Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
Shailaja Fennell
(University of Cambridge)
Albert Sanghoon Park
(University of Oxford)
Format:
Panel
Streams:
Knowledge production
Sessions:
Wednesday 6 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Leaving, Living and Learning: Knowledge Production and its Impact on Designing Just Sustainable Futures.
Panel P31a at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
This panel examines knowledge production to recover alternative ways of conceptualising sustainable development policies. It invites diverse subjects and approaches, from urbanisation/migration to human/non-human relations, decolonising knowledge, cross-disciplinary/linguistic analyses, and beyond.
Long Abstract:
Sustainable development remains elusive. The mainstream focus on economic growth, on modernity, and the power of science and technology, reduced our human and natural worlds to inputs.
Present conceptions of development and their historiographies remain highly fragmented. Two conspicuous gaps are: (1) a dearth in development interpretations from non-Western languages and transnational spaces, (2) limited analysis of this disjointed knowledge production on sustainable development.
Furthermore, how communities and institutions live, learn, and leave, and are impacted by development policies are erased by these lacunae. Consequently, this panel is open to interdisciplinary and multi-linguistic interventions to recover and re-conceptualise sustainable development ideas and policies.
Sample topics might include:
1. Moving towards non-linear theories and histories of development
2. Recovering lost concepts/conceptions of sustainable development
3. Oppressive relations across human and/or non-human subjects and spaces
We encourage papers that reflect on knowledge production as a means towards imagining just sustainable futures.
The convenors will undertake a collective gaze of the milestones such as the creation of international development institutions in the aftermath of WWI and WWII, and how local and national knowledge production was regarded by these global engagements.
Panelists will upload pre-recorded presentations, and convenors will collate the set of questions from all panelists and discussants. Themes emerging from the questions will be provided by the convenors at the start of the session(s). Each discussant will provide a seven-minute commentary, each panelist has three minutes to respond. The convenors will then moderate and open the floor to questions from the audience.
In this paper I would like to bring attention to the role of listening in knowledge production. To build towards a sustainable and socially just future, I would like to create a space that foregrounds knowledge production as a dialogic process and accounts for the positionality of the listener.
Paper long abstract:
I would like to approach this panel with the question that guided my Ph.D. thesis: Can the Coloniser Listen?
Spivak (1988) asked, Can the Subaltern Speak? and drew attention to the impossibility of the subaltern woman having a voice that is free from colonialism. Sharpe (2008), a student of Spivak, also proposed that non-Western forms of 'knowing' or acquiring knowledge of the world have been relegated to the margins of intellectual discourse; margins shaped by the creation of the 'other', 'orient', 'over there' objects of study in the colonial project. To be known, therefore, Sharpe (2008) argues that the subaltern must subsequently abandon 'traditional' ways of thinking, reasoning, and speaking.
But what if we shift the focus from the subaltern abandoning 'traditional' ways of speaking and instead foreground the situated knowledges of the listener, and knowledge production as a dialogic, pluriversal process?
When listening is implicated in the process of knowledge production, it requires us to be mindful of what we are (un)able to hear. In this workshop I would like us to consider what happens when we acknowledge our (in)ability to hear -- the (im)possibility of listening between standpoints or situated knowledges. Do we experience what I have termed 'ontological deafness'; a deafness that is produced and sustained by a priori theories of 'being' in the world, or can a turn to listening create new possibilities for more sustainable future?
Through the comparative analysis of Africa's Ubuntu and Korea's Dure, this study aims to re-launch the idea of degrowth and sustainable development as a way to create alternative sources for public goods which can be shared by community members.
Paper long abstract:
In multiple 'non-Western' settings and languages personhood is understood, imagined and lived in a more relational manner, different from dominant 'Western' understandings focusing on the atomized individual which have strongly shaped our globalized capitalist world. An African example is the philosophy of Ubuntu - Umntu Ngumtu Ngabanye Abantu (a person is a person through her relationship with other people) - which inspires us to think differently how we stand in relationship with each other, wherever we live but also how we may reconceptualise our relationship with non-humans and our understanding of solidarity. Similar to Africa's Ubuntu, the Korean tradition of Dure is a type of collective labouring operation within farming communities, by which farmers work together on each other's farms, so that they can support each other and enrich solidarity for social economies.
