Belonging, Identity, and Decolonizing from Within – Zulfia Abawe

Belonging, Identity, and Decolonizing from Within Zulfia Abawe

Today, we are learning from Zulfia Abawe.

Zulfia is a lecturer in Global Business and Cohort Lead in the MBA Global Program at the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries at the University of South Wales (Zulfia Abawe — University of South Wales). Holding three post-graduate degrees, including a Masters in Public Policy, LLM in Human Rights, and a PhD in Law and Democracy, she has extensive experience in political and legal analysis, with a particular focus on Afghanistan’s legal pluralism and political institutions. Her PhD dissertation examined Afghanistan’s legal pluralism from a gendered perspective and its reflection, or lack of, in the 2004 Afghan constitution.

Currently, she is exploring relationality and decoloniality as an analytical and theoretical framework to study foreign interventions in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, emphasizing decoloniality, local practices and decolonial knowledge production in legal and political developments.

Let’s get started…

In this conversation with Zulfia Abawe, I learned:

  • 00:00 Intro – how to pronounce Afghanistan and the decolonization of the IDGs
  • 03:40 – Explaining the work that Zulfia does at the University of Wales
  • 04:30 The research work of Zulfia on international relations, decoloniality, relationality, and foreign interventions in Afghanistan.
  • 05:20 Looking at colonisation not only from a North-South or East-West perspective.
  • 09:15 The symbolic elements of the various accents and how they form me.
  • 11:00 Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.
  • 13:20 Challenging the victim-savior approach from the Western world towards Afghanistan.
  • 16:05 You have to get as much education as possible, and books are your best friends – her mother always reminded her.
  • 19:18 Bring in your lived experiences, especially in the era of AI.
  • 23:50 We hoped that access to more information would make people smarter, but it often works in the opposite direction, and critical thinking is lacking.
  • 30:25 The definition of leadership by Northouse misses the non-human relationships.
  • 34:55 Acquiring knowledge by taking time to think about the question.
  • 38:45 Going in and experiencing the similarities by being a part of the culture.
  • 41:05 Decolonisation is the process of reflecting and questioning the things that I need to change within myself.
  • 42:35 Knowledge is produced by the mind, the soul, the heart and desire. (Plato)
  • 45:20 Using intuition from your own experiences and the lived experiences of your forefathers in your decision-making.
  • 46:00 Looking for explanations of intuitive capabilities in the work of Jung and Frankl.
  • 56:40 The intention behind the question and stepping onto the cultural island.
  • 59:45 Zulfia is looking for co-authors for the book she is writing on foreign interventions—both military and non-military—from a gendered perspective and micro-resistance.

More about Zulfia Abawe:

Resources we mention:

Video of the conversation with Zulfia Abawe

Watch the conversation here https://youtu.be/5rrd0SNTOjc

Transcript

[00:00:00] Erno Hannink: Hello and welcome at episode 482 of the Decide for Impact podcast. Today you are listening to the conversation with Sophia Abawe.

Welcome in a new podcast episode Today, I’m, [00:02:00] I’m talking to Zulfia Abawe Welcome.

[00:02:05] Zulfia Abawe: Thank you.

[00:02:05] Erno Hannink: I’m trying my best to pronounce your name right, but I also understand now I’m pronouncing the country where you come from. Wrong. How do you pronounce it? Afghanistan, Afghan, how do you pronounce it?

[00:02:17] Zulfia Abawe: It’s I call it a Afghanistan.

[00:02:19] Erno Hannink: A Afghanistan.

[00:02:20] Zulfia Abawe: Yeah. Because with them, yeah, we have a little bit the truth use, it’s the language itself. Afghans call it a Afghanistan, so that’s why otherwise in the west they call it Afghanistan.

[00:02:31] Erno Hannink: The Dutch also have these, this g in the back of Yeah. we ha we should be able to do that, right.

If we know how to pronounce it, we should be able to do it right. I have got in contact with you after a session with Ru Minnie, who had three sessions on decolonizing the inner development goals. And if you want to learn more about that, you have to, I, I have an episode with Minnie in the podcast.

I will link to her in the show notes. You can listen to that. It’s [00:03:00] a very interesting podcast. But we after to have a very interesting conversation too about colonization, decolonization, let’s start with. Where you work, because I think, you have a not so typical, background from my regular guests. So where do you work?

What do you do?

[00:03:15] Zulfia Abawe: I’m a lecturer at the University of South Wales. it’s very interesting because my research focus and my teaching focus, it’s distinct. I lecture in organizational behavior, human resource management and leadership, and I will be, focuses more on multinational businesses.

But then, I’ve been offered another module, which I’m gonna teach next semester, and that’s more public services, and organizations in a public service. And I’m also cohort lead, which means that I’m leading a group of, a cohort of students who come from different parts of the world, ensuring that their journeys, students are very smooth, a different person to help them when they come over to the uk.

We are working with a lot of international students from Southeast Asia. That’s my, teaching side of work. And then the [00:04:00] research is more focused on international relations, decoloniality relationality, looking into foreign interventions in Afghanistan and how it can be seen in, in analyzed in the, from a different perspective, mostly driven from decolonial approach.

And I don’t know if, I wanna give a caveat here because the word decoloniality carries a lot of sensitivities, especially when, when I interact with people from different backgrounds. And some people might think that I’m it employs a binary of north and global North and global South or east and west.

And that’s something which I’m not working on. It’s more of extension of the way we look into reality, extension of the way we understand things and allowing different types of systemologies come to come to the surface. it’s absolutely not creating a binary, it’s more extension of what we already know and the frameworks we have and challenging some of them.

[00:04:57] Erno Hannink: I think there’s an interesting [00:05:00] point here and it related to a post you wrote about your visit to a, a summit you were and about your accent. I think it has a lot to do with where you have been living for longer periods of your life. You’ve been living in Germany, of course, in Afghanistan, but also in Germany, in the US and UK and Wales.

So there’s a lot of, mixture of cultures that you have been part of and interacting with and picking up their. Accents as well, of course in the way that you talk right now. And I think that’s very connected to me. It sounds very connected to looking at colonization as, you know, what are the words that we are using, how are we looking at this?

