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5
- Convenors:
-
Marieke van Winden (conference organiser)
(African Studies Centre Leiden)
David Millar (Millar Institute For Transdisciplinary And Development Studies)
Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju (University of Ilorin)
Albert Roca (University of Lleida)
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- Stream:
- E: Transdisciplinary debates
Long Abstract
In official curriculums of African schools and universities there is often a lot of resistance to include and use indigenous African knowledge : modes of knowledge – scientific and metaphysical, and modes of their transmission: through oral/informal forms, written/’formal’ forms, through institutional and non-institutional routes, through language(s), the arts and through artefacts of indigenous science and technology. What are the experiences of attempts to bring these ‘local’ forms of knowledge together with ‘formal’ forms, especially in African universities?
Accepted papers
Session 1Paper long abstract
Over the years, Music scholars have conducted African music research using universally accepted standards and languages from America and Europe. However, African music scholars have adopted indigenous concepts as the western idioms no longer serve the purpose of thorough academic research in African studies and ethnomusicology. Several music scholars have attempted a unified mode of concepts indigenous to the people in their region (Nketia, Nzewi, Ekwueme, Mapaya,). A major challenge is the use of language acceptable to all in the African region. While this seem to be successful with music scholars from these regions, there is still no unified system agreed upon that engages musical elements and concepts in the indigenous language. This paper, therefore, examines the use of indigenous languages in African music. It analysis the many attempts made by African scholars and highlights the challenges such could have on the overall music process in Africa. Ultimately, this study charts a way by which African musicians can start engaging in the 'scientification' process of African music using indigenous elements that the people will understand.
Paper short abstract
Most documentations and positions of advocacy for local (indigenous) knowledge to be incorporated into formal systems usually focus on integration into Courses, Programmes, Units, Departments, Centers and, on rare occasions, Faculties. In this matter discourses are limited to queries on programme designs, didactics, pedagogy, learning epistemologies.
Paper long abstract
We are desirous of moving the discourse to a higher level. Hence, our submission is to discuss the challenges in establishing a whole new institutions (university type Institutions) dedicated to local (Indigenous) knowledge and for such an Institution to be accepted into the frame of formal school systems. Issue of Accreditation and Re-Accreditation (Institutional and Programmatic), Affiliation, Supervisions of Researches, Grading and Passing of Researches, Acceptance, Quality Assurance, issues of accepting Final Products into the Mainstream for Establishments and Promotions. Although this is a limited case study (Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Studies) in one particular Country, Ghana, the richness of such a discussion will provide insights into the nuances and challenges to be anticipated for any desirous future to engage in such endeavours. The end results will certainly speak very well for integration both at the institutional and the policy levels for local/ indigenous knowledges and formal education institutions.
A Glocal Curricula: Integrating Global and Local Knowledge Systems in Higher Education
Madi Ditmars
(Leiden University)
Paper short abstract
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Paper long abstract
Higher education is key to achieve sustainable development, and internationalisation has become the vehicle to create knowledge societies. This leads to mounting tension between what is perceived as scientific-Western and indigenous-local knowledge systems. Decolonisation demands fuel resistance to the Eurocentric canon inherent in modern African curricula, and this rift impedes global collaboration and co-creation of knowledge to sustain life on earth.
The significance of indigenous knowledge is universally acknowledged, yet the compilation, documentation, validation and dissemination of local epistemologies in higher education remains an immense challenge. Community based- and participatory research approaches are increasing, but documented findings are seldom incorporated in education curricula. For it to happen requires deep reflection of local philosophies and skills to fuse global and local knowledge paradigms in internationally recognised qualifications.
During in-depth discussions at South African HE/TVET institutions participating in a Dutch funded triple-helix Food and Nutrition Security programme, many lecturers acknowledged that global knowledge sharing is crucial, but the ongoing epistemic injustice is pedagogically unsound. Their aspirations to place African values, beliefs, and local knowledge central in their teaching is challenged on different fronts. Documenting their perceptions, concerns, efforts and limited successes, the aim of this papers is to create a foundational base and a communal skills pool to truly democratise education on the African continent.
