Epistemological Shift Research Articles

Tracking the Decolonial in African Christian Theology

AbstractDrawing on the framework and pluriversalist vision of decoloniality, this article offers a conceptual mapping of theoretical debates and trends in recent discourse on the decolonization of theology in the Southern African context with a view to outlining key missiological implications of such debates. It posits a view of African decolonial theology as the foregrounding of local, indigenous, contextual knowledge in discourse and as the praxis of faith rooted in contextual analysis of historical realities. This contribution articulates the notion of “mission from the margins,” derived from Together towards Life, as a decolonial mode of mission that gestures toward an epistemological shift in missional thinking. An initial version of this paper was presented at the seminar on decolonization organized by the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism that was held in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2023.

Facing Depletion. Artworks for an Epistemological Shift in the Collapse Era

This article first reports a victory of technosolutionism over the other alternatives to the ongoing collapse (species extinction, ecosystems depletion...). The victory is considered double: extraction can continue to increase (quantity and scope) and the devices made by technoscience are accepted as a solution to the problems caused by intensive exploitation (which they also require). Exploitation is extended, following Achille Mbembé's proposal, to humans, non-human animals, and the earth (in a geological sense), retaining the terms fracturing, extraction, depletion. Four works are analyzed as epistemological shifts to technosolutionism. David Claerbout's The Pure Necessity (2016) is an animated cartoon of animals with a streamlined behavior depicted with the graphic style of Disney. The complex interlocking of eras, styles, behaviors (human and non-human) is envi-saged as resistance to fracking and exploitation. Animal Cinema (2017) by Emilio Vavarella is a short film made from rushes produced by non-human animals. It is emphasized that the frugal production method opposes the spectacular logics of big-budget animal reporting. It adopts the animal point of view while respecting their means of production. It is also seductive by a fluid and hypnotizing editing more easily accessible to humans. Emilio Vavarella's Amazon's Cabinet of Curiosity (2019) is an installation with a strict protocol: the artist asks what he should order to make an artistic production. He then buys each suggestion until his budget is exhausted. By its absence, the commercial behavior of the so-called intelligent device is underlined. The artist also resists fracturing and exploitation by reducing himself to a demand. Finally, She Was Called Petra (2020) by myself is a multi-media installation. In this one, language is re-interrogated and a zone of contact/exchange is set up to cohabit with and think a hybrid presence.

Infrastructuring environmental (in)justice: green hydrogen, Indigenous sovereignty and the political geographies of energy technologies

Abstract. Against the backdrop of ongoing planetary crises, this paper discusses the ambivalent relationship between large-scale material infrastructure, particularly energy technologies, and environmental justice. Inspired by relational and practice-oriented understandings of infrastructure, it develops a conceptual approach for energy-related environmental justice research, which is exemplarily applied to the emerging issue of green hydrogen, drawing on brief insights from the hydrogen frontrunner countries Colombia and Canada and associated struggles over Indigenous sovereignty. This “infrastructural lens”, based on three epistemological shifts – from infrastructure to “infrastructuring”, from social imaginaries to “sociotechnical imaginaries” and from human infrastructuring to “planetary infrastructuring” – provides deeper insights into how patterns of justice and injustice are practically infrastructured and what kinds of imaginaries they evoke or are entangled with. Moreover, it makes tangible how practices of infrastructuring can themselves become part of a broader political ontology, that is, of struggles over ways of being and ways of relating to planet Earth.

There is no future without Native and Black faculty in higher education

Using a letter-based methodology, we assert that higher education in the United States needs faculty members from Native and Black communities in order to be viable for presence and futures. We recognize that decolonization in higher education requires epistemological shifts that must be achieved by the people. Without people well-attuned to these epistemologies, such as critical Native and Black professors, this decolonization cannot happen. We also draw from extant literature and data from the National Center for Education Statistics to show how demographic disparities among faculty have been persistent over the past four decades. Throughout, we create a dialogue between decolonial and postcolonial literature. In doing so, we draw connections between these theories and education policies, practices, and pedagogies that advance more equitable and sustainable relationships in the relational flow of life where everyone and everything –both human and non-human–are deeply interconnected.

