Citations are a critical component of the academic process. Citations are how we give credit to the sources which influence our work, how we provide support to our ideas and how we situate our research within the larger intellectual landscape.
Citations are more than just a requirement to complete your assignments. Citations also assign intellectual value, legitimacy and authority to scholars and their work. The degree to which a scholar is cited can impact hiring, promotion and tenure decisions; performance and salary reviews; funding and teaching opportunities.
The Politics of Citation is a concept that calls attention to inequities in citation practices. Academia has a long history with intellectual gatekeeping. Institutions of higher education in the United States still employ a predominantly white male faculty population resulting in white male dominated research production favoring Anglo- and Euro-centric systems of knowledge.
Citation politics refers to the exclusion of, and discrimination against, the work and voices of marginalized communities of scholars. This exclusion can lead to inequities in scholarly citations, or citation gaps.
Some examples include:
These patterns of citation politics highlight the implicit and explicit biases underlying the scholarship that we chose to reproduce and uplift, both on an individual and systemic scale.
As a scholar at any level, even as students, who you cite matters!
Reflecting on who and what you decide to cite provides the opportunity for you to make conscious choices about how you conduct research and how your positionality affects your work.
Positionality is “the notion that personal values, views and location in time and space influence how one understands the world” (Encyclopedia of Geography, 2010, p2258).
What and who we choose to cite is often a reflection of our positionality. Either intentionally or unintentionally, we tend to seek information and sources that are similar to our own identities. Thus, our experiences, biases and opinions inform who we consider to be intellectual authorities, and who we choose to cite.
Being mindful of your positionality and critical of the ways it influences your citation practice is important. Without self-awareness and intentional reflection, we risk falling into the pattern of continuing to reproduce sameness, centering perspectives that already align with our own lived experience and furthering the effects of repetitive citation politics.
Citation justice is the act of cultivating and maintaining an intentional citation practice which uplifts and centers marginalized authors and voices. Citation justice is more than a checklist - it is an ongoing reflection which requires sustained engagement with the questions of how, why, and what we choose to cite.
Here are some strategies to get you started:
Remember, there’s no one right way to practice citation justice – but thinking about it is the first step!
Pratt Institute Libraries “Citation Sources – Citational Politics”
