Walking, knowing, and the limits of the map: performing participatory cartographies in indigenous landscapes

2021 ◽  
pp. 147447402110344
Author(s):  
Bjørn Sletto ◽  
Gerónimo Barrera de la Torre ◽  
Alexandra Magaly Lamina Luguana ◽  
Davi Pereira Júnior

Post-representational cartography views maps as inherently unstable and unfinished, always in the making and thus singularly open for refolding and re-presentation. This perspective on maps calls for greater attention to the performances, negotiations, and contestations that occur during the ongoing production of maps, particularly in cases where maps are developed during collective, collaborative, and participatory processes in indigenous landscapes riven by conflict and struggle. In the following, we examine the role of walking for the continual (re)making of participatory maps, specifically engaging with work in indigenous methodologies to consider how an emphasis on performativity in map-makings may foster a post-representational perspective on indigenous cartographies. We understand walking as map-making, a form of knowledge production generated by performative and situated storytelling along paths and in places filled with meaning. Drawing on a critical understanding of ‘invitation’ and ‘crossing’, we build on our experiences from participatory mapping projects in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Brazil to explore the ways in which the material, performative crossings of bodies through indigenous landscapes may inspire new forms of knowledge production and destabilize Cartesian cartographic colonialities.

2021 ◽  
pp. 269-286
Author(s):  
Louise Bezuidenhout ◽  
Dori Beeler

Historically, ethics discourse has reinforced the “othering” of the scientist as an individual who is different, held separate from society and other forms of knowledge production. This othering results in boundary creation that is contingent on where the lines are drawn and by whom. This presents an interesting challenge to current ethics discourse, necessitating flexibility and contextuality. In this challenge, virtue ethics can make a significant contribution. By focusing on boundary ethics, the infinitely variable social practice of science is presented as a negotiation of ever-changing boundaries. Subsequently, the scientist is understood as a morally robust individual who can flexibly deal with the fluctuating spaces created by boundaries without changing their ethical integrity. As such, understanding the role of boundaries affords a very different interpretation of what science is.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Melber

The following arguments are in support of a “renegotiation of the terms of knowledge production” (Horáková 2016: 47). By doing so, this essay sides with demands by others (for example, Keim et al 2014) that “the need to move towards non-hegemonic forms of cooperation between academic realms and forms of knowledge is a practical-material as well as an intellectual task”, while “no success can be achieved without relentless criticisms on inhered spurious certainties” (Lagos 2015). Last but not least, this reasoning is influenced by the conviction that ‘neutral’ knowledge in a value-free vacuum detached from social interests does not exist: “ways of knowing and resulting bodies of knowledge are always historical and they are deeply political” (Bliesemann and Kostic 2017: 6). By pointing to the relevance of hierarchical structures and power, this essay concurswith Halvorsen (2016: 303) that, “the academic profession must rid itself once and for all of the notion that knowledge is invariably ‘positive’, that every question has one correct answer (the truth), and that this is to be obtained through one correct method”. After all —… knowledge of Africa has been produced within what we might define as a Western episteme. The theoretical, conceptual and methodological resources through which Africa is to this day rendered visible and intelligible speak from a place, about that place and in accordance with criteria of plausibility that use that particular place as the normative standard for truth (Macamo 2016: 326).I concur with Smith (1999) that true decolonisation is supposed to be concerned with having a “(m)ore critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values that inform research practices” (Wilson 2001: 214). This is a necessary reminder that we should always include critical reflections when interStrategic Review for Southern Africa, Vol 40, No 1 Henning Melber rogating our own internalised value systems, which we often tend to understandand apply unchallenged as the dominant (if not only) norm.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Richardson ◽  
Catherine Durose ◽  
Beth Perry

There are many critiques of existing forms of urban governance as not fit for purpose. However, what alternatives might look like is equally contested. Coproduction is proposed as a response to address complex wicked issues. Achieving coproduction is a highly complex and daunting task. Bottom up approaches to the initiation of coproduced governance are seen as fruitful, including exemplification of utopian alternatives though local practices. New ways of seeing the role of conflict in participation are needed, including ways to institutionalise agonistic participatory practices. Coproduction in governance drives demands for forms of knowledge production that are themselves coproductive. New urban governing spaces need to be coproduced through participative transformation requiring experimentation and innovation in re-designing urban knowledge architectures. Future research in this field is proposed which is nuanced, grounded in explicit weightings of different democratic values, and which mediates between recognition of contingency and the ability to undertake comparative analysis.