Epistemology of Nationalism in the Context of National Jurisprudence at the Lirboyo Islamic Boarding School

This study discusses the epistemological reasoning of nationalism and national fiqh at Islamic boarding schools, especially at the Lirboyo Islamic Boarding School, Kediri, East Java. Lirboyo Islamic Boarding School was chosen purposively as the research location. With a case study approach, this article reveals the epistemological reasoning of nationalism that occurs and develops in the research location. The results of the study show that there has been a shift in the epistemology of nationalism. This epistemological shift can be seen from the inconsistency of meaning and choice of action taken. From the theory of social transformation, certain social constructions will also affect specific cognitions or awareness—likewise, the epistemology of nationalism at the Lirboyo Islamic Boarding School. During the phase of the struggle against Dutch colonialism, nationalism was interpreted as a form of jihad against non-Muslims, along with the emergence of an awareness of establishing an Islamic state. However, since the establishment of Ma'had Aly Lirboyo, which has the peculiarities of nationalism, nationalism has shifted in meaning to become a form of awareness against radicalism movements born of Islamic Group, such as Hizb at-Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI). The assertion that the State of Indonesia is a state whose government is legitimate and opposing it is a prohibited action further confirms this shift in the epistemology of nationalism.

Interactive theorem provers for university mathematics: an exploratory study of students’ perceptions

Programming is becoming increasingly common in mathematics degrees as it is a desirable skill for new graduates. However, research shows that its use is mostly restricted to computational or modelling tasks. This paper reports a study on students’ perceptions of and difficulties with Lean, an interactive theorem prover introduced as part of a transition to proof first-year module. The data consist of first-year university mathematics students’ questionnaire responses (n = 99) and sections of 37 semi-structured interviews with students from the same cohort. Findings highlight students’ difficulties with syntactic and strategic knowledge, in line with similar research on programming, and how conceptual knowledge is discussed in terms of conceptual-mathematics and conceptual-programming. Moreover, some students share how the experience with Lean changed their perception of mathematics by contributing to the epistemological shift from school to university, which is necessary for students to be successful. However, many students failed to engage with Lean due to its difficult syntax and because they perceived programming to be disconnected from the activity of proving and not worth the time investment needed to become proficient with this tool. We conclude with some reflections on the implications of this study for university teaching and suggestions for future research.

Generating inclusive services for children, youth and families: A shift to using complex systems theory

AbstractService systems for children and families have been shaped by standard approaches to knowledge‐building, which reflect a reductionist approach and assume linearity and/or that individuals and experiences are normally distributed. Yet, these approaches may be inadequate for clients most at‐risk, especially those who would be analytic ‘outliers’. A complexity lens focuses on the whole system and seeks to identify patterns, including the dynamic interactions between components of the system. Social work scholars have begun to apply complexity theory to social work research efforts, demonstrating the conceptual potential of incorporating this theoretical approach into social work theories and models such as the person‐in‐environment framework and the ecosystems perspective. Yet, frameworks informed by complexity theory may require ontological and epistemological shifts in thinking and new methodological approaches in order to fully embody a complexity approach. Complexity theory offers the opportunity to consider social work clients who are most at‐risk, as it is better suited for power law distributions. We can, therefore, reconceptualize the most ‘at‐risk’ clients as being in a state of transition, which is also the space of most creativity and possibility.

Pedagogical Relationships and Identities in Research Incubators: Reconceptualizing Research Training for Language Teachers

This article reports on a case study that analyzed pedagogical relationships and teacher identities in research incubators. Conducted over two years in an English teaching program at a Colombian private university, the study included semi-structured interviews with four research incubator coordinators and two focus groups with eight students. We found that mentoring in research incubators nurtures attitudes and competencies crucial to the students’ construction of their identity as teacher researchers. From the results of our research, we built a theoretical model that describes pedagogical relationships in research education around the axes of power and affect. Finally, we draw some implications about an epistemological shift from knowledge-centered to knower-centered pedagogical relationships in collaborative approaches to research training.