Compatibility between international and African expectations will create a level playing field in which collaborations are transformed into true partnerships that integrate scientific knowledge and technical skills with the wealth of African indigenous and local knowledge, which is still largely untapped.
Paper long abstract
The study examines the contending positions and impacts of Globalism and Localism on Local Knowledge System in Africa. Relying on insights and facts from indigenous local settlements in Africa, this study discovers how the forces of globalism are affecting the development of indigenous knowledge production. Thanks to the globalization process, information and knowledge system have thus been taken over the entire world.
Keywords: Globalism, Localism, Knowledge Production System, Africa
Integrating African indigenous knowledge systems: towards policy changes and a bi-system curriculum in the academy
Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju
(University of Ilorin)
Paper short abstract
This paper harvests indigenous knowledge policies and experiences within language and philosophy based departments in selected Nigerian universities. It proposes policy changes and a bi-system curriculum, towards the integration of indigenous knowledge systems within the academy.
Paper long abstract
A major challenge facing indigenous knowledge systems in general, and African indigenous knowledge systems (AIKS) in particular, is the identification and codification of those elements that can be said to properly constitute the systems, and establishment of modalities for their integration with universal, or modern, knowledge systems. It is not just enough to assert the existence or significance of indigenous knowledge, but rather essential to demonstrate these empirically and methodically, more so in the face of contestations over their validity. Within the context of this paper, it is only when such codification or identification is accomplished that indigenous knowledge systems can be integrated with universal knowledge systems and the associated educational curricular. Such integration within academic curricular is a necessary step towards creating bigger facilities or institutions to advance indigenous knowledge systems.
However, a related challenge is the continued rejection by many African faculties of indigenous sources of knowledge and wisdom. Many African institutions cite 'obsoleteness' and 'the need to move forward' to obstruct the integration of indigenous knowledge systems within their curricular. At faculty levels, such obstructions sometimes take the form of resistance to interdisciplinary cross-fertilisation, especially where such involves partnering with indigenous knowledge systems. For example (and this is not wholly hypothetical), a graduate student attempting to defend a thesis proposal on the use of Yoruba proverbs or other oral philosophical corpora such as the Ifa (divination) corpus in the resolution of conflicts or disputes in African literature might encounter a rather colonial throwback such as: 'why Yoruba proverbs? - this is a department of English!' Yet, the application of Hegelian or Marxian formulations (originally in German), or of Aristotelian or Socratic principles (originally in Greek), attracts no such sanction.
Programmes such as language nesting, bilingual education and inclusive curriculum exist in a number of indigenous knowledge initiative centres in Africa to help build indigenous knowledge capacities. This paper is concerned with language as a veritable source of indigenous knowledge, but also as a medium for the integration of indigenous knowledge and universal knowledge systems within academic curricular. It is well established that official policies do shape popular attitudes. The paper considers experiences within language and philosophy based departments in selected Nigerian universities. It proposes policy changes and a bi-system curriculum as part of efforts to create a subject place for indigenous knowledge systems within the academy.
Paper long abstract
Once upon a time, the academic discipline of the history of science mainly occupied itself with the occurrence of the Scientific Revolution in the West and its consequences. In recent years however, and with a particular nexus in The Netherlands, our understanding of the Scientific Revolution has started to change. As a result, the history of science seems to be gradually transforming into a broader history of knowledge. The underlying assumption is that all knowledge that seeks for regularities and patterns in nature and culture is worth of systematic study. (Rens Bod, A World of Patterns). This has opened up a research agenda in three directions. First, the humanities within the Western tradition are no longer regarded as the antithesis of the sciences but on a continuum with them. (Rens Bod, A New History of the Humanities, ) Second, knowledge being generated and used within practical traditions, such as the visual and the performing arts, are now deemed worthy of systematic study as knowledge. Within the Dutch context, Sven Dupré is an important proponent of this direction (Knowledge and Discernment in the Early Modern Arts), as is Henk Borgdorff as a theoretician of artistic research within an academic context (Art & Academia). Third, the discipline is opening itself up to non-Western forms of indigenous knowledge production. (Bonaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South and The End of the Cognitive Empire, among others). In my talk I want to invite scholars to understand their research within this context. What all three directions seems to have in common is that they are questioning the notion of rationality and objectivity as understood in the sciences (Lorraine Daston, Objectivity), as well as the division between nature and culture (Jürgen Renn, The Evolution of Knowledge). In this sense, indigenous (African) knowledge might be indispensable in intellectually tackling the global challenges of the 21st century, which ultimately root in Western scientific conceptions of the division between nature and culture.
