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