Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement

Vol. 18, No. 1
January 2025

RESEARCH ARTICLE (PEER REVIEWED)

Resisting Scientific Extractivism: A Post-Extractivist Policy of Knowledge Production with Marginalised Communities

Baptiste Godrie

School of Social Work in Université de Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

Corresponding author: Baptiste Godrie, baptiste.godrie@usherbrooke.ca

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v18i1.9326

Article History: Received 01/07/2024; Revised 20/12/2024; Accepted 09/01/2025; Published 01/2025

Abstract

This article analyses scientific extractivism as a research process in which the experiences, discourses and knowledge of members of marginalised social groups are subalternised, i.e. reduced to raw data appropriated by academics. What has been captured and assimilated is then largely reinjected into closed circuits operating essentially between academics, from which marginalised communities are largely excluded. Ultimately, extractivism produces scientific careers and minefields; it confers disproportionate benefits to academics and little or no benefit on communities in material support, intellectual credit, or contribution to social struggles, which may lead them to turn away from academia.

This analysis then raises the importance of developing post-extractivist approaches in the social sciences, based on an ethics of knowledge production rooted in the concepts of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability. I introduce a set of post-extractivist research postures and practices: clarifying and negotiating expectations of research projects; promoting a relational ethics on issues of epistemic and social justice in the production of knowledge with communities; countering the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of qualitative methodologies in the social sciences; valuing reciprocity and accountability towards communities; and reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions.

This analysis is based on pioneering work on this subject, particularly in a context of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South, such as those of Rivera Cusicanqui (2010), Tuhiwai Smith (2012), Betasamosake Simpson (Klein 2013), Gudynas (2013) or Grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b). They are also informed by my experience in participatory research with community-based organisations that work with marginalised communities in the field of the fight against poverty, homelessness and mental health in Quebec (Canada).

Keywords

Scientific Extractivism; Marginalised Communities; Epistemic Justice; Post-Extractivist Knowledge Policy; Relational Ethics; Accountability

Introduction

As an academic, writing about scientific extractivism is not a neutral gesture, since it leads me to consider the power relationships at play at the very heart of the scientific knowledge production process, and thus to question the privileges I enjoy. Such a project involves answering several questions. Firstly, how can we define scientific extractivism and the mechanisms on which it is based? Secondly, for whose benefit is it exercised, and what does it do to the marginalised communities confronted with it? Finally, what are the practices and postures aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of scientific extractivism, or even to resist it, and to support a post-extractivist policy of knowledge production?

The answers provided to these questions in this article are informed by pioneering work on this subject, particularly in the context of the relationship between the Global North and the Global South, such as those of Rivera Cusicanqui (2010), Tuhiwai Smith (2012), Betasamosake Simpson (Klein 2013), Gudynas (2013) or Grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b). They are also informed by my experience in participatory research with community-based organisations that work with marginalised communities in the field of the fight against poverty, homelessness and mental health as a sociologist working since 2006 as a researcher in a research centre on social inequalities in Montreal, and since 2021 as a professor at the School of Social Work in Université de Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) (Godrie, Fournier & McAll 2017; Godrie et al. 2018, 2020). The term ‘marginalised communities’ that I use in this article refers to non-homogenous social groups that experience realities such as discrimination and marginalisation due to unequal social relationships. Depending on the context, I also use ‘indigenous peoples and communities’ (in Canada, referring to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples) and ‘community-based organisations’ (i.e. non-profit third sector organisations) that intervene with and alongside marginalised communities.

In addition to these research experiences, my experience as scientific director of two research centres for four years led me to establish new research collaborations with community-based organisations and various people belonging to marginalised communities and, in so doing, to discuss their previous experiences of collaboration with academics. This academic journey led me to take a critical look at extractivist research conceptions and practices (including those I may have adopted in my training in sociology and philosophy and at various stages of my research journey) according to a definition I give in this article, and to experiment with post-extractivist research practices in the social sciences. This analysis thus raises the importance of developing post-extractivist approaches in the social sciences, based on an ethics of knowledge production rooted in the concepts of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability.

Scientific extractivism and its consequences

In the social sciences, the terms ‘collecting’ and ‘exploiting’ data reflect a research posture that tends to consider people/communities as research objects. In my academic career, which has been marked by research collaborations with community-based organisations in the fields of poverty and mental health in Quebec, I have found that this research approach presents scientific and ethical problems of such a degree that it has led me to transform my research practices. As a preliminary remark, it can be said that this traditional position is likely to nurture disappointment in and even distrust of academics, which can compromise subsequent research collaborations, as well as fuelling a sense of powerlessness among members of marginalised social groups.

Invisibilisation and subalternisation of experience and knowledge

In my experience, people who take part in research projects do so for many different reasons, which are not mutually exclusive. In the case of people working in community-based organisations (whether in management/coordination or field staff), it may be to get away from the urgency of daily work and open up spaces for reflexivity about their guiding principles and practices, reconnecting with the academic world (a lot of workers in the organisations having a university degree in the social sciences), gaining a better understanding of the marginalised communities and their needs as well as the impact of their actions on these audiences, or even enhancing the value of the results of their action to secure or diversify their funding. Despite the diversity of these motivations, and the satisfaction they sometimes derive from collaborating with academics, these people often share several grievances with the research community.

The primary grievance they have is the lack of feedback from academics who have come either to do field research in their organisation or to reach out through them to members to conduct research interviews. To understand this grievance, which is particularly prevalent among community-based organisations in my experience, we need to explain the costs of collaboration: these organisations are often underfunded, they have to free up staff, whose time is then not devoted to administrative tasks and intervention, to read research documents, take part in meetings and research interviews, recruit people from among their members to take part in individual or group interviews in addition to their regular duties, usually in a form of free labour or with financial compensation that partially covers the investment of their time. And it’s the staff of these organisations who must deal with the disappointments experienced by their members in their interactions with academics, if any.

Between 2018 and 2020, I co-organised a series of 10 half-day seminars on power relationships in participatory research, involving employees and members of 30 Montreal community-based organisations in the field of poverty and social exclusion that have had collaborations with academics (Godrie et al. 2020). I also directed a research project conducted in 2023–24 with 10 community-based organisations working with marginalised social groups in Sherbrooke aimed at better understanding their collaboration with the research community. These projects highlighted various grievances that are frequently directed at academics. These grievances are as follows. Firstly, it takes too long for research results to be communicated to the communities and individuals who participated, sometimes up to five years after the start of the project, which makes them less relevant. The context, as well as the people who were the link with the research team, may have changed. In some cases, the results simply don’t come back at all. Secondly, the results are available but inaccessible to the people, because they are published in journals that are not in open access, communicated in paid or inaccessible conferences, or published in a language that is not read by them (for example, in English while they are largely French-speaking). Thirdly, the results are accessible but in irrelevant formats, because they are disseminated according to academic standards that do not favour their appropriation, and their circulation in environments where they could be mobilised for action. This is due, partly, to exclusionary academic jargon (academic writing is often described as ‘incomprehensible’), conceptual or abstract writing that rarely (if ever) includes recommendations on what could be changed or improved in the field, or what could be the subject of public demands and/or mobilisation. Fourthly, the results are available and can benefit organisations, but they deplore the lack of solidarity from academics when asked to support citizen demands/actions based on research results. These grievances and situations reflect wrong or unfair treatment such as the non-accessibility of research results and the exclusion of people from spaces of knowledge dissemination, resulting in a mode of knowledge production that I, along with others, describe as ‘scientific extractivism’.

The concept of extractivism was developed by Latin American activists and academics, including Eduardo Gudynas who coined this term, and by indigenous peoples and communities, as part of an analysis of the combined effects of colonialism and capitalism (Gudynas 2018; Schuldt et al. 2009). Extractivism was originally conceptualised as a process of extraction of natural resources ‘in large quantities or high intensity, and intended primarily for export as raw materials without transformation or with minimal transformation’ (Gudynas 2013, p. 3). The concept has also an analytical focus of extractivist models stemming from colonial history, and the activities, policies and ideologies they promote, as much as a militant one through the implementation of resistance and the establishment of anti- or post-extractivist alliances (Tuhiwai Smith 2012; Willow 2016).

