Doing Theory – From Where and What For? A Backpackers’ Guide to Knowledge Production

In the modern and globalised world, travel has taken many forms: weekend getaways or long months of exploration, curated travel experiences, digital nomads, entertainment, volunteer activities, study trips, post-pandemic revenge travel, and many more. All these forms of travel emerge from a desire to learn and experience different ways of living and knowing. Although these experiences are crucial and formative, questions are increasingly being raised about their sustainability, power relations, and sometimes, even questioning the intentionality of travel. In this working group, we turn back the clock. We go to our academic colleagues who undertook long travels before one could check reviews, offset their ‘carbon footprint’ by paying extra, and experience an imagined place.

For those who are now at the center of producing and disseminating knowledge, what role did one’s own biography play? How do these experiences inform their politics, specifically as academics? To fill this research gap, this interdisciplinary working group seeks to move beyond the how (i.e., the choice of tools) to the who (i.e., the position of the author at the time of writing) and the where (i.e., beyond disciplinary boundaries including preacademic sites) of knowledge production, and asks from where is theory done? By bringing together pre-academic knowledge processes and modes of data collection from different disciplines (Anthropology, Political Science, Sociology, and Islamic Sciences), we hope to rely on these reflections in order to engage more critically with multiple and yet unexplored processes of knowledge production.

Our research question is: what can individual experience and reflection teach us about how to critically engage with epistemic knowledge communities in our academic research? Following Bleiker and Brigg (2010) we use the concept of academics as ‘knowledge entrepreneurs’ and the idea of pre-academic knowledge (by exploring the impact of travels on those who later chose to have academic careers), and propose a conceptual move towards understanding academic knowledge production from a ‘backpackers perspective’. The working group builds on research that has paved the way for including personal experience when assessing practices of knowledge production. We intend to facilitate engagement with the theme of global connectivity and learning through international encounters across epistemic knowledge communities.

The working group explores the ‘backpackers perspective’ by focusing on the three themes of knowledge production, networks, and sustainability. It is supported on three planks: first, oral history of ‘travel’ (with a special focus on the gendered aspect). Secondly, acknowledging the privilege in travel, we follow Samuel (2022) in seeing this as a decolonial reflection exercise on the relationship between global north travellers to less wealthy nations and, retrospective reflection on knowledge production (encounters with culture, local economies, and relationships formed). Thirdly, learnings from travel experiences that might lend to more sustainable forms of travel today.

Beginning with thematic vignettes, we will explore the different aspects of spatiotemporal location (standpoints), connectivity (situated knowledges), type (diverse ways of knowing), and agency (knowledge entrepreneurs), respectively. Keeping knowledge production at the centre of our project (compare also CSS WP No. 5, 2022), some of the larger academic questions that would be addressed by this working group are unpacking the ‘encounter’ in these travels at the intersections of positionality, privilege and identity; ideas and potentialities on sustainability; and academic data collection and politics of legitimacy. Here, we will be borrowing learnings from the CSS Working Group on Academic Travel.

References:

Bleiker, R and M Brigg. (2010) Introduction to the Forum on Autoethnography and International Relations, Review of International Studies, 36: 777-78.

Merschel, O, Wiener, A, Brückner, H, Datschoua-Tirvaudey, A, Riebe, Soares, A, Mondragon Toledo, G (2022) Global International Relations. ‘Doing Theory’ from ‘Somewhere’, CSS Working Paper Series No 5, Hamburg, https://doi.org/10.25592/CSS-WP-005 (accessed on 5 December 2023)

Samuel, O (2022) Travelling while black: A first-hand account of the restrictive visa system impacting diversity at nuclear policy conferences, European Leadership Network, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary/travelling-while-black-a-first-hand-account-of-the-restrictive-visa-system-impacting-diversity-at-nuclear-policy-conferences/ (accessed on 17 November 2023).

• Prof. Dr. Simone Rödder
• Prof. Antje Wiener, PhD
• Dr. Jan Wilkens