‘cause if you look at from north and south or east and west, that’s a very vesting view in general. That’s how we in the Western world look at these issues. But I can imagine if you live, for example, in [00:06:00] Africa, you, you look completely different. Or if you look in, if you live in Afghanistan, you look completely different at this topic.

So it has a lot to do with the culture, where you come from, how you, where you’ve grown up, what, what you bring with you in your history and how you think about these topics. And you have such a wide variety of this that I can imagine that you have a very different perspective on how you could look at this.

[00:06:28] Zulfia Abawe: thank you so much for bringing that up because I agree with you. So I have lived in the Pakistan, Afghanistan, and I lived in Germany. I came to the uk, I went to the US to do a PhD, educated in five different education systems. I’m a multilingual and as much as I, I’m, I don’t wanna put my research in a shelf.

So every day research I do, it I reflect how it’s changing things for me, how I see my everyday experiences. It changes the whole thing for me. And I also see it more of a change in character and the mindset and perspective and the more I [00:07:00] lived in different societies. And I remember first time when I went to Germany, I was way too conservative.

I was very shy. I wasn’t open to engaging with even talking to people from different cultures. But then I know what the experience had changed. It doesn’t, it doesn’t change based on my lived experience and how I interact with people now, it also changed in terms of my more professional research and the way I look at that every, every time because there are some scholarships which do create that binary.

And I take a moment, I reflect I don’t want that as much as I like this theory, how am I gonna make that more and inclusive? and thank you for telling me about the accent. It was really interesting because when I was, it’s, it was a conference. It’s, it was by around Berg and Istanbul, but it’s a Swedish, organization.

They’re doing a lot of work on human rights and they had a confidence on Afghanistan. So I had, I interacted with so many people, Afghans were there and I had, colleagues obviously and participants [00:08:00] from the US New Zealand. And it was really interesting because everybody I was speaking with, some people were picking up Welsh, with my accent.

And then obviously because I live in Wales, some things which I never thought about. And then it did make me reflect, I was is it because I’m picking up some bits and pieces of accent from different places? I was in Scotland here and is that changing the way I speak? And everybody hear that and from different, Afghans, they were oh, you speak pure British and if you see that, say that to somebody Britain here.

And then they’ll be absolutely not. And then I’ve had people who told me, oh, you speak Irish. My manager is Irish. And I go back to him and I’m is it because I’ve picked this up from you and you’re now having influence over my accent? That accent is a symbolic element. It, it made me think deeper because a lot of things goes into our subconscious.

We never go back to that space to unpack and see why do I think this way? Or what is informing or influencing this? accent was that moment when I made me [00:09:00] think. And when I wrote about my experience, which got a lot of views and I had people contacted me about the blogs and stuff, which was really interesting.

And they picked up the same thing. And also it connects with the human curiosity in a way. how much we are interested in small things. Or maybe it could be a small, for me, accent, but then it has a baggage behind it, a history behind it. Makes you think okay,

[00:09:21] Erno Hannink: I was wondering, ‘cause I, I mentioned in our pre-conversation is that I’ve done a little bit, really tiny bit of research on Afghanistan.

There was also a history with the Brits.

[00:09:35] Zulfia Abawe: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:36] Erno Hannink: Was that also, did you feel some negative emotions from the people from Afghanistan with you having a British accent?

[00:09:47] Zulfia Abawe: no. Absolutely not. I think it, it depends. when it comes to the history of Afghanistan and the nation building and the state building in Afghanistan, I’m not somebody who knows way I, I wouldn’t call myself a historian, one of [00:10:00] Afghanistan, but the bits and pieces I’ve learned about Afghanistan and its history of, obviously there was influence of Britain, especially in the beginning of 19 19th century.

and there’s that that’s the history and of Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires because before even the idea of the project of nation state, building started across the world, there were a lot of empires which ended up in Afghanistan and they, and, as some Afghans, again, how you construct the narrative and who is talking about Afghanistan is going to, is gonna give you a new narrative, a different type of narrative.

But something which I have found overwhelmingly amongst Afghans, which I have interacted with. And when I look at some social media posts, they’re proud, oh wait, this is the graveyard of empires. No power can stay in Afghanistan for long. And they always fight them. that is a one bit, but when it comes to the accent and the everyday life and social things, it’s it’s now it’s gonna be a bit of a controversy I might create here once.

And I, I read this something somewhere. It says, [00:11:00] once something becomes a brand, a lot of people wants to connect with that and relate to that because it’s a form of an achievement when it comes to accents and the way you speak English. It also is connected with your education. And there was a time in Afghanistan and even now, getting education in the West was a, is is a massive accomplishment and the way you speak and if it’s fluent, that in itself is an accomplishment in itself.

And when I encountered Afghans in the conference, they were happy for me and they were she thinks differently and the way she thinks and she’s able to articulate things and communicate because English is not my first language. And I’ve had a couple of them speaking to me and they said, how did you do this because it’s articulate the way you speak.

How did this happen? And that level of curiosity. And obviously my answer was perhaps maybe because I’m teaching and it’s the lecturing and the experiences I have, but there was a very it was a welcoming [00:12:00] tone from a lot of people I spoke with. Not because of my accent, but the way I’m translating my thoughts into a simple everyday language.

Even the questions I raised, it was challenging the status quo in a lot of ways because another aspect of my research is thesavior victim framework where a lot of the work done on Afghanistan was, the western approaches or the savior for the victims, especially women in Afghanistan.

that’s where I wanted to challenge that idea was temporarily, it’s about time. Somebody might feel a victim, but it’s never gonna stay. It’s not permanent. And how we are going to unpack that idea. And not every Afghan woman is a victim. Everybody has got their agency regardless. They’re gonna come up and use their agency in a strategic way.

Even if you choose to be silent. That in itself is agency. And for a long time when I was studying scholarships, speaking to people, they were because they’re silent. And I’m what if they [00:13:00] choose to be silent? And then I looked into a lot of other mechanisms and tools Q3 in a very private, intimate space.

