Global Literacies Research Diversity: A Manifesto for Change

Abstract

The essay explores the issue of globalization of literacy education research and offers a manifesto to ignite a commitment for a global eclectic for literacy education research. The manifesto’s tenets are drawn from an interrogation of the current dominance of a Western-centric orientation, and from the interviews with postcolonial critics, indigenous sages, global and southern scholars.

As Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) stated in her book Decolonizing Methodologies, “social science . . . is not an innocent or distant academic exercise but an activity that has something at stake” (p. 5). In this essay, we offer a manifesto on global literacies research in an effort to advance the diversification of literacy research and the transformation of systems that contribute to and reproduce Western and other forms of privilege. We use the term “manifesto” not to dictate or prescribe but rather to prompt further awareness and reflection while joining in long-standing calls for action and reform. The set of seven tenets constituted in the manifesto are rooted in a planetary perspective and aligned with a postcolonial creed; they are anchored in eclecticism and stand in opposition to forms of ethno-nationalism. Foundational to the manifesto are values and ethics that embrace a critical reflexivity relative to our positionality—especially with respect to cultures, races, and ethnicities; Eastern and Western; Northern and Southern; and Indigenous and colonialist. The manifesto also considers how transformative pursuits can counter and challenge practices and values that perpetuate assimilative tendencies, a politic of Western exclusiveness, and racism. It resonates with the need for: “concrete actions . . . to interrupt received systems and redress a global hierarchy that equates south with underneath” (Auerbach, 2021).

Literacy and the Sociopolitical Milieu Governing Scholarship

Across millennia, our literacies have both animated and been animated by global exchanges. As we have mobilized goods and ideas along migratory pathways and trade routes via our languages and ways of knowing, literacies have been employed and deployed across individuals and communities as tools for demarcations and negotiations and as means to frame identities and values. Intertwined with social, political, cultural, linguistic, and economic exchanges, they are integrally involved in migration, empire-building, the spread of ideas, and propagation of religions. Likewise, literacies have provided tools for representing our worlds—enlisted for reflection, celebration, and the formulation and critique of new thinking and innovation. As a result of handheld communications, global media, and the internet, literacies seem to play an ever more pervasive role in our lives, as social media opens up access and new channels for shuttle diplomacy and border-crossings (Gutiérrez et al., 2017; Horowitz, 2012; Hull et al., 2010; Luke, 2004, 2018; Nelson et al., 2016; Tierney, 2018b).

Nevertheless, academic literacy engagements are not so open and accessible. Scholarly outlets—despite ostensibly independent sociopolitical positions and affordances—routinely filter and fashion what is published and taught. Most universities, amid their promotions of internationalization, are thus engaged in perpetuating forms of Western imperialism (Connell, 2019; Willinsky, 1998). As Tuck and Yang (2014) pointed out, “the academy as an apparatus of settler colonial knowledge already domesticates, denies, and dominates other forms of knowledge . . . It sets limits, but disguises itself as limitless” (p. 235). This is also apparent in the persisting modes of inquiry that many scholars consider purposefully disdainful. Comparative educational research, for example, has a history of espousing paternalistic, Eurocentric approaches to “othering” non-Western perspectives (Takayama et al., 2017). Similarly, regardless of their epistemologies (i.e., from positivist to constructivist to critical or Indigenous), researchers who have engaged in studies with Indigenous populations have tended to work from the outside in, rather than adopting participatory or supportive methodologies with local developments as their priority (Dion et al., 2020; Phillips et al., 2007). This lack of alignment between scholarly norms and multiple global contexts extends to the knowledge economy—one that retains systems that perpetuate a form of Western exclusivity and egocentrism. Essentially, the global knowledge economy represents a non-eclectic world reflective of a bias, if not an attitude, of impunity—held up by benchmarks and global structures that can run roughshod over local non-Western and Indigenous interests. Restrictions controlling access to the esteemed scholarly outlets function somewhat akin to a passport, limiting the mobility of ideas or the licensing of local knowledge holders.