Paper long abstract
Aspects of colonial language influence on the African linguistic landscape will not only be found in general usage, but also in the philosophical aesthetic sphere, where receding knowledge of indigenous language forms has led to the emergence of alien new forms. An example is the emergence of variants of traditional proverbs. The perceived misuse of the proverbs often generates resistance within the indigenous populations. The emergence of such variants of old traditional Yoruba proverbs in Nigeria, and such resistance, has been well established (Oloruntoba-Oju, 1997; Raji-Oyelade, 1997). Despite the extensive continuous use of these new proverbial forms in conversations and in aesthetic forms such as Nigerian literary texts and movies, many academics have not accepted these new forms and terms such as disruption, banality, blasphemy and rupture have been used to describe them. They are viewed as disruption or corruption of the traditional form and the philosophical import embedded in the traditional Yoruba proverbs. The aim of this paper is to examine the employment of both old (traditional) and new proverbial forms in the selected Yoruba movies, where the new forms also flourish, and in the light of academic attitudes towards variants of indigenous forms. The paper employs Oloruntoba-Ojus (1997) model, which classifies the new forms as a kind of paralanguage and subdivides variants of the original traditional proverbs into the counterproverbial, the metaproverbial and the pseudoproverbial. It also takes cognizance of the description of the latter as postproverbials (Raji-Oyelade, 1997). Using the movies of Tunde Kelani and Babatunde Omidina as exemplars, the paper acknowledges that it is not all the new proverbial forms that indicate a disruption of the philosophical import of the old proverbial forms. The paper therefore weighs in on the arguments for and against the continued employment of these new forms and their acceptance or integration within formal institutions.
Keywords: traditional Yoruba proverbs, Yoruba movies, counterproverbial, metaproverbial, pseudoproverbial, postproverbials
Paper long abstract
In this paper, we consider the nature of local knowledge and its implications for global health based on a literature review in order to examine the current nature of scientific research on the subject, focusing on the link between local knowledge and biomedical knowledge. It is based on the assumption that linking local and biomedical knowledge will increase access to health services and thus improve health. The research question what are the main barriers between the local and biomedical health systems in Africa, which current approach aim to bridge these barriers, and how adequate do they appear to be to be. The paper has the following structure. First, we define local knowledge in the context of global health. Next, we undertake a critical interpretive synthesis of the scientific literature on local knowledge and health. Based on this synthesis, we reach some conclusions about the perspective of local knowledge taken in the scientific literature. Finally, we consider the implications for the SDGs.
Covid-19, local knowledge and university training. A new opportunity
Albert Roca
(University of Lleida)
Paper long abstract
The communication explores the uses and conceptions of local knowledge that Covid19 has activated in different fields, preventive, therapeutic and socioeconomic. This local knowledge has been practically forgotten by international recommendations, despite the WHO strategy on TCM, and despite the fact that some recognized voices (Paul Richards, Mats Utas) have advocated activating the "local science" accumulated after the Ebola outbreak of 2014.
