What counts as knowledge, and Whose knowledge counts?

1. Service User Academy Symposium Melbourne 13th November 2018 What counts as knowledge, and Whose knowledge counts? Liz Brosnan on behalf of EURIKHA PI: Diana Rose Team: Alison Faulkner, JayasreeKalathil, AkritiMehta, RuthSilverleaf, and Premila Trevidi

2. What is EURIKHA? • A global survivor-research project, mapping: • Histories • Research and Knowledges • Configuration of Research, Knowledge work, Activism & Alternative Practices • from movements of c/u/survivors/PwPSD around the world. • Desk based research and mapping • Qualitative Interviews informed by Oral history with key figures (80 & 20) • Focus Groups -key groups • Literature review: including ‘grey’ literature, blogs and digital media • Archival analysis • Website and public engagement • International Collaborators

3. EURIKHA’s concerns • Challenging the dominance of Eurocentric knowledge and methods*  • Moving beyond these perspectives ​ • Experiential understandings of madness and distress ​ • Alternative strategies for support/healing/coping.​ • Valuing other perspectives marginalised in elite Academic spaces • Inclusion and the Survivor movement ​ • Liminal space of Survivor research in Academy- looked on with doubt.

4. Problematising Eurocentric Knowledge • Eurocentrism -paradigm for interpreting a (past, present and future) reality that uncritically establishes the idea of European and Western historical progress/achievement and its political and ethical superiority, based on scientific rationality and the construction of the rule of law. • A cannon of knowledge arising from the European Enlightenment privileging reason and the individual subject. All other forms of thought are ‘inferior’ – a White European ‘Enlightenment’ • In regard to colonialism, the role of the scientist is to provide the intellectual basis for the subjugation of ‘other’ peoples. • Blind to its bias – knowledge from everywhere else less credible – ‘Sociology of Absences’ • Privileges reason over emotion/senses/ imagination; • Reason Unreason • Male female and • White black, etc

5. Hegemony of ‘Psy’ Research • Clinical Academic Knowledge –individualising, pathologising  ​ • Claims to objectivity and neutrality, ​RCT, Big Data • So retains power to define methods to generate knowledge, to determine what questions/outcomes matter, • And renders invisible its own standpoint and values in privileged knowledge​ • What knowledge and whose knowledge is visible? • What is omitted and invisiblised/absented?

6. EURIKHA’s Theoretical Base • Initially informed by feminist epistemology theories, questioning the objective, value-neutral persona of scientists and their research • Also by Critical Theories (including Black Feminisms, Post-Colonial, and Intersectional) therefore explicitly political. • e.g. Still We Rise; racialised, situated and indigenous knowledges • Developing Intersectional Survivor Situational Standpoint

7. Situated Knowledges • All knowledge is situated, local, culturally informed and specific. • Seeking the commonalities in situated knowledges. • Formed in relations of power and privilege, • Who determines what is valid? • White privilege • We seek to surface mad knowledges that have been marginalised and absented, • codified through community practice, through reflection, through collectively working together​ • Using Critical, Social Justice informed methodologies ​ • ​

8. Critical Lens re Knowledge Production • Uncovering Power Relations • how do u/c/s/PwPSD conceptualize, position, resist discourses of power? • Identify how these discourses silence the lived experiences of ‘madness’ • Highlighting our voices and discourses and alternatives we produce • Eurocentric discourses, discursive whiteness and other intersectional positions. What and who is absent? • Countering individualized, pathologizing, Psy discourses with our own practices and narratives • How are viable alternatives such as safe spaces, peer support, and indigenous healing practices envisioned?

