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Building Dialogue on Globalization Research: What are the Obstacles and How Might These be Addressed?

William D. Coleman and Nancy A. Johnson, Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University


Preface

Paper prepared for presentation to the workshop on Building South-North Dialogue on Globalization Research: Phase II, Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 22-23 August 2008.

Introduction

Building a dialogue on globalization research and working toward collaborative research and dissemination projects growing out of such a dialogue is an objective fraught with potentially very difficult obstacles, especially when the effort becomes a global one. Within a particular society, the conditions for a successful dialogue such as sharing a common epistemology and thus a common understanding of phenomena, ways of knowing, and lived experience already are difficult tasks, particularly when one is looking toward cross-disciplinary research. Conceiving of such a dialogue in a global space becomes more difficult still because different epistemologies and ways of knowing come into play and with these distinctive bodies of knowledge. Compounding the difficulty are historical power asymmetries that have often led to the imposition of epistemologies and ways of knowing at the expense of existing "local" knowledge. So violent have these impositions been that some scholars refer to the process as one of "epistemicide." Nonetheless, living in a world of more expansive and intense globalizing processes in economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental domains among others creates pressures for expanded dialogue. There are urgent needs to address problems that occur on a global scale and to conceive of alternative modes of globalization. Many persons are striving to find ways to counter the social inequities arising from those modes currently being nurtured by powerful states in alliance with international intergovernmental institutions and transnational corporations.

In looking forward to a more expansive transworld dialogue on globalization research and to possible cross-national research collaboration, it is imperative that we understand what options might exist for building such a dialogue. In this paper, we explore these options by comparing two scholars' ideas about such a dialogue: Arjun Appadurai and Boaventura de Sousa Santos. We chose these two authors because they have recognized the need for transworld dialogue on globalization research and have given some thought to what such a dialogue might entail. Based upon our review of their work, we then summarize the kinds of obstacles faced in setting up such a dialogue and the processes that might be followed to overcome these obstacles. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of our analysis for collaborative research projects and with some thoughts on how contemporary information and communication technologies (ICTs) might be helpful in furthering the dialogue necessary if these research projects are to be successful.

Arjun Appadurai and Global Dialogue

Appadurai's (2000) call for a dialogue about research on globalization arises out of his concern about an increasing gap between knowledge of globalization and the globalization of knowledge. He argues that there are possibilities for an alternative globalization, one that is being articulated by grassroots social movements and non-governmental organizations as they cope with the effects of the dominant form of globalization operating in the world today. For these movements to be effective, however, they need a better understanding of the functioning of globalizing processes as they presently work and to do research on how to counter those processes and build alternative ones. In this respect, he writes, social exclusion resulting from globalizing processes is matched by epistemological exclusion. Contemporary globalizing processes worsen the distribution of resources between the more advantaged and the less advantaged when it comes to the teaching, learning, and researching that are vital for pursuit of alternatives.

In a later article, he amplifies his understandings of these exclusions by commenting on developments in higher education in developing countries (Appadurai 2006). Focusing on India, he observes that the past fifteen years have brought an intensive privatization of university education. This privatization comes from two directions. Domestically, there has been significant growth in private institutions that compete with the public universities for students. Internationally, universities from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States among others have set up branches in the country, where they offer the promise of globally certified credentials gained on Indian soil. With both sets of institutions emphasizing teaching rather than research with the objectives of certifying knowledge and providing training, research is relegated to a smaller number of universities, often focused more in the sciences and engineering than in the humanities and social sciences. Consequently, he opines, the students graduating from these private institutions will not have the research skills needed to conceptualize and work toward alternative globalizing processes.

