Community Knowledge

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://knowledgedemocracydspace.com/handle/123456789/1071

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Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Knowledge democracy: Opening our doors to all knowledge systems
    (UNESCO, 2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
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    Understanding design of organisation
    (Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 2001-08-25) Tandon, Rajesh
    This text by Dr. Rajesh Tandon presents a comprehensive analysis of the structure and process of understanding organizations and NGOs and navigates strategies to their management. The text describes models as conceptual tools for analyzing organizational behaviour, emphasizing the organization as an open social system and provides a systems theory for it. It explains missions and purposes of an organisation and lists its required inputs and desired outputs. The text further identifies and describes five key components of organizational design, technology, tasks, human resources, formal organizational structure, and informal organization. It analyses the concept of congruence, arguing that organizational effectiveness depends on the degree to which these components fit together and presents the congruence hypothesis arguing that greater the fit between components, the more effective the organization will be in achieving its mission. The text identifies types of NGOs and addresses several critical issues for NGO management such as compatibility with organizing elements, size and informal structure, hierarchy, and organisational changes. It further discusses the differences arising from different ideologies and operational strategies and the need for NGOs to manage relationships with multiple constituencies. The text concludes that organizations are complex social systems requiring analysis at multiple levels and aspects and that a successful organisation requires effective division of work and integration of efforts.
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    Mobilizing community and academic knowledge for transformative change: The story of the UNESCO Chair in community based research and social responsibility in higher education
    (The Canadian Commission for UNESCO’s IdeaLab, 2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
    What role can higher education play in advancing knowledge democracy and fulfilling its social responsibility? This paper co-authored by Dr. Budd L. Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon reflects the establishment, evolution, and contributions of the UNESCO chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education. Established in July 2012 as a unique co-chair partnership bridging the University of Victoria (Canada) and Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA, India). This paper outlines the effectiveness of a distinctive global North-South co-chair method in connecting academic institutions with grassroots practitioners to promote knowledge and democracy. The paper explores how universities should collaborate with communities in the co-creation of knowledge to promote social responsibility, inclusion, and sustainable development. Through its three core domains, knowledge mobilization, policy advocacy, and capacity building, the chair has generated substantial, systemic impact. Through global reports, policy dialogues, and training programs, the Chair has influenced higher education policy, fostered international networks, and contributed to embedding engagement and participatory research into the everyday functions of universities. This paper demonstrates how universities can contribute to social change by working closely with communities, promoting sustainable development, and strengthening their social responsibility.
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    Higher education-community-industry engagement: Forging meaningful partnerships across ASEAN & Asia
    (2012) Tandon, Rajesh
    Dr. Rajesh Tandon delivered this keynote at AsiaEngage's 2012 regional conference on higher education, community and industry partnerships across ASEAN and Asia. He opens by describing how interconnected the world has become, pointing to Europe's stagnant economies, rising inequality, and ecological strain across Asia. From there, he turns to knowledge production, framing it as a space full of both promise and conflict. He says universities have long treated themselves as the only real producers of knowledge, pushing aside indigenous, intuitive and community-based ways of knowing. Partnerships with communities are not easy. They carry old histories of exclusion and mistrust and need what he calls bridging leadership to work. He points to Europe's science shop movement as one model and announces UNESCO's new chair on community-based research, co-led with Budd Hall. He closes with a story from his own dissertation fieldwork, where a village elder challenges his narrow idea of data.
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    Bridging knowledge cultures: A guide for community practitioners and community organizations
    (UNESCO Chair, 2024) Lepore, Walter; Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
    This guide by Walter Lepore, Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon is about helping community practitioners and organisations build stronger research partnerships with universities. It draws on the larger Bridging Knowledge Cultures project, which studied ten K4C hubs across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Colombia and Canada. The book explores partnerships in areas such as fishing communities, maternal health care, waste management, and early childhood education. Community knowledge is rooted in lived experience and oral tradition, while academic knowledge is typically validated through peer review and disciplinary standards, a gap that often leaves community knowledge undervalued within formal academic settings. It closes with practical recommendations for practitioners facilitating collaboration between communities and universities, pointing to trust, mutual respect, and the recognition of practices like storytelling as legitimate forms of knowledge
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    Perspectives on community practices: Living and learning in community
    (Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani, 2015) Krašovec, Sabina Jelenc; Štefanc, Damijan; Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh; Tremblay, Crystal; Singh, Wafa
    This book presents the findings of the 2015 European Society for Research on the Education of Adults conference and brings together a rich collection of research that explores how communities learn, organise, resist and transform across varied contexts. It covers themes such as adult learning and wellbeing, intergenerational spaces of experience, feminist work in public museums, learning cities and regions, community resilience, applied theatre and transformative learning, and the co-construction of knowledge in community–university partnerships. Contributions such as Adult Learning and Wellbeing: Between Body Politics and the Body Politic, Community Building as Forum and Arena, and Challenges in the Co-Construction of Knowledge foreground tensions between policy, participation, power and everyday practice. The strength of this book lies in its plurality. It holds together critical, empirical and practice-based insights, making it an important resource for understanding community learning in complex and changing times.
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    Fifteen years of Participatory-Research-in-Asia
    (Participation & Governance, 1997) Tandon, Rajesh
    We have just completed fifteen years of our experience as PRIA. The seeds of this organisation were sown by the early work on participatory research during the late 70s. That experience provided the philosophical basis for our work: Knowledge is Power. This perspective inspired the early activities we undertook by promoting a number of initiatives which emphasised recognition and articulation of indigenous popular knowledge in the fields of education, health-care, natural resource management etc. Over the years, different ways of expressing that philosophy gained ascendancy in PRIA's work. Today, our work in strengthening Panchayati Raj Institutions as mechanisms of local self-governance is its most explicit expression. We are using methods of organising and promoting the learning of leadership in local bodies to play their rightful role as self-governing institutions. Special emphasis is being placed on learning and empowerment of new leadership in these institutions: women and socioeconomically weaker sections of society.
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    Participatory research: Revisiting the roots
    (2002) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd L; Brown, L. David; Jaitli, Harsh; Kanhere, Vijay; Small, Dele; Gaventa, John; Merrifield, Juliet; Madiath, Anthya; Belamide, Eileen; Bryceson, Deborah; Manicom, Linzi; Kassam, Yusuf; Vio Grossi, Francisco; Hirabai Hiralal, Mohan; Tare, Savita; Batliwala, Srilatha; Patel, Sheela; Khot, Seemantinee
    It has been nearly a quarter of a century since the early formulations of participatory research began to be presented hesitatingly and tentatively. Those early proposals were essentially a reaction to the classical methodology of research and inquiry which had alienated the social science research enterprise from the very people about whom research was being carried out. In a simple way, stated then, participatory research challenged the 'monopoly of knowledge' which has been vested in the elites of our society. The production of knowledge, its certification and dissemination have been controlled by intellectual elites in all human societies, since a long period of time. The Brahmanical order justified its hierarchy by making the distinction between intellectual work and physical work. Brahmins were the repositories of knowledge and wisdom, could use the language of God's 'Sanskrit', and interpret the religious scriptures to prescribe the social norms and behaviour for the rest of society. Similar Brahmanical orders have existed in other cultures and other histories. Therefore, the first significant contribution of participatory research has been to challenge the mythical and artificial divide between mental labour and manual labour, intellectual pursuits and physical pursuits. It has questioned the belief that capacity for intellectual work resides in only a few. It argued that popular knowledge, ability to produce and use knowledge, is a universal human phenomenon, and such capacity exists in all human beings, so argued participatory research then.