KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND DECOLONISATION — NOT ONLY AFRICAN CHALLENGES

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Melber
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Correct Answer ◽  
Hierarchical Structures ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
A Value ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Normative Standard ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

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.

scholarly journals Grand Challenges, Feminist Answers

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772110203
Author(s):  
Yvonne Benschop
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Feminist Organization

Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.

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
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Participatory Mapping ◽  
Participatory Processes ◽  
Indigenous Methodologies ◽  
Critical Understanding ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

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.

What this book can teach us

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Campbell ◽  
Kate Pahl ◽  
Elizabeth Pente ◽  
Zanib Rasool
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Transformational Change ◽  
Community Knowledge ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Production Practices ◽  
Agent Of Change ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This chapter offers a sense of the legacy of this book and identify its key features, in order to provide a summary of what the authors have learned from doing the book. The central goal in writing this book has been to demonstrate that communities produce their own forms of knowledge, and that those forms are valid — and valuable — ways of knowing. The chapter articulates the value of this kind of research for community knowledge production that is emergent, situated, and future oriented. As such, this chapter identifies four key themes: thinking across difference, the arts as a mode of inquiry and as an agent of change, rethinking knowledge production practices, and hope and the importance of transformational change. The chapter then reflects on these themes.

Harriet Martineau’s Epistemology of Gossip

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-207
Author(s):  
Kristen A. Pond
Keyword(s):  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Main Function ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Domestic Novel ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge ◽  
The Way

Kristen A. Pond, “Harriet Martineau’s Epistemology of Gossip” (pp. 175–207) This essay is a fresh examination of Harriet Martineau’s only domestic novel, Deerbrook (1838). Though the novel seems like an interruption to those writings considered more typical of the author, and more successful, this essay traces the way in which Deerbrook’s preoccupation with epistemology connects it in important ways to the rest of Martineau’s oeuvre. While in most of her writing Martineau gives preference to what the Victorians considered to be empirical and rational ways of knowing, in Deerbrook she focuses on more typically feminized knowledge forms that rely on speculation and intuition, in particular the discourse of gossip. This essay argues that gossip’s main function in Deerbrook is not as plot device or didactic warning; rather, it functions as an epistemological category that challenges Enlightenment presumptions to certain knowledge. Read as a source of knowledge rather than a female vice, gossip becomes the tool through which Martineau raises the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge that might counter, or at least complicate, assumptions about what constitutes certain truth and right knowledge.

scholarly journals Considering Indigenous Research Methodologies: Critical Reflections by an Indigenous Knower

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph P. Gone
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Research Methodologies ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Indigenous Epistemologies ◽  
Indigenous Research Methodologies ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
University Settings

Within the domain of academic inquiry by Indigenous scholars, it is increasingly common to encounter enthusiasm surrounding Indigenous Research Methodologies (IRMs). IRMs are designated approaches and procedures for conducting research that are said to reflect long-subjugated Indigenous epistemologies (or ways of knowing). A common claim within this nascent movement is that IRMs express logics that are unique and distinctive from academic knowledge production in “Western” university settings, and that IRMs can result in innovative contributions to knowledge if and when they are appreciated in their own right and on their own terms. The purpose of this article is to stimulate exchange and dialogue about the present and future prospects of IRMs relative to university-based academic knowledge production. To that end, I enter a critical voice to an ongoing conversation about these matters that is still taking shape within Indigenous studies circles.

scholarly journals Through the Looking Glass Space to New Ways of Knowing: A Personal Research Narrative

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Brand
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Health Professional ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Looking Glass ◽  
Personal Research

This article describes how writing personal research narratives during my doctoral research journey challenged my role as a health professional and my personal beliefs and values in fundamental ways. In qualitative narrative inquiry, the reflexive account of the research experience is a key element in conducting ethical, rigorous, and meaningful forms of qualitative research. However, as a novice researcher, I was unprepared for the unlearning journey I experienced during the research process. This uncomfortable experience cut to the core of my identity by dismantling unexamined belief and value systems that lay dormant and hidden from my everyday consciousness as a health professional. In the spirit of transparency, reflexivity and “good” qualitative research, this article presents an explicit account of my exquisite and sometimes excruciating reflexive research journey that profoundly changed how I relate and work with people. I believe health care professionals should adopt a narrative view of experience that creates the “looking glass space” to locate their own stories within the broader socio-cultural and historical context of their lives, especially in relation to their health professional identity. Exchanging diminishing dialogue with deeper dialogue honours both the complexities of young peoples’ lives and social worlds and encompasses socially-conscious methodologies of promise and hope.

scholarly journals PANDANGAN POLITIK JARINGAN ISLAM LIBERAL DI INDONESIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-174
Author(s):  
Ana Sabhana Azmy ◽  
Amri Yusra
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
The Political ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
A Value ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Reading Materials

This article aims to look at the political views of the Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) in Indonesia. As a community that wants to carry out reforms with the spirit of modernization and rationality in religion, seeing it in political and democratic contestation in Indonesia is interesting. So this article questions two things; how does Jaringan Islam Liberal view the relevance of religion and politics? and how does Jaringan Islam Liberal view the implementation of democracy? The method used in this paper is a literature study that seeks to collect data from journal articles, books, and other related reading materials. This article shows that the Jaringan Islam Liberal (Liberal Islam Network) rejects forms of political Islam that try to formally fight for the superiority of Islamic value systems and symbols in the political sphere. They also reject the idea of an Islamic state and the formalization of shari'ah, and sees democracy as a value that must be implemented in a country. This is because it is in accordance with the basic rights that must be owned by individuals, which are known as human rights.

Existence of State as a Value Problem in Political Realism

2021 ◽  
pp. 5-16
Author(s):  
Sergey A. Kucherenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
International System ◽  
Social World ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
A Value ◽  
Real Objects ◽  
The One ◽  
Political Value

The article is focused around ontological status of state in modern political real­ism. It seems that possibility of moral evaluation depends on the existence of the evaluated object. Only the real objects can be fully valuable. The article demon­strates that theoretical abstraction of social world can function as values only by being the ends that have to be fulfilled. The notion of state plays crucial role in re­alist theory, while states themselves are basic units of international system. This puts the state in an ambivalent position. On the one hand realists view state as a mere theoretical abstraction without proper existence. On the other hand state acts as a value in analysis of statesmen motives. The author claims that realism, be­ing an “understanding” social theory, is stuck between scientific and political value systems. This problem is possible to solve by splitting the concept of state (and re­lated notions), based on the context of its usage.

Expressions

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Schenck ◽  
Peter Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Correct Answer ◽  
Partial Evaluation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Complete Evaluation ◽  
A Value ◽  
Null Value ◽  
Evaluation Exercise ◽  
The One ◽  
Expected Evaluation

Expressions are combinations of operators and operands which are evaluated to produce a value of a specific type. Infix operators require two operands with an operator written between them. A prefix operator requires one operand with an operator written before it. (The expression syntax starts on page 208.) Evaluation proceeds from left to right, governed by the precedence of the operators. The lowest numbered precedence as shown in Table 14.1 is evaluated first. Operators in the same row have the same precedence. Expressions enclosed by parentheses are evaluated before being treated as a single operand. An operand between two operators of different precedence is bound to the operator with the higher one; e.g., −10*20 means (−10)*20. An operand between two operators of the same precedence is bound to the one on the left; e.g., 10/20 * 30 means (10/20) * 30. Exercise 14.1 Work out the intermediate steps for this expression: … −2/(4+4)*5+6… When a null value is encountered in an expression where a non-null is expected, evaluation is short circuited and a null answer is produced. Otherwise, all expressions are fully evaluated even when the outcome is known after partial evaluation. Exercise 14.2 Can you think of an expression that does not require complete evaluation to get the correct answer? The operands of an operator must be compatible with the operator and with each other. Operands can be compatible without having identical types and are compatible when any of these conditions are satisfied: • The types are the same. • One type is a subtype of the other (e.g., one is a number and the other is an integer. • Both types are strings. • Both types are binaries. • Both types are arrays which have compatible base types and identical bounds. • Both types are bags which have compatible base types. • Both types are lists which have compatible base types. • Both types are sets which have compatible base types. Operations are organized by the kind of result they produce, namely: numeric, boolean or logical, string or binary, or aggregate.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document