Such an outcome is tragic for Appadurai because he believes that research is key to the success of grassroots-based movements and organizations working toward these alternatives and thus to the wider circulation of knowledge of globalization. But this conclusion begs another question: what is research? Appadurai resists an understanding of research as a "universal," noting that it is culturally situated and a cultural practice. The key to this "modern" research ethic dominant in the "West" is replicability. Research protocols are built around verifiability, falsifiability, and transparency. The idea is to eliminate "the virtuoso technique, the random flash, the generalist's epiphany, and other private sources of confidence" (2000, 12). Cross-checking and replication of results are crucial to reliable knowledge. These norms in turn give moral force to the idea of "value-free" sciences, which reinforces a growing divide between contemporary researchers and "the ancients" like Aristotle and Plato as well as modern thinkers like Kant, Locke, and Goethe who all articulate a moral voice or vision.

Under this modern ethic, the notion of individual research gives way to one of research as a collaborative activity. By this term Appadurai means that researchers are always working with a view to the values, norms, and practices of an academic community of reference. Appadurai concludes his reflections on the question of the meaning of research by introducing the notion of "plausible shelf life." Modern researchers have to learn to tread the difficult line between too grand a theoretical framework and questions that are too large, and too myopic a framework and questions that are too detailed and specific. Treading this line successfully raises the probability of securing research funding and a successful lifelong career of producing new knowledge that functions "briskly but not for too long" in the given community of reference (2000, 13).

In summary, then, the cultural distinguishing points or "diacritics" of the Western research ethic include (2000, 15):

Appadurai then poses a series of questions (2000, 15) that allude to possible differences between this modern research ethic and other approaches outside the West. These differences would include a reluctance to conduct research where moral and political concerns were not central, support for public intellectuals and grassroots organizations working more independently of specialized communities of experts, and a resistance to a growing divide between the humanities and social sciences along methodological differences.

For Appadurai then, dialogue needs to address the gap between the knowledge of globalization and the globalization of knowledge, and should focus on the very components of the modern research ethic. He writes: "scholars from other societies and traditions of inquiry could bring to this debate their own ideas about what counts as new knowledge and what communities of judgment and accountability they might judge to be central in the pursuit of such knowledge" (2000, 16). He states that he is not certain about what might emerge from this dialogue but does broach the possibility that it might, in fact, be a more robust commitment to the Western research ethic itself. "In this sense, Western scholarship has nothing to fear and much to gain from principled internationalization" (2000, 16).

In a subsequent article, he adds a new international dimension to his argument (Appadurai 2006). He continues to believe that carrying out research is necessary if alternative globalizations are to be conceived and pursued. The problem, however, is no longer so much the epistemological divides between those favouring the Western research ethic and those believing in different, more political, less replicability-focused protocols. More important is the capacity to carry out research itself defined as "not only the production of original ideas and new knowledge (as it is normally defined in academia and other knowledge-based institutions). It is also something simpler and deeper. It is the capacity to systematically increase the horizons of one's current knowledge, in relation to some task, goal or aspiration" (2006, 176). Here then he provides a definition of research without some of the cultural diacritics at issue in the earlier article.

Such research capacity is seen to be most crucial for a specific part of the world's population: "the bottom portion of the upper half of the typical population in poorer countries, the 30% or so of the total population who have a shot at getting past elementary education to the bottom rungs of secondary and post-secondary education. This group (which consists of perhaps 1.5 billion people in the world today) is within the framework of global knowledge societies. But their existence in this category is insecure, for many reasons, including partial education, inadequate social capital, poor connectivity, political weakness and economic insecurity" (2006, 168). Here he frames research in universal, but not cultural, terms, as a "right": "the right to the tools through which any citizen can systematically increase that stock of knowledge which they consider most vital to their survival as human beings and to their claims as citizens" (2006, 168). In this later work, the need for dialogue to break down epistemological exclusions in the conduct of research becomes less compelling. Much more important is institutional reform in higher education that reinforces public institutions of higher learning and that focuses more intensely on cultivating independent research skills and less on credentials and training. Educational reform in this sense is critical to reducing the knowledge gaps found in a globalizing world.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Global Dialogue