For Western scholars, the path is relatively straightforward and globally rewarding, as publications in the most prestigious global journals are aligned with Western ways of knowing. Pursuits by non-Westerners who do not align with Western norms, however, may have limited global reach, at least when channeled through the revered scholarly outlets—that is, should the pursuits be published at all. As bibliometric analyses of the leading scholarly journals have exposed, journals rarely include studies, theories, or even citations from Southern or Eastern scholars (Connell, 2007; Connell et al., 2017; Tierney, 2018a; Tierney & Kan, 2016; Trigos-Carillo & Rogers, 2017). Non-Western pursuits thus rarely appear in the revered journals, and those that do may likely have gone through a gauntlet in efforts to accommodate or assimilate to Western standards.

Through the discriminatory process of citation in particular, Mott and Cockayne (2017) argued, non-dominant bodies and ideas become omitted and silenced: “We bring with us those bodies and ideas deemed legitimate and worthy of attention and dialogue—those we want to remember” (p. 964). The politics of citations have also perpetuated an oppressive White heteromasculinism—a geographical hegemony resonant of cartels (Mott & Cockayne, 2017).

It is as if scholarly outlets tout postcolonialism in theory, while sustaining colonial regimes in practice. The detrimental effects of such exclusion are further compounded by the commonplace measure of global leadership in terms of the publication of research in key outlets and the traction of research citations. For non-Westerners, the revered are those approved to be ranked in Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) listings—the key benchmark for global rankings of universities. Of the 233 SSCI listed journals, very few are Eastern journals, none are Chinese, and very few represent either African or South American publications. As with high-stakes assessment, then, the measures themselves have frequently become the focus of the endeavor.

Literacy education research journals are not exceptions to these circumstances. In the preeminent literacy research journals, the authors, reviewers, and forms of research presented are almost exclusively Western, with citations dominated by Western scholars’ publications. Take the research found in journals such as the Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ) and the Journal of Literacy Research (JLR). Both RRQ and JLR have a limited number of publications by non-Westerners, with few citations of non-Western scholars. Despite the RRQ making claims of a 15% acceptance rate, the proportion of international articles is around 10%—with very few of these articles from non-Western sources. JLR reflects a similar form of Western exclusivity. Across 4 years of JLR articles from the past decade, there is a disproportionately low number of contributors from outside of the United States. The proportion of international articles that appeared in JLR, approximately 15%, includes a very low percentage exclusively by Eastern, Southern, or Indigenous authors. On the rare occasions when global perspectives have been published, they are referenced in Western terms, aligned with Western norms, and positioned as instantiations of Western theorists.

Despite sincere efforts to increase global submissions, entrenched norms thus appear to advance Western voices to the exclusion or silencing of others. While some may argue that the upside may be a form of scholarly rigor to which many, including Southern and Eastern institutions, aspire, the downsides of this Western self-indulgence include a failure to be exposed to and informed by non-Western values, interests, and perspectives, and the habitual and overshadowing characterizations of non-Westerners by Westerners. As Mott and Cockayne (2017) suggested, “the choices we make about whom to cite—and who is then left out of the conversation—directly impact the cultivation of a rich and diverse discipline, and the reproduction of . . . knowledge itself” (p. 955). Moreover, perhaps the greatest danger, as Santos (2013) has argued, is epistemicide—the extinction of non-Western ways of knowing and scholarship focused upon local interest.

Such widespread underrepresentation can lead to the mischaracterization of non-Westerners as lacking or deficient—without regard to the limitations and ethics of doing so. In keeping with Indigenous ethics that value and expect community consultation and involvement, Ndimande (2018) suggested that literacy research “by” or “on” so-called others should instead engage with others’ languages, and perhaps align with non-Western cultural norms and practices.

Certainly, literacy educational research journals such as JLR and RRQ are beginning to publish more articles offering sociocultural perspectives focused upon global issues, including global ethics and epistemologies, cosmopolitanism, transliteracies, border-crossing, translanguaging, pluraversity, and global meaning-making (e.g., García & Kleifgen, 2020; Gutiérrez, 2008; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014; Kim, 2016; Lam et al., 2012; Ndimande, 2018; Perry, 2021; Rizvi, 2009; Stornaiuolo et al., 2017; Tierney, 2018b, 2020; Wandera, 2020). Therefore, optimistically, I would suggest that changes are looming; as a critical global advocate, I would posit that we are not there yet.

Moving Forward

This manifesto’s tenets embrace these emerging paths, befitting an engaged response to postcolonial critiques and an advancement of an array of ways of knowing. Its development is anchored in the view that literacy education should draw upon a range of research undertaken by various research groups in the interests of a multiperspectival global outlook. The manifesto is meant to be more provocative than definitive, in the hope that it will be considered as a thought piece—incomplete and intended to spur discernments relative to how literacy educational research might move forward globally.