Women, they see it from passion community. They see it as a form of agency. They’re expressing their emotions. all of these information I got here and there, I was okay, this savior victim narrative, it needs to be challenged.

[00:13:22] Erno Hannink: I think this could be related. Let’s see. Why did you leave of Afghanistan?

[00:13:27] Zulfia Abawe: Afghanistan? Okay, I left Afghanistan. First time I went to Germany to do a master’s degree. Finished my Master’s and then obviously I was, this is interesting because when I did my master’s in, in Germany, Germany’s education system is it requires students to be proactive. by the time I finished my master’s, I was okay, this is not enough, because I didn’t learn as much and I wasn’t even.

Confident to call myself I’ve got a master’s degree. there was that tense, feeling in me. I was oh, I want to do another degree. I did another degree and I applied and I got fortunate to come to the uk and even then I [00:14:00] wasn’t satisfied. then I went to AF Afghanistan as soon as I finished my, master’s.

And when I went to a Afghanistan, I got a, a job offer from the government and that it didn’t ended up to be, very secure for myself and for my family. I decided to come back to the uk and then I went to the US to do a PhD. And I think a lot of the things is connected with the environment.

You grew up as a child when I grew up, I could see that women in Afghanistan, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a patriarchal society regardless. And women needs to put in double the work most of the times to get somewhere. For me and education. Education. my mother got married when she was young. She was 16 years old.

And that experience made her make sure all her kids gets enough education and we travel as much as we can. I personally, I managed to do that. And I always had that support. And my mother always kept reminding [00:15:00] me that regardless, you have to make sure you get as much education as possible and you, the books are your best friends.

And she was don’t hang out with people. Read more books. And one of the things which I’ve written in one of my blogs, where is that coming for my mom? Who is, she’s not educated, she’s not well traveled, and she’s not somebody even who watches tv. So I was where is this knowledge coming from?

So that is where the idea of intuition comes in.

[00:15:27] Erno Hannink: But does it feel you under pressure to. To make something off your life.

[00:15:34] Zulfia Abawe: the way it sounds, it should be, but no, because when I combined with my upbringing and the environment I was in, it made me feel motivated, challenged, and excited.

At the same time. I always thought I’m gonna change things regardless, even if it’s a very small thing. But that change needs to start from myself. And how every time I was telling myself that you have to be powerful [00:16:00] and the only way you can is to get more education and more knowledge of different places.

And I ended up being, I don’t know if I can call them lucky or some people say that whatever you manifest, it comes your way or the energy you put out there. for some reasons it all, To work in my favor. It wasn’t easy. Let me tell you. It’s not easy. Every time I found myself in a new country, in a new society, and starting from zero, it has been extremely challenging.

But this motivation of getting education and being an agent of change at some point kept me going. And now, even now when I teach, it is really interesting. I had a student yesterday, and it goes back to what you said about the question of all of these things connected our upbringing environments, we lived in.

The way we think is, is changed completely. I had a conversation, I was teaching and this was about ethical leadership. And then I was whenever we are discussing ethical leadership, we have to make sure we are looking into every dimension. [00:17:00] It’s not about the morality of the leader, it’s the institutes we are working with the people we come across.

And there was a case study and I wanted to throw that out to the students to ensure everybody thinks and what dimension is missing. At the end of the conversation, this woman came to me we have worked for three weeks now, less than three weeks. And she was last week I was trying to make my mind, but this week I’m confident, I’m inspired by you and I really want to be you.

And I was that is such a beautiful moment. Somebody coming and telling you that thing because the way you think and it’s inclusive and people pick up on that. And again, it also comes down to simple communication because. I’ve got international students and I try to make it as simple as possible, especially when it comes to these ideas of philosophy, deep thinking and all of that.

for them to connect. And I think it also goes back to, I keep reminding them, don’t shy away from your experiences and bring it in. Especially in the day of ai, [00:18:00] everything might sound robotic unless you bring in your experience and lived experience. And I think that in itself something which has been reinforced in the colonial theory.

It’s about them. It’s about their lived experiences. And I really want them to be seen, and feel seen. these are the experiences.

[00:18:18] Erno Hannink: I think it’s a very interesting, direction. And what I also feel, I’m very curious to hear your experience on this. we see in a lot of European countries and in the UK that the far right, or extremists or ultra right, however you wanna call this, are getting more power and seats and space in general in the media or in the politics.

And obviously with all that power also in the streets, right? We see a lot of fights going on, which have no real background except for need to get to it. Right. How do you experience that do you feel a foreigner right now, or do you feel I’m part of this [00:19:00] culture?

[00:19:01] Zulfia Abawe: that’s,

That’s a very good question. Regardless of what’s happening with the politics here in the uk, it’s something which I’ve sat down with myself and I reflected on and I continue reflecting on, as much as I think that I am not part of this entity, the more I can get away from everyth. I might be feeling isolated eventually.

That is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is regardless of what people think of me, whether they think I’m a foreigner, whether they think, oh, I’m part of this entity and I’m part of this culture, I didn’t, I stopped investing as much energy and thinking on those. And then instead I told myself, how about I invest my energy and focus my energy on something better where I don’t think as much about whether I am part of this culture or otherwise, because the more I do, I don’t know why I will attract similar energy and people, and I’ll have similar encounters where people will be oh, this, you’re not part of this culture, or [00:20:00] something that.

And I was and I’ve had experiences where that happened and I always wanted to rise above because having that goal in mind, because if I react in the same way, it’s gonna create more divisions. And I’ve told myself it’s fine. I’m gonna rise above and I’m going to be the one who’s gonna bring in the light.

It’s fine. And if I don’t see that coming from other people, it might happen and it is happening, but the only thing which I have been trying is not to think so much about it. And within the university where I work, yes, there are challenges, but then there’s also that part of it where it’s all international, it’s very inclusive.

I work with a very group, an inclusive group of people, but then I also had experience of working with local people. Entire team was local at the university and I had a very good time with everybody. It comes down that I don’t wanna see myself as somebody who is not part of this, because at the end of the day, we are all human.