Whereas Appadurai focuses on a dialogue about what research involves and how it is to be carried out, Boaventura de Sousa Santos is interested in more general dialogues across knowledges and cultures on the pressing social concerns arising out of neo-liberal or hegemonic globalization. He sees knowledge as a part of culture and he argues that the hierarchical position and availability of different knowledges are the product of capitalist power relations. Like Appadurai, however, he sees working toward such a dialogue as crucial in preparing alternative globalizations to the current dominant neo-liberal form. As noted above, Appadurai argues that social exclusion is tied to epistemological exclusion. In his writings, Santos devotes more time to unpacking and exploring this relationship. He starts off with a stronger statement of the issue: there is no social justice without cognitive justice. In doing so, his discussion on dialogue begins at a different position than Appadurai, one that has as its goal the breaking down of hierarchies and exclusions related to knowledges. This different starting position leads to a more complex process for setting up dialogue and faces more deeply seated obstacles than those discussed by Appadurai.

Santos states that the epistemological diversity of the world is immense, commensurate with its degree of cultural diversity. This diversity of cultures and knowledges, however, came under severe attack with the onset of European imperialism. In the nineteenth century, utilizing modern science, European powers developed the technological capacity to dominate many parts of the world and in the process elevated modern science to the status of a universal and to a place superior to other knowledges. In the name of modern science, other "non-scientific" forms of knowledges and, at the same time, the subaltern social groups whose social practices were informed by such knowledges were suppressed. In this respect, there is an epistemological foundation to the capitalist imperial order imposed on the Global South by the Global North (Santos, Nunes and Meneses 2007, xix). Or put more bluntly: "In short, in the name of modern science, epistemicide has been committed, and the imperial powers have resorted to it to disarm any resistance of the conquered peoples and social groups" (Santos 2005, xviii).

Santos argues that modern science has so colonized our thinking that diverging from its reason and rationality is immediately constructed as irrational thought. He counters by stating that what is truly irrational, however, "is the drastic separation that has occurred since the seventeenth century between the related concepts of rationality and reasonableness, theory and practice, logic and rhetoric and that total priority was given to rationality, theory and logic" (2002,15). He suggests then that at a time when alternatives to the globalized capitalist order are being sought, the core epistemological and cultural task becomes precisely one of retrieving reasonableness, practice, and rhetoric. More generally, social emancipation depends upon replacing the "monoculture of scientific knowledge" by an "ecology of knowledges" (Santos, Nunes, and Meneses 2007, xx).

In the contemporary period, what has changed is the recognition that modern science is not a universal but "a Western particularism, which has the power to define all rival forms of knowledge as particular, local, contextual and situational (2005, xviii)." Feminist thinking has successfully initiated this change by pointing out that there are alternative paradigms to the dominant one within modern science. And as imperialism is challenged and post-colonial thinking matures, we have learned that there have been and there still are other, non-Western sciences and forms of modernity. Conceptions of knowledge, what it means to know, what counts as knowledge and how knowledge is produced are as diverse as the cosmologies and cultures found on the planet. Santos and his colleagues (2007, xxxix) conclude that a critical front has now emerged that opens the door to the recognition of plural systems of knowledges. These systems provide alternatives to modern science or they are able to enter into articulations with the latter, creating new configurations of knowledges in the process. These developments, in turn, provide part of a basis for social emancipation from hegemonic neo-liberal globalization.

The conundrum that follows this understanding is how to construct a dialogue between different knowledges given the hierarchy still present from imperialism and colonialism on the one side and the distinctive and highly different cultural contexts in which those knowledges are embedded on the other. The starting point for such a dialogue according to Santos and his colleagues is what they term "emancipatory multiculturalism" (Santos, Nunes, and Meneses 2007, xxv). "Emancipatory versions of multiculturalism are based on the recognition of difference, and of the right to difference and the coexistence or construction of a common way of life that extends beyond the various types of differences" (ibid.). They see this concept of multiculturalism to be linked to what Said has noted as "overlapping territories" and "intertwined histories." These products of imperialism and relations between post colonies and their metropoles link dominant societies with dominated territories and have created the historical conditions of diaspora and other forms of migration.

