Current Sociology

Sociologist of the Month, February 2025

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for February 2025, Sarah Demart (Observatoire du sida et des sexualités, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium). Her article for Current Sociology Afro-Belgian activist resistances to research procedures: Reflections on epistemic extractivism and decolonial interventions in sociological research is Free Access this month.

Sarah Demart

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

S. Demart: I was trained in sociology in France, where I’m originally from, and came to Belgium 20 years ago for a cotutelle doctorate on the Congolese diaspora. At the time, I was interested in the discourses and practices of deliverance in revival churches.

I sought to characterize the logics of continuity and rupture of these evangelical and pentecostal churches with a long prophetic tradition of politico-religious mobilizations against colonial power. In this doctoral research I’ve explored the “colonial heritage” in a transnational politicoreligious space, but like a whole generation of French researchers trained in interactionist sociology, I had no access to the mainly Anglophone literature on blackness, race and the decolonial. It’s mainly during my post-doctoral research on antiracism that I discovered black studies, black feminist authors, postcolonial and decolonial scholars as well as race studies and ignorance studies to which I’m so deeply indebted.

What prompted you to research the area of your article, “Afro-Belgian activist resistances to research procedures: Reflections on epistemic extractivism and decolonial interventions in sociological research”?

S. Demart: This article looks back on a series of collaborative experiments carried out with various activist collectives since the beginning of the 2010 decade. These are anti-racist collectives led by black people, people of African descent, often women.

Initially, my approach was motivated by the relative invisibility of the Congolese in the academic arena, including as objects of research. At the time, my understanding of knowledge was very naïve. I thought that empiricism could break with racial and postcolonial ignorance. At the same time, I was realizing that Congolese people were interacting with numerous organizations and institutions, but they were not credited for their epistemic contribution. This is how I engaged in very “participative” methodologies and knowledge coproduction. Gradually, my proposals for academic-activist collaborations (around academic publications or conferences) gave way to activist’s request (around the articulation of an activist expertise) but at that time, the “decolonial” was not really part of the activist or academic language.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

S. Demart: The specificity of this article lies in its focus on research practices, including our aspirations to develop participatory, equitable and even decolonial research.

I wanted to take seriously the activist resistance to research procedures – in sociology and beyond in the humanities and social sciences – and see what kind of interventions might respond to it. In particular, I look at the claims for a politics of citation and of remuneration for activists.

In conversation with the literature on epistemic extractivism (which I discovered at a very late stage) and decolonial methodologies, I discuss how activist resistances challenge not only the divide between “researchers” and “researched” but also our very unquestionned research practices such as anonymity or ownership of research results. It’s not to say that anonymity should be banned from our practices but that for people whose political struggle is deeply intertwined with a quest for epistemic justice, it can be part of silencing devices.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate? How do you think things will change in the future?

S. Demart: In the French-speaking world (Belgium or France), anti-racist activists are strongly disqualified, as are researchers who are too close to activists or who are identified as activists. This disqualification is based on a broad division between researchers (objective, neutral)/activists (subjective). Although this division has been challenged for decades, it remains an organizing fiction in the academic world. But what the discussion on epistemic extractivism shows is that disqualification does not exhaust appropriation; it is even its condition of possibility. And this changes the discussion about how the university engages with different types of knowledge. In particular, we could ask ourselves what instruments would enable us to take into account the demands of civil society and specific communities in terms of knowledge production and sharing. Some instruments may already exist and could to be amended (e.g., the requirement to quote activists or the possibility of sharing or owning data), while others would need to be invented (e.g., a commitment by universities to produce research to fill in specific gaps, with a monitoring and steering committee drawn from the communities, etc.).

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

(with Gia Abrassart) Créer en postcolonie. 2010-2015. Voix et dissidences belgo-congolaises which brings together almost 50 academic, activist and artist contributors.
Special issue on Congolese diaspora.
Articles on Black women’s activism and the politics of ignorance towards Black/African women.
Forthcoming book (2025): La fiction postraciale belge: antiracisme afrodescendant, féminisme et aspirations décoloniales. Coll. Sociologie et anthropologie. Bruxelles: Éditions de l’ULB.