And I always bring that [00:21:00] regardless. Everybody’s going through something. Even with the idea of race and everything. End of the day, it’s all socially constructed. There was a time when I was working with people and I was if I speak about race, which obviously it is something I’m not denying, but then somebody else is having a disability, which very minor and they don’t get something and there are some other people with protected characteristics and it made me think oh, some people for being women or some people for being a certain type of individual, it made me think if I only think myself and play the race card, which I’m not denying, it happens, people experience so many different things on the grounds of race, but then at the same time, now let’s, if we shift the spotlight on the other side, when you said about the right politics and everything, and I had a conversation with one of my friends the other day.

I was this is such a small game. They’re playing, first of all, the economy shrinking here. A lot of people are not happy. There’s a lot of anger because of the economy to start with, and then they’re [00:22:00] playing immigration card because people are angry and they wanna take it out on something.

And then the level of knowledge and education, even again, social media, the information, as much as we hope that access to more information is going to make people smarter, apparently in a lot of cases it’s, it’s working the opposite direction and that critical thinking is lacking. there’s those things, and I wouldn’t blame them, if I see it from an educational perspective.

I have been in platforms and spaces where people do not want to get education and they are why would we, they don’t have enough support young people. that is also a big massive problem in the uk. We don’t get a lot of home students coming in and studying undergrad, grad. And that in itself is a problem.

If it goes on within the next 10, 20 years, we are not going to be living in a very good society with people who are not critical thinkers.

[00:22:57] Erno Hannink: I completely understand and agree what you’re saying. [00:23:00] I, I brought this point up because I, I think it has a lot of connections with what we, what we are talking about, because you talked about the victim role before.

we talk about colonization and about the language that we use. We talk about all these things. I think it’s all connected with what you just described, how you feel at this moment in this situation. And like you described, it has something to do with race, but there’s all these other things that are also setting us apart or we could fight on.

Right. Right now it’s, it’s immigration. But we could talk about, TGPQ or we could talk about, women versus male. we could talk about, there’s many things we could talk about. There’s always. Inequalities that we can talk about and discuss on how that, you know, what’s happening in this, in this space, or what’s happening in this situation.

There was another thing that was found interesting and thought, let’s ask a question about that was, you had this event in Istanbul [00:24:00] about Afghanistan, why Istanbul about Afghanistan? think there’s a lot of cultural things going on there.

[00:24:08] Zulfia Abawe: And this is, again, a very interesting question.

Thank you for bringing that, that up. the organization is Swedish and as I said, the human rights, but then they wanted to have it in Azerbaijan, the, the conference, because the intention behind was to have as many participants from different parts of the world with no problems with visas. Azerbaijan proved to be very difficult, and they’ve changed it Istanbul because Istanbul as a hub was easier for a lot of participants to come from across the world.

There are some scholars who have left Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban took over and a lot of them were having pending documents, which allows them to travel to certain countries. they don’t have that freedom of movement, that’s why they’ve picked up the Istanbul. And this is the same thing with, for other conferences.

Most of the time Istanbul [00:25:00] is an accessible place for having participants. We were locked in in one place, two, three, and no, it was a week long, heavy days. in terms of culture and stuff, I don’t know if they, I don’t know if they organizers thought that, we are gonna bring it up against here and all other participants to also enjoy a bit of culture in Turkey.

I dunno if that was the intention. The main intention was to make sure, people can come in and be. In person. And also there’s a lot of movement in conferences where they want actual people to come in. The reason being, there’s a lot of networking going on after these panels, presentations, and they really want people to come in together and connect instead of having them online.

that was another reason, and that’s why you’re pushing for Istanbul. That was a question I asked one of the organizers. I was why did you move from Azer Boyn? I’ve never been to Azer VO for very selfish reasons. Then they said, oh, because we needed more people to come in. I was how Azer boyn [00:26:00] time.

[00:26:01] Erno Hannink: you do teach. You teach, people who are probably gonna work in a corporate environment and with the new teaching that you’re coming up is who work more in nonprofits or organizations, or governmental organizations. but your studies are a lot about colonization and about Afghanistan.

It sounds separate and probably isn’t, but you mentioned I don’t wanna leave my things on the shelf, explain to me how this is connected for you.

[00:26:32] Zulfia Abawe: I think this is something which, I should, at some point in my life, I should write about this, as much as I see it. And also it comes across four people when I do work on research and I, and in a very individual experience also, it can become a bit isolated.

I’m working on a paper at the moment. It’s about a nomadic community in Afghanistan and I wanna focus on their epistemic agency. They’re non sedentary. They move. And I wanna see mobility as a form of, as a form of knowledge in [00:27:00] itself. And it challenges this idea of anthropocentrism, which focuses on humans at the apex of all creatures.

They super humans and they can use anything for their own benefit. And obviously that’s where I’m, I’m challenging that and I’m human and non-human, including environment, land, water, everything has got agency. that hierarchy of human being on top and using everything for their benefit should be challenged.

And that is the research I’m focused on at the moment. But then comes teaching regardless. No matter what, we always have something and only have something to bring into the teaching from my research. Corporate world can be, and especially yesterday was speaking about ethical leadership and corporate world can be very.

rigid and logical and approaches and the way they see, look into things. And most of the times it’s about profit, but then obviously not every organization or corporate, things that. But for my students, I really want to highlight that, that when it comes to [00:28:00] corporate, we have to also think about everything else.

I was looking into one of the books, which is a key textbook in my one of the key textbooks and for teaching, and this is by North House. And he’s speaking about different forms of leadership and I really wanna teach critically and I ask my students, how do you see things? yesterday, a lot of the conversations.

In North House’s book and his podcasts and everything else is about the people and how they need to be ethical. they, one of the definition is about people doing the right thing for the right reasons to achieve a common goal. And I put that definition of North House on the screen. I asked my students what, think about this definition.