The Approach

The tenets explicated for the manifesto draw from interrogations of the current Western-centric dominance toward considerations of possibilities for a more diverse global research eclecticism. Postcolonial critics, Indigenous sages, and southern scholars have been enlisted here to provide guidance and illuminate our way, including five global scholars who have been involved in deliberations on these matters in their own writings. These five scholars are Vanessa Andreotti, Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change at the University of British Columbia; Ruth Hayhoe, professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto; Allan Luke, Professor Emeritus at the Queensland Institute of Technology; Arathi Sriprakash, professor of education at the University of Bristol; and Shi Zhongying, professor of philosophy at Tsinghua University (see the appendix).

Along with a request to comment on internationalizing our educational research journals, each of the five scholars was sent an invitation. We asked,

Would you be willing to offer some constructive suggestions for how educational research journals (especially literacy journals) might pursue goals, principles, and practices befitting more eclectic considerations of epistemologies, diverse frames, and approaches to scholarship, especially in ways that respect Eastern and Southern considerations, situations, and norms? How might journals conceive of the nature of international contributions (especially from non-Western scholars) in terms of original knowledge that heeds global and local considerations?

As we explained,

We are keen to shift the current circumstances that non-Western authors experience—that is, they are often rejected unless they situate their work in a fashion consistent with Western research norms and sometimes tied to mostly Western theorists.

The positive responses we received from the interviewees reflected their ongoing engagement with these issues both as individuals and, as Arathi Sriprakash noted, as part of a wider and long-standing “collective thinking & struggle.”

The Manifesto

Seven tenets emerged from our interviews. Beginning with the foundational premise discussed in the introduction to this essay, our first tenet posits that our literacies are inherently global and have functioned hand in glove with our shared lives on the planet as well as international engagements and developments through migration, trade, communications, and the spread of ideas. The tenet befits a view of cultures as relational consistent with Allan Luke’s discussion of scientific ecosystems and interoperability (Luke, 2011) and Fazal Rizvi’s conceptualization of interculturality as foundational to the dynamics of our ongoing interrelational existence and identities (Rizvi, 2021).

Our second tenet reflects a foundational moral and ethical imperative that global research should involve respect for and support of one another in the exchange of ideas and ways of knowing. It as an alignment that represents a reckoning of global synergies with local context matters. As such, this tenet has a number of antecedents in postcolonial critiques (e.g., Bhabha, 1994; Nozaki, 2009; Said, 1979, 1993; Spivak, 1988, 1990, 1999), as well as the articles and principles articulated by the UN declarations and conventions that advocate for rights tied to the revitalization of languages and local knowledge in the interest of the planet’s ecology and environmental well-being (United Nations, 1990, 2006). For example, the 2003 Geneva Convention on the Information Society established a principle to

build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society, where everyone can create, access, utilize and share information and knowledge, enabling individuals, communities and peoples to achieve their full potential in promoting their sustainable development and improving their quality of life, premised on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and respecting fully and upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (United Nations, 2003)

Notions of respect and equality examined through a postcolonial lens also comprised the cornerstone of many comments made by our interviewees. They recognized that science as it stands is not apolitical; it sustains forms of colonization and reproductions of privilege through the forms and sources of research and theories it chooses to publish and cite. They were adamant that a shift relative to the global flow of ideas needs to occur. As Allan Luke explained,

How do we respond to the rise of nationalism/nativism/fascism/racism in the midst of a pandemic and ecological crisis, geopolitical conflict and increasing inequality? For the field of education and educational journals, this isn’t a matter of “internationalization” any more. It is about fighting for the open, accessible, reflexive and dialogic exchange of rigorously peer-refereed knowledge, science, scholarship and research. It is about a shared exchange between educators, communities, nations, societies and cultures—especially in the face of the imposition of boundaries and constraints (East/West/South/North) that attempt to curtail such exchange. It is about the principled defense and critique of expertise, theory, knowledge and professional practice—as against an environment where everyday educational practice may be shaped by propaganda, conspiracy theories, misinformation and outright and deliberate ideological distortion.