A TIMEFUL THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Hydrological landscapes played a significant role in the elaboration of Gaston Bachelard’s and Martin Heidegger’s historical epistemologies. More specifically, both philosophers relied on hydroelectric landscapes to explore nonlinear time and profound epistemological shifts in the history of knowledge. The landscapes they invoke are composed of hydroelectric dams, thunderstorms, and related landmarks like mountains, rivers, and lakes. Together, these varied yet connected elements offer rich environmental and conceptual terrains that I revisit to situate human knowledge formation within a much older natural history, and to lay the groundwork for a deep time theory of knowledge. Such theories promote timefulness and geological consciousness by establishing less anthropocentric historical narratives – or what Dipesh Chakrabarty calls “planetary history” – on more suitable epistemological grounds.

Multicultural Curriculum in India

By applying the concept of a multicultural curriculum and approaches to it as advocated by James Banks, this paper critically analyses the presence and absence of a multicultural curriculum in Indian text books after NCF 2005 through the case study of the “Vasant Part II” (Hindi text book for 7th Std). A multicultural curriculum is the need of the hour in contemporary India to create a learning environment for people from diverse cultures and backgrounds so that they can access education free from all insecure feelings and have fair chances of learning. NCF 2005 calls for an epistemological shift in the curriculum that accommodates multiple ways of imagining the Indian nation. The analysis of the case study clearly presents a different picture away from this call. The majority of the units propagate mainstream Hindu culture instead of taking along multicultural perspectives. The non-transformative and uncritical representations of women, minorities, and differently abled people often lead to a reinforcement of stereotypes and misconceptions. In this gloomy picture a couple of units send rays of hope for a multicultural curriculum in the future, so that our future generation may be a generation with transformed attitude and convictions to form a better citizenry.

Spirit-Centered Counseling and Second-Order Change: The CPR Model

Building upon a previous exploration of Spirit-centered counseling, which described its purpose as expanding the redemptive pattern of God’s story by following the transformative wisdom of Jesus (Buker, 2021; Decker et al., 2021), this paper offers a model that conceptualizes how such a process might be facilitated. Depicting it via the three general phases of connection, perception, and redemption (CPR), the CPR model draws on the concept of second-order change to describe the epistemological shift that occurs when the transformative wisdom of Jesus is embraced. Spirit-centered counseling is portrayed as helping clients experience similar shifts by deconstructing the taken-for-granted epistemological assumptions that inform perception, especially their source in the conventional wisdom of culture, while constructing new perspectives based on the transformative wisdom of Jesus. The goal is to help clients, caught in repetitive cycles of struggle, enter and expand the redemptive pattern of God’s story.

Disasters in the Anthropocene: a storm in a teacup?

Dramatic alterations to the natural environment due to human activity have produced a permanent rupture in the Earth system; the relative stable epoch of the Holocene has given way to a volatile Anthropocene. Acceptance of these claims means that we now live in this altered physical reality, inviting us to rethink how we conceptualise disasters. Yet, disaster scholars have been hesitant to apply the Anthropocene label and to acknowledge the profound changes that it can bring to the study of disasters. This paper queries whether this label is a necessary adage or unnecessary baggage for disaster studies by examining the possibilities and the challenges associated with engaging with the Anthropocene. An analysis of the concepts, causes, and consequences of disasters reveals how the Anthropocene provides, as the very least, a theoretical heuristic for challenging linear temporal assumptions, the epistemological status of uncertainty, and the location of agency in disaster studies.

Мировоззрение в условиях цифровизации государства

The purpose of the article was to analyze the risks and potentials of the formation of a worldview in the conditions of digitalization of the state. The principles of a comparative analysis of the risks and potentials of digitalization of the state became the main methodological optics. The study also used A. Toynbee's "call–response" model. Among the main conclusions, it is emphasized that epistemological shifts contributed to the fact that the state, as the main political institution, throughout the history of its evolution was forced to consistently cooperate with three successive groups controlling the production of ideological meanings. The last epistemological shift meant not just a crisis of the previous worldview systems. He implied the overlap of two processes: the emergence of the Internet, communities of network communications and the emergence of digital capitalism, in which digital corporate giants became competitors of the postmodern state in the formation of worldview pictures. As a response to such existential challenges, it is proposed to construct a national metaverse – a digital ecosystem of the state that controls the activity of digital corporations for the benefit of society. A desirable scenario for the work of the national digital ecosystem of the state is the harmony of two principles – the admission of network discourse and network leadership, the protection of the ideological core of the country. The digital platform should simultaneously preserve the values of the country and give way to innovation. The theoretical significance of the work is determined by the thesis according to which the symphony of collective worldview and individual worldviews is impossible without the reverse transformation of an idle, conformist Consumer into a responsible and socially, economically enlightened Citizen who is able to realize his needs in a modern type of political agency – network leadership among teams of national projects aimed at consolidating the country.