The analysis of extractivist processes was subsequently extended to other themes and logics of exploitation, appropriation and institutionalisation at work in societies. Originally, this extension of the concept referred to the appropriation of indigenous knowledge by international institutions, resulting in the sidelining of the political radicalism and alternative vision carried by indigenous peoples and communities. This appropriation goes hand in hand with a reframing and misappropriation of knowledge, since the latter is then most often used in a productivist and/or commercial context that it did not initially have, as illustrated by the practice of illegal appropriation and patenting of indigenous traditional knowledge and resources by states, companies and academics (bio-piracy) analysed by Vandana Shiva (1997). A growing number of activists and academics are gradually applying it to the scientific field, including Wilmsen (2008), Rivera Cusicanqui (2010), Grosfoguel (2016a, 2016b), Tilley (2017), Davis (2018) and, more recently, Alcoff (2022) and Demart (2022), under several names often used as synonyms such as ‘cognitive, scientific, intellectual, academic or epistemic extractivism or appropriation’.

Ramòn Grosfoguel (2016a, 2019) attributes one of its origins in the field of knowledge to the Anichinabe intellectual and activist, Lianne Betasamosake Simpson, who, in an interview with Naomie Klein in 2013, referred to a project initiated by the United Nations to mobilise traditional knowledge in the environmental field as a ‘cognitive extractivism’ as much as a physical one (Klein 2013). In this interview, Lianne Betasamosake Simpson linked extraction and assimilation as two intertwined mechanisms of the colonial system (which she also referred to as an ‘extraction-assimilation system’) leading to the erasure of relations that give meaning to what is torn away or stolen violently from the communities:

The act of extraction removes all of the relationships that give whatever is being extracted meaning. Extracting is taking. Actually, extracting is stealing—it is taking without consent, without thought, care or even knowledge of the impacts that extraction has on the other living things in that environment. That’s always been a part of colonialism and conquest. Colonialism has always extracted the indigenous—extraction of indigenous knowledge, indigenous women, indigenous peoples. (Klein 2013)

Previously, Rivera Cusicanqui (2010, 2012), an Andean sociologist from Bolivia, produced an analysis of the mechanisms of scientific extractivism operating from indigenous communities to universities in the Global South and from universities in the Global South to universities in the Global North. She analysed what she called ‘americanised authors of the postcolonial current’, such as Mignolo, Dussel, Walsh and Sanjinés, who have invisibilised the indigenous sources of their own thought or selectively integrated certain ideas, purposely leaving out the most polemical ones. In this process, the decolonial struggle becomes solely a decolonial discourse, in what she calls a ‘logocentric and nominalistic version of decolonization’ (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010, p. 64). Here is an extract from the chapter entitled ‘Ch’ixinakax utxiwa. Una reflexión sobre prácticas y discursos descolonizadores’ from her 2010 book, in which she methodically analyses the mechanisms operating at the heart of scientific extractivism:

Ideas flow, like rivers, from south to north, becoming tributaries of the great streams of thought. But, as in the global market for material goods, ideas also leave the country transformed into raw material, which returns regurgitated and in a great blend in the form of a finished product. This is how the canon of a new field of social scientific discourse is formed: the ‘postcolonial thought’. This canon makes certain themes and sources visible, but leaves others in the shadows. Javier Sanjinés, for example, writes an entire book on mixed people in Bolivia, while ignoring the Bolivian debate on the same subject in an Olympian fashion. Cooptation and mimèsis, mimèsis and cooptation, selective incorporation of ideas, certifying selection of those that are most valid to nourish this armchair multiculturalism [multiculturalismo de salón], comfortable and depoliticized, which allows accumulating exotic masks in the living room and a top-down dialogue about future public reforms. (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010, p. 68)

Las ideas recorren, como ríos, de sur a norte, y se convierten en afluentes de grandes corrientes de pensamiento. Pero como en el mercado mundial de bienes materiales, las ideas también salen del país convertidas en materia prima, que vuelve regurgitada y en gran mescolanza bajo la forma de producto terminado. Se forma así el canon de una nueva área del discurso científico social: el ‘pensamiento postcolonial’. Ese canon visibiliza ciertos temas y fuentes, pero deja en la sombra a otros. Así, Javier Sanjinés escribe todo un libro sobre el mestizaje en Bolivia, ignorando olímpicamente el debate boliviano sobre este mismo tema. Cooptación y mímesis, mímesis y cooptación, incorporación selectiva de ideas, selección certificadora de cuáles son más válidas para alimentar ese multiculturalismo de salón, despolitizado y cómodo, que permite acumular máscaras exóticas en el living y dialogar por lo alto sobre futuras reformas públicas. (Original Spanish quote, translated to English by the author of this article.)