I had only one, one student. And he said, this is focused a lot on people and their relationships. It’s not talking about non human and our relationship with them. And that was the moment when I got very happy. I was at least somebody’s thinking about this. Somebody’s thinking beyond people and profit, which [00:29:00] organizations especially the corporate won’t make.

And I really wanna see them as future leaders who are not thinking about people. and that is where my research comes in. And I told them, I’m working on this challenging anthropocentrism and how we are gonna connect with non-human. And even I told them as future leaders and businesses.

One is social responsibility, corporate social responsibility. Another one is the environment. Obviously you wanna make sure you have products and services, which doesn’t harm the environment, but at the same time, look beyond that, how are you gonna help the environment? there was a case study of Tom, Ben and Jerry’s, producing ice cream, but they’re doing many other initiatives on the side, which is helping immigration, L-G-B-T-Q, refugee asylum.

that type of thinking. And then a lot of these conversations happens because of the research I’m doing, even though they’re do, I’m doing it in very isolated ways, but it always comes and translates in one way or the other when I teach. I think I, I, I like [00:30:00] that. But then also if I, if I may say this, I think focus said that we are a complex, mixture of different identities.

And it also depends on which space where I find myself when, for example, I’m in a conference, where people are discussing about Afghanistan, a lot of the conversations about that. that is a one pocket of information vibrant. And then I find myself in another place where they’re talking about social mobility.

You in global compact and there’s so much you can bring in and then you yourself find yourself in a space of teaching. it’s different, a spaces where you find yourself and also the different identities that comes to the fore and your different sides and how they play out.

Again, that in itself is a form of decoloniality in the sense that you allow that to happen and you reflect and it’s very fluid.

[00:30:52] Erno Hannink: To me, it sounds a lot being a philosopher, right? Acquiring wisdom,

[00:30:57] Zulfia Abawe: possibly. And [00:31:00] also, apart from acquiring wisdom, it’s more about, questioning so much.

[00:31:04] Erno Hannink: Yeah,

[00:31:04] Zulfia Abawe: thinking deep.

[00:31:06] Erno Hannink: But that is, that is acquiring wisdom to me. Questioning and asking questions and asking other people that you learn because, you could of course get wisdom from books, but I think if you are having conversations with people different from yourself, different cultures, different backgrounds, that is where you’ll learn most.

That is what you really learn, where you really acquire, not knowledge, but wisdom.

[00:31:31] Zulfia Abawe: Absolutely. I agree. I, I guess it reminded me. one day I was going to an appointment, I came across this book outside somebody’s house. They had a a pile of books for people to collect it for free when you said whether you have, and pronounced my name correctly.

you did it well, because a lot of people calls me Sophie here in my workplace. the book is called Sophie’s World.

[00:31:54] Erno Hannink: All right.

[00:31:55] Zulfia Abawe: And then this is about philosophy. Yes. And author is [00:32:00] explaining that. this is written by Justin Gar, and he’s explaining these complex philosophies from way before, it’s very western, to a 16-year-old.

Her name is Sophie. And I know a friend of mine saw the book and he, she was you cannot be more selfish. You’re reading something about your world. I was no. And this comes back to your point about acquiring knowledge. A lot of the things in these philosophers have done was raising the questions.

the right questions. and it this now connects back to my conversation with my students. they use a lot of AI and sometimes when they do the workshops and assessments, they come back and it doesn’t answer the question perfectly or in a right direction. And I’m you are living in a golden age.

You’ve got every access to every tool and platform to do an excellent work. But where you’re missing out is you are not asking the right questions. And I reinforce, and I tell them, when you read in a question from the [00:33:00] assessment, sit with the question for 10, 20 minutes and ask yourself, what am I asked to do here?

that art of questioning and reading the question, it’s extremely important. And I agree with you. That in itself is a form of acquiring wisdom. Because asking the right questions is not easy. It needs a lot of thinking. I agree with what you said.

[00:33:23] Erno Hannink: Looking at your research that you’ve been doing and are still doing a lot is about Afghanistan.

And your mom to me, feels also a philosopher saying, you have to go outside and acquire wisdom and acquire knowledge, and you answering to that question and doing it, and also becoming then a teacher, teaching other people wisdom and knowledge, which makes it, you know, a circle of life.

Right. Is it your research on Afghanistan is that, has that a lot to do with your past, your upbringing, your [00:34:00] culture? Or is there other things? Why it specifically is event? Very interesting topic for you to do the research on.

[00:34:10] Zulfia Abawe: this is an excellent question. I have been still reflecting on this because when I started doing my PhD, I’ve been in a very, positivist area.

What do I mean is knowledge. Sorry. Law has been institutionalized in the US and the different jurisprudence that we’re focusing on. It’s a very logical way of looking into law and how it has been institutionalized in a lot of western societies, especially America, the constitution, everything else.

It’s a very logical way and I opted for complete opposite. I was working on legal pluralism instead. I wasn’t looking into how a state is enforcing or creating laws. I was looking into how societies and communities are doing it and to be honest, where did that come from? I don’t know. I was still trying to identify, and I was [00:35:00] speaking with another colleague yesterday about my current research and I was stuck and I was I don’t know what made me, or what exposed me to decoloniality and indigenous knowledge.

I’ve got another paper, which is under revision. It’s about relationality. It’s a completely different way of looking at things. What it advances is instead of looking into static entities, it could be a very logical, rigid way of looking at things because you see the cause and effect, but relationality is the opposite.

Relationality says, look into the process and don’t decide for it. Wait, tell the process, tells you or the relationships. What is gonna be the outcome or the boy product, or the product of that outcome. Instead of going into a room with our preconceived and determined knowledge, we go into a room with open-mindedness and let that process, relationship, whatever it is, give.

Rise to a new form of knowledge. how I came across all of these ideas and why, I don’t know, I’ve [00:36:00] been trying to reflect on that and identify that moment in my life where I’d be this is the time when it happened. somehow, vaguely I can connect it with my lived experiences because of living in many different societies.

And my experience has been, again, as somebody, as an outsider, you go into a society with a lot of assumptions and preconceived notions of everything and culture. And then you live and then you are my God. There’s many, similarities amongst people and cultures more than you ever thought.

