Forcing a square into a circle: why South Africa's draft revised material transfer agreement is not fit for purpose

The South African National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC) recently released a final draft revision of the standard material transfer agreement (MTA) that was promulgated into law in 2018. This new draft MTA raises pertinent questions about the NHREC's mandate, the way in which the draft MTA deals with data and with human biological material, and its avoidance of the concept of ownership. After South Africa's data protection legislation, the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), became operational in mid 2021, the legal landscape changed and it is doubtful that the NHREC has a residual mandate to govern personal information in health research. Furthermore, data is dealt with in a superficial, throw-away fashion in the draft MTA. The position with human biological material is not substantially better, as the draft MTA fails to recognise that human biological material can contain pathogens, which has important legal and ethical ramifications that are not sufficiently addressed. A central problem with the draft MTA is its use of the term 'steward', and avoidance of the legal concept of 'ownership'. This is not only misaligned with the South African legal framework, but also fails to consider the ethical case for recognising ownership. Finally, a call to embrace decolonial thinking in health research underscores the importance of recognising ownership in order to foster the growth of the local bio-economy. Key recommendations to reshape the draft MTA include: Making use of the eventual revised MTA optional, and allowing it to evolve with input from scientific and legal communities; regulating the transfer of associated data in a separate data transfer agreement that can be incorporated by reference in the MTA; enhancing guidance on liability and risk management in respect of human biological material that contains pathogens; and, finally, adopting a decolonial approach in health research governance, which requires recognising the ownership rights of South African research institutions.

Islam's weight in global history: A response to Sidaway

In this commentary, we discuss three major themes that Sidaway raises in his article, 'Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies': the problem of Muslims as 'others'; the fraught role of religion as a universal category; and Muslim geographies as perceived in area studies and global history. Along these lines, we argue that Sidaway makes a number of important interventions aimed at changing the social science focus on Muslims in the West, highlighting the importance of Islamic concepts, and dislocating spaces of Islam from predefined geographical areas. After a critical discussion of the specific approaches presented in the article, we follow up on Sidaway's encouragement to think beyond the decolonial. We see this as an invitation to formulate our own vision of a new global history of Islam that takes into account traces of the influence of Muslims and of Islam more broadly speaking from Indigenous Australia to China to the Americas, and from everyday culture in Europe to extinct empires in Iberia, Sicily, and the Balkans. From this perspective, we argue, a more serious engagement with the multitude of global Islamic influences beyond Muslim communities might turn into a powerful force of decolonization.

Beyond sexual deviance: Elevating the expansive intimacies of Chicana lesbian life in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About

In this article, I expand popular readings of Chicana lesbianism focused on sexuality by tending more deeply to the affective terrains of love and kinship represented in the 1991 anthology Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About edited by Carla Trujillo. Countering the (il)logics of white supremacy and Chicano nationalism which reduce Chicana lesbians to symbols of sexual deviance, I argue that Chicana Lesbians embodies an expansive matrix of intimacies that reconstruct the Chicana lesbian figure from a one-dimensional symbol of sexual deviance to a multi-faceted figure who redefines what it means to love one's people and culture beyond colonial paradigms that privilege heterosexuality. Drawing upon theories of decolonial love and queer asexuality, I examine the expansive inner lives and intimacies of Chicana lesbians to construct a more thorough portrait of how we love and relate to each other. While many studies foreground the sexual lives and politics of Chicana lesbians as subversive to the heteronormative status quo, I elevate the equally powerful forces of love and kinship in our struggle to transform the legacies of colonialism and Chicano nationalism.

Notes on growing love: Cherríe Moraga's "If," a world-making incantation conjuring collective consciousness through Chicana lesbian po(i)esis

This essay introduces the embodied ceremonial practices of deep presence and sustained attentiveness as Chicana lesbian poetic devices that shape-shift Chicana lesbian subjectivities, socialities, and simultaneously the violence of colonial capitalist racial heteropatriarchies. My reading of the poem "If" in Carla Trujillo's rendering of Chicana lesbian desire in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, delves into the shape-shifting and time-bending potentiation at the heart of Chicana lesbian poetics. Cherríe Moraga's "If" generously offers a map that stalls time with the magnificence of sustained attentiveness. The poet's observations entice the reader with a depth of presence that illuminate the subject, casting life-sustaining reimagined meanings onto otherwise commodified individuated bodies. Moraga's "If" refracts the meaning of loss, ghostly pasts, and unimaginable futures through embodiment, imbuing a vivid and deep presence capable of casting spells on futures yet to come. The poem posits total immersion in being-ecstasis, that blooms with the transformational potential of the ecstatic. This essay reads the poem "If" in the context of Moraga's oeuvre as ceremonial world-making incantation conjuring collective consciousness through Chicana lesbian po(i)esis.

