Beyond Participation into the Future: Reflecting on Digital Technology and Indigenous Knowledge Systems from a Gender Perspective Position Paper for the IKTC 2011 Conference: Embracing Indigenous Knowledge System in a New Technology Design Paradigm Windhoek, Namibia 2-4 November 2011 Ineke Buskens
Importance Of A Gender Perspective • Content of indigenous knowledge may be very disparaging, discriminatory or even harmful to women. • A gender blind research and intervention perspective will contribute to a deterioration in women’s situations. • Women’s human rights will be violated when their dreams, aspirations and struggles are not understood as responses and adaptations to the sexist cultural environments in which they live. • Women’s contribution to their communities from a knowledge perspective is still less than it can be and less than what their communities need and are entitled to.
Beyond Participation Into The Future • How to include women in research and intervention initiatives that aim to develop digital technology for indigenous knowledge systems? • A future where women have more voice, critical voice, critical agency and participation than what they could imagine having now. • Dilemma between two essential imperatives: the need to respect ‘cultural freedom’ on the one hand and the need to honor human equality and individual liberty on the other hand. • This tension cannot be solved philosophically; it has to be faced and worked through anew in every encounter in
A New Paradigm for Research and Intervention
(from the invitation letter to contribute to a book on Human Centered Development by Buskens, I., Smith, M. & Thompson, M. )
• Development is seen as a wider program of social transformation, where progress is defined as conscious human evolution and achievement of well-being; • All development participants, both researchers and practitioners come from a critical perspective on society and on power relationships; • The development process is understood as a
A New Paradigm for Research and Intervention (Contd.)
• Intentions are recognized as ever-present drivers of development processes whether they are overt or covert, aligned with the project purpose or not. People have many intentions when participating in development. • Striving for quality in development requires mindful attention to the alignment between personal intentions, evolving group intentions, the purpose of the development work, and the wider transformational aims. Lack of
Thank you Ineke Buskens GRACE Project Leader PO Box 170 ELGIN 7180, South Africa +27(0) 21 2000 525 / +27(0) 21 859 1030 ineke@researchforthefuture.com