Re: At a loss (Re: All the way with Piaget)

diane celia hodges (dchodges who-is-at interchg.ubc.ca)
Wed, 6 May 1998 11:01:28 -0700

At 12:16 PM 5/6/98, Naoki Ueno wrote:
>At 0:54 PM 5/5/98 -0700, diane celia hodges wrote:
>>I think that yes, a global/earth-wide
>> inter-connected network of access to knowledges is
>>
>>important, necessary, but such a network would need to be
>>interdisciplinary in its language - accountable for
>>
>>biology, politics, economics, structures of systemic power and
>>social organizations, and accountable for the acts of oppression within
>>which researchers often participate (thanks Suzanne de Castel) -
>>
>>such as the always suspicious desire for "universalization" of Western
>>ideas & practices....
>
>diane,
>
>Thank a lot for your response.
>I think I got your point. My problem is, it seems to me that
>interdisciplinary language for accountable for biology, politics,
>economics, structures of systemic power social organizations has
>the possibility to be trappped by suspicious desire for "universalization"
>again.
>
>How do you invent such langauge without trapping by "universalization"?
>
>Naoki Ueno
>NIER, Tokyo

I think it would have to start locally - that is, it would have to emerge from
the contexts/communities themselves - for example,

in areas of India & Africa, Western medical personnel are often dispatched
to forcibly
inject "third world women" with sterilization drugs to prevent
pregancies, or, "control population" - many of these women are lied to,

told that these injections are vaccines.

As an issue of LEARNING, how could we find out more from
the context/community itself, as opposed to imposing our interpretations?

1. First, someone who is fluent in the language of the context/community
would need to go and ask what is happening, find out what the
women already know - and what they don't know.

2. A community organization would need to be set up,
involving the community folks, and an agenda is organized
regarding what is known & not known about the visting medical personnel.

3. What kind of information/language will help these people? Perhaps the
responses need to come from them? What kinds of literacy support these
languages?
what kinds of access to literacy to these people have? Are the medical
personnel local, or are they coming from outside the community? outside the
country?
who finances their visits? what is the efect of these vaccinations? what
does it mean?

4. Understanding the biology of the body, reproduction technologies,
in this case, is crucial;
understanding the politics of science & the social construction of "population
control" as a medial/political/economic practice - is the gov't supporting this
project? who funds the visits and provides the drugs?
what can be done to intercept this practice?

5. In my experience, folks usually know quite a lot about the structures which
oppress them; what they don't have is access to the authoritative languages
& practices/genres which mediate these structures. I think here, the role
of the "intellectual" is to listen to what is being revealed in terms of
knowledge,
and find ways to make available the kinds of knowledges which will

enable an active intervention against more "vaccinations."

It would have to be interdisciplinary - and it would most likely begin
in the native languages of the community. In other words, it
would, reasonably, take a few years to I think to complete this
sort of engagement in a way which provided community-based knowledge about
a global-event.