Our third tenet posits the need for a significant commitment to pluralism—whereby minor adjustments to the status quo will not suffice. The pursuit of global research diversity will require a challenge to universalism and an uprooting of egocentrism. It calls for critical reflexivity and more if there is to be commitment to the changes needed. This includes dismantling what Vanessa Andreotti considers entrenched ethnocentrism. As she commented,

The imperative to internationalize scholarly knowledge aligns with the growing recognition that we will need to draw on the full range of human wisdom in order to face today’s many overlapping political, economic, and ecological challenges. Yet internationalizing research is far from a straightforward practice, especially if these efforts are to go beyond the tokenistic and selective inclusion of non-western knowledges, and ensure that all knowledges are to be treated as truly equal and valued for their contextually relevant gifts. Those who occupy editorial positions in which they are tasked to arbitrate what constitutes intelligible, rigorous, and consequential scholarly interventions will need to challenge the universality of their own perspectives, and in so doing, develop greater humility about their expertise. In some cases, this may mean ceding their positions altogether, making space for entirely different editorial visions to thrive; in other cases, this may mean developing more appropriate means of assessing the rigour of contributions rooted in knowledge systems and sensibilities outside of their own areas of expertise.

Our pursuit of global diversity should be filtered through a critical consciousness embedded within sociocultural systems that embrace diversity and empowerment—not subversion or subordination. If scholars are to abide by an ethic of cross-cultural respect and responsiveness, scholarly editors, reviewers, and readers should be divested of the conceit of universalism and heed diversity, situatedness, and decolonizing practices. Rather than relying on ethnocentrism, editors, reviewers, and readers should interrogate their predispositions and approaches by being vigilant of preexisting assumptions, the cultural boundedness of their practices, and the potential influences of their own insularity and attitudes of impunity. Otherwise, their continued arrogance may perpetuate faulty presumptive readings, mask ignorance, and risk complicity with forms of cultural appropriation. As Vanessa Andreotti further stated,

Importantly, these are not simply intellectual tasks, as they often prompt affective responses rooted in resistance to the epistemic dethroning that is necessary in order for an equitable ecology of knowledges (Santos, 2007) to become possible. These affective responses, including anger, defensiveness, dismissiveness, and shame, among others, tend to deflect attention away from the necessary examination of the ways that certain knowledges have been systemically centered at the expense of others. Those who have been granted epistemic authority by this system have been promised that the knowledge they hold grants them certainty, universality, and exceptionality. These are not easy promises to interrupt and dis-invest from, but those who wish to earnestly engage this work will need to commit to the uncomfortable, ongoing unlearning of their own epistemic privilege, and thus, the unravelling of their sanctioned ignorance of both their own complicity in harm, and of other ways of knowing and being in the world (Spivak, 1999). Only by doing this difficult work might we “pluralize the future by pluralizing knowledge in the present.” (Nandy, 2000, p. 122)

Integral to respect is a recognition and appreciation of difference, cultural norms, and expectations of community relative to consultation, engagement, and reciprocity (King, 2017; L. T. Smith, 2005). To these ends, it may be helpful to view the world as multiple rather than singular, uniform, or fixed—arising from various fusions of concentric circles that move back and forth and shifting from and with self to different others in various multiplicative and generative ways (e.g., Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Purcell-Gates, 2006). Critical reflexivity must therefore be dynamic and outward-looking, lest researchers remain gazing at mirror images of themselves.

Our fourth tenet posits that transactions stemming from platforms supporting global research eclecticism are essential for us to move forward as a planet. Pursuing global diversity entails learning about, from, and with others. We can too easily become victims of egocentrism, limiting our understandings by espousing approaches to science that verge on appropriating or reinscribing differences. As Ruth Hayhoe lamented, comparative education promotes a largely insular, Eurocentric narrative—one she has tried to challenge:

I have written several pieces recently about my field of comparative education, to demonstrate its roots in Asian and African civilizations, as against the common view that the field was founded by Marc Antoine Jullien in France, shortly after the French Revolution. In my research I found the world of Ali Mazrui and Ashis Nandy, with the founding of the World Order Models Project in the 1970s, and the journal Alternatives, based in Delhi, India, provided the best possible framework for comparative educational research, a value explicit framework as against the positivist so-called “scientific” frames dominant in the western world at the time. The work of Lê Thàn Khôi, a Vietnamese scholar based in Paris, has emphasized the history of the field in world civilizations . . . going back to Buddhist influences from India on higher education in SE Asia and China, for example.

According to Arathi Sriprakash, this colonializing mind-set perpetuates the displacement, sidelining, and appropriation of others. As she and her coauthors (Takayama et al., 2017) commented in their discussion of comparative education, discussions of multicultural issues were often “thin” and cosmetic, and social theory was applied uncritically to non-Westerners in ways that were deemed stagnant and absent. This mirrors what has been experienced by Indigenous groups, both within nations and globally. As Australian Aboriginal author Bruce Pascoe (2014) argued, “To deny Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders agricultural and spiritual achievement is the single greatest impediment to the intercultural understanding and perhaps, to Australian moral wellbeing and economic prosperity” (pp. 228–229). But, as Indigenous anthropogists and archeologists, Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe stress, Indigenous spirituality and ecological considerations need to be gven precedence over western materiality as measures of credibility (Sutton & Walshe, 2021).

Western approaches thus continue to fail to recognize the importance of Indigenous and non-Western developments in illuminating the present. For instance, as Shi Zhongying commented, the West needs to recognize how the East might be informed by the West and the West by the East. An understanding of and respect for each is essential for any development of global understandings—that is, for there to be transferability, abduction, or synthesis of one another’s ideas, either separately or together. Shi Zhongying’s contemplation of global frames befits such an understanding of both the West and the East. This was also evidenced in his recent tempered discussions of Bourdieu’s possible relevance for China (Shi & Li, 2018), as well as in others’ discussions of Asia-centric research methodologies (e.g., Chen, 2010; Park, 2017).

Our fifth tenet recognizes that a diverse range of global inquiry holds the potential to contribute to our understandings, discoveries, and problem solving, both locally and globally. This appreciation will require a rebalancing of scholarly diversity to ensure there are opportunities to see the world more fully—lest findings, theories, and perspectives get lost, misinterpreted, or mistaken. As Vanessa Andreotti noted, “We will need to draw on the full range of human wisdom in order to face today’s many overlapping political, economic, and ecological challenges.” The way forward is therefore not likely to be akin to flipping a switch or announcing an intent to change. It will instead require significant changes in visions, mind-sets, and value systems, and in the positioning and the nature of operations.

For instance, in her various writings (Hayhoe, 1986, 2019) and as developed in her recent article on cross-cultural understanding, Ruth Hayhoe (2021) has advocated for becoming a “listening intellect”—one who engages “deeply with educational ideas and visions arising from regions and cultures with very different philosophical and religious roots from those developed in Europe after the Enlightenment” (p. 16). Drawing upon notions of listening described by those from the Global South, especially Asia, and in particular attending to the ideas of Indian scholar Rajni Kothari (one of the founders of the World Order Models Project) along with Ali Mazrui, Ashis Nandy, and others at the Centre for Developing Societies in Delhi, Hayhoe (2021) further observed, “Listening sounds like something simple, but the term ‘intellect’ suggests how demanding it is, requiring us to open our minds and hearts to the other at a deep level” (p. 13).

Our sixth tenet reflects the view of all of our interviewees: The ongoing realization of diverse global research will require changes beyond a shift in operations if it is to proceed in ways that have integrity and are impactful, sustainable, and ethical. As Canadian First Nations scholars Marie Ann Battiste and James Youngblood Henderson (2000) have observed,

Transforming any of the entrenched Eurocentric contexts will be difficult; yet such a transformation is a prerequisite to obtaining respect for Indigenous worldviews. The challenge of protecting Indigenous knowledge and heritage requires the transformation of all these interdependent areas. This is a huge undertaking that will require concerted, comprehensive effort. It will require many generations working together with persistence. It will take vision, trust, and tolerance, which can be manifested by skilled diplomacy, strategic agreements, and deliberate commitments by all parties. Creating these transformations and respecting Indigenous knowledge and heritage is an intimidating task but a necessary goal for the end of colonialism and for the construction of postcolonial global and national orders. (pp. 289–290)

To achieve substantive change, research should be viewed as more than a supplementary pursuit, an object for study, or a form of integration into the preexisting hierarchy. The notion of diverse global literacies research that we are advocating in this manifesto warrants transformative change that is systemic. Our interviewees suggested that this change would be equivalent to a form of renaturalization. Indeed, the interviewees touched upon the need for a new form of advocacy that moves us beyond the status quo and the acceptance of the hierarchies in place. Their recommendations reflect a mix of suggested approaches—stemming from both the bottom-up and the top-down.