So that becomes in itself very fluid. And I have done that over and over again. Every time I found myself in a different society and lived there for a few years. It’s different from when people says, oh, I’m traveling a lot And it made me think what type of travel, because it depends, are you immersing yourself and giving yourself time to engage with people and learn from the locals, or is it going there, being in a luxury hotel, not doing [00:37:00] anything, wind beach and we come back.

I, I would call them different types of public. Mm-hmm.

[00:37:04] Erno Hannink: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I think if you look at travel from the past where people had to travel by carriage or by horse or walking, and there was much more space to interact with culture and there’s much, of course this was a privilege for some people.

It wasn’t for everybody. That’s the same. True today, travel is still a privilege thing. what I found interesting here is what you mentioned about looking at similarities. Finding similarities, right. And it’s very related to the topic of colonization. if we. It’s a, it’s a very broad topic, colonization, but if we, if we look at the conversations we had about decolonizing the inner development goals, how do you see this topic to make it a bit smaller?

[00:37:52] Zulfia Abawe: we had this conversation A lot of things has to start from within, and that’s something I I’m working on. And one of the things which I got, I, I haven’t [00:38:00] done a lot of, the sessions on decolonizing in a development. But one of the things which I, I came across this work from Paul Fry, if I’m saying his name right, and that’s where it says that you need to decolonize your inner, stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself how many of the colonized legacies you are carrying yourself.

it’s not much about questioning the institutions and the pthe norms, which is not working. It’s questioning yourself. for me, decolonization is that close of reflecting and flecting and questioning things that I need to change within myself. In order for me to allow to see something differently or allow that I, and freedom to connect with people.

And it goes back, even not people and the non-human. I’ve came across a piece, and I don’t remember the name of the scholar, I vaguely remember, and this was a few years back. I think she’s from an indigenous aboriginal community in Australia, and she was writing about a piece of work where she said how much she’s listening to the environment and the land itself, even to the extent that it [00:39:00] informed her journeys and whether she needed to take the trip to the us.

She said even reading the environment, the climate in itself tells you so much that the message and brings me that idea of agency, to hear from the environment itself. But again, you have to have that, perspective and that frame of reference within yourself, challenged and over, challenged in in some parts to be able to see things like that.

Able to connect with people and the nonhuman and the environment, which goes beyond the rational cause and effect. And I think I I don’t remember the exact exact quote. and I think it was Platon. I read that on Sophie’s world, where it said, initially, and this is when I say Western, it’s mostly the modern posten enlightenment, 18th century, where the entire focus is on rationality, cause and effect.

And I think it was hu who said anything, which you can feel in your senses, it’s knowledge and you can rationalize it, it’s knowledge. Anything beyond that, I don’t count as knowledge. It [00:40:00] doesn’t exist. But then there comes relationality where it talks about intuition. A lot of the things cannot put in words, but that is a form of knowledge.

Our bodies carry knowledge. So going back to, Plato, he said, knowledge was produced. By mind, soul, heart, and desire. And every knowledge which is being produced from these different parts is going to be different. But what we have done, Posten, loment, is a lot of the knowledge which is driven from mind.

So I am now in that phase in my life where I don’t have the knowledge to understand other forms of knowledge and explain them even. I don’t know whether I should be explaining them, whether that should be the goal. And that’s where even the intuition comes in. And that’s something which I have been focusing and thinking about.

And I wanna give you one example. I was in a, conference, it was a few months ago, at the university, a very intelligent young lady. She was [00:41:00] working in computing and statistics. she came and she was talking about data. And how you put in data, all these beautiful charts, everything, analysis, the statistics, put in your information here, and that’s how it’s gonna inform decisions.

And then I raised my hand and I was that is brilliant. Yes, we do need data. It’s, we do, definitely. But how about intuition? Sometimes you have all the evidence right in front of you and something doesn’t feel right. And that is where your intuition is trying to tell you something. And there has been many instances in my life where I’ve had evidence and then I’m okay, but my intuition is not going with this and I have to listen to that.

But you cannot put any, any words and logic into that part of intuition, which is trying to tell you something. But then how would you put that in today’s posten loment rational knowledge? And the same thing is when now there’s a bit of work being done onindigenous production of medicines or things.

Which is completely different from a [00:42:00] rational type of production of knowledge. there’s those voids where I’m finding myselfwhen it comes to a development, how I, how I can work with them to better understand it. And does it have to be something explain to articulate or it has to be different?

How about we feel things, it sound it sounds perhaps nonsense at the moment, but what if that is also a form of knowledge?

[00:42:24] Erno Hannink: This is an interesting topic for me. I’ve been listening to and reading the books, for example, of Dan A is an Israeli American professor and also Daniel Kahneman and I, I feel a lot for the way that Daniel Ali is saying this about intuition when you have lived experience.

Experiences, I should say, and have a lot of experiences on a certain topic and have seen the quickrelationship betweena decision or [00:43:00] an action. And the result, there’s a short moment of time between those moments. you make a decision or you take an action and you see the result of your action.

And that is where you can learn a lot by experiencing. And at some point your intuition kicks in because it has learned so much from your experience that it can project guess what the result will be after I’ve taken this action. But he says, if you don’t have a lot of experience and then you use.

Intuition, it’s a dangerous field because you have no idea what’s going on. Especially when you have something and he gives the example a lot in his books. For example, if you have an interview with a prospect for a job, then the manager says, my intuition says this person is not good or not is really perfect for this job.

And then there’s a lot of time between the moment this person is hired and you see the actual effect and this person [00:44:00] really, flourished in the organization or this person really, left in a certain amount of time, within a year And when you do this, he says it’s very difficult to use your intuition because you don’t have a lot of experience.

that’s one way of looking at it. An interesting way of looking at it. And the other way, what you can do, that’s something that you are looking to is you can say, I have lived experience from the ancestors, from the people before me. I’m using the history of my culture to make decisions,

the lady that was indigenous lady was saying, I’m reading the land or the environment to determine what my next step will be to will I make this trip? Yes or no? Which is very unusual for people live in the West that we think that, because then there’s no way that’s a logical thinking on this topic.

