Knowledge Democracy: Bridging Knowledge Cultures

In the current system of socio-economic development around the world, the place of knowledge has become increasingly important. The knowledge economy is seen to be rapidly integrated into the growth strategies of societies. Yet, the dominant knowledge system of our times is the basis for educating and training the next generation of professionals. Higher education institutions produce and mobilise academic knowledge, largely based on European theories and frameworks that evolved over a few centuries. Universal access to higher education, mostly conducted in a European language, is further alienating youth from contexts in which their parents live and work.

One of the most invisible forms of exclusion in modern societies, therefore, is that which devalues local, experiential, and indigenous knowledge systems. By excluding such local knowledge systems, voices, perspectives, and worldviews of rural, nomadic, tribal, and Dalit communities and those of women and the elderly, their democratic participation and inclusive development are obstructed.

Over the past decade, many experiments in community-university partnerships to co-create knowledge solutions have been gaining visibility. Such examples of engaged scholarship have been largely driven by academia. Yet, understanding of community knowledge systems, their rituals, literature, music, stories, and artifacts has been rather limited even amongst such innovative practices. A recent international study of “Bridging Knowledge Cultures” has produced some significant insights into how diverse knowledge systems can be synergised.

Post-Covid context, increasingly facing climate distress, is starting to raise questions about the limitations of various knowledge economy models practiced so far. Greater attention to experiential, indigenous, and community knowledge to respond to these challenges is being encouraged at national and global levels. India’s National Education Policy (NEP 2020) has explicitly recommended efforts to integrate community knowledge in teaching and research in higher education. UNESCO’s Recommendations on Open Science (universally ratified by all member states) in November 2021 call for valuing the multiplicity of epistemologies and systems of community knowledge.

This is an emerging movement towards ‘knowledge democracy’ which recognises and integrates the diversity of knowledge systems.

The Seminar (hosted by UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education in partnership with Asia Democratic Research Network (ADRN)) was an opportunity to share perspectives and experiences of scholars and practitioners to identify practical ways in which authentic bridging may be practiced and taught to the next generation.

Read the report here.