scholarly journals Do We Understand Life after Genocide? Center and Periphery in the Construction of Knowledge in Postgenocide Rwanda

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Ingelaere
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social

Abstract:Do we really understand life after genocide? A reflection on the construction of knowledge in and on Rwanda reveals that it is rife with contradictory assertions and images, and that there is a discrepancy between image and reality. This article attempts to map the center(s) of knowledge construction in postgenocide Rwanda, the place not only where policy is made, but also where knowledge is actively construed, managed, and controlled. It argues that an overall cultivation of the aesthetics of progress and a culturally specific communication code have contributed to an active interference in the scientific construction of knowledge. It stresses the need for scholars and observers to reveal the social and historical context for the knowledge being generated. It also urges them to physically and mentally move away from the center of society: to adopt a bottom-up perspective that captures the voices of ordinary people.

Multiple-source Record Linkage in a Rural Industrial Community, 1680–1820

1994 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve King
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Life Cycles ◽  
Multiple Source ◽  
Demographic Analysis ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Industrial Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Broad Outline

Re-creating the social, economic and demographic life-cycles of ordinary people is one way in which historians might engage with the complex continuities and changes which underlay the development of early modern communities. Little, however, has been written on the ways in which historians might deploy computers, rather than card indexes, to the task of identifying such life cycles from the jumble of the sources generated by local and national administration. This article suggests that multiple-source linkage is central to historical and demographic analysis, and reviews, in broad outline, some of the procedures adopted in a study which aims at large scale life cycle reconstruction.

Race and the Epigenetics of Memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Soto Laveaga
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Dna Analysis ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Neural Function ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Race Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Lasting Change

In my brief response to Terence Keel’s essay “Race on Both Sides of the Razor,” I focus on something as pertinent as alleles and social construction: how we write history and how we memorialize the past. Current DNA analysis promises to remap our past and interrogate certainties that we have taken for granted. For the purposes of this commentary I call this displacing of known histories the epigenetics of memory. Just as environmental stimuli rouse epigenetic mechanisms to produce lasting change in behavior and neural function, the unearthing of forgotten bodies, forgotten lives, has a measurable effect on how we act and think and what we believe. The act of writing history, memorializing the lives of others, is a stimulus that reshapes who and what we are. We cannot disentangle the discussion about the social construction of race and biological determinism from the ways in which we have written—and must write going forward—about race. To the debate about social construction and biological variation we must add the heft of historical context, which allows us to place these two ideas in dialogue with each other. Consequently, before addressing the themes in Keel’s provocative opening essay and John Hartigan’s response, I speak about dead bodies—specifically, cemeteries for Black bodies. Three examples—one each from Atlanta, Georgia; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Mexico—illustrate how dead bodies must enter our current debates about race, science, and social constructions. 

Formación Inicial Docente: Una mirada al Proceso de Construcción de Conocimiento Profesional desde la Práctica

2014 ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Pamela Labra Godoy ◽  
Rodrigo Fuentealba J.
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Student Teachers ◽  
Social System ◽  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Educational Context ◽  
Teacher Formation ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Social ◽  
Application Logic ◽  
Process Product

Resumen: Los procesos de formación de profesores han estado fuertemente influenciados por una lógica aplicacionista y una visión fragmentada y prescriptiva de la naturaleza del conocimiento. Se puede observar una enseñanza basada en la oralidad, en un bajo trabajo práctico y una escasa vinculación con la realidad educativa y los requerimientos del contexto. Se hace necesario que en dichos procesos se reconozca a los futuros profesores como sujetos de conocimiento con quienes se debiese generar una estructura curricular práctica activa y reflexiva.El reconocer la complejidad de los procesos que se llevan a cabo en el contexto educacional, hace necesario transitar desde una lógica instrumental/mecanicista, proceso-producto a una perspectiva epistemológica donde se rescate el dinamismo del ámbito educacional y la complejidad del sistema social en que éste se encuentra inserto. Palabras clave: Formación Inicial Docente - Construcción de Conocimiento Profesional – Prácticas – Reflexión Profesional Abstract Teacher education processes have been heavily  influenced by application logic, as well as, to a fragmented and prescriptive vision of the nature of knowledge, instead of the construction of it. A teaching process based on the predominance of oral discourse, low practical work, and a limited relation with educational reality and context needs, has been  observed. It seems necessary to recognize student - teachers as knowledge subjects with whom there should be an active/reflective curricular activity, and also recognize the complexity of the processes that take place in the educational context. In other words, it is necessary to move from an instrumental, process/ product perspective towards an epistemological perspective able to recognize the dynamism in the educational system and the complexity of the social system in which it is immersed. Key Words: Initial Teacher Formation- Professional Knowledge Construction- Practicum- Professional Reflection