For emancipatory multiculturalism to work, certain key assumptions are important.1

  1. All cultures have conceptions of knowledge but these conceptions will differ significantly. Thus, one has to focus upon isomorphic concerns among different knowledges.
  2. All cultures are incomplete and problematic in their conceptions of knowledge. This incompleteness is best perceived from the outside, from the perspective of a different culture.
  3. No major culture is monolithic. Cultures will have different conceptions of knowledge, some more open to other cultures, some less so.
  4. All cultures tend to distribute people and social groups among two competing principles of hierarchical belongingness: hierarchies among homogeneous units and separation among unique identities and differences. "The two principles do not necessarily overlap and for that reason not all equalities are identical and not all differences are unequal (Santos 2007, 15).

It follows that emancipatory multiculturalism only becomes possible if there is a process of reciprocal and horizontal "translation." Translation would allow common ground to be identified without erasing autonomy and difference. It would also permit different knowledges to articulate with one another and to permit the construction of new configurations of knowledge anchored in local experiences. If translation works well, then these new configurations of knowledge are less likely to reproduce simply the concepts and concerns of modern science.

In his quest for an emancipatory notion of human rights, Santos (2007, 15-17) suggests a method for organizing such a translation process. He bases this method on the assumption that dialogue between knowledges must also be a dialogue between cultures and thus between potentially incommensurable universes of meaning. Each culture includes a number of topoi, overarching commonplaces that are self-evident and not an object of debate. To understand another culture's topoi may be very difficult, if not impossible. At the same time, the given topoi of a culture are incomplete, something that is not visible from within the culture itself. By engaging in a dialogue and arguments related to such topoi, their incompleteness becomes more evident and the potential for mutual understanding and cooperation increases. Santos describes such a process where one has one foot in one culture and the other foot in another culture as diatopical hermeneutics. He suggests as an example that such a dialogue could be constructed between the topos of human rights in Western culture, dharma in Hindu culture, and umma in Islamic culture.

For example, one might ask how does the Western concept of human rights look from the perspective of dharma (it is plagued by a very simple and mechanistic conception of rights and duties) and from the perspective of umma (it is difficult to ground the collective linkages and solidarities without which any society can survive). Conversely, one can ask how does the concept of dharma looks from the perspective of human rights (it occults injustices, overlooks the value conflict toward a richer harmony, and forgets that societies do not suffer but individuals do so). Santos advocates such an approach because the recognition of the reciprocal incompletenesses and weaknesses of cultures is a necessary condition for inter-cultural dialogue.

Drawing from this analysis of Santos (2007, 25-28), it is possible to abstract several conditions necessary for participating in the kind of dialogue necessary for utilizing diatopical hermeneutics.

  1. A certain discontent with one's own culture and its ability to provide answers to some difficult questions. This sense of cultural incompleteness opens the way for dialogue with other cultures. In the process, this incompleteness becomes more recognized and self-reflective.
  2. Each culture has different versions because of their rich internal variety. One must choose those versions of the culture that present the most reciprocity with other cultures.
  3. The time to enter such a dialogue must be agreed upon by all the cultures and social groups involved. Conversely, the time to end it must be left to the unilateral decision of each culture and social groups involved.
  4. Partners and issues in the dialogue must be mutually agreed upon.
  5. Partners in the dialogue have the right to be equal whenever difference makes them inferior and the right to be different whenever equality jeopardizes their identity.

