Hovering on the periphery? ‘Decolonising’ writing for academic journals

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Notes

1. The terms ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ need to be used with some caution. While they give us a certain kind of grip on prevailing global power dynamics, they also can conceal complex realities. We echo Chan, Zhang & Kenway (2015) who recognise that terms like this are not single or cohesive, and that ‘global traffic in knowledge is not a one-way, or even a two-way, street’ (p. 7). However, since it is difficult to avoid these concepts, we use them with the knowledge that they should be ‘understood as always potentially under erasure’ (Ibid, p. 4).

2. In this article we refer to authors by their first name with the title Ajarn which translates to ‘teacher’ or ‘professor’ in English, and may be given to university teachers or monks in Thailand. The use of the first name rather than the surname is an appropriate way of addressing others in Thai academic writing, and Thai academia more broadly.

3. Indeed, as Kenway (2015) reminds us ‘Western’ knowledge and modes of sharing it might be properly considered ‘provincial or regional’ (p. 18) rather than universal.

4. This is not an insubstantial amount when one considers that the starting base salary of a Thai lecturer with a PhD may be around 35,700 Baht/month.