Bilchiinsi philosophy: decolonizing methodologies in media studies

ABSTRACT

Despite recent calls for decolonization in academia as a whole and the fields of communication studies and media studies in particular—with a focus on narratives such as #CommunicationSoWhite and #RhetoricSoWhite—there remains a lacuna of research on the topic within the African academy. Drawing on what I call an African feminist autoethnography framework grounded in a decolonial philosophy of Bilchiinsi, I present critical reflections on my experiences as an African scholar conducting research on media studies on the continent. I argue that although canonical theories can be useful in theorizing African media systems, decolonizing research must first look to Indigenous African epistemologies and knowledge systems to support knowledge production in communication studies and media studies. I draw on my experiences as a scholar cocreating knowledge with marginalized communities in Northern Ghana to discuss the legitimacy of African knowledge systems and parse out methodological strategies informed by these knowledge systems. I demonstrate the ways my knowledge gathering in this region is guided by the Dagbaŋ philosophy of Bilchiinsi, which ontologically emphasizes respecting the human dignity of interlocutors. I highlight the need for a paradigm shift in knowledge-building in media studies and communication studies, especially when African communities are the focus.

KEYWORDS:

• African epistemologies
• collective memory
• Indigenous knowledge systems
• oral epistemologies
• Northern Ghana

Acknowledgements

This work is dedicated to every Dagbaŋ bilchina who has worked to grow and sustain Dagbaŋ knowledge systems. Ni yi tuma pam! I am thankful to my father, Tijo Nieɣundana, for his endless guidance on my journey toward learning more about Dagbaŋ knowledge systems. I would also like to thank Dr. Anthony Olorunnisola and Dr. Gabeba Baderoon for their initial guidance on this project. An earlier version of this article won First Place in the Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition and was adjudged Best Paper in African Journalism Studies in the International Communication Division at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) in 2021.

Ethics Approval

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Pennsylvania State University on June 4, 2018, under study number STUDY00009156.

Notes

1 Paula Chakravartty, Rachel Kuo, Victoria Grubbs, and Charlton McIlwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite,” Journal of Communication 68, no. 2 (2018): 254–66; Godfried Agyeman Asante, “#RhetoricSoWhite and US Centered: Reflections on Challenges and Opportunities,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (2019): 484–88.

2 James Curran and Myung-Jin Park, cited in Antje Glück, “De-Westernization and Decolonization in Media Studies,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018): 1, doi https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.898.

3 Mohan J. Dutta and Mahuya Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South: Dismantling, Resisting, and Transforming Communication Theory,” Communication Theory 30, no. 4 (2020): 349–69; Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies,” Howard Journal of Communications 32, no. 2 (2021): 123–38.

4 Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, “Journalistic Griots: The Marginalization of Indigenous Language News and Oral Epistemologies in Ghana,” Radio Journal 17, no. 2 (2019): 235–52.

5 Raka Shome, “Thinking Culture and Cultural Studies—from/of the Global South,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 16, no. 3 (2019): 196–218; Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012).

6 Cheikh Anta Babou, “Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 632, no. 1 (2010): 41–54; Glück, “De-Westernization and Decolonization in Media Studies”; Maziki Thame, “Reading Violence and Postcolonial Decolonization through Fanon: The Case of Jamaica,” The Journal of Pan African Studies 4, no. 7 (2011): 75–93; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

7 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South,” 357.

8 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Nairobi, Kenya: James Currey, 1986).

9 Mohammed, “Journalistic Griots.”

10 Afonso de Albuquerque, “The Institutional Basis of Anglophone Western Centrality,” Media, Culture & Society 43, no. 1 (2021): 180–88.

11 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South”; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies”; Mirjam B. E. Held, “Decolonizing Research Paradigms in the Context of Settler Colonialism: An Unsettling, Mutual, and Collaborative Effort,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 18 (2019): n.p., doi https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918821574.

12 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South”; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

13 Sylvia Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism (Ottawa, ONT: Daraja Press, 2020), 7.

14 Wendy Willems, “Provincializing Hegemonic Histories of Media and Communication Studies: Toward a Genealogy of Epistemic Resistance in Africa,” Communication Theory 24, no. 4 (2014): 415–34.