In terms of bottom-up approaches, they pointed to journals and personnel—as well as raising awareness of the ethics of who is researching whom, for what purposes, and how. In terms of top-down approaches, they suggested challenging the hierarchies in place—namely, those perpetuated by SSCI publications and universities. As Stein (2017) warned, oftentimes tertiary institutions may feign transformative change by adopting forms of integrative approaches—giving the appearance of accommodation while retaining key features that ensure White privilege. In her examination of the actual inclusion of internationalism and Indigenous engagements within tertiary institutions, she described how these changes, rather than marking a shift in the dominance of Western-centric forces, instead institute a form of subordination via integration embedded within preexisting structures.

For instance, Luke alluded to the possibility of shifting allegiances in terms of journals as open access—thereby beginning to challenge the monopolies of some journal publishers. At the same time, Arathi Sriprakash noted how some journals are pursuing changes aligned with a global call similar to the tenets of our proposed manifesto. In her role as coeditor of International Studies of Sociology of Education, Sriprakash oversaw the journal’s call for authors to “include references to the dilemmas of translating across cultures and languages, that is, how their translation acknowledges that concepts or theories are culturally embedded, and/or reflections about the difficulties of translating particular notions or research traditions.” She also pointed to advances by other publications, including the American Historical Review, as they shift their vision and values and change personnel (e.g., editorial board membership, reviewers) to accommodate a more diverse global eclectic. According to the editor of the Review, this begins with a process of critical self-examination that builds toward substantive action and change:

What has “the official publication of the American Historical Association” done to rectify decades of exclusionary practice, during which women, people of color, immigrants, and colonized and Indigenous people were effectively silenced as producers of scholarship and subjects of historical study? This requires more than a well-intentioned commitment to “diversity,” which consists primarily of adding extra flavors to the stew. “Decolonization,” as the movements for the transformation of historical consciousness listed above have reminded us, is about changing the recipe altogether. (American Historical Review, 2018, p. xiv.)

The seventh tenet proposes committing to pursuing new imaginaries of our scholarly spaces. As all of our interviewees suggested, scholarly outlets need to be rethought in relation to the spaces that are provided, with new awareness of and insight into the possibility of new spaces. Editors of scholarly publications with ambitions to diversify should do so discerningly and respectfully, with the support of global scholars and local knowledge holders to guide them. Befitting the Indigenous use of “sui generis,” epistemologies should be positioned in a fashion that respects their self-defining, distinctive coherency and roots. As an alternative guideline, “sui generis” involves judging the validity of an epistemology by the context of its use and internal consistency (e.g., see Thiong’o, 1986, 2012). It befits the stream of discussion of multiple worlds and the notion of pluriversal, a world where many worlds fit (e.g., Escobar, 2018; Perry, 2021; Perry & Pullanikkatil, 2019). Epistemologies should thus be considered primary rather than secondary—not to be subordinated or modified to align with terms externally imposed by outsiders (Hampton, 1995). They should be attuned to multiple considerations, including Indigenous ways of knowing (Battiste, 1998; Battiste & Henderson, 2000; Bishop, 1994; Nakata, 2001, 2004; Ocholla, 2007; D. Rigney et al., 2015; L. Rigney & Hattam, 2018; G. H. Smith, 2000, 2015; L. T. Smith, 1999). Decolonized pursuits would likely entail a syncretic and horizontal orientation to our literacies (Campano et al., 2010; Gutiérrez, 2014; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003), as well as the enlistment of frames that go beyond postcolonial critique to a broader array of considerations—including humanism and critical theory (e.g., Janks, 2018), ecology (Misiaszek, 2015) and Ubuntu (e.g., Assié-Lumumba, 2017; Le Grange, 2015), forms of ethico-onto-epistemology (Song, 2020), postmonolingualism (Singh & Lu, 2020), contrastive rhetoric (Kubota, 2009; Kubota & Lehner, 2004), positionality (Abdi, 2015; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014; San Pedro, 2018; L. T. Smith, 2005), and frames emerging from studies of mobility, border-crossings, and transliteracies (García & Kleifgen, 2020; Lam et al., 2012; Robertson, 1995; Stornaiuolo et al., 2017).

