Inclusive Citation Practices
Below is an excerpt from Maha Bali’s blog Reflecting Allowed titled, Inclusive Citation, How Diverse are your References? Bali reflects on her approach to becoming more inclusive with her citations and offers the steps below so that you can become more inclusive with your citations:
"Here are some other things I have done to help me do better
- Start somewhere. Even if I can only think of one woman or one scholar of color or minority (of any kind), I would start following their work. Chances are, they’re citing other minorities (no guarantees, though). For example, I learned about the wonderful Ruha Benjamin from Rafranz Davis’ blog. I met many of my South African friends through each other.
- Prioritize. If in my morning I find four possible articles I want to read, I’ll start with the ones written by minorities. Every. Single. Time. This doesn’t mean I don’t read anything by anyone dominant. I do. But I have a healthy dose of non-dominant reading and perspectives.
- After doing this for a while, challenge yourself in two phases. First phase, try to name 10 scholars in your field who aren’t white men. Keep trying this until you can do it in under 5 minutes. Once you can, try this other exercise. Name the top 10 scholars in your field in general. Check how many of them are women or minorities. When you reach a point where you can name a top 10 in your field that is relatively diverse (relative to your field), you will find that you no longer need to make conscious choices to cite minorities. It will come naturally to you. If diversity just isn’t the way your field is… Then there might be something wrong with power structures in your field and the problem is bigger than yourself. I’ve written before that the problem is in “field of vision” and we need to check if the problem is in our own vision or the narrowness of the field itself.
- If you teach, check your syllabus. How diverse is your reading list? How is the diversity of your reading list compared to the diversity of your student body? Will a student taking your class find someone like them in the reading list, and imagine themselves as scholars of this field one day? Someone recently reminded me of an activity I used to do a while ago. I used to ask my students to go and find articles about educational game design written by Arab or Egyptian people. I wanted my almost entirely Egyptian group of students to know that educational gaming was not an imported, foreign concept, but something we had locally. "
“Inclusive Citation: How Diverse are your References?” by Maha Bali is licensed under CC-BY-NC.
