Knowledge Democracy

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://knowledgedemocracydspace.com/handle/123456789/1076

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50th anniversary edition of pedagogy of the oppressed: A review
(2020) Hall, Budd L
A Canadian approach to higher education, community-engagement and the public good: The future of continuing education
(2009) Hall, Budd L
This work addresses the vital role of Community-University Engagement (CUE) in Canadian higher education as a critical strategy for responding to major global challenges like social injustice and climate change. It is argued that the collective resources of universities are the largest under-utilized assets for community change and sustainability. This work introduces the CUE Factor as a triangle encompassing “Community-Based Experiential Learning”, “Community-Based Research (CBR), and Community-Based Continuing Education” , defining CBR as a collaborative, democratizing process aimed at “social action and justice”. While Continuing Education (CE) units have over a century of experience and a strong base in lifelong learning, they face significant challenges, including declining institutional support and a perceived distance from the university's core academic and research functions. Therefore, this paper proposes an agenda for action to position CE centrally within the CUE movement, recommending that CE units strengthen their research profiles, lead university-wide discussions on civic engagement, and forge action alliances with community organizations to ensure universities meet their obligation to contribute to social transformation.
A policy brief on knowledge mobilization: The power of creativity and action
(UNESCO Chair, 2022-05-11) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
This brief fits within the Data and Knowledge Production theme, but also relates to the Futures of Higher Education and the Higher Education and the SDGs themes. If we are to meet the challenges of our times, the research produced within higher education institutions and their partners needs a dramatic shift from the academic mode of knowledge production to a societal mode of knowledge production and sharing. it will require that attention be given to the creation of locally contextualised knowledge with priorities for action that affect the everyday lives of people where they live and work. The Active participation of local stake-holders---community, local governments, local business, women & youth-in co-producing and sharing the knowledge of such local solutions can be facilitated through their involvement in the research process. Knowledge mobilization (KmB) is therefore called for. Our brief provides a context for understanding the need for KmB as well as providing examples of how creative or arts-based approaches to KmB have been proven to be effective.
A reflective book review-Challenging the professionalization of adult Education: John ohliger and contradictions in modern practice
(2010) Hall, Budd L
A river of life: Learning and environmental social movements
(Interface: A journal for and about social movement, 2009) Hall, Budd L
What and how can we learn from social movements? According to Dr. Budd Hall, social movements are intense locations for knowledge to come together and for learning to happen. They are seen as one of the best routes to social transformation because they bring together action, learning and social change. In this 2009 paper, Dr. Hall reflects on the epistemic value of social movements in the creation of knowledge. He begins by exploring what a social movement is and outlines its characteristic features as discussed by different schools of thought. The paper is a collaborative effort involving teams from three organisations and presents qualitative analyses based on case studies of environmental social movements from countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Sudan, India, Canada and many more. From these cases, the paper formulates key principles of environmental social movement learning, including seeing humans as part of nature rather than separate from it, deconstructing power relations in our relationship with nature and with each other as a first step toward transforming them, and several other interconnected insights. Through both theoretical reflection and grounded case studies, Hall argues that social movements, while leading to social transformation, also facilitate deep personal transformation by creating powerful spaces for learning.
Against epistemicide: Decolonising higher education
(2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
How have knowledge systems been shaped by histories of enclosure and dispossession? In this reflective essay, Dr. Budd Hall and Dr. Rajesh Tandon examine how colonisation and the enclosing of knowledge are embedded within the same paradigm through which capital was accumulated by dispossession, as theorised by David Harvey. Drawing parallels with the enclosure movement in England, they argue that common lands were gradually privatised, displacing those who depended on them. In a similar way, wealth extracted through colonisation helped build universities that enclosed knowledge within their walls, regulating who could access it and who could legitimately produce it. These enclosures determined which knowledge systems were recognised and legitimised and which were dismissed as irrational, reinforcing distinctions between knowers and non-knowers. The essay traces how these processes continue to shape contemporary academic institutions and their authority over what counts as legitimate knowledge. In response, the authors describe the establishment of the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education as a deliberate effort to reverse the colonisation of knowledge systems by creating structures and processes for the co-creation of knowledge with social movements and civil society partners, grounded in a commitment to epistemic justice.
An emerging global civil society? Implications for learning and work
(2000) Hall, Budd L
An introduction to the Ekoln letter on universities in the era of climate change
(2021) Masschelein, Jan; Lotz-Sisitka, Heila; Hall, Budd L; O’Brien, Karen; Dinerstein, Ana; Andreo, Vanessa; Thiel, Pella; Eiríksdó r, Lovísa; Chabay, Ilan; Hine, Dougald; Wright, Sue; Barrineau, Sanna; Barne, Ronald; Stein, Sharon; Stoddard, Isak; Webster, Noah Sobe; Facer, Keri; Kulundu-Bolus, Injairu
Beyond epistemicide: Knowledge democracy and higher education
(UNESCO Chair, 2015) Hall, Budd L
As universities grapple with their role in a world marked by inequality and ecological crisis, the question of whose knowledge counts has become impossible to ignore. This paper situates higher education within a longer history of epistemicide, the systematic erasure of indigenous and marginalized ways of knowing, and examines how knowledge democracy offers a path toward repair. By drawing on examples of community-based research and indigenous scholarship, it argues for reimagining universities as sites of dialogue rather than dominance, where multiple epistemologies can coexist. The study underscores both the transformative promise and the unresolved tensions of this shift, positioning knowledge democracy less as a finished framework than as an unfolding experiment in rebalancing power and voice.
