Epistemological Movement Research Articles

An Econcentric Turn in the Transitional Restorative Justice Process in Colombia

ABSTRACT∞ This article reflects on how Colombia, as an important laboratory in transitional restorative justice, a 60-year long internal conflict, is experiencing an ‘ecocentric turn.’ This transition is not free from contradiction, ambivalence or great challenges. For this article, ‘ecocentric turn’ means an epistemological movement from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism, with biocentrism as the middle stage between the two ends. We argue that the ecocentric turn does not exclusively imply postures that are purely anthropocentric or ecocentric, but also ones that are hybrid and eclectic, which for the purposes of this article will be called biocentric positions. The ecocentric turn is reviewed on two levels: the first is the institutional level, focusing on the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP for its name in Spanish); and the second level corresponds to the experience of Palestina, Huila, a non-ethnic campesino community.

Superioritas Laki-laki atas Perempuan

The women's movement in Islam is in a dilemmatic position. One group thought there was nothing to argue about with women. While other groups consider the fate of women has not been completed. The first group views that Islam highly upholds the dignity of women. This group usually criticizes the Western-style women's movement which is considered un-Islamic. By stating that there are no similarities between men and women in any way. What exists is similarity in dissimilarity. Because even though there are many similarities that the Qur'an reveals, it turns out that there are many more dissimilarities. In principle, women and men are physically and biologically different. According to them, the best women's movement is the dedication of women in the household, helping husbands as defenders and guardians of family morality. Because the moral crisis that hit the younger generation is caused by the small role of women as guardians, educators and protectors of the household. While the second group, considers the problem of women's fate has not been completed. There are still many aspects that should receive attention. Theoretically and methodologically this group draws on concepts from the West, although sometimes without criticism. This is because Western feminism is more based on a paradigmatic and epistemological movement. However, ideally and normatively this moderate group still uses the Qur'an and Sunnah as the basis of its movement. Therefore, this group does not view the domestic role of women as a setback, as long as it is carried out not by force or coercion by men.

A matripotência nos terreiros de candomblés pelas mãos das Makotas

This article is an excerpt from a doctoral research that aims to analyze the feminine in the candomblés of Angola in Brazil, specifically the feminine positions of Makotas. We will use as a theoretical framework authors whose work focuses on African ancestry, such as African Womanism, by Dove and Matripotência, by Oyěwùmí. In this sense, as a methodology we will adopt the everyday studies present in Alves and Caputo, as well as Alves' educational networks. It should be noted that this research is part of a decolonial and anti-racist epistemological movement.

Towards De-Colonial Agitations in University Classrooms: The Quest for Afrocentric Pedagogy

This study empirically conceptualised and rationalised decoloniality as a way to bridge the vacuumed of Americentric classroom hegemony in an attempt to reposition classroom with Afrocentricism as a dominant practice in Universities. “Ubuntugogy” as a transformational deviation from the Americentric teaching and learning is adopted as a theoretical framework. The study is situated in the transformative paradigm because its focus is to propose “ubuntugogy” as a way to deconstruct Eurocentric hegemony in university classrooms. Critical Emancipatory Research CER as an epistemological movement that is channelled towards emancipation and freedom from ideological enslavement is used as research design, and the participants consist of 10 people, 5 actively experienced lecturers, and 5 students were selected in the QwaQwa campus of the University of the Free State. Free attitude interview was used to collect data from the participant and the data collected were analysed using Thomas and Harden’s three steps of thematic analysis. The study found out that the curriculum and the perpendicular of language and cultural diversities, and colonization of mind and irresistible western classroom system are the significant challenges of implementing “ubuntugogy” in the classroom. The study subsequently proposed curriculum adjustment to accommodate trans-languaging and cultural diversities, and inculcation of self-worth and self-esteem to respond to the western irresistibility in the system with the conclusion that Afrocentric classroom may be one dimensional and thus needs to be redirected to speak to the issues of globalization. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19.4.2