But what you do then is you use your past, your generational history. On [00:45:00] making a decision. I’m not sure if I would call that intuition. Maybe you can, but definitely not a logical way of making decisions using your history, your past to making decisions which you didn’t know you had in you.

I’m not sure how you would experience that, but I like the explanation of Dan a if you trust on decision making on your intuition, you can do that If you have a lot of experience in this field, and if it’s a very clear relationship between an action and the result. If that’s not true, if there’s a longer time, there is many other issues things that could happen.

Why this thing didn’t work out as you. Guest or planned has probably nothing to do with the moment that you interview them. And the trap that we have is when we use intuition, for example, in these interviews, is that we like the people that look like us, that feel comfortable because they look like [00:46:00] us.

And that means the trap means that we don’t hire people who think differently and would really enrich the environment. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that’s a very interesting topic, intuition. Mm-hmm. intuition could be a trap where you don’t see new ways.

We don’t see critical voices, we don’t hear critical voices. We don’t bring critical voices into your environment because if you do, it will enrich all of us. Right. If we do that, but it doesn’t feel comfortable. Thus the intuition wouldn’t say that.

[00:46:33] Zulfia Abawe: to be honest, I agree with you and I’ve read that in some of, there was a time in my life when I was reading a lot about psychology psychoanalytic and all of that, but it brings me to different points where it raises the exceptional cases where it may not fit within this idea.

But mostly I agree with a lot of the experiences, some scholars, gen, psych psychology calls it, and either subconscious or our unconscious mind. And that is built from the reputation of the [00:47:00] habits we have throughout our life. Perhaps some people call it intuition, but then it brings me two different scholars.

One is Cole Young and Cole Young of this year. I don’t know if you’ve heard about him. And he was looking a lot about, dreams and how our thoughts are being constructed. Partially, yes, it’s habits, it’s experiences we have it’s lived experiences and that’s undeniable. And that added a small more component of this thinking.

He was saying, there has to be something beyond ourselves that is putting that into our minds. Because if it’s the same thing, even people who saw the same exact dream who was interpreting dreams, he was exactly the same thing. But it would mean completely different things for different people.

But that again, could be connected with their lived experience. But then he dig down deeper and he said how our thoughts are being formulated we, the ones who have full control our thoughts and power over how we think, or if there’s anything beyond us, which puts those thoughts [00:48:00] into our mind.

And he was more inclined towards that Maybe something beyond us. And this brings me also to a lot of cultures and the idea of God and, and religions, faith and stuff. So that’s one thing. Another thing is, one of the work done by I am, I think it’s the search for meaning,

[00:48:19] Erno Hannink: Vitor Frankl,

[00:48:20] Zulfia Abawe: Victor.

Yes. And he says, again, this is something which I remember. He says, if you put in individuals in the same environment and you do a long term study about them, the reactions definitely is going to be different from everybody regardless of the experiences they have. and he also, one of the things he said was rising above.

the, concentration comes and the amount of difficulty and this, it’s even difficult to put it in words everybody gone through, but they were individuals who rise above and they still showed that level of selflessness and everybody can be selfish. So that was another [00:49:00] thing which always makes me think as much as I’m employed towards lived experiences, habits, environment, how about these?

Because in these situations, even if every individual lives the same experience is still going to be different for different people and they’re gonna react differently. So what makes that different then? these are the things, and it brings me back to the idea of intuition. It could vary for people, partially it could be constructed because of our lived experiences, but then I’ve also seen people with very strong intuitive, capabilities.

And I’ll be how this is coming from? And is it young? Which says that there might be something beyond us. Which puts that into people. And it’s also the idea of nature versus nature. Mm-hmm. environment versus, versus our innate, traits that you’re born with and where’s that coming from.

these are very interesting conversations and a lot of questions around that, which I also always ask myself, and I think it goes back to your point of acquiring wisdom. perhaps we are on a [00:50:00] journey to keep asking and keep learning and learning and relearning.

[00:50:05] Erno Hannink: I think that’s an interesting topic that I mentioned that I talked about in my previous epi episode, two episodes ago.

I was having, because we talking about bringing new things to our minds, and I think if, if we are looking into the mirror, which you mentioned before, and looking at ourselves and see how we are doing, what is our role, what’s our history in this? the difficulty there is that you’re asking yourself questions, which is.

Interesting, Socrates, is saying, you should ask yourself questions and learn from those questions and, improve your questions. but it’s better when somebody else is asking, or you asking somebody else the questions, because I think if you, if you do that, you, you’ll be confronted with a lot more different thinking on what’s going on in your brain,

Your brain has a certain amount of expertise or experiences or, knowledge and, [00:51:00] but then you talk to somebody you and you get new ideas and new knowledge because you have a different perspective on the same case or situation. I had this conversation with this lady and she started a union for working animals.

the whole concept of starting a union for working animals is of course a very interesting concept, first of all, we. I think most people understand what a union does, how a union works, and what a union can do. it’s a, it’s a great wording that we use, that she uses that gives us familiarity that we can think, oh I understand a union.

it makes it a lot easier. But then a union for working animals, that’s weird. ‘cause union for humans, I, I know that, but for working animals, that’s weird. then you start listening. why a union? And then she has these great points, why a union for working animals is important and why it’s important that somebody’s on the board or in the seed speaking up for those animals because they can’t speak up for [00:52:00] themselves.

And I think this is the same with when you look at decolonizing, educations or, Our, politics or the inner development goals, whatever it is that we are trying to look at. what is our Colin Colonized history on this? Mm-hmm. I think what is important is that you have conversations with a number of various different views on this topic, so you understand and learn from other people.

What is their perspective on the same thing that I’m, I’m looking at from my culture or my background, right? it’s, we have so many different views on the same topic, and if you, if you do that with various people, for example, if you go to an event that you’ve been to in Istanbul, you get so many different views from various cultures that you’ll learn so much more on a topic than if you were on in wheels in school and doing a book research on the same [00:53:00] topic.