Beyond epistemicide: Knowledge democracy, higher education and the path towards pluriversality
(UNESCO Chair, 2016) Hall, Budd L
How have our knowledge systems been shaped by histories of colonisation, enclosure and dispossession, and what might it mean to move beyond them? In this lecture delivered in Brighton, Dr. Budd L. Hall traces how contemporary knowledge systems are rooted in long histories of land theft, colonial expansion and epistemicide. Beginning with a personal account of his family’s migration to Canada and the acquisition of Indigenous land through illegal and immoral means, he situates his own access to higher education within the material histories of dispossession that financed universities and consolidated Western knowledge systems as dominant. Drawing on David Harvey’s notion of accumulation by dispossession and Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ concept of epistemicide, Hall argues that universities have functioned as sites of enclosure, determining who is authorised to produce knowledge and whose knowledge systems are dismissed. Through examples from India, Uganda, South Africa and beyond, the lecture highlights alternative knowledge systems that persist despite marginalisation. It calls for transforming knowledge systems through knowledge democracy, co-creation and a sustained commitment towards epistemic justice.
Challenges in the co-construction of knowledge: A global study on strengthening structures for community university research partnerships
(0000) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh; Tremblay, Crystal; Singh, Wafa
Civil society and construction of knowledge systems
(Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), 1997-06-01) Tondon, Rajesh
Modern systems of knowledge have largely been shaped by the state and the market, yet both have left little room for the lived realities of ordinary people. This paper positions civil society as a third arena in which knowledge is generated, one grounded not in abstract theory but in everyday practice, collective memory, and problem-solving. It argues that knowledge forms such as oral, experiential, intergenerational etc, are vital to understanding social life, even as they remain marginalized by formal institutions. By contrasting these dynamics with the dominant knowledge systems of state and corporate actors, the study opens up new questions about how knowledge is produced, legitimized, and used in society.
Contemporary conversations and movements in adult education: From knowledge democracy to the aesthetic turn
(2022) Hall, Budd L; Clover, Darlene E
In this article, two key figures in the history of the International Council for Adult Education, one being the Secretary General, discuss some of the contemporary conversations and movements that we have been a part of and how we are contributing through these areas to the field of adult education. Budd focusses on knowledge democracy, community-based participatory research and social movement learning. Darlene shares new conceptualisations of aesthetics and gender justice and her research and pedagogical work in these two areas.
Creating knowledge: Breaking the monopoly
(1982) Hall, Budd L
Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research, and higher education
(UCL Press, 2017) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
This article raises questions about what the word ‘knowledge’ refers to. Drawn from some 40 years of collaborative work on knowledge democracy, the authors suggest that higher education institutions today are working with a very small part of the extensive and diverse knowledge systems in the world. Following from de Sousa Santos, they illustrate how Western knowledge has been engaged in epistemicide, or the killing of other knowledge systems. Community-based participatory research is about knowledge as an action strategy for change and about the rendering visible of the excluded knowledges of our remarkable planet. Knowledge stories, theoretical dimensions of knowledge democracy and the evolution of community-based participatory research partnerships are highlighted.
Editorial: Knowledge democracy for a transforming world
(UTS ePress, 2020) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, Rajesh
The past five decades have seen enormous, worldwide growth in, and appreciation of, knowledge democracy - the discourse which we have found best contains the various theoretical approaches, values and practices within which participatory research exists. This Introduction outlines our understanding of knowledge democracy, which can be expressed by a number of principles: (1) Recognition of a multiplicity of epistemologies and ways of knowing; (2) Openness to assembling, representing and sharing knowledge in multiple forms (including traditional academic formats and all manner of social and arts-based approaches); (3) Recognition that knowledge emerging from the daily lives of excluded persons is an essential tool for social movements and other transformational strategies; and the (4) Requirement to carefully balance the need to protect the ownership of communities' knowledge with the need to share knowledge in a free and open access manner. We are pleased to present five articles from around the world that broaden and deepen our understanding of knowledge democracy -from a theoretical perspective, a practice perspective, an ontological perspective, and an action or political perspective.
Education for all as determined by the few?
(Society for Participatory Research in Asia, 1989-12) Tandon, Rajesh
Engaged excellence and the challenge of democratizing knowledge: Reflections on the history and practice of participatory research
(2016) Hall, Budd L
What can we learn from the histories and practices of participatory research in our efforts to democratize knowledge? In this lecture, Dr. Budd Hall traces the political, methodological and personal journeys that shaped participatory research across continents. Through his work in Tanzania under Julius K. Nyerere and in dialogue with thinkers such as Paulo Freire and Orlando Fals Borda, he reflects on how participatory research emerged through collective efforts guided by a vision of social transformation. Extending Freire’s argument that methodology is never neutral but shaped by ideology and power, Hall examines how knowledge production is structured by the social positions researchers occupy. Speaking as a white, male academic from a wealthy country, he reflects on how universities reward publications and professional recognition, while community collaborators rarely receive similar benefits. Recalling key developments such as the 1977 Cartagena conference convened by Orlando Fals Borda, the lecture situates participatory research as a politically grounded practice shaped by struggles for justice. Hall affirms that it deserves a place within universities while remaining accountable to communities, and calls for sustained critical engagement with power, inequality and the ethical responsibilities of knowledge creation.
Entry for new pergammon encyclopaedia of adult education: Social movement learning
(0000) Hall, Budd L; Clover, Darlene E.
Global Consortium of Knowledge-for-Change (K4C). September 16-17, 2019
(2019-09-17) Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)