Here, extractivism is based on the appropriation and invisibility of concepts originating from social movement activists or academics from the Global South by academics from the Global North, notably through bibliographic non-referencing or referencing in closed networks (Connell 2007; Rivera Cusicanqui 2010). The break that then occurs with the life experience of the people/communities at the origin of these concepts and theories subsequently authorises a decontextualised treatment of these same concepts and theories.

This leads us to make explicit another central mechanism of extractivism, namely the subalternisation of local knowledge, which is thought of as data to be collected and analysed and never as legitimate critical knowledge and theories (Godrie 2021; Grosfoguel 2016a, 2016b; Rivera Cusicanqui 2010). Social critical theories are not exclusive of academics: several marginalised communities are at the origin of concepts and theoretical currents to account for their minority social position in society, as illustrated by their contribution to the understanding of matrices of domination such as colonialism, racism, sanism, ableism or even heterosexism (Luchies 2015). In this sense, scientific extractivism differs radically from mining extractivism: what is extracted in social science research is never raw data, as is the case in the extraction of raw minerals from the ground. What is extracted from communities are experiences, skills, cultural traditions, local knowledge and worldviews forged by collectives, often over generations. The reduction of this heterogeneous ensemble to raw data by academics allows it to be requalified as scientific knowledge after analytical processing.

Unilateral appropriation and closed science

What more specifically characterises scientific extractivism is the dispossession of communities’ knowledge in favour of the academics who benefit — wholly or disproportionately — from those profits to advance their careers (Alcoff 2022; Grosfoguel 2016a, 2016b; Rivera Cusicanqui 2010; Tilley 2017). Rivera Cusicanqui uses the term ‘political economy of knowledge’ to refer to these mechanisms of appropriation (integral or selective) of communities’ thought by academics, as well as the disproportionate material and epistemic benefits (opportunities, titles, invitations, prestige) they provide these individuals:

Postcolonial discourse in North America is not only an economy of ideas; it is also an economy of salaries, commodities and privileges, as well as a certifier of values, through the awarding of degrees, fellowships, master’s degrees, invitations to teach and publication opportunities (Rivera Cusicanqui 2010, pp. 65–66).

El discurso postcolonial en América del Norte no sólo es una economía de ideas, también es una economía de salarios, comodidades y privilegios, así como una certificadora de valores, a través de la concesión de títulos, becas, maestrías, invitaciones a la docencia y oportunidades de publicación. (Original Spanish quote, translated in English by the author of this article.)

Scientific extractivism manifests itself in other ways. It tends to marginalise the expectations and concerns of marginalised communities in the research process and, by dispossessing these communities of their knowledge, to some extent it dispossesses them of their power to act. This dispossession can have profound and lasting deleterious effects, as can be seen in the case of indigenous communities and peoples who have learned to their detriment that social sciences can be a source of epistemic violence (Coburn et al. 2013; Tuhiwai Smith 2012). In the same vein, Wilmsen (2008) notes that scientific extractivism undermines reciprocity, i.e. the quality of social relations in research, mutual learning and action: ‘Participation without reciprocity, mutual learning, and other elements of healthy partnerships is an empty promise leading ultimately to extractive research, frustration, and continued marginalisation on the part of community members.’ This reciprocity is based, for example, on the sharing of information on the identity or life experience of academics and not only on unilateral collection as it is often the case in research interviews or on offering research workshops to transfer research skills to people. I explore these elements in more depth in the last part of the article.

Furthermore, it can be argued that scientific extractivism denies the centrality of relationships in knowledge production, and the idea of the accountability of academics to the communities that undergo this extractivism. It is in this sense that Alcoff (2022) characterises scientific extractivism as non-relational or anti-relational. In this view, the disqualification of certain communities as holders and producers of knowledge justifies their status as research ‘objects’ rather than collaborators in the knowledge production process.

