Knowledge And Decolonial Politics

Knowledge and Decolonial Politics: A Critical Reader offers the perspectives of educators and learners within current developmental settings, highlighting the dominance of Western epistemologies in ‘academic knowledge making’, and the systemic barriers faced whilst trying to implement decolonial practices.

This provocative book is anchored on the insurgent and resurgent spirit of decolonization of the twenty-first century. The author calls upon Africa to turn over a new leaf in the domains of politics, economy, and knowledge as it frees itself from imperial global designs and global coloniality. With a focus on Africa and its Diaspora, the author calls for a radical turning over of a new leaf, predicated on decolonial turn and epistemic freedom. The key themes subjected to decolonial analysis include: (1) decolonization/decoloniality – articulating the meaning and contribution of the decolonial turn; (2) subjectivity/identity – examining the problem of Blackness (identity) as external and internal invention; (3) the Bandung spirit of decolonization as an embodiment of resistance and possibilities, development and self-improvement; (4) development and self-improvement – of African political economy, as entangled in the colonial matrix of power, and the African Renaissance, as weakened by undecolonized political and economic thought; and (5) knowledge – the role of African humanities in the struggle for epistemic freedom. This groundbreaking volume opens the intellectual canvas on the challenges and possibilities of African futures. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Politics and International Relations, Development, Sociology, African Studies, Black Studies, Education, History Postcolonial Studies, and the emerging field of Decolonial Studies.

In The Politics of Decolonial Investigations Walter D. Mignolo provides a sweeping examination of how coloniality has operated around the world in its myriad forms from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Decolonial border thinking allows Mignolo to outline how the combination of the self-fashioned narratives of Western civilization and the hegemony of Eurocentric thought served to eradicate all knowledges in non-European languages and praxes of living and being. Mignolo also traces the geopolitical origins of racialized and gendered classifications, modernity, globalization, and cosmopolitanism, placing them all within the framework of coloniality. Drawing on the work of theorists and decolonial practitioners from the Global South and the Global East, Mignolo shows how coloniality has provoked the emergence of decolonial politics initiated by delinking from all forms of Western knowledge and subjectivities. The urgent task, Mignolo stresses, is the epistemic reconstitution of categories of thought and praxes of living destituted in the very process of building Western civilization and the idea of modernity. The overcoming of the long-lasting hegemony of the West and its distorted legacies is already underway in all areas of human existence. Mignolo underscores the relevance of the politics of decolonial investigations, in and outside the academy, to liberate ourselves from canonized knowledge, ways of knowing, and praxes of living.

This book provides a compendium of strategies for decolonizing global knowledge orders, research methodology and teaching in the social sciences. The volume presents recent work on epistemological critique informed by postcolonial thought, and outlines strategies for actively decolonizing social science methodology and learning/teaching environments that will be of great utility to IR and other academic fields that examine global order. The volume focuses on the decolonization of intellectual history in the social sciences, followed by contributions on social science methodology and lastly more practical suggestions for educational/didactical approaches in academic teaching. The book is not confined to the classical format of research articles but moves beyond such boundaries by bringing in spoken word and interviews with scholar-activists. Overall this volume enables researchers to practice a reflexive and situated knowledge production more suitable to confronting present-day global predicaments. The perspectives mobilise a constructive critique, but also allow for a reconstruction of methodologies and methods in ways that open up new lenses, new archives of knowledges and reconsider the who, the how and the what of the craft of social science research into global order.

2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention To be able to promote effective anti-colonial and decolonial education, it is imperative that educators employ indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance hopes to contribute to the search for a more radical decolonial education and practice that allows for the coexistence of, and conversation among, “multiple-epistemes.” The book approaches the topics from three perspectives: • the thought that our epistemological frameworks must consider the body of the knowledge producer, place, history, politics and contexts within which knowledge is produced, • that the anti-colonial is intimately connected to decolonization, and by extension, decolonization cannot happen solely through Western science scholarship, and • that the complex problems and challenges facing the world today defy universalist solutions, but can still be remedied. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism. Perfect for courses such as: Anti-Colonial Thought, Indigenous Knowledges, and Decolonization, Education, Social Development, and Social Justice Research in Education, Race, Indigeneity, and the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Marginality and the Politics of Resistance, Indigenous Settler Relations Issues for Teachers, Education Leadership, Reform, and Curriculum Innovation, Leadership in Social-Change Organizations, Adaptive Leadership: Power, Identity, and Social Change, Equity & Anti-Oppression in Practice and the Promise of Diversity: Addressing Race and Power in Education Settings, Strategies and Policies for Narrowing Racial Achievement, and Major Concepts and Issues in Education.

Shortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protestors called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa's struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation? This edited volume brings together the best minds in curriculum theory to address this important question. In the process, several critical questions are raised: Is decolonisation simply a slogan for addressing other pressing concerns on campuses and in society? What is the colonial legacy with respect to curriculum and can it be undone? How is the project of curriculum decolonisation similar to or different from the quest for postcolonial knowledge, indigenous knowledge or a critical theory of knowledge? What does decolonisation mean in a digital age where relationships between knowledge and power are shifting? The book combines strong conceptual analyses with novel case studies of attempts to 'do decolonisation' in settings as diverse as South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Mauritius. Such a comparative perspective enables reasonable judgements to be made about the prospects for institutional take-up within the curriculum of century-old universities.

For many institutions, to ignore your university’s ranking is to become invisible, a risky proposition in a competitive search for funding. But rankings tell us little if anything about the education, scholarship, or engagement with communities offered by a university. Drawing on a range of research and inquiry-based methods, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge exposes how universities became servants to the education industry and its impact. Conceptually unique in its scope, Global University Rankings and the Politics of Knowledge addresses the lack of empirical research behind university and journal ranking systems. Chapters from internationally recognized scholars in decolonial studies provide readers with robust frameworks to understand the intersections of coloniality and Indigeneity and how they play out in higher education. Contributions from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts explore the political economy of rankings within the contexts of the Global North and South, and examine alternatives to media-driven rankings. This book allows readers to consider the intersections of power and knowledge within the wider contexts of politics, culture, and the economy, to explore how assumptions about gender, social class, sexuality, and race underpin the meanings attached to rankings, and to imagine a future that confronts and challenges cognitive, environmental, and social injustice.

This book develops an integrated perspective on the practices and politics of making knowledge work in inclusive development and innovation. While debates about development and innovation commonly appeal to the authority of academic researchers, many current approaches emphasise the plurality of actors with relevant expertise for addressing livelihood challenges. Adopting an action-oriented and reflexive approach, this volume explores the variety of ways in which knowledge works, paying particular attention to dilemmas and controversies. The six parts of the book address the complex interplay of knowledge and politics, starting with the need for knowledge integration in the first part and decolonial perspectives on the politics of knowledge integration in the second part. The following three parts focus on the practices of inclusive development and innovation through three major themes of learning for transformative change, evidence, and digitisation. The final part of the book addresses the governance of knowledge and innovation in the light of political struggles about inclusivity. Exploring conceptual and practical themes through case studies from the Global North and South, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners researching and working in development studies, epistemology, innovation studies, science and technology studies, and sustainability studies more broadly.