Interdisciplinarity from Below

Interdisciplinarity is one of the key catchphrases that define the ongoing educational reform in the Philippines. Through the K-12 basic education curriculum and the revamped tertiary-level general education curriculum, bureaucrats and their partners in the academe seek to equip students with knowledge and skills that will allow them to think and act beyond their chosen field. Such an edge supposedly affords graduates a competitive advantage in a highly globalized labor market. Nonetheless, one must not be carried away by the hype; interdisciplinarity, especially this version imposed from above, still has to be interrogated. For one, lost in the state-directed discourse of interdisciplinarity is the emancipatory tradition arising from epistemological movements that question methodological and conceptual conventions. In the discipline of history, one such epistemological movement—with “movement” deployed here in its broadest sense—is the push toward crafting a “history from below.” Foregrounding diversity rather than orthodoxy, this historiographical turn has sought to give voice to the voiceless. In the Philippines, the nineteenth-century ilustrados’ conception of the nascent field of Philippine studies and the social histories that broke new ground starting in the 1970s best represent this progressive knowledge–power nexus. These examples demonstrate that interdisciplinarity, for it to be beneficial, should not be the goal itself but a means to an end. Without substantial changes emanating “from below,” especially among teachers and students from the huge number of educational institutions neglected by the state, the promise of interdisciplinarity that the Philippine government is peddling is nothing but the production of fantasy.

MODERNIDADE, DESCOLONIALIDADE E EDUCAÇÃO POPULAR: PERSPECTIVAS DA PEDAGOGIA DA ESPERANÇA DE PAULO FREIRE

This paper inserts itself on the debate about the Descolonial reflection, which has been carrying out a fundamental epistemological movement for a critical and utopic renovation of social sciences in Latin America in the twentieth-first century. This scenario composes the context which includes Popular Education as a pedagogical proposal in the twentieth century as opposed to the processes of domination inaugurated in Latin America from its 'discovery'. The contemporaneity of Paulo Freire thought as an epistemological reference for the construction of a liberating praxis and its articulation with the Descolonial reflection will be our analysis axis so as to promote a dialogue between them in order to seek a conection between their educational proposals / policies / organizational empowerment in the Eurocentric mirror.

Decoloniality as the Future of Africa

AbstractDecoloniality is not only a long‐standing political and epistemological movement aimed at liberation of (ex‐) colonized peoples from global coloniality but also a way of thinking, knowing, and doing. It is part of marginalized but persistent movements that merged from struggles against the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, neo‐colonialism, and underdevelopment as constitutive negative elements of Euro‐North American‐centric modernity. As an epistemological movement, it has always been overshadowed by hegemonic Euro‐North American‐centric intellectual thought and social theories. As a political movement, it has consistently been subjected to surveillance of global imperial designs and colonial matrices of power. But today, decoloniality is remerging at a time when the erstwhile hegemonic Euro‐North American‐centric modernity and its dominant epistemology are experiencing an epistemological break. This epistemic break highlights how Euro‐North American‐centric modernity has created modern problems of which it has no modern solutions and how theories/knowledges generated from a Euro‐North American‐centric context have become exhausted if not obstacles to the understanding of contemporary human issues. This essay introduces, defines, and explains the necessity for decoloniality as a liberatory language of the future for Africa.

An Attempt to Empower Teachers in Education: An Epistemological Look

A teacher, as a cultural broker and the inheritor, critic and interpreter of culture, can be used to orient discussion and action in a particular direction. The knowledge that teachers need to have is more complicated than just knowing and using facts. The paper, incompatible with positivistic epistemological movement, holds that the complexity of classroom dynamics cannot be achieved simply by transmitting knowledge. Teacher education is an attempt to equip prospective teachers with the knowledge, behaviors, attitudes, and skills that they require to perform their tasks more effectively. Thus, training teachers obviously involves equipping them with various objects of culture and different types of knowledge essential to their cultural training. The present study, in disfavor with the simplicity orientation in positivism, holds that the reality in the classroom life is so complicated that we cannot achieve it by setting up clinical experimental designs.

