Does some one know sociologists and anthropologists who have dealt with the problem of how knowledge is constructed, and particularly cultural (traditional, local) knowledge in indigenous communities? I´m looking a good theoretic background that allowed me to understand knowledge as a social construction.
Thanks
Pd: Add you answers in english, spanish or french!!
A classic text is Lakoff's and Johnston's "Metaphors We Live By" that discusses how language inflects and shapes cognition. Another important book is Berger's and Luckmann's "Cultural Construction of Reality". I don't think either relates to indigenous communities specifically but both provide a general theoretical background.
Hello Pablo,
I recommend Linda Tuwihai Smith's text Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999; 2012), especially chapter 5: Research Through Imperial Eyes. She articulates how Western science differs epistemologically and ontologically from Indigenous ways of knowing and how colonization has guided "science". She emphasizes Maori culture in New Zealand. There are reviews online to further guide you in making an informed decision. I have used sections from the text in teaching curriculum analysis and philosophies of inquiry courses. I have included a link to one such review:
https://www.academia.edu/5279928/Decolonizing_Methodologies_2nd_Edition_by_Linda_Tuhiwai_Smith
On the emergence of global society and its relation with regional cultures, see:
Wolf, Eric R., Europe and the people without history, 2nd. ed., Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, University of California Press, 1997.
Conceptual (and visual) metaphors may be shared across linguistic boundaries, as calques. This was frequently the case in ancient and colonial Mesoamerica. I have written a bit on this topic, comparing metaphors shared by the Otomi and the Nahua:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287218021_One_culture_two_languages_what_calques_tell_us_about_central_Mexican_society_at_the_time_of_the_Spanish_conquest
For a critique of Whorfian linguistic determinism, please see this article:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234798890_La_hipotesis_Sapir-Whorf_una_evaluacion_critica
Article La hipótesis Sapir-Whorf: una evaluación crítica
Chapter One culture, two languages: what calques tell us about centr...
Mead and Vygotsky have been the originator of the sociogenetic viewpoint on human cognition:
1. Ontological postulate:All human cognition is social in its nature
2. Developmental postulate: The social nature of human cognition emerges in the process of internalization of external social experiences by individuals in the process of socialization.
:
They build on ideas from: James Mark Baldwin, Josiah Royce, William James, John Dewey, and Charles Cooley.
Herder,Kant, Hegel, Dilthey, Lipps, Wundt,
Tarde, Janet, .
Oldies like Claude Lévi-Strauss's radical La pensée sauvage, Clifford Geertz's essays on "Thick Description", those on the island of Bali and the anthology of his essential essays, The Interpretation of Cultures. Also Mary Douglas' epochal book Purity and Danger. Regis Debray has a fascinating book, Transmitting Culture (2005) where he invented the term "glocal" (global + local) where he proposes that thanks to the web we can be as local as we want and transmit it to all the world without loosing our "locality". There is also Victor Segalen's for many years ignored but recently acclaimed book Essai sur l'exotisme which has changed the way we understand (or not) the cultures we visit. In the Caribbean, we have the very challenging essays by Édouard Glissat (born in Martinique) Le discours antillais, Poétique de la relation, Introduction à une poétique du divers, Traité du Tout-Monde, and Philosophie de la relation. Glissant's books are probably what you are looking for.
Best regards, Lilliana
Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, religion, notions of time, concepts of the universe and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. The theory of knowledge centers on the notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating models of the social world and share and reify these models through language.
Pablo,
This paper may help
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236941623_Building_a_knowledge_society_one_individual_at_a_time_a_multi-level_review
Working Paper Building a knowledge society one individual at a time: a mul...
Dear Pablo, there is no "structure of knowledge" in our global society, just mean and nasty competition and distortion of the real value of the vast kinds and complex manners of knowledge. Medication is a case in point. Laboratories receive money for privatizing medication development, which makes medication almost impossible to buy. The rules of the "market" are changing every day under one main slogan: "let's make money". The "1%" is always changing its strategies and right now we are in such a bad shape that money is no longer moving around, but kept safely in banks. Investment is almost paralyzed, and a lot has been written about this in the last few months. Knowledge has become a commodity, and it can yield a return on investment only if it becomes a "trade secret". There is no "free speech" for knowledge. We cannot speak of structure is so much of knowledge is not available to anyone.
In global society the command-structures seem always more protected. So far it is really difficult that a real alternative reaches the leaders and the sets of power. In this view i question: is the human race able to understand such risks? Are we able to deal consequences with longer times, such as ecosystemic consequences? Are we able to create a power that protects communities from speculation and select bad leaders before they reach the top?
See Critical Indigenous Methodology Handbook, Mignolo, Linda Smith, etc.
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