This post was originally published on Menelique Magazine, issue #3 and .

#Black Lives Matter highlights the suppression of black lives in all aspects of society, but the public interest in the movement has been limited to systemic state racism involving the brutality of white police officers against black people. The visible and visceral discriminations in the public domain are serious and warrant such interest and concern, but this focus leaves out several other issues that are of interest to the movement.聽

The intellectual marginalisation of black people is one of such relatively overlooked areas. When black intellectual suppression is recognised, it is commonly held to be a mere supply problem. In this sense, black people produce little or no knowledge, there are few or no serious black scholars to engage, or the work of black scholars is not good enough. Conventional indices appear to bear out such claims. From 1987 to 2016, for example, a suggests that the share of Africa鈥檚 contribution to the global pool of scientific knowledge as measured by scientific databases such as Web of Science declined from 1 to under 1 per cent. 

Cultural explanations, suggesting that African cultures inhibit scientific progress, are sometimes raised to explain this status quo, although the scientific community tends rather to emphasise weaker research context and capabilities. Articles about how Africans lack books and African universities are underfunded abound. Others highlight how lecture rooms are crowded, and underpaid lecturers and other staff members are overworked. To further complicate the situation, the point is made that, although the internet is widespread in Africa now, it is unstable, unreliable, and unaffordable. 

These challenges shade into many others such as lack of mentoring, relatively little exposure, and limited opportunities to create knowledge divides, according to a by the International Social Science Council. In this way of diagnosing the problem, others try to dig deeper into the origins for these divides and how the status quo is maintained. It is common to highlight the destructive and cumulative ramifications of years of slavery, colonialism, and neoliberalism on the weaker and dependent research environment in which black people find themselves. 

This chain of reasoning percolates much of the idea that black human capital is low and increasing this human capital is the central challenge. How can 鈥榳e鈥� increase the potential 鈥榟uman capital鈥� in Africa is a question that is commonly implied in Western approaches to addressing the problem of black intellectual marginalisation. 

Yet this human capital framing of the problem and how it might be addressed are highly contestable. Not only do human capital indices and databases for analysis overlook African research, human capital measures of progress are also biased in favour of the West. The key databases for scientific advance mainly focus on journals produced and run in the West. So framing knowledge divides in human capital terms maintains invisibility, concretises discrimination, and normalises privilege, creating a paradox in which the construction of knowledge divides not only explains the status quo but also reinforces it. A fanatic religion, the mainstream human capital framework of analysis (which, among others, claims that obtaining education and experience are not only necessary but is also sufficient to address the problems of discrimination and marginalisation, and which also insists on rankings and league tables) privileges the powerful and further subjugates the rest, creating a self-fulfilling prophesy that must be confronted.

Confronting Knowledge Invisibility, Discrimination, and Privilege

One way to do so is to systematically seek, recognise, and utilise the ideas of black people themselves. Another way, commonly embraced by many Western institutions, is to build partnerships with African universities. Both approaches go farther than the mainstream human capital approach to analysis, but they fall short of asking much deeper questions: what is the historical record of Westerners seeking to visibilise African knowledge? In what ways is research produced by Africans utilised? How effective could solutions be, if they do not confront the wider problem of ? These three questions are not easy to address, but in a recent in African Identities, we contribute to the conversation. The experience of Africans merely being listed as research assistants or named as the last and least contributor on research articles is well known. More recently, an in African Affairs reminds the journal鈥檚 readers of the historic and continuing problem of marginalisation of Africans who have 鈥榩artnered鈥� Western scholars. Many feel used and abused in these 鈥榩artnerships鈥�. Others realise that, while they 鈥榮erve鈥�, they are valued, but as soon as they seek their independence as scholars, they are devalued, dejected, and rejected.

Research by scientists from Sub-Saharan Africa is cited . Globally, . Africans have much less presence in the leadership of global universities, research institutions, and editorial boards of major journals. In settler colonies in Africa, such as South Africa, blacks are . Around the world, however, a small group of black scholars enjoy a healthy stream of attention. But the work of these better-received black researchers tends to support privileged and powerful groups. That is evidently the case with research on race that tends to cast doubts on racial motivation for police killing of black people. Such work enjoys . On the other hand, black Research by women who fundamentally challenge patriarchy tends to show . 

These characteristics reflect the colour of knowledge production, privilege, and power. In disciplines such as , many Africans and women, but particularly , are excluded from leadership positions such as editorships. Journals led by Africans tends to be devalued by Western rating agencies. Whether the assignment of low or no ranks to black journals is correlation or causation is moot. The key point is that consigned to the least powerful outlets, or refused indexation altogether, African intellectuals are not as able to influence the direction of research in their own fields nor promote the uptake of their own research.