The (postcolonial) return of grand theory in American sociology: Julian Go on postcolonial thought and social theory

Julian Go's BJS annual lecture is discussed in reference to his landmark OUP text Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory (2016). Go is one of the most prominent names in a "third wave" of post-colonial thought, now spearheading a post- (or de-) colonial turn in sociological theory, something that has professionally revived the sub-field of "grand" social theory in mainstream US sociology. While endorsing the aims and substantive themes of this turn, the review raises questions about the delayed timing of this post-colonial wave in the discipline, both relative to the humanities more generally, and to the impact of post-colonialism in other national contexts. Go's challenge is, in effect, something quite particular to teaching social theory in the US sociology context. The review goes on to question how effectively the critique speaks to mainstream empirical practitioners, given its lack of focus on transforming technical methods. It concludes by raising concerns about the relationship of Go and other "third wave" decolonial theorists to Marxism and Marxist politics.

Self-loving in the epidemic years: Carmen Machado's rhetoric of woundedness

This article explores Carmen Machado's Her Body and Other Parties (2017) as articulating generative unmaking of bodies. Mobilizing that which I examine as rhetoric of woundedness, a thread of Latina rhetoric wherein wounds are strategically positioned to emphasize flesh as space of conflict, Machado writes body horrors to provoke dis-ease in audiences. Specifically, Machado highlights pervasive discursive discomforts that decentralize narratives about women's body (un)wellness. It is important to note, however, that Machado's attention to the corporal becomes, in part, rejection of body, a de-composition of physicality-sometimes reached through sexual ecstasy, other times through violence and epidemics-to re-compose self. Such a tactic recalls conversations advanced in Cherríe Moraga's writings and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano's embodied theories, both included in Carla Trujillo's landmark anthology, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991). Moraga and Yarbro-Bejarano investigate textual dismemberment of female physique to re-imagine and reclaim body for enactments of Chicana desire. What marks Machado as distinct is her resistance to reclaim body. Often, Machado's characters manifest phantom states that quarantine body from toxic physical and social spaces. Concurrently, characters lose rights to body due to self-hate within that toxicity. Machado's characters find clarity only when freed from physicality, at which point they may re-compose themselves according to their testified truths. I see this distinction as a progression of works contained in Trujillo's anthology as Machado envisions a worldmaking process that one composes through autonomous self-love and self-partnership to nurture female narrative and solidarity.

Precarious engagements and the politics of knowledge production: Listening to calls for reorienting hegemonic social psychology

In this paper, we invite psychologists to reflect on and recognize how knowledge is produced in the field of social psychology. Engaging with the work of decolonial, liberation and critical psychology scholars, we provide a six-point lens on precarity that facilitates a deeper understanding of knowledge production in hegemonic social psychology and academia at large. We conceptualize knowledge (re)production in psychology as five interdependent 'cogs' within the neoliberal machinery of academia, which cannot be viewed in isolation; (1) its epistemological foundations rooted in coloniality, (2) the methods and standards it uses to understand human thoughts, feelings and behaviours, (3) the documentation of its knowledge, (4) the dissemination of its knowledge and (5) the universalization of psychological theories. With this paper we also claim our space in academia as early career researchers of colour who inhabit the margins of hegemonic social psychology. We join scholars around the world in calling for a much-needed disciplinary shift that centres solutions to the many forms of violence that are inflicted upon marginalized members of the global majority. To conclude, we offer four political-personal intentions for the reorientation for the discipline of hegemonic social psychology with the aim to disrupt the politics of knowledge production and eradicate precarity.

