Theoretical streams in Marginalized Peoples' Knowledge(s): Systems, asystems, and Subaltern Knowledge(s)

• Published in: Agriculture and human values Vol. 19; no. 3; p. 225
• Main Author: Kothari, Brij
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Nature B.V 01.10.2002
• Subjects: Agriculture; Educational innovations; Empowerment; Indigenous knowledge; Institutionalization; Knowledge; Native peoples; Power; Social exclusion; Studies; System theory
• ISSN: 0889-048X; 1572-8366
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1019942727343

Two distinct theoretical streams flowing in the investigation, documentation, and dissemination of Marginalized Peoples' Knowledge(s) (MPK) are identified and a third suggested. Systems thinking, which originally coined the term Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), continues to predominate the growing interdisciplinary interest in MPK. This approach has tended to view knowledge or its production based on systemic principles. The asystems approach challenges the usefulness of MPK as a systems construct. Its central proposition is that MPK does not always represent a coherent system of knowledge with underlying principles. Asystemists tend to prefer the term Local Knowledge (LK) and approach the subject from very different, even opposing, epistemological assumptions. Although both the systems and asystems research streams are often concerned with power, an in-depth exploration of power-issues is not inevitably integral to either approach. A third Subaltern Knowledge(s) (SK) perspective is suggested. The SK term embodies a central condition of many LKs vis-a-vis the scientific/Western knowledge establishment - that of being marginalized but resisting or with the potential to resist this process. More benign terms in literature (IK, LK, Rural Peoples' Knowledge (RPK), etc.) fail to make this condition explicit. Such a conceptual recasting overtly invites a consideration of the intertwined nature of power and knowledge in the exploration of MPK. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]