Democratisation of Knowledge: Challenges for Engaged Scholarship

1
Democratisation of Knowledge Challenges for
Engaged Scholarship
23 November, 2009
Dr. Rajesh Tandon, President, PRIA 42 Tughlakabad
Institutional Area, New Delhi 110 062 Tel
91-11-29960931/32/33 Fax [phone] Ema
il rajeshtandon_at_pria.org Web www.pria.org
2
The World of Knowledge Today

• Growing Knowledge Economies Hardware Software
• (knowledge workers, knowledge elites)
• Multiple Sites of Knowledge Production
• (universities, business, media, civil society)
• Power of Knowledge Information Society
• (Yahoos, Googles, Facebooks Twitters)
• Knowledge as commodity Intellectual property
• (propertied classes and property-less masses)

3
Assymetries in Knowledge world

• Global Soft Power Media, Advertisements,
  Bollywoods
• (power to shape minds?)
• Educational Inequities Access to Post-secondary
  education
• (primary literates abound, college access
  denied?)
• Digital Divide Mobile vs internet
• (deep oral/directed penetration, low
  written/original access?)
• Language Hegemony Victorious English
• (rootless monopoly, dying diversity?)

4
Rebuilding the Knowledge Society

• Valuing diversity of knowledge sources
• (beyond the academe?)
• Appreciating plurality of knowledge forms
• (beyond the written word?)
• Critical thinking as natural human phenomenon
• (beyond the expert?)
• Knowledge as a global public good
• (beyond consumption?)

5
Trajectories of Challenges

• Political economy of knowledge
• (who pays for it? And why?)
• Organic Intellectuals
• (voices from the subaltern classes?)
• Scholar Practitioners
• (practice-research engagement?)
• Indigenous Knowledge
• (native science or science of the natives?)

6
Engaged Scholarship

• Inquiry of curiousity
• (what is the source of curiousity?)
• Rigorous Inquiry
• (benchmarks and standards?)
• Inquiry for Action
• (what issues to act upon?)
• Accountable Inquiry
• (to whom? And why?)