At 11:01 AM 5/6/98 -0700, you wrote:
>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.
>
>>From that, however, is the importance of sharing what took place with the
>rest of the
>world,
> or, more importantly, with other communities in similar siutations.
>
>At this point, again, a kind of "activity" is offered which
>each community would re-shape for their own needs - beginning with the local
>lanaguage & interpretation of experiences,
>
>and slowly transforming into genre-knowledge, that there are many ways
>to communicate knowledge and many ways to reconstruct & claim knowledge,
>and many ways to deny/suppress/refuse knowledge -
>
>the question is not how do people learn, but what is important for
>folks to know? This changes in different settings. I think it
>would be presumptious to think that "learning" is the area of
>intervention,
>
>when clearly the issues are more complex than "learning"
>but are about actively engaging with existing knowledge structures
>in critical ways.
>
>Personally, I think local communication is more important at this phase of
>history
>than a global communication.
>And out of these locally-organized networks, global information emerges.
>
>I suppose I see it as something which must come out of the
>process, not something to be imposed upon a process.
>diane
>
>
> "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right." Ani Difranco
>*********************************************
>diane celia hodges
> faculty of education, centre for the study of curriculum and
>instruction,
> university of british columbia
> vancouver, bc canada
>
>snailmail: 3519 Hull Street
> Vancouver, BC, Canada V5N 4R8
>
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