Global Trends and Indigenous Challenges

A defining trend throughout the modern era has been the spread of an evolving capitalism across the world. This process has been accelerated throughout the twentieth century, more recently involving the decline of Keynesian economics and the welfare state, uneven development between nations and regions, a serious weakening of alternative economic ideas and practices, the development of information and knowledge economies in association with industrial economies and unprecedented technological change leading to instantaneous communication worldwide. Socialist revolutions, most particularly in Russia and China, have not been sustained in terms of the development of socialist economics and democratic organisation that are substantially different to capitalist practices. For some, such changes constitute the ‘end of history’ where market monopoly capitalism has triumphed and the liberal, parliamentary model of governance has become increasingly accepted as the way to individualise and privatise social existence.

Conscientisation represents the development of the awakening of critical awareness. It will not appear as a natural byproduct of even major economic changes, but must grow out of a critical educational effort based on favourable economic conditions (Paulo Freire, 1974, p. 19).