Cargando…

Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production

In this contribution to the special issue on Fakery in Africa, I examine the booming “fake essay” industry and draw on the role and perspectives increasingly occupied by of tens of thousands of young and highly-educated Kenyans. These so-called “Shadow Scholars” are part of a vast global online mark...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Kingori, Patricia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Routledge 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8596499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803473
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2021.1952405
_version_ 1784600391332134912
author Kingori, Patricia
author_facet Kingori, Patricia
author_sort Kingori, Patricia
collection PubMed
description In this contribution to the special issue on Fakery in Africa, I examine the booming “fake essay” industry and draw on the role and perspectives increasingly occupied by of tens of thousands of young and highly-educated Kenyans. These so-called “Shadow Scholars” are part of a vast global online marketplace, an invisible knowledge production economy, where students and academics in the global North solicit and pay for their services in exchange for confidential and plagiarism-free essays, theses, dissertations, qualifications and publications. This article centres on descriptions of these writers as “shadows” as a means of complicating not only the most popular description of Africa in the global imagination – as existing in the shadow of an infinite number of different entities – but to challenge the notion of the shadow in relation to African knowledge production as being fake. It pays attention to the Kenyan writers’ protestations that their knowledge, experiences and labour are all real and that analogies with shadows reduce them and the impact of their work to something that is non-existent and not alive. From their perspective the term shadow is pejorative because it further reduces the intellectual contribution of Africans, presenting them as derivative.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8596499
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher Routledge
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-85964992021-11-18 Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production Kingori, Patricia J Afr Cult Stud Research Article In this contribution to the special issue on Fakery in Africa, I examine the booming “fake essay” industry and draw on the role and perspectives increasingly occupied by of tens of thousands of young and highly-educated Kenyans. These so-called “Shadow Scholars” are part of a vast global online marketplace, an invisible knowledge production economy, where students and academics in the global North solicit and pay for their services in exchange for confidential and plagiarism-free essays, theses, dissertations, qualifications and publications. This article centres on descriptions of these writers as “shadows” as a means of complicating not only the most popular description of Africa in the global imagination – as existing in the shadow of an infinite number of different entities – but to challenge the notion of the shadow in relation to African knowledge production as being fake. It pays attention to the Kenyan writers’ protestations that their knowledge, experiences and labour are all real and that analogies with shadows reduce them and the impact of their work to something that is non-existent and not alive. From their perspective the term shadow is pejorative because it further reduces the intellectual contribution of Africans, presenting them as derivative. Routledge 2021-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8596499/ /pubmed/34803473 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2021.1952405 Text en © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Kingori, Patricia
Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title_full Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title_fullStr Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title_full_unstemmed Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title_short Kenya’s “Fake Essay” Writers and the Light they Shine on Assumptions of Shadows in Knowledge Production
title_sort kenya’s “fake essay” writers and the light they shine on assumptions of shadows in knowledge production
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8596499/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34803473
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2021.1952405
work_keys_str_mv AT kingoripatricia kenyasfakeessaywritersandthelighttheyshineonassumptionsofshadowsinknowledgeproduction