined by and can in turn define such quests and their outcomes. In the pervasive de-legitimization of approaches, issues and geographic regions, this community of scholars can support a focused intrusion into that mediated center, to produce, transmit and validate alternative codes for seeing, analyzing and addressing conflict.

Notes:
In the article that follows, Sophia Woodman responds directly to this call for discourse on the dilemmas of displacement, with a critical commentary on the scholar-activist interface in practice. I hope that her hard hitting comments will open up further dialogue on this vital issue. Leigh Payne continues the conversation, through a personal and professional exploration of her field experiences in working with perpetrators and victims of state orchestrated violence in South Africa. She re-visits the problem of the unaccommodating structures of academe for expressing and validating such experiences.

References:

Celestin Monga. The Anthropology of Anger, Civil Society and Democracy in Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996.

Itty Abraham and John Tirman. "Generating Useful Knowledge on Global Security Issues: A New SSRC Program." GSC Newsletter, No. 1, Winter 2001.


Peyi Soyinka-Airewele is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and African Politics at Ithaca College, New York and Coordinator of the Alliance for Community Transformation, (ACT) Africa. Dr. Soyinka-Airewele obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham in international studies and African development. She obtained her M.Sc. from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria and her B.Sc. from the University of Ife, Nigeria, both in International Relations. Her scholarship on the politics of memory and identity in transitional/post-conflict African societies emerges from her on-going involvement in the struggles for sustained social and political change in Nigeria. Dr. Soyinka-Airewele is also a GSC Fellow researching on her project entitled "The Uses of Memory in Communal Catharsis and Sustainable Peace: Leveraging NGO-Academy Partnerships in Fractured African Societies."