Transforming Labour: From the Workers’ State to the Post-Socialist Re-Organization of Industry and Workplace Communities

2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Standards Of Living ◽  
The Social ◽  
East German

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy and action research

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shotter
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Social ◽  
Professional Research ◽  
The Many

Three themes seem to be common to both Greenwood’s and Gustavsen’s accounts: One is the social isolation of professional [research] elites from the concerns of ordinary people, which connects with another: the privileging of theory over practice. Both of these are connected, however, with a third: the great, unresolved struggle of ordinary people to gain control over their own lives, to escape from schemes imposed on them by powerful elites, and to build a genuinely participatory culture. An understanding of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and the recognition of its striking differences from any previous philosophical works, can make some important contributions to all these issues. Wittgenstein’s aim is not, by the use of reason and argument, to establish any foundational principles to do with the nature of knowledge, perception, the structure of our world, scientific method, etc. Instead, he is concerned to inquire into the actual ways available to us of possibly making sense in the many different practical activities we share in our everyday lives together: “We are not seeking to discover anything entirely new, only what is already in plain view.”

True Church, National Church, Minority Church: Episcopacy and Authority in the Restored Church of Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Rose Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
First Principles ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The People ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Church Of Ireland ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Church

The Church of Ireland in the later seventeenth century faced many challenges. After two decades of war and effective suppression, the church in 1660 had to reestablish itself as the national church of the kingdom of Ireland in the face of opposition from both Catholics and Dissenters, who together made up nearly ninety percent of the island's population. While recent scholarship has illuminated Irish protestantism as a social group during this period, the theology of the established church remains unexamined in its historical context. This article considers the theological arguments used by members of the church hierarchy in sermons and tracts written between 1660 and 1689 as they argued that the Church of Ireland was both a true apostolic church and best suited for the security and salvation of the people of Ireland. Attention to these concerns shows that the social and political realities of being a minority church compelled Irish churchmen to focus on basic arguments for an episcopal national establishment. It suggests that this focus on first principles allowed the church a certain amount of ecclesiological flexibility that helped it survive later turbulence such as the non-jurors controversy of 1689–1690 fairly intact.

Lessons Learned … About Curriculum: Five Years on and Half a World Away

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doune Macdonald ◽  
Lisa Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Physical Education ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
National Standards ◽  
Primary Field ◽  
Health And Physical Education ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Selection Of

The knowledge, skills, and attitudes manifested in health and physical education school curricula are an arbitrary selection of that which is known and valued at a particular place and time. Bernstein’s (2000) theories of the social construction of knowledge offer a way to better understand the relationship between the production, selection, and reproduction of curricular knowledge. This article overviews contemporary knowledge in the primary field (production) upon which curriculum writers in the recontextualizing field may draw. It highlights tensions in the knowledge generated within the primary field and, using a case of the USA’s National Standards for Physical Education (NASPE), demonstrates how particular discourses become privileged when translated into curriculum documents in the recontextualizing field.

scholarly journals Legitimizing indigenous knowledge in Zimbabwe: A theoretical analysis of postcolonial school knowledge and its colonial legacy

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Shizha
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
School Knowledge ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Informal Knowledge ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Postcolonial States

This article is a theoretical discussion on the social construction of knowledge in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. It examines effects of hegemonic knowledge constructions and how they may be de-legitimated through incorporating indigenous knowledge in postcolonial school curricular. The article questions the importance attached to Euro-centric school knowledge and the devaluation of indigenous knowledge in postcolonial states. It further argues that indigenous knowledge as informal knowledge plays a major role in society and should be formalized in educational institutions to constitute a transformative and inclusive educational system. The article proposes hybridization of knowledge to give voice to the formerly marginalized in school curricular in Zimbabwe. It also proposes that knowledge as a historical, cultural, social, spiritual and ideological creation should be a product of collaborated efforts from all possible stakeholders to foster social development and self-confidence in individuals.

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