Black Reels Film Festival

Black Reels Film Festival

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane (review)

Reviewed by: Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane Mary Tuti Baker (bio) Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i by Candace Fujikane Duke University Press, 2021 THE ACT OF MAPPING ABUNDANCE for a planetary future is audacious and necessary for planetary survival. Candace Fujikane works toward this goal in Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i. "The struggle for a planetary future," she argues, "calls for a profound epistemological shift" from economies of scarcity to economies of abundance (3). To engage this shift, she takes readers on a journey along fault lines of capitalist economies of subdivision and accumulation that are laying waste the 'aina (land, that which feeds) and she maps the procreative pathways of abundance through Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) stories of resistance, struggle, and transformative social practice. Her analysis of this epistemological shift uses two parallel cartographic methodologies: Kanaka Maoli mo'o'āina cartography and critical settler cartography—interlaced methodologies that she frames with the following questions: How are the exhausted cartographies of capital being transformed by the vibrant cartographies of Indigenous and settler ally artists, scientists, writers, and activists to restore more sustaining arrangements of life? How can abundance be mapped to show functioning Indigenous economies not premised on the crises of capital? How are lands mapped as an ontology—a life, a will, a desire, and an agency—of their own? How can such cartographies help us to grow a decolonial love for lands, seas and skies that will help to renew abundance on this earth? (4) She addresses these questions through a thoughtful study of mo'olelo (storied histories), cutting analysis of the failures of the occupying state, and loving interactions with Kanaka Maoli whose work on the land and in community bring ancestral knowledge and values to bear in the present to engender future economies of abundance. Fujikane's work begins with critical settler cartography that critiques "the toxic logics and imaginaries of late liberal settler colonial cartography" and then moves into the "expansiveness of Kanaka Maoli cartographies that map familial relationality among humans, lands, and elemental forms, plant [End Page 156] and animal 'ohana (family)" (17–18). These cartographies are set in motion as we traverse the storied landscapes laid out in each of the six chapters. The battle plays out again and again between ancestral knowledge and practice and the practices of wastelanding that destroy relationships with 'aina in order to possess it. The text is dense. Her lyrical writing moves readers deftly through the details of a mo'olelo into a topography of complex land formations that echo and support the claims of stewardship and protection embedded in the stories. A full appreciation of the many references to and invocations of Kanaka Maoli mo'olelo, wahi pana (storied places) and the ancestral knowledge and cultural practices of her companions on the journey requires a careful reading of the text. I wonder if some of the richness of her analysis might be lost to readers outside of Hawai'i and those who do not have direct visceral experience of the elemental forces and ancestors she invokes. Fujikane identifies as a settler aloha 'āina. Aloha 'āina is a highly politicized positionality in contemporary Hawai'i. It is both the act of loving and caring for the land and one who practices aloha 'āina. The term emerged in Hawai'i politics during Kanaka Maoli resistance to settler rule in the nineteenth century and the descendants of these Kānaka Maoli declare allegiance to the sovereign Hawaiian nation with the phrase "until the last aloha 'aina." To what degree can settler aloha 'āina be included in this accounting? There will always be an incommensurable difference between settler and native subjectivity. In the book's introduction, Fujikane engages in a frank assessment of the challenges of this incommensurability. Settler aloha 'aina must navigate the discomfort and, as she maintains, commit to a shift in consciousness with respect to land-based knowledge. It necessitates growing "an intimacy with land that brings about more pono (just, balanced, and generationally...

Family-centered therapy: Implications of Pacific spirituality for person-centered theory and practice

ABSTRACT Based on the authors’ different backgrounds and experiences of working in Pacific communities and with Pacific people as clients, supervisees, trainees, and colleagues, and taking a critical perspective informed by Talanoa research methodology, mainly Samoan and by Southern theory, this article examines person-centered theory and practice. The article firstly reviews Rogers’ theory of therapy, personality, and interpersonal relationships; and second deconstructs Rogers’ original ‘general structure’, offering a reconstruction of the theory that accounts for placing the family and spirituality at the center of psychological practice and theory. The article concludes with identifying three epistemological shifts necessary to make person-centered psychology more relevant to the Pacific context.

