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Issue 2: Concept Note
Theme – Knowledge Systems : Making Sense of World(s)
TheDaak Academic invites book review submissions on the theme Knowledge Systems: Making Sense of the World(s) for its second academic issue.
How do we know what we know? What are the different worldviews and philosophies that inform our understanding of diverse subjects and issues? What are our worldviews, who defines them, and how do our worldviews get defined and delineated? These are questions of knowledge systems as much as these are of epistemology.
Given the long history of human mobility, settlements and cultural interactions, as collateral effects of migrations, colonialism, explorations, wars, and trade, it is difficult to identify the points where one knowledge system comes into being or the other ceases to exist. Horizons of touch, taste and smell blend into each other to emerge as distinct flavours in another time and space. The fact that diverse knowledge systems continue to work in tandem, and exist simultaneously, needs greater academic acknowledgement and perhaps even appreciation.
Knowledge systems within which we situate ourselves are products of long and often tedious dialogue and interactions. These knowledge systems shape our everyday choices, and the manner in which we subscribe to them goes on to define and direct our policies along with shaping our moral cosmos and political, socio-cultural systems and institutions. This may include questions of transcendental repute including those of life and death, nature of existence, to everyday questions around health and healing, of remedies and rituals.
The role of science is another predominant force in generating and sustaining a particular kind of knowledge. Innovation and artificial intelligence has ushered in a regime of digital knowledge where data creates knowledge, structures and presents it, and hence controls it.
Despite the overlapping and melding of interactions, the origin, context, spatio-temporal matrix, and the historical roots through which these knowledge systems evolve or develop cannot be undermined. These factors are what imbibe each knowledge system with uniqueness and a set of peculiarities. While enlightenment and modern science as we now understand, have worked in tandem, the decolonising moments have been significant in baring knowledge systems of their colonial effects. Similarly we have had other emancipatory moments in different parts of the world (for instance anti-caste, anti-class struggles as well as movements against racism and patriarchy, among others) that exposed the oppressive stages of certain knowledge systems.
However, there has been a tendency of framing knowledge systems in binaries, within intellectual discourses and otherwise. The question then is – can we think of knowledge systems in a way which transgresses the simplistic binaries entrapping the debates on knowledge systems since long; for example the binaries of universalism and particularism, universal values and cultural relativism, materiality and spirituality, West and non-West? Further, can we look at knowledge systems in ways that do not make it fall in the trap of the binaries deployed by extremist ideologies for political capitalisation, for instance the binary of alien versus natives? These are few of the many questions that one may think of while approaching knowledge systems. Knowledge systems then, may be read as a grid of dense dialogical or reactionary interactions that can neither be reduced to binaries of this kind, nor can be simplified for justifying the claims of singular ownerships.
Appreciating this complexity, TheDaak for the second issue of TheDaak – Academic, invites book reviews speaking to the question of knowledge and the following sub-themes (but not limited to)
- Decolonising Knowledge and Knowledge systems
- Indigenous Knowledge cultures and resources
- Local traditions/ regional Knowledge and sustainability
- Language and Knowledge
- Scientific and Technological Knowledge Paradigm
- Knowledge property and Global Commons
- Pedagogy and Knowledge Production
- Data and Knowledge Economy
- Gendering Knowledge Systems
Please send your book reviews to submission@thedaak.in by 15th November, 2023. The issue is due for publication on 15th December 2023.
Please note that if you are looking for a book recommendation on the current theme, or want to discuss your book with our editorial team, you can write to us at editor@thedaak.in. Please check our detailed guidelines for submissions in the Academic theme.
TheDaak Academic
Previous Call for Submissions:
Issue 1: Academic, due for publication on 30 August 2023. Submissions closed.
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