Through the comparative analysis of Ubuntu and Dure, this study aims to re-launch the idea of degrowth, not understood as regression or recession, but as a way to steer away from the mantra of GDP growth and instead create alternative sources for public goods which can be shared by community members. This would mean huge opportunities for the Global South, in the current system of unequal exchange largely relegated to supply labour, resources and raw materials at the expense of ecological riches and diversity. These 'non-Western' views on personhood and humanity, as well as imaginaries, conceptualizations and theorization regarding our understandings of degrowth and sustainable development may be combined with debates on "alternatives to development."
This paper considers three selected epistemological perspectives that can shape decolonial perspectives towards redressing power imbalances within Africa's knowledge production and research ecosystem.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers three selected epistemological perspectives that can shape decolonial perspectives towards redressing power imbalances within Africa's knowledge production and research ecosystem. The epistemological perspectives are the "Colonial Matrix of Power" (Mignolo and Walsh 2018), the "Empire Framework" (Ndlovu Gatsheni 2018) and "Sociology of Absences" (Santos 2007). After a brief introduction, section two synthesises the selected decolonial perspectives, focusing on three themes: (1) the decolonial framework of inquiry, (2) the epistemological orientation, and (3) the key concepts. The synthesis provides a deeper understanding of colonialism and coloniality and their direct implications on knowledge production. The underlying purpose is to underscore the vital role of epistemological orientations, both as sources of critical insights to examine the mainstream knowledge framework and as sources of decolonial perspectives. This dual purpose of epistemological perspectives is further explored throughout the paper. Then the paper specifically focuses on the fields of urban studies, development studies and education as case studies to demonstrate how the three decolonial perspectives contribute to decolonising knowledge production specifically in Africa and other regions.
This study explores resilience policy and knowledge production in the contexts of British and Indian agriculture. In particular, it will focus on how 'resilience' is defined by whom, and what opportunities or challenges remain hidden across these national discourses.
Paper long abstract:
Resilience has emerged as a key theme in the discussions of sustainable development and climate action. The recent scholarship on resilience suggests policy actions for building resilience as sustainable when their impacts confer to the planetary boundaries. The challenge is that the conditions in which socio-ecological systems function are disparate across space. Therefore, achieving global action to tackle climate change is a challenge. For instance, while dense populations and increasing climate variability characterise the agricultural sector of the global south, mechanisation and loss of bio-diversity characterise the global north. Community participation and collective action is promoted for better resource management in the south, while land management and conservation at a scale is promoted in the north. Similarly, while mitigating climate shocks is at the core of policy action in the former, strategies for climate adaptation lie in the latter. Does this imply that the scope for collaboration for global climate action is inherently limited?
The central objective of this study is to identify opportunities for north-south and south-south collaboration, specifically in the agricultural sector. This is achieved through comparative analysis of knowledge production in Indian and British agricultural policies. Using semantic analysis of government policy documents, this study will trace how 'resilience' is defined in agricultural policies (and by who, for whom, and why). This will, in turn, be paired with insights from knowledge production from local actors working on resilience.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality, and to see the links to virtual rooms. Log in
Albert Sanghoon Park (University of Oxford)
Short Abstract:
This panel examines knowledge production to recover alternative ways of conceptualising sustainable development policies. It invites diverse subjects and approaches, from urbanisation/migration to human/non-human relations, decolonising knowledge, cross-disciplinary/linguistic analyses, and beyond.
Long Abstract:
Sustainable development remains elusive. The mainstream focus on economic growth, on modernity, and the power of science and technology, reduced our human and natural worlds to inputs.
Present conceptions of development and their historiographies remain highly fragmented. Two conspicuous gaps are: (1) a dearth in development interpretations from non-Western languages and transnational spaces, (2) limited analysis of this disjointed knowledge production on sustainable development.
Furthermore, how communities and institutions live, learn, and leave, and are impacted by development policies are erased by these lacunae. Consequently, this panel is open to interdisciplinary and multi-linguistic interventions to recover and re-conceptualise sustainable development ideas and policies.
Sample topics might include:
1. Moving towards non-linear theories and histories of development
2. Recovering lost concepts/conceptions of sustainable development
3. Oppressive relations across human and/or non-human subjects and spaces
We encourage papers that reflect on knowledge production as a means towards imagining just sustainable futures.
The convenors will undertake a collective gaze of the milestones such as the creation of international development institutions in the aftermath of WWI and WWII, and how local and national knowledge production was regarded by these global engagements.
Panelists will upload pre-recorded presentations, and convenors will collate the set of questions from all panelists and discussants. Themes emerging from the questions will be provided by the convenors at the start of the session(s). Each discussant will provide a seven-minute commentary, each panelist has three minutes to respond. The convenors will then moderate and open the floor to questions from the audience.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -