Decolonised Knowledge

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://knowledgedemocracydspace.com/handle/123456789/1070

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End date: 1989Has files: Yes

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Non-formal adult education as an entry point for community organisation
    (0000) Ginny; Shrivastava, Om
    How can adult education be leveraged to organise communities? Non formal adult education, by virtue of its flexibility and close alignment with local needs, offers a strong entry point for community organisation. In this article, Ginny and Om Srivastava outline how adult education can be operationalised not merely as a literacy intervention but as a participatory process rooted in people’s lived realities aimed towards individual and social development. They emphasise that the core aim is not limited to reading and writing, but to enable individuals to understand their social conditions, develop critical awareness, and begin to act collectively. Literacy, functional knowledge, and consciousness raising are seen as interconnected pathways through which people can recognise their own potential and organise for change. The article further details how such programmes must be grounded in the community through immersion, participatory methods, and locally relevant materials. Adult education centres, when designed as shared spaces of dialogue and reflection, can evolve into forums for collective decision making and action. In this sense, adult education becomes not an end in itself, but a starting point for building confidence, leadership, and sustained community organisation.
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    Creating Knowledge: A Monopoly? Participatory Research in Development
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1982-06) Hall, Budd L; Gillete, Arthur; Tandon, Rajesh
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    The democratization of the production of knowledge
    (1988-05-03) Hall, Budd L
    Dr. Budd L. Hall delivered the opening address at a participatory research workshop held at the University of Calgary in May 1988. In this address, he reflects on his journey in participatory research, beginning with his work in Tanzania in the early 1970s, where he met Paulo Freire, to his role in founding the International Participatory Research Network in 1977. By the time of the address, he headed the International Council for Adult Education. . Participatory research is framed through three connected dimensions: a theoretical grounding aimed at building popular hegemony rather than serving ruling classes, an epistemological understanding of knowledge formed through the interaction of research, education and action, and a political practice built on working directly with communities. Feminist, Indigenous, and worker perspectives run through the address, including a Montreal poultry workers' union that studied its own workplace health conditions instead of relying on outside experts, illustrating that there are many ways of knowing beyond formal Western science. John Gaventa's observation appears too that social movements often falter either by rejecting research altogether or by depending too heavily on outside experts. A six-step method developed by Joao Francisco de Souza runs from context and justification through to the collectivization of the knowledge produced. Participatory research is presented, in the end, as a difficult but necessary strategy within the larger struggle over who controls knowledge and power
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    African studies, the formation of knowledge and political commitment
    (University of Ottawa, 1978-05-04) Hall, Budd L
    This knowledge resource is a keynote address delivered by Dr. Budd L. Hall at the University of Ottawa in May 1978, at the joint conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies and the Institute for International Cooperation. Hall raises two central questions: what responsibilities do African studies scholars carry within the Canadian political economy? And how does a genuine commitment to oppressed peoples reshape the practice of research? In his view, academic knowledge production has largely come to serve state and market interests, at the expense of the knowledge systems held by working and indigenous communities. Based on Gramsci, Cabral, and Freire, Hall challenges the neutrality of mainstream research and points toward participatory and activist alternatives, citing community-led examples from Kenya and Tanzania. The address stands as an early and enduring contribution to participatory research thought, speaking directly to present-day debates on knowledge democracy and the decolonization of research practice.
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    Participatory research: An approach for change
    (International Council for Adult Education, 1975) Hall, Budd L
    How can research be imagined as an educational and transformative process rather than an extractive one? In this reflective essay, Dr. Budd Hall examines the shortcomings embedded within dominant principles of social science research. Drawing from his experiences as a researcher and his interactions with local education officers in the 1970s, he reflects on how research practices often alienate communities from the very processes meant to understand them. The essay explores key concerns around the ideological foundations of research, the ways in which social problems are oversimplified, and the distance from adult education principles. In doing so, it invites researchers to reimagine research as a dialectic, dialogic and ongoing educational experience which is oriented towards the liberation of human creative potential rather than the production of “neutral” knowledge.
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    Zapatistas in Chiapas
    (1984-03-23) Tandon, Rajesh
    At a moment when Mexico was entering a new era of economic liberalisation under NAFTA, an unexpected uprising in Chiapas reshaped debates on democracy, land, and indigenous rights. This paper examines the Zapatista movement within the longer history of indigenous struggle while drawing attention to its distinctive way of combining traditional claims with new tools of communication and solidarity. The research also considers how the movement’s vision travelled beyond Chiapas, raising questions about development, autonomy, and cultural survival. In doing so, it argues for seeing the Zapatistas not only as a regional rebellion but as a reminder that struggles over dignity and self-determination can unsettle dominant ideas of governance in ways that remain unresolved.
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    Education for all as determined by the few?
    (Society for Participatory Research in Asia, 1989-12) Tandon, Rajesh
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    Creating knowledge: Breaking the monopoly
    (1982) Hall, Budd L
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    Participatory research meeting in India
    (1979-02) Tandon, Rajesh
    This report documents a Participatory Research (PR) meeting held in February 1979. It was attended by 35 activists, field workers, researchers, and practitioners from across India. It describes case studies shared at the meeting, including West Bengal's Operation Barga sharecropper registration drive, a tribal-led irrigation scheme in Rajasthan, and the mobilization of landless labourers and tribal women through Maharashtra's Shramik Sangathana. The report then turns to debates that emerged on PR's relationship to social action, the overlapping roles of researcher and activist, the risk of fostering dependency, and possible entry points for PR work, along with a comparison of PR and classical research across five guiding principles. It closes by reflecting on the empathy and self-awareness needed in a participatory researcher.