This work by Santos is part of a transnational research project on "reinventing social emancipation." Although he did not include the principles according to which the project was organized as part of his discussion of the conditions for successful dialogue, these principles would seem to be useful ones for any set of researchers seeking to build a dialogue on globalization research or any other research topic. Like Appadurai, Santos worries about the inequalities in resources and political situations of researchers across the world. Using the core-periphery concept, he distinguishes among researchers from core countries, semi-peripheral ones (Brazil, India, South Africa, and Colombia among others) and peripheral ones (such as Mali, Paraguay, Burma, Mauritania). He hypothesizes that the semi-periphery countries feature the strongest conflicts between hegemonic and counter hegemonic globalization and "although these countries are outside the hegemonic centers of scientific production, over the years they have constructed strong and frequently numerous scientific communities (2005, xxiii)." For these reasons, he argues, scholars in these countries are less likely to be co-opted by the core countries and may be in a stronger position to question scientific knowledges developed in the core. He also states sardonically that no scholars know the literature of the core countries better than the "colonial reader."

In addition to selecting researchers from semi-periphery countries, he followed these principles to avoid hegemonic co-optation in a collaborative research endeavour (2005, xxiv-xxv):

  1. The project did not have a structured theoretical framework.
  2. The project did not impose a single method or a single set of research methods.
  3. The project did not make use of a series of working hypotheses or even less of terms of reference.
  4. The theory of the project was to be collectively constructed, from the bottom up, and the basic concepts to be worked out together.
  5. The project also assumed the plurality of rival and alternative knowledges and sought to give voice to them.
  6. The project privileged the definition of a wide analytical field: those social situations where the conflict between hegemonic globalization and counter-hegemonic globalization was expected to be or to become more intense, and which were also fields of conflict between rival knowledges.

Presumably, then, if research collaboration were constructed along these lines and if the approach defined as emancipatory multiculturalism were adopted and if the individuals concerned met the conditions for a diatopical hermeneutics, a global dialogue on globalization research has more chance to succeed

Discussion

Appadurai and Santos start from similar positions. Appadurai argues that social exclusion and epistemological exclusion are intimately linked; Santos stresses that there is no social justice without cognitive justice. Both authors believe as well that there is knowledge about globalization developed in the Global South by researchers, social movements, and non-governmental organizations that is much less visible across the world than is such knowledge produced by researchers at universities or working for social movements and NGOs based in the North. Appadurai adds that those involved in grassroots globalization in the South also have inadequate access to knowledge about globalization developed in the North. Santos argues that the knowledge produced in the South, particularly in semi-periphery countries, needs to be more visible in the North if alternative globalizations are to be conceived and acted upon. Given the nature of his own research projects, we can also conclude that he sees a need for greater South-South exchange and sharing of research.

In addressing these problems, both authors note the importance of improved dialogue between researchers in the North and the South. They differ, however, on where they would focus the dialogue. In his favouring of "strong internationalization," Appadurai suggests that there needs to be a dialogue about potentially different research ethics. He wonders whether the hegemonic Western approach might be overpowering other research ethics, which grow out of distinctive cultures in the South. For this reason, he suggests that the characteristics of the hegemonic approach — replicability, working within a community of practice, divorcing moral concerns from research practice and so on — should be the focus of the dialogue. Presumably, then, a better understanding of the differences between research ethics or possibly a conclusion that the hegemonic approach is robust will lead to better research collaboration coming out of this dialogue.

In contrast, Santos is interested in research collaboration on topics related to building alternative globalizations to the hegemonic, neo-liberal one. He puts stronger emphasis on the culturally embedded character of knowledge and presumably, then, of producing knowledge. In order to work with these deeply culturally entrenched knowledges, he argues that an emancipatory multiculturalism is necessary, which recognizes difference and the right to difference. This argument leads him to see the notion of dialogue as itself problematic. He argues that dialogue is only possible when a number of conditions are met by those participating in it, and which permit researchers to reflect upon and move past the power hierarchies in the construction of knowledges. In a way, one might conclude that dialogue is considerably harder work for Santos than it might be seen to be by Appadurai. Or the difficulty of dialogue increases when one moves away from a focus on how to do research toward one of defining what the most important research topics might be.