15 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

16 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South”; Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies”; Cindy Peltier, “An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing: Indigenous Research Methods with Participatory Action Research,” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 17, no. 1 (2018): n.p., doi https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406918812346.

17 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

18 Bagele Chilisa, Thenjiwe Emily Major, and Kelne Khudu-Petersen, “Community Engagement with a Postcolonial, African-Based Relational Paradigm,” Qualitative Research 17, no. 3 (2017): 326–39; Peltier, “An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing.”

19 Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 7.

20 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies”; “Journalistic Griots”; Kehbuma Langmia, ed., Black/Africana Communication Theory (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

21 Chilisa, Major, and Khudu-Petersen, “Community Engagement with a Postcolonial, African-Based Relational Paradigm.”

22 Dani W. Nabudere, Afrikology, Philosophy and Wholeness: An Epistemology (Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa, 2011), cited in Chilisa, Major, and Khudu-Petersen, “Community Engagement with a Postcolonial, African-Based Relational Paradigm,” 332.

23 Joëlle M. Cruz, “Reimagining Feminist Organizing in Global Times: Lessons from African Feminist Communication,” Women & Language 38, no. 1 (2015): 23–41; Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 7.

24 Tamale, Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 7.

25 Cruz, “Reimagining Feminist Organizing in Global Times”; Selina Makana, “Contested Encounters: Toward a Twenty-First-Century African Feminist Ethnography,” Meridians 17, no. 2 (2018): 361–75.

26 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South.”

27 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

28 Cruz, “Reimagining Feminist Organizing in Global Times.”

29 Makana, “Contested Encounters,” 367.

30 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

31 Ibid.

32 de Albuquerque, “The Institutional Basis of Anglophone Western Centrality”; Shome, “Thinking Culture and Cultural Studies—from/of the Global South”; Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

33 Mohammed, “Decolonizing African Media Studies.”

34 Ibid.; de Albuquerque, “The Institutional Basis of Anglophone Western Centrality”; Chilisa, Major, and Khudu-Petersen, “Community Engagement with a Postcolonial, African-Based Relational Paradigm”; Glück, “De-Westernization and Decolonization in Media Studies”; Peltier, “An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing.”

35 Shome, “Thinking Culture and Cultural Studies—from/of the Global South,” 197.

36 Mohammed, “Journalistic Griots.”

37 Evelyn Steinhauer, “Thoughts on an Indigenous Research Methodology,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 26, no. 2 (2002): 69.

38 Dutta and Pal, “Theorizing from the Global South,” 357.

39 Chilisa, Major, and Khudu-Petersen, “Community Engagement with a Postcolonial, African-Based Relational Paradigm.”

40 Ibid.

41 Mohammed, “Journalistic Griots.”

42 Ibid.

43 Dagbamba, “Bilchiinsi,” Dagbaŋ Philosophy (Northern Ghana: past and present).

44 Charles A. Walker, “Lest We Forget: The Tuskegee Experiment,” Journal of Theory Construction & Testing 13, no. 1 (2009): 5.

45 Peltier, “An Application of Two-Eyed Seeing.”

46 Ibid., 5.

47 Margaret I. Amoakohene, “Researching Radio Audiences in an Emerging Pluralistic Media Environment: A Case for the Focus Group Discussion (FGD) Method,” Africa Media Review 12, no. 2 (2004): 25–40.

48 Herbert J. Rubin and Irene S. Rubin, Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).

49 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies.

50 Rubin and Rubin, Qualitative Interviewing.

51 Chakravarrty, Kuo, Grubbs, and McIlwain, “#CommunicationSoWhite”; Amy E. Earhart, Roopika Risam, and Matthew Bruno, “Citational Politics: Quantifying the Influence of Gender on Citation in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities,” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 36, no. 3 (2021): 581–94; Carrie Mott and Daniel Cockayne, “Citation Matters: Mobilizing the Politics of Citation toward a Practice of ‘Conscientious Engagement,’” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 24, no. 7 (2017): 954–73.

52 Mott and Cockyane, “Citation Matters.”

53 Mohammed, “Journalistic Griots.”

Additional information

Funding

This work would not have been possible without the support of the Bellisario College of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University, and funding from the Don Davis Program in Ethical Leadership and the African Studies Department, both at the Pennsylvania State University.