Decolonize Science

Resources

This page highlights critical literature around the topics of decolonization, knowledge production, and science.

The guidelines page collects concrete actions YOU can implement in your context and practice.

The following reading list was compiled by the panelists at the Science Summit 2022 session on decolonizing science:
  • bell hooks
    • Teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom
    • Teaching Critical Thinking Practical Wisdom
    • Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope

  • Paulo Freire
    • Pedagogy of the Oppressed

  • Audre Lorde
    • The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.

  • Achille Mbembe

  • Paulin J. Hountondji

  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos
    • Beyond Abyssal Thinking

  • Tuck and Yang
    • Decolonization is not a metaphor

  • Frantz Fanon
    • The Wretched of the Earth

  • John Galtung
    • What is Scientific Colonialism?

  • Kuan-Hsing Chen
    • Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization

“If the colonized and colonizer do not address the history of imperialism and colonialism together, it is impossible to build solidarity among the so-called global multitudes.”

  • Nussaïbah B. Raja, Emma M. Dunne, Aviwe Matiwane, Tasnuva Ming Khan, Paulina S. Nätscher, Aline M. Ghilardi, Devapriya Chattopadhyay
    • Colonial history and global economics distort our understanding of deep-time biodiversity

  • Bianca Elkington, Moana Jackson, Rebecca Kiddle, Ocean Ripeka Mercier, Mike Ross, Jennie Smeaton, Amanda Thomas
    • Imagining Decolonization

  • Linda Tuhiwai Smith
    • A civilizing mission
    • Decolonizing methodologies

  • OR Mercier and B Leonard
    • Indigenous Knowledge and the sciences in global contexts: bringing worlds together in Handbook of indigenous education

  • Pamela Palmater (2011)
    • Beyond Blood: Rethinking Indigenous Identity

“What decolonization means at a very practical level is taking back our power”

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein curated this wonderful reading list as a starting guide

There are likely ressources by now on how to decolonize any and all disciplines. The following is a very small selection.

  • Robin Wall Kimmerer
    • Braiding Sweetgrass – Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

  • Caroline E. H. Dessent, Ruhee A. Dawood, Leonie C. Jones, Avtar S. Matharu, David K. Smith*, Kelechi O. Uleanya
    • Decolonizing the Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum: An Account of How to Start

  • Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
    • Decolonising the Mind

  • Linda Tuhiwai Smith
    • Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

“We were told that violence in itself is evil, and that, whatever the cause, it is unjustified morally. By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? By what standards can we equate the violence of blacks who have been oppressed, suppressed, depressed and repressed for four centuries with the violence of white fascists? Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression.”

― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers