Modern Knowledge Systems Research Articles

DIGITAL HUMANIZATION OF EDUCATION IN THE LIGHT OF GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES

The article examines systemic conditions and important determinants of the humanization of higher education in the light of crucial geopolitical challenges. Complex analysis of the international background of educational humanization is provided on the basis of world rankings given by international network of universities for European countries. The research discloses the most highlighting tendencies towards modern knowledge and education system in the conditions of innovation progress, digital transformation and sustainable development. The analysis reveals logical coherence between humanization, national education, and economic growth. The role of humanization of education is also considered, taking into account the requests of the world labor market, that shapes the most demanded personal criteria in different occupation areas. The concept of human-centrism of the educational system and its components are presented towards economic, geopolitical, digital and environmental discourse. It is concluded that higher education in EU and Ukraine quickly responds to crisis situations and becomes a necessary foundation for comprehensively overcoming the relevant challenges. The research represents authors’ vision on the issue of digital humanization of education and reveals its empiric model.

Traditional Building Knowledge Systems - A Path to Sustainability

In architecture and planning domain, sustainability has been considered as a core strategy for over three decades now. The modern era of globalisation, led to homogenisation in architecture, thus widening the gap between modern and Traditional Building Knowledge systems (TBKS) worldwide. This gap is widening at an alarming speed and alienating the architectural concepts from the context and its people, by ignoring the sustainability aspects. The TBKS has evolved in line with the environmental, cultural, technological, economic, and historical context within which it exists. The current study provides an overview of the concepts involved in sustainability and TBKS and how TBKS is addressed in the international forums and UN reports, and ancient treatises that formed the basis of TBKS in the Indian context. The four pillars of sustainability i.e., environmental, social, economic, and cultural dimensions were considered as the parameters to measure how far the sustainability has been achieved in the built environment. From the extensive review of literature, a set of design indicators was identified for the TBKS. Further, its applicability was also analysed based on the case examples. The current study reveals that such indicators, mentioned in the TBKS, are context-specific in nature. Hence, it helps in achieving sustainability at the building level. The paper concludes by identifying the co-relation between TBKS and sustainability and calls for more studies upon using the Traditional Building Knowledge Systems as a potential tool to achieve sustainability.

Pursuing Legal Harmony: Indonesianization of Islamic Law Concept and Its Impact on National Law

This study responds to a polemic on Indonesia’s formalization of Islamic law, which is inseparable from the dynamics of political authority and the internal views of Muslims. It seeks to describe, explore, construct, and analyze the ​​Indonesianization of Islamic law, as proposed by Kamsi, an Islamic law professor at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University of Yogyakarta, as one of the efforts to make Islamic law become the national law. The Indonesianization of Islamic law, namely by legislating or codifying Islamic law through the state system so that it is enforceable in Indonesia. This study is conceptual research using a legal philosophy approach to comprehend an Islamic legal thought from a sharia scholar using the content analysis method. The results of this study show that the concept of Indonesianisation of Islamic Law uses a modern knowledge system as the paradigm. This effort seeks to nationally legalize Islamic law through Indonesian legal instruments that can give birth to inclusiveness and tolerance coupled with pluralism with differentiation in unification. Its theoretical implication emphasizes a need for epistemological and axiological adjustments to realize the concept of Indonesianization of Islamic law. The idea should also apply nationally within the framework of Pancasila (the Indonesian state’s ideology) as a democratic country.
 Keywords: Kamsi, Indonesianization of Islamic Law, National Law.

THE OLD AND NEW OF DIGITAL HISTORY

ABSTRACTThis article reflects on the expectations and changes that digital technologies have brought to history, activities that are increasingly codified as digital history. Because of the breadth of digital technologies and communicative media, the contours of a digital history are still unclear, so I frame my discussion with two potential narratives that begin from different ideas that emerged from World War II weapons research. One narrative begins with Roberto Busa and the application of a computer to find concordances in the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The emphasis here is on the application of computer technologies to the practice of history. The second narrative begins with Vannevar Bush's essay “As We May Think” and focuses on digital technologies as a key element in an information system. This beginning invites a parallel between inscription technologies (especially the movable‐type press) and knowledge systems. Both narratives imbibe the modern faith in technology to improve; the “new” is better, but the latter better involves humans and societies. Despite important differences between them, both narratives lead to an inquiry into the foundations of our modern knowledge system. In the case of history, the question is whether a knowledge system that was developed in the nineteenth century and designed to encompass and order the world into one system is still apposite in our digital world. I close by suggesting that one such presumption that needs to be reconsidered is the idea of the past as a prior and distant time‐form. A shift from “the past” to “pasts” opens history to a broader field of previous happenings and a reconsideration of chronological time, of change, and to other modes of transmission, such as storytelling.

Evolving farm-level adaptation to climate variability and change risks in the forest-savanna transitional zone of Ghana

The study explores evolving farm-level adaptations of smallholder farmers to climate variability and change (CVC), their determinants and barriers in the forest-savanna transitional zone of Ghana. Using a mixed-method approach, the study obtained primary data from 300 sampled farm household heads, and other selected lead farmers across six rural communities in the Offinso Municipality of Ghana. The survey results show that smallholder rural farmers have observed climate variability and change including reductions in frequency and intensity of rainfall and floods, increased temperatures and intensified drought events in their local environment. While rising temperatures corroborated the available scientific evidence, farmers’ perceptions of rainfall slightly varied from the meteorological data. Also, respondents reported livelihood disruptions, food insecurity risks and reduction in incomes as impacts they are facing in their farming activities. From the focus group discussions, farmers' adaptation strategies are evolving through an integration of modern and local knowledge systems and technologies to facilitate, for example, irrigation, agro-chemical application and drought resistant varieties. Estimated results from the multinomial logit regression support established hypotheses that socioeconomic factors such as gender, age, education, household size, frequency of income and marital status influence farmers’ choices of adaptation at the farm level. Findings highlight high-cost of agricultural inputs, lack of adequate climate information and communication, lack of access to water and absence of alternative livelihood support as key inhibiting factors of farmers’ adaptation strategies. The study emphasises that a blended knowledge system is indispensable in policy formulation and implementation for effective adaptation and food security.

Dichotomy between Modernity and Nepalese Education System: A Qualitative Analysis

This paper aims to critically assess the impact of modernism upon Nepalese local and indigenous knowledge systems. The paper highlights that modernism is a challenge, as well as an opportunity for the indigenous community and their knowledge systems. This is a challenge because of its potent threats to collapsing the originality and knowledge tradition the local communities have. And, this is an opportunity because of extending and widening its scope and recognition in the global market with a societal or national space. The paper was based on the qualitative research methodology in which numbers of Focus Group Discussion were carried out to generate the data. The paper explores that there is no need for indigenous communities and local knowledge holders to turn back to their tradition by entirely giving up their interests to become a modern one. Nor has there been a compulsion to abandon their oral traditions and wisdom to become an updated modern one. One of the impacts of modernity on Nepali education is privatization which has devalued the local or indigenous knowledge system. The paper, therefore, advises us on an education system that adapts some theoretical concepts that work as a bridge between local/indigenous knowledge system and modern knowledge system enriching local/indigenous knowledge and grasping good ethos of modernity.

Ayurveda: A Boon in Pandemics

Population around the world is dealing with an unrivalled pandemic of viral disease severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 leading to severe acute respiratory syndrome. The novel coronavirus has affected people worldwide with more than 1.43 million confirmed cases and 82,100 deaths as per data recorded on April 8, 2020. The pandemic has elevated the distress in common people including the psychological conditions with symptoms such as depression and anxiety. The psychological distress is linked with variation in the functioning of immunological responses including high level risk for viral infections of the upper respiratory tract. The extent of pandemic requires exploration of traditional as well as modern knowledge systems obtainable worldwide. Use of traditional Chinese Medicinal system in Wuhan for the treatment of patients suffering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has set an example illustrating the efficiency of traditional ways of healthcare as an addition in treatment of patients of COVID-19. In India, Ayurveda is medicine system with historical roots encouraged by Government of India as “immune booster regime.” Implementation of Ayurvedic knowledge and administration of Ayurvedic dosages with the present scientific studies on related clinical settings is an efficient plan for intervention in India for the treatment of patients suffering from COVID-19. In accordance to severity of symptoms and stage of infection among the patients, Ayurvedic dose regime can be administered in both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients. Implementation of Ayurvedic medicinal system will ease learning and develop evidence as we cannot combat the reality that there is no evidence-based treatment for COVID-19. Therefore, Ayurvedic system of medicine should be implemented immediately to abate the impact of pandemic in terms of diminishing both psychological distress and risk of infection. Development of such elucidatory models will shed the light on the effectiveness of traditional medicines and medical practices during disease surges and could aid the symbiosis between traditional and modern medicinal system.

The Politics of Knowledge in Development: An Analytical Frame

The parameters of modern knowledge systems are clearly showing fault lines—that if there is a continuation of the technological systems at the heart of development, neglecting the twin issues of ecology and equity—there is a serious threat to human existence. This article seeks to answer a specific question: in the context of the twenty-first century search of offering alternatives to the hegemonic development paradigm, what kind of knowledges of production in society could possibly be best developed at this point in history? It argues that the answer lies in ‘already existing knowledge systems ( AEKS)’, accompanied by critical thinking on production, distribution and consumption systems. Locating the production of knowledge in five spaces—historical context, policy formulation, political economic structures, forms of collective action and articulation of contested epistemologies—it argues that when AEKS are understood both in form and transformation in these spaces, that the possibilities they offer for substantial alternatives can be explored.

Slippery ontologies of tidal flats

Tidal flats are a type of coastal space that flood at high tides and are exposed at low tides—not quite land or sea. Distinct from open waters or seabeds, tidal flats’ in-betweenness gives them particular materialities that constantly frustrate our efforts to know them. Inspired by the provocation of recent scholarship on “wet ontologies” while simultaneously recognizing the nuances within water worlds, I argue for the slippery ontologies of tidal flats and explore the implications of this approach. Specifically, this paper shows how tidal flats’ dynamic and ambiguous materialities resist attempts to place them into modern knowledge systems. Drawing upon the particular case of South Korea’s tidal flats, called getbol, I first interrogate the in-betweenness of tidal flats, a major source of their material and conceptual slipperiness. I then discuss the similarities and differences between tidal flats and other types of land–water spaces. Next, through several interviews with those who produce modern scientific knowledge of getbol, I examine how tidal flats’ unique compositions interfere with modernity’s efforts to measure their boundaries, matter, and verticality. I highlight how both non-humans and humans contribute to tidal flats’ slipperiness. Finally, I show how the slippery nature of tidal flats has threatened their survival. In South Korea alone, more than half the tidal flats were removed due to reclamation efforts in the past century. In this context, I contend that fully embracing tidal flats’ slippery ontologies may prevent them from further endangerment.

중국문학사 다시쓰기 작업의 문화사적 의미 - 魯迅의 『中國小說史略』을 중심으로

Lu Xun’s “A Brief History of Chinese Novel” is the first theoretical introduction to the history of Chinese “fiction”. This paper will expand various existing discussions to pay attention to the meaning of rewriting of Chinese literary history centered on Lu Xun’s A Brief History of Chinese Novel.BR The New Cultural Movement advocated journalism under the banner of ‘anti-tradition’ and ‘science’, thus seeking changes in the system, form and content of literary works. This paper examines the cultural and historical trends as a process of discourse in the cultural public forum of the New Cultural Movement, instead of fixing them in a single and sequential flow.BR In this context, this study attempts to describe Chinese literary history in the early 20th century as a process of building a modern knowledge system, and analyze the internal momentum of the cultural public debate among Chinese intellectuals under the connection between Chinese Literature and the Western knowledge system.

Metallic Iron for Environmental Remediation: Starting an Overdue Progress in Knowledge

A critical survey of the abundant literature on environmental remediation and water treatment using metallic iron (Fe0) as reactive agent raises two major concerns: (i) the peculiar properties of the used materials are not properly considered and characterized, and, (ii) the literature review in individual publications is very selective, thereby excluding some fundamental principles. Fe0 specimens for water treatment are typically small in size. Before the advent of this technology and its application for environmental remediation, such small Fe0 particles have never been allowed to freely corrode for the long-term spanning several years. As concerning the selective literature review, the root cause is that Fe0 was considered as a (strong) reducing agent under environmental conditions. Subsequent interpretation of research results was mainly directed at supporting this mistaken view. The net result is that, within three decades, the Fe0 research community has developed itself to a sort of modern knowledge system. This communication is a further attempt to bring Fe0 research back to the highway of mainstream corrosion science, where the fundamentals of Fe0 technology are rooted. The inherent errors of selected approaches, currently considered as countermeasures to address the inherent limitations of the Fe0 technology are demonstrated. The misuse of the terms “reactivity”, and “efficiency”, and adsorption kinetics and isotherm models for Fe0 systems is also elucidated. The immense importance of Fe0/H2O systems in solving the long-lasting issue of universal safe drinking water provision and wastewater treatment calls for a science-based system design.

ФОРМУВАННЯ СИСТЕМИ БАЗОВИХ ЗНАНЬ У ГАЛУЗІ ПУБЛІЧНОГО УПРАВЛІННЯ ТА АДМІНІСТРУВАННЯ

The modernization of the management system and the knowledge management model is needed in the context of the public administration reform, taking into account the concept of decentralization and Good Governance. That is why the article focuses on the author’s approach to substantiating the formation of a modern knowledge system in public management and administration in Ukraine. It is proved that the approach to the knowledge system formation should be based on the identification of the needs of public administration objects. The need to comply with the necessary diversity law for a management subject of public entity regarding its knowledge of the entity has been identified. The content of the principle «from general to specific» for the objects of public administration is considered. The formation structure of the basic knowledge system in the public sphere is presented, which unites a number of blocks. The first block deals with the system of basic knowledge of public management and administration. The second block deals with the idea of a public authorities system at different levels. The third block concerns the formation of basic knowledge about public service. The fourth block concerns the formation of a basic knowledge system about current trends in the development of domestic public administration. The fifth block deals with the knowledge about the development and implementation of public policy and implementation of public administration. The sixth block deals with the consideration of public administration as a deliberate activity to establish internal procedures and processes in public administration to ensure their smooth functioning. The seventh block concerns the knowledge system for ensuring social stability. The eighth block is a glossary of basic terms and the ninth is a bibliography. The proposed approach is the scientific substantiation of the development of educational and professional programs of the basic textbook and standards for the specialty 281 – «Public Management and Administration». Keywords: knowledge, public administration, the necessary diversity law, public policy, public service, public authorities, public stability.

Agricultural practices in a drought-prone region of India: opportunities for S&T innovations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the agricultural practices in a drought-prone region of India in an effort to find out how science, technology and innovation (STI) measures can address the existing problems and help achieve sustainable solutions. This study has been planned with two specific objectives: to study the agricultural practices of small and marginal-holding farmers in a drought-prone region and to examine the opportunities for suitable interventions to mitigate the impacts of droughts. The study is based on primary survey conducted in Banda district of Bundelkhand region, Uttar Pradesh, India.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical survey was done in eight different blocks of a drought-prone region of India using structured questionnaire. The questionnaire was pre-tested with a group of 12 farmers during a workshop through a pilot survey conducted during April 2017. Stratified sampling based on land holdings (small farmers having 1–2 ha of land, medium farmers having 2.1–5 ha of land and large farmers having more than 5 ha of land) and irrigation types (canals and tube wells) were utilised in different blocks of the district for selecting farmers in the surveyed villages.FindingsFindings suggest that due to various reasons like change in climatic conditions, frequent crop failure, crop diseases and high cost of production, farmers have adopted certain crops which are not suited to their agro-climatic conditions. The paper recommends that farmer’s school or “on-farm training school” have to be initiated to integrate farmers’ traditional knowledge with modern knowledge systems with amalgamation of STI tools.Research limitations/implicationsUttar Pradesh is divided into nine agro-climatic zones; however, this study is focused on Bundelkhand and may be region specific, though the findings are important for other drought-prone areas.Practical implicationsThe paper links the existing agricultural practices and further linking them with farmers’ socio-economic, cultural and environmental settings. Only 17.5 per cent of respondents owned any agricultural equipment due to high cost of farm tools, difficulty in taking equipements on rental basis and lack of sharing tools among the farmers.Social implicationsThis paper targets small and marginal farmers in the drought-prone region of India who face the dual shock of climate impacts and poverty. Adoption of modern agricultural practices and use of technology is inadequate which is further hampered by ignorance of such practices, high costs and impracticality in the case of small land holdings.Originality/valueThis paper has advocated for well-organised, efficient and result-oriented STI system to mitigate the adverse impacts of drought-prone agriculture. Farming community in drough-prone areas needs adequate investment, local-specific technology, better quality inputs, real-time information on weather and most importantly latest know-how for sustaining commercial and cost effective sustainable agriculture.

“The keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge:” Big History, Cosmic Evolution, and New Research Agendas

This article offers an interpretation of recent attempts at the unification of knowledge. It argues that today’s scholarly world is aberrant. It is splintered into distinct scholarly disciplines to such an extent that universities and research institutes have lost what Erwin Schrodinger called “the keen longing for unified, all-embracing knowledge.” In contrast, most earlier human societies have valued the search for an underlying unity to human knowledge, a unity that was both conceptual and narrative, and often took the form of “origin stories”. Unifying knowledge on the basis of modern science was also one of the central projects for the Enlightenment and for many nineteenth century thinkers. But at the beginning of the twentieth century, in every country in the world, knowledge was broken up into disciplines, to such an extent that most educators and researchers lost sight of the ancient hope of seeking an underlying unity to all knowledge. The essay describes the fragmentation of knowledge in the twentieth century and discusses reasons for that sea-change in the modern knowledge system. But it also argues that the period of extreme disciplinarity, in which the disciplines blocked the free flow of ideas between disciplines, may prove short-lived. The emerging transdisciplinary fields of “Big History” or “Cosmic Evolution” may herald a general scholarly return to a more balanced relationship between detailed research and the quest for large, unifying frameworks. This paper ends by speculating about how a return to the project of unifying knowledge may transform education, research agendas, and the institutions within which they take place. This chapter was originally published in the Journal of Big History, Vol. III(3), pp. 3–18 (2019).

СОЦІАЛЬНИЙ ДОСВІД ФОРМУВАННЯ ІННОВАЦІЙНОЇ КОНФІГУРАЦІЇ СУЧАСНИХ ЗНАНЬ

Urgency of the research. Today scholars are returning to the idea of the priority importance of science in society, a conscious desire of mankind to create a more humane configuration of its social relations is being formed. Target setting. The innovative configuration of the knowledge system should have an unconventional decentralized nature with the obligatory consideration of the peculiarities of the national semantic field and the type of culture. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. The source study base of the research is made up of conceptual developments of such famous authors as L. Burrows, P. Bourdieu, D. Bell, M. Heidegger, P. Drucker, E. Durkheim, S. Zizek, J.-F. Lyotard, N. Luhmann, T. Parsons, O. Toffler, W. Eco and many other researchers. The works of such domestic scientists as V. Andrushchenko, L. Voznyuk, E. Gerasimova, S. Klepko, S. Kutsepal, V. Kusherets, M. Mulyar, D. Sviridenko, S. Terepischiy and others became the historiographic literature of the study. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. We can state that the process of comprehending the nature and meaning of innovative processes is in a constant dynamic state, therefore, despite the large-scale nature of the research carried out by famous domestic and foreign scientists, a set of questions remains unanswered. The research objective is to analyze the social experience of the formation of an innovative configuration of modern knowledge. The statement of basic materials. The new configuration of the modern knowledge system is a coordinated combination of opportunities, competencies, both material and invisible resources, values and aspirations for effective performance, which can be achieved in the future due to synergistic configurations. Conclusions. Having analyzed the configured synergistic effect of the innovative process of forming a modern knowledge system in Ukraine, as a complex social act that covers the analysis of many key competencies, taking into account the features of the national semantic field and the type of culture of the corresponding social production, as well as the possibility of obtaining effective social result from its practical application, the mechanism of their interaction was presented.

Social Sciences, Humanities and Liberal Arts: China and the West

For the most part, modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge have been shaped and predominantly influenced by the West. Since the modern Chinese knowledge system is an integral and inseparable part of that dominant western system, an immanent critique will view Chinese problems not as extraneous, but as intrinsic to modernity, to the world-system or globalization. This article traces the genealogy of modern European modes of knowledge under the rubrics of ‘liberal arts’, as the origin and basis for modern China’s institutions and modes of knowledge, and then examines China’s ‘liberal arts’ as institution and modes of knowledge from the early years of the twentieth century to the present. The paper’s objective is to question the relationship between (Eurocentric) universalism and Chinese exceptionalism within the dominant modern Western institutions and modes of knowledge today.

Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England. Katherine Eggert. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xi+351.

<i>Disknowledge: Literature, Alchemy, and the End of Humanism in Renaissance England</i>. Katherine Eggert. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xi+351.

MENGGAGAS PENGETAHUAN BERBASIS KEMANUSIAAN: Menelaah Pemikiran Henry Bergson

Dewasa ini sistem pengetahuan modern disadari telah menimbulkan implikasi yang tidak kondusif bagi manusia dan kemanusiaan. Karenanya pengembangan pengetahuan yang berbasis kemanusiaan sudah merupakan hal yang sangat penting untuk ditampilkan. Tulisan ini mencoba untuk mengkaji tentang apa dan bagaimana struktur fundamental pengetahuan manusia dalam pandangan Henry Bergson dan relevansinya bagi pengembangan pengetahuan yang berbasis kemanusiaan. Pendekatan yang digunakan bersifat filosofis dengan metode refleksi kritis. Henry Bergson menempatkan manusia dan kemanusiaan sebagai dasar dan sumber yang permanen dalam struktur pengetahuan manusia. Landasan ontologis, epistemologis dan aksiologis pengetahuan manusia adalah manusia dan kemanusiaan. Sarana dan sumber untuk mendapatkan pengetahuan adalah indra, akal, hati nurani atau intuisi. Sarana dan sumber-sumber pengetahuan tersebut bersifat sinergik atau saling menguatkan. Struktur pengetahuan manusia dalam pemikiran Bergson secara filosofis koheren dengan pengetahuan yang berbasis kemanusiaan. Pengetahuan yang berbasis kemanusiaan pada idealita juga harus menempatkan manusia dan kemanusiaan sebagai dasar, sumber dan tujuan yang paling fundamental.

The Legal Science in the System of Interdisciplinary Connections

The title of the article and its theme is inspired by the work The Absent Structure written by an Italian historian, cultural studies scholar and semiotician Humberto Eco (M., 2004). It is difficult to identify the main sphere of interest of the author of many texts devoted to a variety of topics - from cooking to describing the daily life of individual communities of different historical epochs - in terms of his scientific specialization. At the same time, his texts are recognizable by some elusive features determined by the existence of some common, though invisible, structures of understanding and perception of reality - its internal concept or attitude. The logic and content of the objects under study are arranged with regard to this phenomenon. What relation does this have to the understanding of the logic of developing traditional and modern knowledge systems, including legal knowledge? In my opinion, the most direct one. Legal knowledge is an integral part of legal reality. Its movement is determined by its own processes of self-organization that are very far from divisions into the disciplines and professions, into which it was transferred by scientific and educational communities of specific epochs and cultures providing production and distribution of the knowledge based on the interests of its historical consumers Jurisprudence as a system of knowledge and a system of qualifications awarded in accordance with scientific degrees follows different principles Manifestations of this distinction reveal themselves through an internal capacity of the legal knowledge to develop a variety of combinations of concepts and definitions at the intersection or beyond formal disciplinary systems The development of interdisciplinary bodies of legal knowledge, such as sociology and anthropology of law, legal psychology, cultural and historical jurisprudence, etc., possible and conceivable combinations of objects, methods and languages of description and interpretation of phenomena of law and of the State, reflects and captures this process. It is interdisciplinary bodies of legal knowledge that, unlike authorized differentiation of systems of knowledge and professions, give a real picture of development, functioning and transition of social and legal institutions from one historical state to another responding to the cultural meanings and demands of a particular society and time The paper provided was an impudent attempt to respond to criticism against theoretical jurisprudence that had been expressed by Professor V. V. Lazarev in a number of articles during 2013-2015. 44

A DECOLONIAL TURN IN DIPLOMATIC THEORY: UNMASKING EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE

The subject of the decolonisation of knowledge broadly, and the social sciences as they are practiced in the developing world, is growing. This is linked to the need to decolonise the modern Kantian university as an important site for the production and reproduction of Eurocentric thought, thus subtly reinforcing the racist claim that only Europeans know, others only mimic. There is an effort towards negating Eurocentric thinking that permeates the modern knowledge system, which has failed to give expression to the experiences, aspirations and needs of people in peripheral areas of the Westernised world. This article joins this epistemic rebellion by seeking to unmask the structure in the dominant discourses of diplomatic theory. It seeks to show that in diplomatic theory, there is blatant erasure of diplomatic experiences and ideas that emanate outside the West and the silencing of voices outside Eurocentrismin its broad sense. An attempt is made to show that this, like slavery and colonialism, is a serious injustice produced by coloniality as a model of power that emerged together with the coloniser's model of the world in the late 15th century. On this account, there is a need to decolonise the narrative and discourses on diplomacy, including its dominant theories. The article, therefore, argues that diplomatic theory is yet to benefit from decolonial perspectives that put forward the need for epistemic justice as a crucial arena in the long process of decolonising the modern world.