Special Collection: Decolonize This!?

EDITORS
Sara Curran, University of Washington, Seattle, US
Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University, Denmark
Mélanie Lindberg Guichon, Aarhus University, Denmark

A particularly relevant current development is the rise of post-colonial approaches and quests for “decolonizing” the academy. Post-colonialism is both a political movement and an academic approach that seeks to challenge the social sciences and the humanities in their very foundations and does so across disciplines as well as fields of inquiry. It questions the legitimacy of the social sciences and the humanities in their present form to constitute the system of global knowledge and points to what are seen as inherent biases and inequities. In our view, the contemporary debates on decolonization can be seen as a continuation of the great debates in the history of the social sciences. Where does knowledge originate? How do knowledge and power relate? What are the underlying assumptions of social science research, and what are both content and connotation of major concepts used in theories? How do we collect, organize, analyze information and disseminate research results? And, critically, who benefits?”