Consider systematic research reviews, increasingly the gold standard in global policy making, for example. Most of such reviews must usually draw on journals indexed in databases that exclude much of the research published by Africans. So a system of excluding African journals and scholars is institutionalised. These claims are broad generalisations, of course, but they are also corroborated by specific examples, including the systematic devaluation and poor rankings of leading Africanist journals such as Africa Development, The Review of Black Political Economy and the Review of African Political Economy. Their role in developing new fields and subfields of economics, in providing alternative outlets for research that responds to local needs in a global world, and in decolonising Africa seems to count for little or for nothing. This argument has been made by both and scholars who identify a system of intellectual apartheid, dominated by a few transnational publishing corporations whose deleterious visible hand directs much of the academy. 

Therefore, repudiating this system is no easy matter. Black scholars can organise, of course, and many do, for example, around the National Economic Association and the African Finance and Economics Consult. However, African scientists, institutions, and processes seeking to make their name must rely on these problematic systems of command and control. Not only do funding decisions depend on them, global rankings also rely on them to bestow visibility on a few and obscurity on the many. Africans can reject this system, but at substantial social costs. Apart from becoming even more unknown and obscure, and having less and less influence on their own fields of study, they also risk losing their craft and work because these indices, originally prioritised by powerful groups within the Western academy, are increasingly imposed on African universities, too. 

Decolonising and Democratising Knowledge, Political Economy, and Power 

Pan-African research groups, such as the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, are pushing back against a trend which is clearly going to worsen existing knowledge divides. Their alternatives range from creating new databases, producing new ranking systems, and developing new systems of recognistion that better appreciate, celebrate, and disseminate African scholarship, as the tries to do. African journals and editors complement this effort. Not only do they support the publication of much-needed critical research relevant to African liberation, they also provide avenues to nurture intellectual leadership, as studies  on the history of the , the Review of African Political Economy, and the show. 

Over the years, African scholars have been producing outstanding research. More fundamentally, this research . The historic and continuing appropriation of demonstrates the hypocrisy of so-called Western 鈥榮tandards鈥�. Coupled with the systemic non-recognition and devaluation of black knowledge creation, it is quite clear that the knowledge divide today is not simply a 鈥榮upply problem鈥�. The sustained effort to recognise and make visible African scholarship can help, but more can be done. The black power movement has historically shown that the struggle to bridge the knowledge divide is not simply a struggle of ideas to decolonise, deconstruct, and democratise knowledge systems. It is, above all, a liberation struggle, a movement for total deconcentration of political-economic power toward a world of greater socio-economic inclusion, sovereignty, and self-determination.聽

Thanks to Dr. Svenja Flechtner for constructive feedback on the post.

Franklin Obeng-Odoom is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Development Studies and at the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science at the University of Helsinki in Finland. He is the author of Property, Institutions, and Social Stratification in Africa (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). He can be contacted via Franklin.obeng-odoom@helsinki.fi. Photo by Nadia Pillon.

The current pandemic might temporarily slow down environmentally destructive economic growth. However, claiming that we are dying for sustainability is dangerous. The global sustainability crisis is not just driven by uneconomic growth but also increasing global inequality and social stratification.

Growthmania

Suggesting that  is tempting. Transnational oil corporations have halted production. Oil prices have tumbled. Plans for new oil explorations have been halted. Shale gas companies are folding up. Air travel has plummeted. So has road travel. Consequently, emission levels have dropped. Skies have cleared. Rare and remote species of animals appear to be back in sight. As recently demonstrated , some of this optimism is based on . Others can be questioned for comparing .

Still, humanity seems to have rediscovered its sacrosanct relationship with nature. The ramifications are wide-ranging. Some employers now recognise that work can be done from home. With so many virtual conferences now taking place, it appears that international travel is not so much needed. Maybe not so many people are needed either. Australian philosopher, Peter Singer,  of so many old people who are no longer productive. Perhaps the reduction in unsustainable population growth could also be welcome. A world that is small and serene has come.

Is this a plausible pathway to start the journey described in , first published in 1972?  suggests that whatever the pathway, we must have limits to growth. That is evidently the argument made by political economists such as Ezra Mishan who coined the name 鈥榞rowthmania鈥� in The Costs of Economic Growth, published about a decade before The Limits to Growth.

Growthmania has become even more problematic in recent times.From this perspective, , a major rapture like COVID-19, can disrupt the path of unsustainable growth. Humanity appears to be dying for sustainability.

Over the years, however, the critique of , suggests that . The current socioecological crises are . , as Herman Daly calls it, is only one of them.

Limits to Inequality

Inequality is, perhaps, even more fundamental to the sustainability crisis. For the Global South, addressing inequalities has been the central sustainability challenge. This point was echoed in the famous Brundtland Report which declared that 鈥淭his inequality is the planet鈥檚 main 鈥榚nvironmental鈥� problem鈥�. The report promoted 鈥榮ustainable development鈥� as an antidote. Yet, this idea was, in effect, sustainable economic growth. Such contradiction in ambitions can be seen in  as well.

