Why focus on reading lists? Because it is clear that reading lists are not neutral - these books have been identified as 'essential' or 'recommended' by lecturers and librarians who have created the lists, which indicates that they hold the essential, expert views that students need to know. The point being that if reading lists don't include minority or non-western views, these perspectives will be seen as secondary and of lesser importance.
There have been many excellent webinars, talks, blogs and articles where librarians have been sharing knowledge and experience. Many have already embarked on the process of reviewing the reading lists and creating resources that they have made available to others. I started by auditing three reading lists on the Social Work degree. I used Manchester Metropolitan University's Reading List Diversity Audit, an Excel file which documents the ethnicity and gender of the authors/editors; the publisher (Established, independent etc); and the geographical location of the publisher (North Europe, South Asia etc). Many librarians have commented on the difficulty of ascertaining the ethnicity of the authors - most settled for an online search to find their biographical details and ideally a photo, which worked well even though it feels a bit uncomfortable. Speakers at the excellent UHMLG EDI in Libraries conference also discussed the importance of looking at content, so I added a column to describe this too (drop down list for amount and quality of Minority/Global South content), a notes field on the content, and the geographical location of one or all of the authors. For anyone interested in my amended MMU excel sheet, click here.
For anyone embarking on this - this is a very lengthy process, but it does allow you to dive into the books and really get an idea of their subject. One difficulty was deciding on perspective. Some books on 'global' issues discussed institutions such as the IMF, EU, World Bank and the UN, often criticised for having a Western/Rich nation bias, even of being neocolonial. Most of these books were written or edited by people from white, privileged backgrounds, so it was important to confirm whether they were reporting from a distance, or actually engaging with voices from the Global South.
Findings so far are that the authorship is almost exclusively white and based in the UK, US or Northern Europe. This is due to the fact that most books on the reading list were drawn from a small number of publishers using authors almost exclusively from European or US universities. The latest HESA report shows that just 17% of UK academic staff are BME, which drops to 11% of professors. And (with a few exceptions), it seems that publishers are apparently not commissioning works from a diverse body of experts. There are loads of blogs and articles about this from publishers saying they must improve what appears to be discrimination against work from academics based in the Global South. (Similar conversations are going on in the world of fiction, where publishers show their lack of awareness about unconscious bias shaped by their class and education - Diversity in Publishing, 2020)
The next stage will be to collaborate with teaching staff to identify academic books that have been published by authors from different backgrounds, from a wider range of publishers, or books including minority/global south perspectives that could be added to reading lists.
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