This post is really all about reciprocity, or rather, the lack-thereof within North-South research relations. The author recognizes that, within the academy, recognition is achieved through publication. Thus, one of the primary incentives of academics all over the world is to publish findings so as to advance their careers and prestige. Given the topic she is addressing (authorship on political violence), there is often an added incentive to address, assuage/attenuate, or at the very least draw attention to the violence being studied. This incentive often transcends the researcher/researched binary, though the character and degree of intimacy of people’s investments in this goal obviously vary in important ways. And, as Bouka argues, this difference in positioning enables structural violence to be perpetuated by the practice of authorship and accreditation. In my understanding, the potential for this violence lies in distinguishing between what counts as “knowledge,” “information,” and “data,” as well as who is seen as having the authority to make such a distinction. In Bouka’s account, scholars and interlocutors from the south are often seen as capable of producing data but require the aid of Western scholars to transform that data into useful information and knowledge. Even when such transformations consist of little more than a mere stamp of approval. To correct/counteract this tendency, she problematizes current discourses around “capacity building” by pushing her readers to recognize and value the extant capacities and current, important analytic contributions being made by diverse scholars, activists, mothers, children, etc. (in other words people) from the “Global South.”
