Book Review: Academic Knowledge Production and the Global South: Questioning Inequality and Under-Representation, by Márton Demeter

Reading Márton Demeter’s bold and incisive book on global imbalances in knowledge production at the end of 2020, one feels its release was well timed to coincide with the heightened efforts to decenter academia beyond the White, male heterosexual from the Global North. (2020 was the year when the world witnessed large-scale protests against racial discrimination inspired by the Black Lives Matter Movement.) However, the book not only offers a fresh perspective into the center-periphery problem in academia, but it is a product of Demeter’s extensive empirical work into power relations in academia over the years. Indeed, this book richly documents “western exclusivism” and exploitation of the Global South. Its purpose is to serve as ammunition in sustaining epistemic resistances against racism and class inequalities perpetuated by higher education institutions in North America and Europe.