As we look back upon our discussions at last year's meeting, we find a number of persons in our group made arguments that were closer to the concerns of Santos. Clarissa M. Jordão stressed that dialogue needs to engage with differences and participants must be willing to challenge their own principles. Referring to a critical literacy approach to foreign language teaching, she adds that dialogue needs to respect "local contexts." She also stresses that working together in difference implies that participants are open to negotiating, to being challenged, and to changing their own positions. In this respect, her remarks echo Yanqiu Zhou's point that the purpose of dialogue is to "co-construct knowledge." Or we might add the purpose is to "co-construct" the relationships between knowledges. Yassine Essid argued that dialogue can only happen when individuals recognize each other in mutual fashion as subjects and grant the Other her or his dignity and her or his rights. He adds that dialogue is a social activity where researchers remain attached to the society to which they belong, with its history, values, standards, and sanctions, a point that is consistent with the strong cultural argument of Santos. Finally, he echoes Santos' argument about power hierarchies and notes that a goodly portion of research on globalization is sponsored by international governmental organizations where there is no real dialogue, but an orthodoxy based on a rapport de force.

In addition, however, our discussion last year included a crucial question that was not addressed directly by Appadurai or Santos: language. Both authors presumed in their respective texts that researchers would be able to speak to one another through a common language. As was pointed out in our last meeting, the common second language for scholars from the South, generally speaking, is often one inherited from colonial times such as English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. We will refer to these languages as hegemonic languages for the purpose of this paper. Working in a hegemonic language, however, always complicates communication and puts those doing so into a sometimes dependent, sometimes inferior position to those for whom the hegemonic language is the first language. In short, the use of a hegemonic language may reinforce the social exclusion and cognitive injustice upon which Appadurai and Santos focus. Of the hegemonic languages, English, in particular, is usually associated with "modern science" and is the primary mode of communication for hegemonic knowledge. As Clarissa M. Jordão wrote: "if literacy is equated with rationality and intellectual ability, and if English is embraced as the international language of science, media, and technology, then there is the danger that people who are literate in English are considered to be more rational and intellectually able than those who are not."

Both Clarissa M. Jordão and Koo Yew Lie offered some thoughts on how to begin to address this issue. They suggested that local ways of knowing and of producing and sharing knowledge be allowed to be constructed differently within the hegemonic language. As Koo Yew Lie writes thinking of the experience in Malaysia, expectations of English are still referenced to first world English and to those from the South who have mastered these forms of English. What is needed is some systematic consideration of what the choices and risks might be, which come with accepting research content not written in "standard" English. We require new ways of looking at research through "multilanguages" like varieties of hegemonic languages. To put forms of knowledge in the South into dialogue with each other as well as with the North, thought must be given to how to provide access, respect, and equity to languages other than the hegemonic ones and to versions of hegemonic languages that are local, culturally situated, and used for communicating knowledge.

Moving Forward

Organizing Collaborative Research

In light of this review of the Appadurai and Santos positions and our own discussions last year, what are the guidelines we should give ourselves in thinking about collaborative research? For discussion purposes, suppose that we think through what it would mean to do collaborative research in two areas:

  1. exploring the complexity of relationships between globalization and regionalization
  2. developing protocols for sharing knowledges that are constructed differently in local contexts using particular forms of English or other hegemonic languages.

The Role of Contemporary Information and Communication Technologies

In conceiving a research project influenced by the discussion above, a next question is whether ICTs provide us with useful tools for supporting the kind of dialogue and collaboration we have in mind. At this point, we would need to begin by determining what level of access to such technologies exists at the sites of our research. In those sites where the level of access is low, we would need to determine to what extent these low levels are the result of inadequate access to the technical infrastructure needed as opposed to political controls by the state. To the extent to which state controls are present, we would need to ask whether in the presence of state controls, there is any room to improve access through enhanced technical infrastructure. To the extent that technical enhancements would be helpful, these would be built into any application for funding that we prepare.