Growthism has taken a strong resurgence. , consequently, blamed the pursuit of sustainable development as the primary reason. Not only has sustainable development come to erode, corrupt and dilute the lofty ideals of 鈥榣imits to growth鈥�; the argument goes, it has also expanded and justified more growthism. The catechists for growth have, accordingly, been enabled to hide behind the poorer world for their own gains. Consequently, 鈥榣imiting growth鈥� has become a major preoccupation of many environmentalists and activists.

Yet, the centrality of inequality  to socio-ecological crises needs to be .  ; not limitless growth. The rising movements around the world are, in fact, against the rise of the 1%, a shorthand for inequality. Thomas Piketty鈥檚 , which has had world-wide acclaim, is on inequality. The MeToo Movement and Black Lives Matter are both about addressing inequality. This demand is theoretically sound. Widely endorsed by , , and , considering the ramifications of Maintaining status is one way of fleshing it out. Analysing the tendencies for  Catch Up, and reflecting on the effects of monopolising Privilege (three crucial indicators of inequality) on the environment can offer even more clarity.

Consider Maintaining Status. Inequality fosters consumerism. The wealthy seek to maintain their status. Temptations to buy more and more set in. When the world is unequal, binge purchases and consumption sustain unsustainable volumes of production meant for the wealthy. At the national level, such processes are quite well-known, but similar comments apply to global inequalities too. Status shapes global consumerism. Among the wealthy countries of the world, there is a race to show position: whether it is spending more on arms, going to space, or building more transportation systems. This desire to succour the leisure class, as , is widespread. However, it is especially pronounced among the very rich countries and the middle-income ones. Yet, maintaining it is bad for the environment. When such a practice becomes rampant, it sets in motion problematic forces of mimicry.

That is one way to explain why catching up is related to maintaining status. So long as inequality persists, the concern among the middle-class and some poorer countries is to seek catching up as progress. Often though, this maintenance of privilege gives world development organisations, usually located in the same wealthy nations, the power to impose these standards on the poorer nations. Catching up becomes development. With this dynamic in place, opportunistic pressures to pollute to similar levels as the wealthy lend themselves. In this process, polluter pays arguments are transformed. They become Western payments for nature, carbon sinks drilled in the Global South apparently save the planet.

Yet, this transfer of land from the South to the North, disguised as a way to ensure 鈥榗atch up鈥�, is, in fact, another way of cementing the monopoly of privilege. Globally, absentee landlord states  and their transnational corporations continue to monopolise the land commons in the Global South. Not only do they control the global value chains and the global commodity chains, they also control the downstream transport and petroleum industries. They make decisions and influence world mineral pricing. They manipulate the demand, and supply of such resources. They transport fossil fuels over long distances. After refinement, they return the waste products to the South. Significant pollution and dispossession arise from this inequality of ownership and control. Increasing rentierism, absentee ownership, dispossession, and systemic environmental accidents arise. These processes attest to the environmental pandemic that arises from unequal property relations.

Within nations, the concentration of land in the hands of a few raises serious concerns. The resulting rent increases generates unsustainable national transformation. Rental increases . Land concentration also explains widespread insecurities. In turn, uncertainties drive . This trend is concerning. Not only does the building sector, dominated by a small powerful hierarchy of transnational corporations and absentee estate developers, generate 30 per cent of global annual emissions, it also consumes .

These inequalities have become more complex with time. So have the ecological crises. Both are . These socio-ecological problems, in turn, create . They tear communities apart. Broken, society cannot be sustainable. When farms are replaced with fences and fences with gates, where the desire for rent drives the pursuit of land, and when more and more land is concentrated in few hands, what is needed is not just sustainability; but a just sustainability.

Beyond Limits to Growth

 The emphasis on growthmania as the central and only problem of sustainability has brought us far, but it can take us no further. Continuing to insist on it prioritises environmental sustainability over social and economic sustainability. Growing inequality and social stratification undermine environmental sustainability. Ecological justice suffers. Placing limits on inequality and stratification is, therefore, . For holistic and fundamental transformation, what is needed is not just sustainability but a just sustainability.

If there is any useful analytical lesson from COVID-19, it is that our  need to be holistic and our analysis . Without these transdisciplinary approaches and transformation in , we risk overlooking just sustainabilities and reifying environmentalism.

Thus, if more research is needed on COVID-19, it should not only be on finding a vaccine and empirically ascertaining its effects on economic growth. Although important, what is urgent is research on sustainability and COVID-19 within the context of limits to inequality.

Franklin Obeng-Odoom leads  research theme. He teaches in , and he is the author of .

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Drs. Kaisa Korhonen-Kurki, Michiru Nagatsu, Jussi T. Eronen, and Andreas Exner for excellent feedback. Voices for Sustainability team deserve special thanks for their patience and constructive suggestions.

Photos by  from . This post was first published on the blog.