9. User/Survivor Researchers in Academy • Experiential base of our knowledge, challenging ‘psy’ knowledge- supposedly objective knowledge about what is wrong with us, and how to fix us. • Radically devalued as knowledge producers, always ‘collaboration’ rather than control • Culture shift needed in academy​ • https://www.ryerson.ca/news-events/news/2017/10/a-culture-shift-in-academia/ • Racialised experiences with MH System unacknowledged - beyond the academy- in user movement and user research as well •  Jayasree Kalathil, Nadia Kanani, Louise Tam, Essya Nabbali​, BhargaviDavar

10. Users/Survivors - Knowledge Production

11. Reflecting on Our Positionality • Team composed of people with different, and occasionally competing or contradictory, expertise and experience which brings a richness of possibilities but also concomitant tensions. • Different relations to the Academy and Activism. • Some of us white – some employed in Western academic institution, inadvertently reproducing whiteness, • Some positioned as Deliberately Independent of Academy​ • Some privileged in academia, Partake of the hierarchies of knowledge and status • ​Yet positioned as the ‘Mad’, mainstream always deeply suspicious of us • Paradox of trying to surface subjugated knowledges from within, and without, that space​

12. EURIKHA’s Work

13. Inclusion of Global South • Includes interviews with persons with psychosocial disabilities in the Global South • Contexts: • No or minimal mental health systems • Colonial psychiatry • Continued imperialism (for example, Movement for global mental health) • Legal advocacy (e.g. colonial national mental health laws; international advocacy – CRPD) • Widespread inequalities within and between countries • Challenges for the researcher: • Need for a different lens and perspective • Platforms for information are different – organising over internet; non-textual sources • Need to avoid pitfalls of research projects based in global north exploring the global south

14. Emerging findings • Terminology used to self-identify – • Diversity of terms: service user, survivors, persons with psychosocial disability, activist with lived experience, fighter • Sometimes a pragmatic choice (for example, to access legal protections, form alliances with other groups) • Identity may not be central to the work • Sites of knowledge generation outside of academia • Navigating national and international networks – differing priorities, power imbalances between north and south, continued efforts to prioritise situated local knowledges • Importance of alliances – cross-disability, broader human rights organisation, women’s movements, sustainable livelihoods, etc

15. Aims: • Mapping the history of activism and advocacy of user/survivors from African, African Caribbean and Asian backgrounds in the UK • History at the intersection of ‘race’ and ‘mental health’ • Map collaborations and conflicts with the mainstream survivor movement and anti-racism movements • Address ‘racism’ and ‘sanism’ • Whiteness and Eurocentrism in user/survivor knowledge creation • Sanism and mental health discrimination in anti-racism histories Methods: Preliminary survey identifying key figures Interviews ~20 Case studies of key moments, groups, events and campaigns Compilation of a public archive of historical records and materials as currently none exist Objectives: “Making opaque the whitening process” in knowledge making and histories Work against the marginalisation and mythologisation of minority histories into the terms of a mainstream worldview. ‘Still We Rise’

16. History in Global North Social Movement arose as a response to treatment within MH System: • Commonalities • Concern re systemic abuse and stigma, • Seek to Empower, and emancipate from trad. role of ‘mad person’ • Reclaim ownership of experiences, capabilities and voice • Improve the lot of others in MHS • Change the operation of MH services and treatment options • Diversity of positions, • Entry via soc/political awareness • Via MHS treatment experiences, • share value of ‘finding voice”, creates understanding and builds knowledge. • Segregation by race and ethnicity, despite some efforts Evolution –impact of neoliberal policies & audit culture – SUI led to shift from SM orgs into governmental,policy and research efforts

17. Global North • Early focus on UK survivor research and Public Patient Involvement • Shift to focus on knowledge work (research exclusionary) • Some survivors now in Academy (perspectives easy found) • Marginalization – Whiteness and exclusion from elite sites of Knowledge production (Academy, policy development and NGOs) • Shift to ‘Invisiblised’ groups and their collective knowledges • Europe • Eastern- State Incarceration still live; Western – Racialised and minority communities, Roma, Travelers & Gypsies, Sami in the far North. • Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA. • First Nations peoples, Racialised communities, other marginalised groups.

18. Thank you for listening! ? Questions/comments welcome Contact Us: Liz.brosnan@kcl.ac.uk Others using first.name @kcl.ac.uk eurikha@kcl.ac.uk Twitter @EURIKHA_ And on our discussion forum on www.eurikha.org