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Re-centering African Subjects and Subjectivities Network
The scientific network Re-centering African Subjects and Subjectivities, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), led by Mariel Reiss, officially started its work in January 2024. The network brings together 14 internationally renowned scholars from different disciplines, united in shaping a new research agenda on African regionalism over the next three years. The membership includes scholars located at African, European, and North American Universities with diverse interdisciplinary experience in studying African regionalism. Stemming from political science, international relations, sociology, and anthropology, and with each member having several months to years of extensive field research or personal lived experience, they are able to leverage diverse expertise on African realities. These include, but are not limited to, the broad themes of gender; conflict and security; political economy, institutional and governance; post- and decolonial theory; and civil society and non-state actors.
Proposition for a New Research Agenda on Regionalism in Africa
The network has three distinct but highly interconnected aims. First, the network will re-center African subjects and subjectivities, which have largely been ignored by mainstream debates in all stages of the research process. The network places the experiences and knowledges of those doing and living African regionalisms centerstage – including not just elite actors, but a plurality of non-elite/marginalized actors – and advances crucial ongoing academic discussions concerning decolonizing the global economy of knowledge production.
The network takes seriously that (inter)subjectivities are powerful determinants of knowledge, and argues that this has not been sufficiently accounted for in mainstream/Western scholarship on regionalism. The invisibility of African subjectivities in regionalism studies has led to two problems: a) portrayals of African regionalism remain overly simplistic and generalizing because the diverse ontological, epistemological, theoretical, and conceptual understandings of African subjects about their own regionalism projects have been poorly accounted for; b) the resulting research questions and theories in mainstream regionalism studies remain irrelevant to addressing the particular challenges being experienced by African subjects. Second, the network will explore the methodological implications of this shift in subjectivity. Because European subjectivities dominate regionalism studies (Eurocentrism), even on questions regarding African regionalism, research epistemologies and methodologies have not sufficiently accounted for the realities of the African context or the knowledges that remain untapped because of inappropriate methods. Third, the network strives to explore underutilized African theories and concepts and to develop new ones based on the lived experiences of the plurality of subjects involved in African regionalism.
In pursuing these three interconnected aims, the network will develop effective ways to re-center African subjects and subjectivities in studying African regionalisms and formulate methodological and theoretical innovations for scholarly as well as policy-making circles.
Duration: 2024-2026
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Coordination: Dr. Mariel Reiss
Team: Soary Stéphan-Robert