Philosophical Progression, Causality, and the “Principles” of Dante’s Commedia

This article focuses on the external features of Dante’s epistemology (i.e., objects of knowledge) as they materialize in the Commedia through the Scholastic notion of principles, understood as “beginnings”or “sources” (rather than more narrowly as “fundamental truths”). While causal knowledge appears throughout Dante’s poem, I show how each canticle significantly culminates in thematic beginnings: Lucifer for the Inferno, Earthly Paradise for the Purgatorio, and God for the Paradiso. By embedding these historic beginnings into the conclusions of each canticle, the poet is able to highlight the pilgrim’s philosophical progression conceived as an epistemological movement toward principles which parallels the protagonist’s metaphysical advancement toward the First Principle. As the physical and metaphysical journey ends with God as the Supreme Being, this similar development applies to the philosophical journey concluding with God as Truth.

Tekstualiteit van kinematografie: Filmhermeneutiek as publieke teologie

Tendencies in film hermeneutics. Hollywood is synonymous with the tradition of images that are used to create emotion, to strengthen attachment, and to encourage imitation. In a certain sense these values are also encouraged by the church as institution. Scholars who study the connection between cinematography and theology acknowledge that the cinema has become the ‘principal new church’ for post-secularised believers. Films are regarded among the ‘big books’ of ‘postmodern culture’. In this article it is argued that film hermeneutics should be regarded as an epistemological movement which has departed from a typographical culture, including logocentrism, phonocentrism, and text-focused cognition. The movement is towards a visual culture, including audiovisual and virtual realities, and is contextualised in a cyber-community. Tendencies in films with biblical and religious dimensions and themes, including the way in which the Christ figure is portrayed, are discussed. In this article the value of film hermeneutics – that is, the ‘textuality of the screen’ – as public theology, is also identified.

Authority in Early Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka

This paper examines the role of pramāṇa in Jayānanda’s commentary to Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra. As the only extant Indian commentary on any of Candrakīrti’s works (available only in Tibetan translation), written in the twelfth century when Candrakīrti’s interpretation of Madhyamaka first became widely valued, Jayānanda’s Madhyamakāvatāraṭīkā is crucial to our understanding of early Prāsaṅgika thought. In the portions of his text examined here, Jayānanda offers a pointed critique of both svatantra inferences and the broader Buddhist epistemological movement. In developing this critique, he cites at length Candrakīrti’s Prasannapadā treatment of svatantra, and so comes to comment on the locus classicus for the Svātantrika-Prāsaṅgika distinction. For Jayānanda, svatantra inferences are emblematic of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti epistemological tradition, which asserts an unwarranted validity to human cognition. As such, Nāgārjuna’s philosophy admits neither svatantra inference, nor pramāṇa (as “valid cognition”) more generally. Instead, Jayānanda argues for Nāgārjuna’s “authority” (pramāṇa) as our prime means for knowing reality. Jayānanda’s account of authority offers a helpful counterbalance to the current trend of portraying Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka as a form of skepticism.

Editorial

Editorial

The ntersection of agricultural sustainability and new farmer education: A sociohistorical analysis

The literature in sociology and rural studies suggests that since the industrialized agro-food system continues to dominate the influence of production and marketing towards a global trajectory, the flow of information and opportunity pertaining to agriculture and rural development is predominantly oriented along this same path. In this view, some authors argue that in order to have sustainable agricultural development, we need to have an alternative system of research and education, one that contrasts with the way the US public system of agriculture has operated for the past 50 years. This paper examines “new farmer” education as one such alternative to the industrial extension project developed by a number of agricultural organizations providing sites of learning and resource for new kinds of agriculturists, particularly farmers engaged in alternative food systems. While it appears new farmer education is informed by the sustainable agriculture movement, it remains uncertain as to what this expression looks like and what purpose it serves. By reviewing the sociological and educational literature, this paper investigates the structural and cultural patterns that contribute to the formation of new farmer education since the Second World War. Thus, the paper further elucidates the ideological and discursive forces constituting and challenging new farmer education. Insights are offered for future in-depth studies of the implications of sustainable agricultural education and policy from political economy, epistemological, feminist, and new social movement perspectives.