This is how academics rooted in an extractivist approach become the designated experts in problems experienced by marginalised communities. A coordinator from a community-based organisation involved as a co-researcher with me in a research project on homelessness, lucid about this phenomenon, once confided to me: ‘You have to be the one to speak up for me to be heard.’ Indeed, as academics, we are the ones who are most often invited to speak out in various forums, particularly in the media, on behalf of community-based organisations and the marginalised communities they represent or work with; we build our scientific credibility by widely communicating our results in journals or symposia that are not, or hardly, accessible to non-academics, which contributes to increasing inequalities of access and circulation of knowledge for these communities. This exclusion from knowledge production doubles the social, economic and epistemic violence suffered by marginalised communities. And yet, in the context where it is these groups who experience difficult, sometimes brutal realities (poverty, domestic violence, homelessness, food insecurity, forced migration, etc.), and where research results are likely to contribute to making a vital difference in the environment, it can be argued that guaranteeing this accessibility is an ethical duty (Tuck 2009).

Post-extractivist ethics and science policy

Minefields, resistance from social groups

Conventional research fuelled by the extractivist posture is not necessary of lower scientific quality than anti- or post-extractivist research. Nor is it devoid of potentially positive spin-offs for the field: research reports are often mentioned in the annual activity reports of community-based organisations, sometimes fuel the team meetings’ agendas and even contribute to the transformation of policies or practices. I provided notable illustrations of these contributions in a previous article highlighting how traditional, non-participatory and largely extractivist research had contributed (and still contributes) to the empowerment of alternative mental health community-based organisations as well as supporting psychiatric survivors’ criticisms of psychiatric institutions (Godrie 2017).

However, one of the tangible problems of scientific extractivism is that it produces ‘minefields’ in at least two senses. Firstly, it produces fields that have been disproportionately epistemically exploited for the benefit of academics as described above. It produces careers: scientific careers. Secondly, it produces explosive fields (also often referred to as ‘burned fields’) in which we, as academics, must tread carefully, as they are inhabited by people who feel they have been used, and who harbour a distrust of new perspectives of scientific collaborations. As I discuss below, demining research fields requires the adoption of research ethics that enables us to take care of wounded and broken bonds before even considering new research collaborations.

As authors such as Gudynas (2013) and Willow (2016) note, extractivism and resistance to extractivist schemes from local communities are inseparable. Over the years, some communities have developed practices of resistance to deal with and politicise extractivism, that is, to make it a matter of public discussion. Among health-related mobilisations, we can cite the movements of HIV activists (Epstein 1995) or patients with mental health problems and/or disabilities, in particular, those united around the slogan ‘nothing about us without us’ (Barnes 2003), extending this slogan initially concerning care practices to scientific investigation.

In my experience with community-based organisations in Quebec, I have identified a range of artisanal and formal practices developed to cope with scientific extractivism. These practices are organised into three main strategies: 1) Controlling access to academics by establishing blacklists of academics with whom communities no longer wish to work (which can penalise communities in smaller settings where research collaborations are limited) or, conversely, lists of academics with whom to prioritise collaborations in a context of multiple academic requests that cannot be all met, by conducting interviews with academics to learn about the values and positions of the academics who ask for their collaboration; 2) Negotiation to introduce reciprocity by verifying their degree of openness to taking their expectations into account in the proposed research projects, to negotiating the research question or to promoting research results. It can also involve asking academics to volunteer to help them get to know the environment better and create a link with the organisation and the people who work there or benefit from it; 3) Laissez-faire, laissez-aller: some community-based organisations also accommodate extractivist research practices because of some positive benefits they perceive (for example, because the seal of research can give value to their action in the eyes of actual of potential funders), because they are not familiar with alternative research models, or because they do not have the adequate resources, expertise or interest to propose alternative forms of research, but yet wish to contribute to developing knowledge. Groups have unequal capacities to deal with extractivist practices and postures. Some groups are over-extracted and others organise themselves to be under-extracted by academic circles by restricting access to their group because they rely on secrecy regarding illegal practices, they develop their own community research practices or because they exclude researchers who are not part of their community.

Alongside these more or less formal and widespread practices of resistance to scientific extractivism implemented by community-based organisations, there is a set of post-extractivist research postures and practices that can be developed by social sciences researchers.

Post-extractivist research postures and practices

As Wilmsen points out, extractivism is not about to disappear, at least in the current university system. In his eyes, the challenge is not to practice research that would be based solely on other bases than extraction, but to manage to ‘bring together extraction and empowerment in a kind of creative tension’ (Wilmsen 2008, p. 135) for both researchers and communities. But can we be satisfied with this pragmatic compromise? In my research experience, the consequences of scientific extractivism can be greatly mitigated or even counterbalanced by the adoption of post-extractivist research postures and practices. And these practices and postures have even more chance of contributing to this other way of doing research if they are discussed, analysed, experimented with, and reshaped by different people in multiple contexts.

This last section thus focuses on the definition of a post-extractivist ethics of knowledge production, rooted not in dispossession, but in accountability. This ethics also consists in the discussion of the expectations of communities and their consideration, including when they are in tension with the expectations of academics, and the definition of guidelines surrounding the production of knowledge with community-based organisations and marginalised communities. The main pillars of such ethics are the practice of epistemic justice, reciprocity and accountability. To achieve a multilevel transformation, I introduce a series of post-extractivist postures and practices affecting both our ways of conducting our research, as academics, and the academic institutions and policies that support our practices.

Clarifying and negotiating expectations for research projects

In my experience, one of the sources of tension between academics and community-based organisations and marginalised communities is that they do not primarily have the goal of accumulating more knowledge about poverty or developing explanatory theories of poverty: they are rather aimed at reducing poverty, proposing various policies and actions such as reducing prejudice against people on welfare, increasing welfare and the minimum wage, constructing social housing, etc. Although, it’s important to note that some community-based organisations are also working to change the dominant discourses on poverty, which focus on individual shortcomings, in favor of explanations centered on the unequal distribution of wealth and the existence of discriminations. In this case, producing or mobilising social theories is as crucial as collective action.

In this respect, Wilmsen’s article (2008) highlights the importance of open communication between communities and academics concerning the distinctive (and sometimes convergent) aims of action and knowledge. Open communication in research makes it possible to identify and negotiate the interests/expectations of the different actors involved, and how these interests/expectations impact on communities and on the credibility of research results. The ability to discuss and negotiate these issues is embedded within the power status of relationships. The quality of the relationship and the level of trust that exists or is built up between career academics and co-researchers from different communities can help establish this dialogue while acknowledging these power differences. This issue therefore calls for the promotion of a relational ethic that focuses on issues of justice/injustice in the production of knowledge.

Promoting a relational ethic on issues of epistemic and social justice-injustice in the production of knowledge with communities

We need to go beyond the level of negotiation of expectations regarding research projects and to engage in reflection with communities on the issues of epistemic and social justice/injustices in the production of knowledge (Godrie & Dos Santos 2017). This is the proposal put forward in a previous contribution where, with colleagues, we reported on a participatory approach that led to the development of a guide for community-based organisations and marginalised communities to help rebalance the power relations surrounding the production of scientific knowledge (see Godrie et al. 2020).

In the guide, questions were addressed to communities that were solicited by academics, such as, ‘By whom were the issues problematised in the first place?’ and ‘Were oppressions and/or inequalities identified from the outset of the project as an integral dimension of the situation?’, directly addressing the type of framing proposed (or imposed) by academics in their work. These issues are often implicit and not discussed openly with the communities, thus leading to the marginalisation of their own questioning and findings regarding the very realities that are being researched by academics.

The guide also helps to raise the question of (co-)ownership of what is being collected and produced, and the responsibility attached to this (co-)ownership, a central issue at the heart of the transformation of extractivist practices, as Demart reminds us:

The question therefore would not only be how knowledge could be co-produced, but also whether this co-produced knowledge with the ‘researched’ should be translated in a policy of co-ownership. In this era of decolonial aspiration, it might be important to reflect upon the politics of data co-ownership and to include this issue in any ethical and methodological discussion related to research or projects conducted among groups that are politically and epistemically dominated (Demart 2022, p. 13).

These exchanges also concern what findings can be analysed and disseminated in scientific and non-scientific arenas, with the development of practices of co-presentation of findings, and consideration of non-publication of certain findings of fragile knowledge to guard against the potential for assimilation and institutional violence. Research ethics protocols or principles specific to certain communities that have historically been subjected of colonial violence also offer examples of such a relational ethics that enriches the procedural ethics usually proposed by research ethics committees (Vander Kloet & Wagner 2024). Examples include those proposed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith in Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (2012), the San Code of Research Ethics in South Africa (Schroeder et al. 2019), the OCAP principles (for Ownership, Control, Access and Protection) (First Nations Information Governance Centre 2014) or the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS2 2022), especially its chapter 9 ‘Research Involving First Nations, Inuit or Métis Peoples of Canada’.

Relational ethics also lead to discussion of the ways in which academics can limit as far as possible, or avoid, the free labour of community-based organisations and members of marginalised communities who contribute their time, experience and ideas to research. This may involve material recognition in some cases (through compensation or remuneration) and intellectual credit for ideas and analysis that serve to develop scientific knowledge. This is one of the contributions of the relational epistemology (epistémologie du lien) proposed by the anthropologist Florence Piron (2017), which commits academics to crediting all types of sources including informal conversations that may have played a decisive role in research in the same way as scientific sources are credited.

Counter the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of qualitative methodologies in the social sciences

Teaching the nature and impact of scientific extractivism, particularly for masters and PhD students, and especially in epistemology and research methodology courses, is another post-extractivist antidote. These courses could teach approaches and methodologies designed to counter the subalternisation of knowledge, encourage students to move from the idea of ‘data’ to be interpreted to a reflection on the heterogeneity of what is called research ‘data’ (which, as we said earlier, can include life experiences, discourses, representations of the world, social theories and experiential knowledge). This can also include teaching participatory research methods more likely to make visible subalternised understandings of the world, including in research, and dialogue with theses worldviews within the research process itself (Alcoff 2022; Wilmsen 2008).

In the above-mentioned guide, questions such as, ‘Have the groups/persons concerned been given the means to share their interpretation of the situation? What status was given to these perspectives (e.g. beliefs, life experiences, experiential or scientific knowledge, etc.)?’ point toward this direction (Godrie et al. 2020). In short, the aim of these courses is to offer teaching that is open to pluralistic epistemologies, and that teaches students to engage in dialogues with communities, even when academic deadlines are tight, for example, through meetings in the community to exchange with people about the fruit of their work.

Valuing reciprocity and accountability to communities

Reciprocity and accountability go hand in hand: they aim to create two-way relationships in which the benefits of scientific knowledge production are shared more equitably. Reciprocity can be based on simple practices (when relevant) such as telling people with whom we want to conduct interviews why we are interested in them and their experience, telling our story (or part of it) to people from whom we ask for life stories, or giving back to people what we have understood through the research process and what we are doing or what we intend to do with the research results. Despite the imbalance of power that often exists, this reciprocity may develop over time and through informal moments that allow personal subjectivities to meet and not only professional postures or roles.

The notion of accountability refers to what Luchies calls an ‘ethic of relevance’ (Luchies 2015), in that it questions what is returned to social groups throughout the research or at the end of the process, and how the research process and results can support them in their ongoing challenges. This accountability thus questions the relevance of the formats and languages used to nurture the dialogue with people. Such an ethic of relevance is likely to support social struggles, as Luchies points out: ‘Researchers can help to offset potential weaknesses of activist knowledges like limited access to information, the reproduction of accepted wisdom, and the limitations of volunteered time and resources’ (Luchies 2015, p. 529).

Tilley also reports on creative practices in which academics transfer some of the benefits of their privileges by using research funds to facilitate networking between social movements and academics at regional and international levels and support the participation of community members in scientific activities (2017). Tilley’s words sum up this idea: ‘Institutional privilege can easily be put to use in the service of social justice’ (Tilley 2017, p. 40).

Reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions

In order not to restrict responsibility for the changes we need to make solely to the research approaches and practices of individuals, it’s important to target structural transformations. Extractivist research practices are produced and fuelled – among other factors – by the circumstances of academic careers within university institutions which are subject to national and even international competition and pressure to publish and excel. These values dictate a pace of research that pushes us to move from one research project to another, and to approach field work from the angle of the number of articles to be obtained, as I sometimes hear people report. This is what leads Kuntz (2015) to point to the neoliberal framework of academic research as responsible for the ‘logic of extraction’ that reduces the socially transformative potential of qualitative research (Kuntz 2015, p. 19, cited in Caron 2017, p. 73).

