Knowledge Participation and Empowerment

Abstract

Efforts to understand and change a given social reality have always been based on perspectives of those promoting such change. Knowledge systems and knowledge producing institutions have been at the forefront of defining and organising such perspectives. In most societies and periods of human history, the elites have maintained hegemonic control over such knowledge systems. These dominant perspectives for understanding and changing social reality have mostly been the perspective of those in positions of power in a given society. Thus dominant knowledge about and perspectives on social reality have largely been those supported by the elite and the powerful in a given society.