[00:53:00] Zulfia Abawe: I absolutely agree with that. Absolutely. But one thing which I would also bring to the, to the conversation from my own experience, in order to engage in that authentic, conversation and interaction with people where you’d learn, we have to put our ego, that’s how it, and we have to be extremely open-minded and not take things personal and feel attacked.

Because I’ve had experience with a lot of people and that’s happening one example from my teaching and I keep, telling my students, think about your intention behind asking a question. Are you asking the question to make the other side feel they don’t know enough? Or are you asking the question out of curiosity because you want to know more yourself?

That is one thing. And another thing is, HSTA is working a lot, and he’s a scholar. He’s a Dutch scholar. You might have heard his name. And he’s talking about this concept of cultural islands. He says, in order to and authentically learn from people, you have to make sure you are leaving [00:54:00] all your preconceived notions, everything else on the side.

You go to this island with an open mind, open, completely open, and you shouldn’t, because once you get into that moment, you have, you are, you become a magnet. You wanna attract, absorb different types of information. And that is where the change happens in perspectives. But getting into that moment in your life where you don’t have any of these preconceived notions, it’s gonna take time, but it has to start from somewhere.

I agree with you. I also been in those beautiful places with beautiful minded people who is genuinely wanting to learn and want to teach you something. And the intention is not to teach you, but it is being themselves. They tell you something and it’s for me, I’m oh my God, I never thought about this this before.

things that, even with the first session in, in a development, one of the colleagues which I’ve met there, individuals, he was, he had nice, ideas, which made me think a lot about it. Even about [00:55:00] enlightenment, posten, loment, colonialization, and all of that.

and I agree, yes, we, we do need to ask questions and engage with other people, but at the same time, we need to work on ourselves also to have that open-mindedness to allow that space to, that space. In, in, in a very genuine and authentic way where we learn and, and learn.

[00:55:21] Erno Hannink: I enjoyed this conversation.

I want to come to a close, but not before I’ve, I’m giving you the space to talk about one more thing. As I saw on your LinkedIn post, you are working on, starting on, or having the idea for a book.

[00:55:38] Zulfia Abawe: Yes.

[00:55:39] Erno Hannink: What is it about, why are you writing a book? Is it, is it gonna be a academic book or what is it?

How, what is it gonna be?

[00:55:45] Zulfia Abawe: this is something which is going to be, it’s a long term project because I’ve got so many other things coming up at the moment. It might take me a few years to actually get to that place, but one of the things for me is this book [00:56:00] is also personal in a way. I am in that place where I’m working on a lot of the again, the terminology frameworks and how I can.

Decolonize them in a way. currently I’m working in different pieces, but for that book I want to look particularly on the idea of resistance and how resistance can be seen, from a day-to-day everyday lived experience of people and what we might call as an outsider, as a resistance. Perhaps people on the ground may not call it resistance, but it could be a form of resistance.

And this is driven again, from my experience of observing people on, in, in Afghanistan, when I go there and I travel and I see around because there’s a lot of books, every scholarship on a Afghanistan about state building. And it brought me in that moment. if you see a vendor spend selling vegetables.

All they care about is to get that vegetable sold by the end of the day so that they can go back to their family. And some of them are very young individuals. [00:57:00] What happens, what, how, how many times regime changes in Afghanistan, a state elections, everything else from a very state building project being doesn’t matter to them.

At the end of the day, all they care about is their survival, their day-to-day life. what I really wanna see is how we can bring in different projects together, which reflects their reality. Something which can lead to some sort of progress for them. And perhaps that in itself will being completely careless and not care about anything about what’s happening, in terms of politics and stuff.

That in itself could be a form of resistance. but the scholarship hasn’t got down deeper in that sense of Type I am looking into Scott James, idea of everyday resistance and small things that he calls resistance or work in everyday encroachment of life and stuff. But still, there’s so much work to be done.

and also I’m reflecting on the way I look at things and analyze [00:58:00] things, and how I can bring that sense of authenticity in my work. And that’s something which I’ve been considering for a book project. I’ve had conversations with people, about whether they want to work with me. One of the things which I don’t wanna do it, I don’t want this to be a form of oh, I’m doing this because I want to have emotions in my academic life and stuff.

I want it to be a very genuine project, which I even don’t care about the impact next day if it is delivered. I don’t want, I dunno what is gonna happen with that, but I want it to be very genuine, which reflects different forms of realities.

[00:58:36] Erno Hannink: I really enjoyed this conversation and learning about, all these pockets that you brought in, all these tiny things that you brought in on, on, instead of talking about one great topic, we had all these various nuggets, that we talked about, and bringing them together to, in my opinion, to, to bring back the larger [00:59:00] piece of colonization by not looking at huge topic of colonization, but look at all these various things being critical to yourself, putting your ego aside, these culture islands.

or the idea of, asking questions, learning from other people and seeing how they are looking for similarities. As you mentioned before, there’s so many things that you’ve mentioned that in total, I think, looking at the language that we all use on the same topic in total is.

Everything that we can learn about how to improve the decolonization process and without in the future, probably not using the word colonization anymore, ‘cause it’s so much more than that.

[00:59:42] Zulfia Abawe: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. I am in in pursuit of finding something else, perhaps, or maybe nothing. feelings way we don’t use too many words.

I don’t know.

[00:59:53] Erno Hannink: I know. Sophia, thank you very much.

[00:59:56] Zulfia Abawe: Thank you. Thank you very much.[01:00:00]

By Erno Hannink

Erno is de businesscoach die ondernemers helpt om de lange termijn doelen sneller te realiseren. Ondernemers die het beter willen doen voor de planeet, maatschappij en zichzelf. Met zijn ondersteuning en tips helpt hij je dagelijkse doelen te kiezen zodat je de lange termijn doelen eindelijk gaat realiseren. Test zijn coaching een week lang gratis uit met deze code ERNOHANNINKWEEK op dit platform -> ga naar coach.me. Sluit je aan bij de community van ondernemers die iets bijzonders doen.

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