Local knowledge from the Global South needs to evolve from static, preserved heritage into dynamic, living resources for development. Photo: TUCHONG

Over the past few decades, the rise of the Global South has often been framed merely as an economic narrative. In reality, this structural transformation has long since moved beyond the economic sphere, profoundly reshaping global governance, technological development, cultural landscapes, and knowledge systems.

In recent interviews with CSST, several scholars from Asia, Africa, and Latin America observed that knowledge production in the Global South is advancing along three intertwined and mutually reinforcing tracks. The first is breaking the entrenched illusion that “Western” equals “global.” Although this structural cognitive bias has long been recognized by academics, it continues to shape evaluation standards, key theoretical frameworks, and the circulation of knowledge. The second is redefining academic autonomy. Epistemic autonomy does not mean academic isolation or self-seclusion; rather, it entails seeking equal interpretive and discursive power through critical and selective engagement with external knowledge. The third is pursuing a fundamental methodological shift—one that reorients research perspectives and transforms the environment of knowledge production, enabling local knowledge from the Global South to evolve from static, preserved “heritage” into dynamic, living “resources” for development.

Breaking the illusion that ‘Western equals global’

Fernando Vizcaíno Guerra, a principal researcher and professor at the Institute of Social Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, noted that the greatest obstacle facing Global South scholars is not a lack of funding or technology, but the deep-seated belief that the “Western” is universal. “The most prestigious academic journals are run by European and American institutions,” he observed. “The most recognized theoretical frameworks come from Western traditions, and non-English scholarship is often treated as ‘area studies’ rather than ‘universal knowledge.’”

Augustin Holl, a distinguished professor at the School of Sociology and Anthropology at Xiamen University, offered an important historical-structural perspective: The Global South includes all countries that have been partially or fully colonized by European powers since 1500. “These countries have long been subjected to the strictures of a self-serving and patronizing colonial system,” he explained, “and these strictures did not end with political independence. Despite variations across countries, Western academia has managed to maintain control over global research agendas and knowledge production systems. Major academic outlets remain in the hands of these gatekeepers.”

Yet change is underway. A growing number of academic platforms and cooperation mechanisms rooted in the Global South are emerging. According to Asma Arif, chairperson and assistant professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Wah in Pakistan, organizations such as The World Academy of Sciences, the South Centre, the Chinese Council for BRICS Think Tank Cooperation, the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa are becoming powerful actors in advancing knowledge sharing across the Global South. These institutional efforts are being reinforced by digital infrastructure: Vizcaíno noted that digital repositories and open-access journals—such as the Scientific Electronic Library Online, which covers more than 10 countries, and African Journals Online, which boosts the global visibility of African periodicals—help Global South scholars bypass commercial paywalls.

“Oral tradition as history was once despised by Western academia, but today, as long as solid methodological protocols are followed, it is accepted as a legitimate historical source,” Holl said. “This shows that the rules of knowledge production established during the colonial period, while persistent, are not unshakable.”

Knowledge autonomy does not mean isolation

Global South scholars generally agree that autonomous knowledge production does not mean self-seclusion, nor does it require wholesale rejection of Western knowledge traditions. In the opinion of Balmukunda Regmi, a professor of pharmacy at the Institute of Medicine under Tribhuvan University in Nepal, “Knowledge production is historically embedded in power relations. Meaningful transformation requires grounding scholarship in local histories, languages, and lived experiences. True epistemic autonomy means engaging critically with Western traditions while asserting equal interpretive authority. The most easily misunderstood claim is equating epistemic independence with academic isolation.”

Holl approached the same question from the perspective of the philosophy of science. “The engine of scientific progress is contradictory debate and disagreement,” he explained. “In his ground-breaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolution (1962), American historian and philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn has shown using the concept of ‘transformations of the paradigms’ that beyond the accumulation of new data in the context of ‘normal science,’ it is a whole set of changes in world views and methodologies that trigger scientific revolution. ”

For Regmi, the growing push for epistemic autonomy reflects broader historical and social demands. “The driving forces behind this shift include decolonial consciousness, the search for cultural self-definition, and the growing demand for knowledge that is socially relevant and transformative. Especially in countries like Nepal, scholarship must remain closely tied to societal needs.”

Holl likewise emphasized that the Global South is a work in progress: “Exploring new, mutually beneficial South-South academic collaborations is a foundational project. The goal is not simply to apply existing theories but to generate new ones from diverse, concrete local practices through appropriation and adjustment. We must ‘think global, act local’—avoiding the traps of localism and esotericism, as well as the risk of monopolistic or fragmented knowledge systems.”

Indigenous knowledge transformed from ‘heritage’ to ‘resource’

The dominance of written documentation and English-language scholarship has left much of the Global South’s local wisdom outside the sphere of theory production. How can this barrier be overcome? Regmi argues that such knowledge must be brought into theoretical work without being detached from the settings that give it meaning: “We need to translate lived practices into analytical frameworks without stripping them of context. Oral narratives, rituals, and indigenous classifications can generate theory when treated as knowledge systems, not folklore.” Major obstacles persist, including the overemphasis on English in academia, weak institutional support for vernacular scholarship, and rigid methodologies that privilege written sources. In response, Regmi advocates for ethnographic co-production, multilingual scholarship, community-based research, and institutional reforms that legitimize alternative knowledge traditions.

Holl drew on a decades-long academic debate in which he took part to illustrate why methodological change matters. In the 1950s, two hypotheses emerged regarding the origins of African iron metallurgy: One traced it to Southwest Asia, while the other argued for its independent emergence in Africa based on the diversity of local techniques. “At the time, both lacked archaeological evidence and were more like a clash of worldviews,” Holl recalled.

In the 1970s and 1980s, fieldwork in Africa produced challenging evidence, especially against the dominant “Non-African origin” view, yet this evidence was systematically ignored. Since 2000, overwhelming new data have shown that iron metallurgy emerged independently in several parts of the world, including Northwest Central Africa—Nigeria, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic—where early iron production facilities date to 2200–2000 BCE.

For Holl, allowing this new understanding to take root requires a shift in research perspective—from simply dating and describing metal objects to an anthropology of technology approach grounded in a regional analytical framework. “Technological breakthroughs,” he explained, “can happen by accident—serendipity—but their adoption and sustainability depend on social acceptance. Technology is not self-driven; its social dimension is essential.”

Mamadou Fall, a professor of history at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, proposed a more systematic vision. In his view, the “creative transformation” of traditional culture in the Global South cannot stop at preservation and archiving. Instead, a new knowledge production environment must be built—one that encompasses everything from archaeological sites to oral memory, from traditional crafts to digital objects—so that local knowledge systems can shift from being studied as preserved “heritage” to serving as living “resources” for generating new theories.

This new knowledge economy encompasses museums, art markets, cultural mediators, traditional communicators, archives, historical databases, archaeological sites, and other platforms, data collection tools, and experts. It draws on iconography, ethnography, linguistics, archaeology, audiovisual materials, collective imaginaries, commemorative sites, and other forms of cultural and historical evidence, Fall concluded. The ultimate goal is to make traditional culture a living resource that can be activated, operationalized, and used innovatively in knowledge production across the Global South.