Managing racism? Race equality and decolonial educational futures

The Office for Students is now holding UK universities to account for their failures to address racial inequalities, and the Teaching Excellence Framework is bringing the student experience to the fore in assessing higher education institutions. Racial inequalities persist in spite of decades of legislation aiming to promote equality and end discrimination. The paper considers two main areas of racial equalities work, namely, (1) anti-racist and (2) decolonial initiatives. It suggests that the rise of managerialism and in particular, audit cultures, have allowed racism to flourish in spite, or because of, the need to account for equality, diversity and inclusion in global markets for higher education. Auditing requires a focus on identities, and cannot take into account the complex ways in which race, race thinking and racism are maintained in knowledge production. The lack of consensus around what decolonial education should be undermines attempts to produce educational social justice. From a feminist postcolonial perspective, the paper suggests that recentralizing racism and reengaging difference offer an important way to negotiate more just educational futures.

A call to resist occupational therapy's promotion of ableism

BACKGROUND

Critical occupational therapists have exhorted their profession to engage with disability studies' scholarship, curtail occupational therapy's promotion of ableism and amend its disabling practices. These appeals have largely been ignored despite their importance for a profession that researches, theorizes, assesses, and intervenes in the lives of disabled people.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

To interrogate occupational therapy's collusion with an ableist neoliberal agenda; and call for occupational therapists to resist their profession's disabling practices.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

This paper draws from critical disability scholarship to expose, critique and contest the ableist ideology underpinning occupational therapy.

RESULTS

Interlinked with racism, heteronormativity and gender binarism, ableism upholds certain bodies as normal and appropriate. Ableist values shape occupational therapy, with clients classified according to their proximity to 'normality', and exhorted to minimize their occupational performance deviations from dominant norms.

CONCLUSIONS

Collusion with colonialism's binary classificatory systems and neoliberal ableist norms, and avowed aspirations to improve bodies, 'normalize' performances, promote individualism, self-reliance, independence, self-care, and productivity contribute to the perception that ours is a disabling profession.

SIGNIFICANCE

This paper calls for occupational therapists to resist their profession's promotion of ableism, and refuse to collude with colonial practices that contribute to the oppression of disabled people.

Fostering and sustaining transnational solidarities for transformative social change: Advancing community psychology research and action

As we planned this special issue, the world was in the midst of a pandemic, one which brought into sharp focus many of the pre-existing economic, social, and climate crises, as well as, trends of widening economic and social inequalities. The pandemic also brought to the forefront an epistemic crisis that continues to decentre certain knowledges while maintaining the hegemony of Eurocentric ways of knowing and being. Thus, we set out to explore the possibilities that come with widening our ecology of knowledge and approaches to inquiry, including the power of critical reflective praxis and consciousness, and the important practices of repowering marginalised and oppressed groups. In this paper, we highlight scholarship that reflects a breadth of theories, methods, and practices that forge alliances, in and outside the academy, in different solidarity relationships toward liberation and wellbeing. Our desire as co-editors was not to endorse the plurality of solidarities expressed in the papers as an unyielding methodological or conceptual framework, but rather to hold them lightly within thematic spaces as invitations for readers to consider. Through editorial collaboration, we arrived at the following three thematic spaces: (1) ecologies of being and knowledge: Indigenous knowledge, networks, and plurilogues; (2) naming coloniality in context: Histories in the present and a wide lens; (3) relational knowledge practices: Creative joy of knowing beyond disciplines. From these thematic spaces we conclude that through repowering epistemic communities and narratives rooted in truth-telling, a plurality of solidarities are fostered and sustained locally and transnationally. Underpinned by an ethic of care, solidarity relationships are simultaneously unsettling dominant forms of knowledge and embrace ways of knowing and being that advances dignity, community, and nonviolence.

Ethical Relationality and Indigenous Storywork Principles as Methodology: Addressing Settler-Colonial Divides in Inner-City Educational Research

In this article, we share our engagement with Indigenous methodologies in a research study focused on teacher candidates in inner-city education. The study is conceptualized through ethical relationality as developed by Dwayne Donald (Papaschase Cree), and the principles of Indigenous Storywork as developed by Jo-ann Archibald (Stó:lō and St'at'imc). The study was enriched through encouraging a wholistic embodiment of ethics, revealing the presences of land and more-than-human teachers, and providing opportunities to transcend dualisms. We conclude with a consideration of the complexities, possibilities, and limitations of ourselves as Euro-descendant researchers, and the ethical requirements of Indigenous mentorship, time, and responsibility.

Decolonizing Science Diplomacy: A Case Study of the Dominican Republic's COVID-19 Response

The COVID-19 pandemic forced healthcare systems globally to handle a dramatic surge in healthcare utilization while also taxing available testing resources. In the context of healthcare systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, COVID-19 added to the existing burden of infectious diseases related to endemic infections such as arboviruses and HIV. In the Dominican Republic, testing is supplied mostly by the private sector and a national public laboratory. The surge in testing demands laid bare a lack of installed capacities both in laboratory facilities and equipment and trained staff in molecular biology laboratory procedures. This article discusses a case of how science diplomacy and a relatively new law fostering public-private partnerships allowed a university to play a major role in public health response while generating knowledge to inform public policy decisions in an unprecedented manner in the country. Science diplomacy is discussed in the context of decolonization and the importance of the local gaze when creating academic partnerships in the context of global health emergencies.

Green colonialism in the Nordic context: Exploring Southern Saami representations of wind energy development

This paper explores social representations of wind energy development within reindeer herding lands among the Indigenous Southern Saami living within Norwegian borders. For this matter, the paper combines Social Representations Theory (SRT) with the analytical framework of "circuits of dispossession and privilege" and decolonial approaches within community psychology. Data consisted of seven individual semi-structured open-ended interviews, three collective interviews, and observation in three lawsuits, public meetings, protest actions, and reindeer herding activities. The findings suggest that for the subjects in this study, the onset of wind power represents the renewal of historical processes of dispossession through accumulation and colonialism, enabled by harmful knowledge gaps in Norwegian society and institutions, contrasting Southern Saami's values of responsibility and ecological practices. The implication of these findings suggests an urgent need of rethinking renewable energy and including indigenous knowledge in climate change agendas.

Coloniality and perspectivism in psychology: from damnation to ecosophical care relations

Inspired by Amerindian peoples' philosophy, this article aims to problematise the modern philosophical anthropology that underlies psychology as a social practice, and to use the Amerindian perspectivist philosophy proposed by Viveiros de Castro as a critique of Western values. Thus, we approach some of coloniality's epistemological implications in the institution of subject-object and nature-culture separations that grounds psychology. On the one hand, there is a totalising unification, which operates alongside a transcendental subject that subjugates its object. Beginning from nature's homogeneity, the differentiation and hierarchy of each being depends on its representations or its soul, expressed as a people's culture or as an individual psychology. This spiritual-representational aspect is the very foundation of the colonialism and racism of damnation, and their purpose in perpetuating the miserable ways of life of those considered to be scum. On the other hand, in Amerindian cosmogony, humanity is a pronominal mode, a non-exclusive perspectivist position of mankind, built in each context of relations. It is based on this idea that we posit other bases and a new agenda for psychology as a social practice which can enable us to broaden our ways of living towards ecosophical care, as a way of resistance to coloniality.

Sexual rights in Uganda and the struggle for meaning in community

Drawing on lessons from the experiences of women who exchange same-sex erotic energies, this article suggests that advocates of same-sex human rights should take into account epistemic erasures colonized people experience when activism and policies regarding sexual freedom ignore various linguistic and community structures that create spaces for diverse ways of knowing and being. Since the late 1990s, the discourse on homosexuality in Uganda has motivated important debates concerning human values of sovereignty, rights, and family, and has expanded freedoms of sexual expression while at the same time conditioning these freedoms to be experienced in colonial ways of self-knowledge. The language that frames these debates continues to locate human rights for Ugandans who exchange same-sex erotic energies outside the locales-family, history, and language-of intelligible episteme for them. To make sense of this claim, I draw "exchange of same-sex erotic energies" from a saying in Rukiga language spoken by Bakiga in southwestern Uganda, okugira omukago mukika nikwokunywaana oruganda, to think about family and community in which same-sex erotic energies are lived and experienced. This article attempts to redirect attention from colonial constructions of homosexuality to indigenous and decolonial perspectives in relation to women in Uganda who exchange same-sex erotic energies in their struggle for meaning in community. I argue for pedagogies and epistemologies of place and memory in the struggle for human rights and sexual rights.