Re-understanding Change: a decolonial pedagogy for empowering people to think from the margins

Abstract

This study seeks to contribute to the unfinished project of decolonisation (Fanon, 2001) by questioning the Eurocentric knowledges we have inherited through Western academic institutions, and that stand as the only pathway for bringing about socio-environmental justice. In this dissertation I argue that the current socio-environmental crisis is, in reality, a crisis of knowledge. The universal way of thinking and understanding the world is a legacy of a global colonial history that started with the colonisation of the Americas and that led to the imposition of Western knowledge as the only lens from which to look at reality (Grosfoguel, 2015). This lens has naturalised the exploitation of Nature and people from the periphery, making it impossible to transform society’s thinking from the hegemony of Western knowledge, as it perpetuates the unequal colonial relationships that led to the crisis in the first place. It is in this context that the original contribution of my research sits, as it addresses the research problem of decolonising the knowledge sphere by bringing light to the hidden Indigenous knowledges present in Latin America. In addressing this research problem, I designed a decolonial pedagogy (Walsh, 2013) that enables scientists and social scientists to recognise the coloniality of knowledges framing their thinking, and discover the possibilities of creating change by thinking from the margins of Western knowledge. It is from the margins of knowledges, the place in which Western and non-Eurocentric knowledges meet, where other ways of understanding, thinking, being and acting can be imagined to transform society (Escobar, 2014). As a study that sits on the margins of Western knowledge, this thesis does not follow traditional academic frameworks, but it is an exercise of epistemic disobedience (Mignolo, 2011) that shifts the place of enunciation of knowledge from Western academic institutions to that of epistemological fights led by Indigenous peoples. To empower scientists and social scientists to think from the margins, I embarked on a journey to un-learn the Eurocentric narratives that have shaped our understanding of reality, to then re-learn from another place. To re-learn, I developed a partnership with the Nahua Indigenous peoples of Cuetzalan (Mexico), a community that is actively defending their lands from extractivist projects, through a series of yarns. This experience taught me a different way in which to understand our relationship with Nature and other people. Following the activity-centred analysis and design framework (ACAD) (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014), I designed a decolonial pedagogy that could guide participants in their decolonial journey to recognise the existence of colonial structures behind the socioenvironmental crisis, and could recognise the viable pathway for creating change that sits in the margins. The ACAD framework recognises learning cannot be designed; it is emergent. As such, the design process was focused on the design of the task given to the participants (epistemic), the design of the place in which learning occurs (set) and the design of the support for participants’ and facilitators’ engagement (social). The design decisions were informed primarily by Freire’s critical pedagogy, Fanon’s perceptions of decoloniality and Indigenous pedagogies. A pilot program of the decolonial pedagogy presented in this thesis was conducted in June 2018 in the City of Cuetzalan with four participants: three scientists and one social scientist. The findings from the pilot program illustrate how the participants, initially unaware of the colonial structures behind the socio-environmental crisis, were feeling negative emotions related to the lack of pathways available for creating change. After participating in the tasks designed and co-facilitated by myself and members of the Nahua community, the participants reported moving from an inadvertently oppressed position to an empowered one from which they could see a clear pathway to bring change. An unexpected finding of the pilot program was that the four participants expressed their desire to become to become facilitators of the pedagogy. As such, this thesis has been written as a pedagogical tool to help prepare the participants to become facilitators and with it, widen the crack this study has created in the coloniality of knowledges. This thesis – a product of research, design, learning and teaching - represents a theoretical-practical contribution that brings light to the Indigenous alternatives to the modernity paradigm emerging from Mexico, and shows the power of this alternatives for empowering scientists and social scientists to create change. As such, the decolonial pedagogy designed for this study has implications for decolonial educators as well as for professionals seeking to transform society, as it shows a clear pathway to do this important work from the margins.