2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110364
Author(s):  
Yasminah Beebeejaun

The expansion of fracking, an intensive form of hydrocarbon extraction, has been met with increasing public hostility, spanning a diverse range of interests and political allegiances. However, to date, few authors have engaged with the role of gender and women activists. In this paper, I consider how gender and gendered ideas have been used as a resource to underpin fracking protests in the USA and UK. I find that a problematic gendered binary has emerged that undermined the veracity of anti-fracking protestors’ opposition and aligns with modes of planning governance that valorize universal and objective forms of knowledge. Drawing upon a feminist epistemological stance, I turn to a planning dispute over noise levels in Lancashire, England, to explore the limits to current forms of knowledge production. I argue that specific actors, behaviours, and forms of knowledge become framed as gendered and unreliable in the sphere of technical decision making, diminishing our understanding of the complexities of human experience and subjectivity within spatial planning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Iris Clemens

The call for the decolonization of knowledge refers to both its colonization and contingency and puts the focus on the multiplicity of knowledge. This contradicts European-North-American thinking and definitions of knowledge. Consequently, to advance an epistemological decolonization of knowledge, the actual process of defining knowledge will be analysed and the multiplicity of perspectives stressed at the epistemological level. Using Indian epistemology as an example, I will work out differences in definitions of knowledge and therefore basic diversifications in describing and explaining the emergence of knowledge. Truth-value-neutral forms of knowledge in particular challenge dominant European-North-American philosophical definitions, which incontrovertibly include assumptions of true or false knowledge. An interesting overlap between some Indian epistemologies and postcolonial theories can be observed with regards to the central role of the contextualization of knowledge production and the socially embodied nature of scientific knowledge in general. If the incentives gained are to be taken seriously, the consequences for educational science in general as well as educational practices must be discussed. According to the findings of organizational theory, emphasis on diversification and complication is also seen as an opportunity for the emergence of fresh meaning. Referring to Helen Verran’s concept of generative tension as a sign of collective creativity, encounters between diverse forms of knowledge and epistemological principles are seen as sources of creative processes and prerequisite for the emergence of new positions, perspectives etc., and thus as incubators for innovations.


Author(s):  
Torun Reite ◽  
Francis Badiang Oloko ◽  
Manuel Armando Guissemo

Inspired by recent epistemological and ontological debates aimed at unsettling and reshaping conceptions of language, this essay discusses how mainstream sociolinguistics offers notions meaningful for studying contexts of the South. Based on empirical studies of youth in two African cities, Yaoundé in Cameroon and Maputo in Mozambique, the essay engages with “fluid modernity” and “enregisterment” to unravel the role that fluid multilingual practices play in the social lives of urban youth. The empirically grounded theoretical discussion shows how recent epistemologies and ontologies offer inroads to more pluriversal knowledge production. The essay foregrounds: i) the role of language in the sociopolitical battles of control over resources, and ii) speakers’ reflexivity and metapragmatic awareness of register formations of fluid multilingual practices. Moreover, it shows how bundles of localized meanings construct belongings and counterhegemonic discourses, as well as demonstrating speakers’ differential valuations and perceptions of boundaries and transgressions across social space.


Author(s):  
Ruth Stock-Homburg

AbstractKnowledge production within the interdisciplinary field of human–robot interaction (HRI) with social robots has accelerated, despite the continued fragmentation of the research domain. Together, these features make it hard to remain at the forefront of research or assess the collective evidence pertaining to specific areas, such as the role of emotions in HRI. This systematic review of state-of-the-art research into humans’ recognition and responses to artificial emotions of social robots during HRI encompasses the years 2000–2020. In accordance with a stimulus–organism–response framework, the review advances robotic psychology by revealing current knowledge about (1) the generation of artificial robotic emotions (stimulus), (2) human recognition of robotic artificial emotions (organism), and (3) human responses to robotic emotions (response), as well as (4) other contingencies that affect emotions as moderators.


1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-522
Author(s):  
Brady Coleman ◽  
Robert Beckman

AbstractIntegrated coastal management (ICM) programmes are being planned, formulated and implemented in coastal States all over the world. To date, however, ICM has been seen as more in the realm of policy-makers, managers, scientists, coastal resource economists, and others, rather than in the realm of lawyers. This article reveals how law and lawyers should play an absolutely essential role at all stages of the ICM process. Ideally, ICM legal consultants will have a broad range of knowledge and experience in both international legal treaties as well as in certain fundamental national law principles, so that coastal zone policies will be designed and carried out with a critical understanding of the laws and institutions needed for the long-term success of an integrated coastal management programme.


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