Closing Remarks

We hope that this manifesto will be viewed both as a work in progress and as a prompt for further consideration of real change. We view these suggestions as connecting to social movements that confront systemic racism, isolationism, and anti-immigration policies. They resonate with the global reaction to events tied to White supremacism, as evidenced in the words of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern after the deadly mosque shooting that occurred in 2019:

Many of those who would have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand . . . They may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home . . . They are us. (NZ Herald, 2019, paras. 3–5)

This manifesto also aligns with concerns about the incarceration of Aboriginals in Australia and the brutality of the police in the United States, as exhibited, for example, in the death of George Floyd. As Al Sharpton (2020) noted in his eulogy for Floyd, the circumstances of his death by choking represent the plight of many Blacks in the United States:

What happened to Floyd happens every day in this country, in education, in health services, and in every area of American life. It’s time for us to stand up in George’s name and say get your knee off our necks.

Indeed, the pursuit of diverse global literacies research aligns with the anti-racism movements in the United States (e.g., Black Lives Matter) as well as with those in all countries and continents experiencing racism against Indigenous peoples (i.e., Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South America, and North America).

The lack of global diversity in our journals mirrors the oppressive and exclusionary systems and practices that sustain such violence. The exclusion of non-Westerners in Western journals represents the experience of those outside the mainstream. The divisions are manifested in terms of engagement—with respect to who gets to be the knowledge workers and what forms of knowledge count. In the world of scholarly publications, the divisiveness is akin to a line in the sand that has been drawn and retraced. By perpetuating one group’s knowledge and norms, these publications create a gap to be bridged rather than a diverse community of norms (for different persons in different situations to address different circumstances).

We hope that our manifesto sheds light on our complicity with what we argue are non-democratic and perhaps, at times, racist practices. As Keito Takayama (2009) contended,

Given that the existing unequal structure automatically warrants Western scholars the right to speak “on behalf of the world,” they have ethical responsibility to bring in sophisticated theoretical work from the margin that should immensely contribute to the discussion in the center . . . Democratic space must be generated . . .where non-Western scholars and activists can participate in theoretical knowledge production on an equal footing with Euro-American counterparts. (p. 364)

As such, this manifesto befits a postcolonial position similar to what Spivak (1988, 1990, 1999), Santos (2007), and Andreotti and de Souza (2011) espoused in their challenge to the systemic forces (e.g., hegemonic, ethnocentric, ahistorical, depolitic, paternalistic, simplistic) that perpetuate dominant constructions of the world. We advance the argument for interrupting these systems to “de-mystify the fantasies behind them and to open up possibilities previously unintelligible to the invested self” (Andreotti & de Souza, 2011, p. 225) and to challenge “the epistemological privilege granted to modern science from the seventeenth century onwards, which made possible the technological revolutions that consolidated Western supremacy” (Santos et al., 2007, p. xix). Our interviewees see this challenge as imperative. As Santos et al. (2007) described, “The logic of the monoculture of scientific knowledge and rigor must be confronted with the identification of other knowledges and criteria of rigor that operates credibly in other social practices regarded as subaltern” (p. xlix).

We acknowledge that our manifesto may provide more questions than answers. The tenets proposed are meant more as compass points situated within a broad overview of some of the issues, rather than as a definitive road map. We can imagine a number of other possibilities tied to these tenets, and see it as crucial to find a balance—to challenge our scholarly contributions in terms of their overt and hidden embodiments of Western exclusivity. Failure to do so may merely reproduce the perpetuation of Western privilege, a domesticated and colonized/Westernized mind-set, and a form of epistemological imperialism. To avoid such outcomes, we, as scholars, should admit to our own critical illiteracy on these matters—and should take steps to redress the Western excess. We contend that our global scholarship is facing a crisis of similar proportion to that of climate change. We are being stunted by a form of critical illiteracy because we are insufficiently “reading the world,” in the Freirean sense—acting as if we can and should be monolingual in a world that is multilingual.

Supplemental Material

sj-zip-1-jlr-10.1177_1086296X211031262 – Supplemental material for Global Literacies Research Diversity: A Manifesto for Change

Supplemental material, sj-zip-1-jlr-10.1177_1086296X211031262 for Global Literacies Research Diversity: A Manifesto for Change by Robert J. Tierney, Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Kan Wei in Journal of Literacy Research