Read on Twitter
While I agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread, I think the review here is a very detailed and helpful one. A lot of Indian reviewers of reputed journals in social sciences provide extremely poor comments that add nothing to the work. https://twitter.com/DollyKikon/status/1357150090477989888
While language (English) writing skills has regularly been used to undermine research of scholars from global south/marginalised identities, it would be wrong to say that emphasis on academic writing is entirely superfluous and has no value.
In academic writing, contrary to popular beliefs, writing is not just about class, aesthetic, or style it's also about authencity, originality of ideas, methods & data, proper attribution of sources & ethicality of not lifting other people's work w/o properly establishing source
While I'm always more than happy to promote scholarship from my region esp by indigenous scholars, I don't believe that the established scholars who have for years benefitted from their academic networks & years of experience from privileged institutions need to cry foul +
When they are reminded that we all also have to unfortunately cater to some standards as members of the scientific community. This I'm specifically pointing out today wrt Kikon's tweet coz I unfortunately have not found it a very pleasant experience when I recently discovered +
That my MA dissertation on Experiencing 'Otherness': Prejudice and Discrimination of NE Youth in Delhi that was one of the first empirical/ethnographic work on racism against NE folks undertaken in 2010-11 on which Kikon & her spouse and fellow academic Barbora had provided+
Some feedback on was later passed on to their academic buddy Duncan McDuie-ra w/o my prior consent who secured funding & published a monograph in 2012 on NE migrants experiencing racism in Delhi. My study was not attributed at all. Instead there is broad plagiarism of themes
Given academic work on racism faced by NE folks in India in only becoming more relevant during the pandemic now, what I tried to do a decade ago as a student w/ zero funding was quite significant. McDuie-ra if you're on twitter, you should consider responding what you did there.
Second, an academic no matter what their background is highly aware of the consequences of unethical practices and plagiarism or academic exploitation. Academic honesty is a fundamental research principle. So simply because one is an indigenous scholar (which I am too) it doesn't
absolve us of our these basic academic responsibilities. Besides just because a scholar marginalised/oppressed identity doesn't mean they are incapable of abusing their position of power to exploit others from within the community or in a position of lesser privilege (students)
It's one thing to use your lived experience as an oppressed identity scholar to uplift your community, & totally another to use your very specific position/social location to appropriate, mishandle, exploit scholarship & harm academic interests of promising scholars of the region
Imagine the output: A white man using his white "writing skills" to produce a poor publication lacking in original insight for being based on unoriginal research lifted from an indigenous scholar's work on racism/ethnic discrimination that she/others like her have faced in Delhi
Another imp. detail that now makes more sense in retrospect: Kikon had discouraged me from using the term "racism" explicitly on grounds that Indian academia prefers the term "ethnic discrimination". So I should talk about it but avoid using it on the title.
Bottom-line: When we get used to mobilising our oppressed identity for purely opportunistic ends, to grow more powerful/profiteer from it. But conveniently forget to acknowledge our privileges, engage/justify academic dishonesty & malpractices, then empathy & solidarity is hard.
