Beyond the Master's Tools?: Decolonizing Knowledge Orders, Research Methods and Teaching

Product Description
This book provides a compendium of strategies for decolonizing global knowledge orders, research methodology and teaching in the social sciences. The volume presents recent work on epistemological critique informed by postcolonial thought, and outlines strategies for actively decolonizing social science methodology and learning/teaching environments that will be of great utility to IR and other academic fields that examine global order. The volume focuses on the decolonization of intellectual history in the social sciences, followed by contributions on social science methodology and lastly more practical suggestions for educational/didactical approaches in academic teaching. The book is not confined to the classical format of research articles but moves beyond such boundaries by bringing in spoken word and interviews with scholar-activists. Overall this volume enables researchers to practice a reflexive and situated knowledge production more suitable to confronting present-day global predicaments. The perspectives mobilise a constructive critique, but also allow for a reconstruction of methodologies and methods in ways that open up new lenses, new archives of knowledges and reconsider the who, the how and the what of the craft of social science research into global order.
Review
This book examines how academics have used decolonial pedagogies and methods to teach and research development studies as they grapple with colonial modernity’s ruptures and post- development critiques of international relations. Calls for the decolonisation of the ‘stale, pale, and male’ university could be regarded as the prescriptive source of inspiration for this work.... Doctoral students, researchers, and academics in social science working on international relations and development, higher education, and cultural studies will primarily benefit from this book. ―
Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education
About the Author
Daniel Bendix is a Professor for Global Development at Friedensau Adventist University, Germany. He gained his PhD from Manchester University and writes freelance material for glokal, a postcolonial education NGO based in Berlin. He is on the editorial board of the academic journal PERIPHERIE (Politics, Economy and Culture).

Franziska Müller is a research group leader at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Kassel, Germany. Coming from the fields of International Relations theory and Global Environmental Governance, her work focuses on the intersections of international relations and political ecology in postcolonial contexts and under circumstances of liberal governance. Her research concentrates on energy transitions and global carbon governmentality. Franziska holds a PhD in Political Science from Technische Universität Darmstadt and is active in the group 'kassel postkolonial'.

Aram Ziai holds the Heisenberg Chair for Development and Postcolonial Studies at the Institute of Political Science in Kassel, Germany. He holds an MA in sociology from the RWTH Aachen, a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hamburg and a habilitation in the same field from the University of Kassel. His research focuses on Post-Development approaches, and postcolonial political science. He also leads the junior research group “Protest and reform in the global political economy from a postcolonial perspective” and is active in the group ‘kassel postkolonial’.