Assuming then that each of the participating sites for the research project have relatively effective ICT capabilities, we might expect that digital technologies would provide the following opportunities.

  1. Similar to the South-North Dialogue effort, they would permit us to plan and manage the research project more efficiently and at a lower cost.
  2. In the initial dialogue phase of the project, where we search to construct a problematic around research themes or topics, it is unlikely that they would substitute for an intensive face-to-face meeting to begin the dialogue. After such an intensive meeting had taken place, however, the various tools available should provide us with opportunities to continue the dialogue and reach an understanding of the problematic. Here we could draw upon technologies that facilitate real time and asynchronous communication and social networking among research team members (video conferencing, Internet relay chat, Internet telephony, text messaging, email, and blogging).
  3. Once the research got under way with an agreed upon problematic, an approach like diatopical hermeneutics would imply a continuing dialogue among participants as the problematic became better understood and possibly reshaped or even fundamentally changed.
  4. As the multiple local knowledges that bear upon the research problematic become better identified and understood, these technologies would then permit a further dialogue about the knowledges and their different implications for understanding the research problematic. Again, however, we think that this use of the technologies would only work well if they had been preceded by a second intensive face-to-face meeting, possibly for as long as a week, where understanding of these knowledges could be shared and a renewed strategy for dialogue could be devised.
  5. At this point, as well, the Internet becomes a potential helpful tool for making such initial findings from the research available to a broader public. These might take the form of "thematic presentations." Such "presentations" might include academic articles; conference papers; reports for governments or non-governmental organizations; books; films; visual art; and literature including short stories, novels, and poetry. Such a variety of presentation tools would permit us to begin to communicate differences in local knowledges on the one side and to understand the implications of these differences for next steps in the research.
  6. Finally, as the project comes to an end, the ICTs used throughout the project could be a tool to communicate our final results. In addition, the experience could lead to the development of more permanent configurations of ICTs to support continued and expanded South-North dialogue on globalization research.

In outlining these ideas, we are making certain positive assumptions about ICTs:

Each of these assumptions is problematic in some way. For example, the latter two assumptions do not fit well at all in some of our participating countries like Tunisia, Iran, and perhaps Malaysia. There are quite a few countries in the world where censorship is extensive and effective, where access to facilities is controlled by the state or state-controlled universities, and where attempts to evade these controls could lead to severe penalties. States can also ration access to broadband technologies which are a sine qua non for many of the technologies we might presume to use. We would need to get these issues on the table and see whether they can be addressed in any way.

Finally, if we would propose to develop a research project that made such extensive use of ICTs, we would need to address two final issues. How do we address the need for multilingualism? How do we cope with the fact that information on the Internet can be unstable? It can be found at a location one day and might disappear the next. What other forms of communicating our research findings would we need to develop to avoid such difficulties?

Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. 2000. Grassroots globalization and the research imagination. Public Culture 12 (1): 1-19.

Appadurai, Arjun. 2006. The right to research. Globalisation, Societies and Education 4 (2): 167-77.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2002. Toward a new legal common sense: Law, globalization and emancipation. London: Butterworths Lexis Nexis.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2005. General introduction: Reinventing social emancipation: Toward new manifestos. In Democratizing democracy: Beyond the liberal democratic canon, ed. B. d. S. Santos, London: Verso.

Santos, Boaventura de Sousa. 2007. Human rights as an emancipatory script? Cultural and political conditions . In Another knowledge is possible: Beyond northern epistemologies, ed. B. d. S. Santos, London: Verso.

Santos, B.d.S., Nunes, J.A., and Meneses, M.P. 2007. Opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference. In Another knowledge is possible: Beyond northern epistemologies, ed. B. d. S. Santos, London: Verso.

Notes

1. We derive these principles from a more specific discussion of human rights (Santos 2007, 14-15).

Contents



Glossary Terms