Vom Ausgang der Erde aus der Welt des Menschen, oder: Wie das „Prä-“ vor die Geschichte kam

Abstract The anthropocene discourse is a fascinating intervention into the current understanding of the human sphere and its environment, stimulating the re-shaping of “natural” as well as disciplinary, epistemological boundaries. But the vivid circulation of this vibrant term seems to hide the fact that the binary of the natural and the cultural sphere is not a recent invention nor is it itself a “natural” differentiation. This article will therefore shed light on its intellectual predecessors and its diachronic depth discussing contributions to European enlightenment historiography around 1800 and their narrowing understanding of “universal history” as human, written history – and as such clearly separated from the history of the earth and other species. Analyzing this crucial episode of modern historiography is of genuine importance: this specific understanding of history as limited to humans has to be regarded as the fundamental epistemological shift separating the two worlds of nature and culture that remains influential until the present day and is currently challenged by the anthropocence discourse.

Poetics of Migration Trauma in Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West"

Migration has emerged as one of the most pertinent issues in the contemporary milieu. Currently, more than ever, people from many countries are being forced to migrate because of religious, social, cultural, national, racial and economic issues. This increasing trend of shifting from one place to another is causing an epistemological shift in the current milieu of human history. Exit West (2017) by Hamid is one of those novels that develops a discursive discourse of the ongoing migrant crisis, and highlights the ugly realities related to the phenomenon of relocation. It chronicles the story of two lovers, Nadia and Saeed, who migrate from their conflict-ridden country to save their lives. This paper configures the poetics of migration trauma in the contemporary literature by analyzing the symbols, metaphors and narrative technique used in Hamid's text with the aim of tracing a discursive aesthetic trajectory of the migration trauma discourse.

The Shifting Epistemological Horizon of the Pandemic

The reaction to the pandemic has put in place some profound transformations. These transformations do not come entirely anew. They are rooted in the long-term process of oscillation between scientism and relativism. Yet, the fallout of the pandemic promises to work as a new global social regulatory system, different from the ones that predate it. Thereby, it preludes to a paradigmatic epistemological shift. I sketch out four dimensions of such a shift, which I refer to in terms of vectors, in order to emphasise the directional as well as orientational nature of such elements. A vector is a pattern of long-term and large-scale social change. It manifests as a historical configuration of power that organises the collective and individual activities of humans. The evolution of these four vectors designs trajectories of development. The four vectors of the shifting horizon of the pandemic are as follows: the normalisation of the colonial exception; the centrality of necro-politics as global technology of control; the displacement of uncertainty from the margin to the centre of the intersectional space between expert knowledge, political power and public opinion; the radicalisation of the word ‘theory’.

Bringing resilience-thinking into water governance: Two illustrative case studies from South Africa and Cambodia

Resilience is a multidimensional concept that is increasingly used to understand environmental change in hydrological systems. Yet, the current discussion about water governance and resilience remains relatively limited, with resilience typically seen as a normative outcome for governance (i.e., to be resilient against change). Using a theoretical multiplicity approach, we explore how the theories of social-ecological systems (SES), resilience and interactive (water) governance can provide new insights for water governance studies. We propose a resilience–governance framework that captures the partly overlapping but distinct characteristics from these three theories. The framework aims to develop a more nuanced way of using resilience-thinking for water governance, viewing resilience as a function of three capacities (absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity) and noting the simultaneous existence of three interpretations for resilience (as a property, process and outcome) across different scales. The framework also considers issues of power and equity, which are often missing from resilience framings. We illustrate the framework with two case studies – the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia and a small sub-catchment of the Limpopo River Basin in South Africa – to provide two distinct examples of the possibilities of resilient governance. Finally, we consider what the framework suggests more broadly for ongoing discussions around resilience and water governance, including the possibilities for governance to also ‘bounce forward’ – i.e., transform – to a new, improved state. We argue that resilience-thinking may be valuable in understanding governance characteristics and guiding governance processes, in addition to seeing resilience (just) as a normative end-goal. In this way, the article supports an epistemological shift away from focusing on institutional structure, towards capturing the dynamic processes within governing systems.