Reducing extractivism can be achieved by building relationships with communities before even thinking of starting a research project, creating spaces for the expression and negotiation of expectations and addressing issues of epistemic justice-injustice in the research relationship, including the possibility of non-publication of certain fragile forms of knowledge, and so on. All of these require time that is often unavailable in the headlong rush from research project to research project and from grant application to grant application. Of course, these career issues are encountered differently depending on one’s position within the university hierarchy, whether it’s on the side of stability or that of precariousness in tenure. Having achieved status and advancement in one’s career may make it easier to escape the extractivist logic, but can also go hand in hand with a deeper internalisation of this logic.

Ensuring fair funding for communities

The relationship of scientific extractivism is likely to persist if current research funding modalities remain inequitable for communities. In the academic contexts I am familiar with, scholars cannot reallocate part of their research funds to the communities they work with. Generally speaking, research grants do not include a budget line allowing for equitable financial recognition of marginalised communities, aside small amounts dedicated to compensation for participation in interviews or workshops. One of the reasons put forward by universities and funding agencies is that this would create an economic power dynamic favoring academics. On the one hand, academics could sanction communities by withdrawing research funding and, on the other hand, the communities’ ability to refuse certain research collaborations would be weakened and/or could be motivated by financial prospect.

In Canada, there is one important exception that suggests this picture might be rather different. Over time, Canadian Institutes of Research changed the rules so funding could go directly to Indigenous communities rather than universities and researchers. This practice provides a dual economic recognition: firstly, a recognition of the communities’ contribution to the production of scientific knowledge; secondly, a recognition of their autonomy in managing these funds to support their participation to the research process. This practice could inspire research carried out with other marginalised communities. In other cases, practices such as parity of funding between researchers and community conducting a project together should certainly be considered. If these amounts come from research funding agencies or universities, is it however essential that they do not replace the obligation of public authorities to financially support communities and community groups.

Conclusion: A post-extractivist policy of knowledge production with marginalised communities

The first part of this article defines scientific extractivism as a research process in which the experiences, discourses and knowledge of members of marginalised social groups are subalternised, i.e. reduced to raw data appropriated by academics. This data is then shaped (refined, if we follow the metaphor of extraction) according to the routines and norms of scientific knowledge production (i.e., theorisation, analysis and publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals). Once captured and assimilated, knowledge is largely reinjected into closed circuits, that is those that operate essentially between peers, and from which people are excluded. Ultimately, extractivism produces both scientific careers and minefields; it confers a disproportionate benefit on academics and little benefit on community-based organisations/marginalised communities in material terms, intellectual credit and contribution to social struggles, that can lead to distrust in academics. Some people will argue that this idea of closed circuits must be nuanced considering the mobilisations in favour of open science (Chan et al. 2020) and the growing concern of the academic world for knowledge mobilisation, but the criticism that I report here is based on experiences reported by many members of marginalised communities and community-based organisations working with academics.

Even if scientific extractivism appears as one of the fundamental and driving forces of knowledge production in the academic world, in the second part of the article I highlight a set of postures and practices, derived from the scientific literature and my own research experience, favouring post-extractivist research postures and practices: clarifying and negotiating expectations of research projects; promoting a relational ethics on issues of epistemic and social justice/injustices in the production of knowledge with communities; countering the subalternisation of knowledge by reconsidering the teaching of methodologies and epistemologies in the social sciences; valuing reciprocity and accountability towards marginalised communities; and reconsidering the logic of careers and the functioning of our academic institutions. Many of these elements are also pillars of feminist, indigenous and decolonial research traditions, particularly in their radical participatory variations, which have criticised some aspects of scientific extractivism (Godrie, Juan & Carrel 2022).

Other practices that appear just as important would merit further development: supporting the research capacities of community-based organisations to deconcentrate resources (including fundings)/expertise from academic circles; supporting services offering scientific mediation such as Université du Québec à Montréal’s Service aux collectivités or science shop to support the capacity of organisations to negotiate post-extractivist research relationships with academics; training academics and students in these directions acknowledging that the power of academics to experiment with post-extractivist knowledge policy depends on their location on the ladder of power within the university; and support open science policies that include open access, but go beyond this to encompass scientific practices for and with communities that help to combat the alienation of social groups from research results based on the realities and life experiences that concern them first and foremost (Chan et al. 2020). Such practices as part of a research program would lead to increased dialogue between experiences and reflections that sometimes develop in silos, and strengthen the capacities of marginalised communities to resist or deal with scientific extractivism in an informed way.