One of the potentials and challenges at the same time of African local knowledge is that it affects all fields of human activity, without establishing borders. This is due to the strong holistic component of African societies, which in turn determines the frequently religious and embodied (initiation) nature of knowledge. Therefore, as it is useless trying to produce something like recipes for customary hygienic practices, based on concrete scenarios (in Madagascar, Senegal, Mali ...), the aim of the communication is rather to survey how effective interaction spaces could be generated among very different epistemological systems (including a health component, specialist and community agency), allowing them to complement each other, and see how this knowledge could be incorporated into university studies.
The finding that most experts in the field, neither African nor European, do not know how to manage or even how to articulate with this type of knowledge, was the wishbone of the CUDA, Cultures and Development in Africa master, which was taught in different African (UCAD, Yaoundé I, Antananarivo) and Catalan (Barcelona, Lleida, URV, UPF, URL) universities between 2010 and 2014. The communication will try to connect with this experience, as well as with the joint work accumulated by the SACUDA network of researchers (Salus, Culture and Development in Africa).
Forgetting Alma Ata
Pino Schirripa
(University of Messina)
Paper long abstract
After Who assembly in Alma Ata lot of efforts had been made in attempting to integrate therapeuticallocal knowledge and biomedicine, especially in concrete project.
Yet today the local knowledge seems to be marginalized on advantage of biomedicine.
The paper will start from a critical evaluation of some of this experiences to try to understand if there is still room for an integrated approach and how it could be thought in a larger idea of integration.
Paper long abstract
The study analyses African environmental cosmology, ecology and labour in Sirisia, Bungoma County using the concepts of innovation, adaptation and commercialization. The study applied these concepts to explain how African societal needs were dictated, initiated and sustained by the environment. The concept of innovation embraces the dynamism of African communities and therefore, contradicts analyses that portray them as resistant to change. Adaptation on the other hand was used to explain the copying mechanisms of African communities to the environment and the link between the ideas, techniques and approaches used by African communities to work the environment for survival. Commercialization presupposes the changes embraced by African households in response to market forces. A study of environmental cosmology and labour in Sirisia, accordingly is an illustration of this state of affairs. The paper holds that, commercialization disrupted African cosmology, ecology and disoriented adaptation to the environment. The paper further notes that, African societies were not only close to nature but to them the environment symbolised life, a departure from western view that "this world is not my home." Environmental use was therefore dictated by nature; it was a field of abundance. The paper was based on archival research, oral interview as well as analyzing literature on the impact of capitalism on environment
Towards endogenous education, research and development: lessons from Ghana, India and Bolivia
Bertus Haverkort
(Compas)
David Millar
(Millar Institute For Transdisciplinary And Development Studies)
Paper long abstract
The authors have had the privilege to work together for about 40 years.
The cooperation between the two authors started in the 1970-ies with a World Bank sponsored agricultural development programme. Since then cooperation went through different phases. It experienced failures, adjudgments, and innovations during which the attention gradually moved away from agricultural production based on western knowledge to ecology to sustainability, indigenous knowledge and endogenous education and research and cumulated in a programme for transdisciplinary sciences and co-creation of sciences.
This conference paper gives a summary of the learning experiences and the main conclusions, with specific reference to Ghana.
The experiences with The Green Revolution, driven by western technologies and neo liberal business model and implemented with its top down method of communication, failed for a number of reasons: It erroneously assumed that western technology was applicable in an environment that deviates from the situation where it emerged. In most cases, the ecology, the economic and social conditions as well as the worldviews and values of the people where so different that in most African countries and rain fed areas on the globe, these programmes failed. The authors were part of this failure and decided to follow a different approach: agro-ecology with a focus on the optimal use of local resources and local knowledge of the people. This approach gave promising results, but again it was learned that the worldviews, values and the way people come to knowledge was not sufficiently taken into account. And, this learning lesson was also drawn in other African as well as in Asian and Latin American countries.
Therefore the authors made in depth studies of the worldviews, values and the knowledge system in communities in 16 countries in three continents. This allowed to make generalizations on the role and relevance of local peoples knowledge and the way this can be enhanced by internal learning, and by exchange between knowledge communities in other cultures. It had led to an approach of endogenous development and co-evolution of, education and research.