Introduction: International Perspectives on Education, PAR, and Social Change

Abstract

As globalist euphoria, market triumphalism despite recent vulnerabilities and hypermodernizing political, cultural, educational, and linguistic projects define the dominant accents of this historical juncture, academics and knowledge/pedagogical workers continue to deliberate on our contributions to education, research, and to knowledge processes. More importantly, for those of us who view such engagements as being fundamentally political, we critically assess the import of synergies between research, knowledge, education, and social action in relation to the dominant epistemic conceptions and political-economic interests of our time. Recognizing that all research and socioeducational inquiry begins from a social location and that research being conducted by those who are located with and for power, will produce knowledge useful for the purposes of ruling relations and the reinforcement of existing hierarchies of culture and material existence (for instance, “western empiricism reifies the conventional values legitimating capitalist society” Antonio, 1981, p. 381), it is incumbent on others to democratize and decolonize these constructions (Fanon, 1961; Freire, 1970; Nandy, 1987; Nkrumah, 1964; Smith, 1999) and take a standpoint outside the relations of ruling (Smith, 2005). We need to be clear about whose standpoint we are taking and why, whose questions need to be addressed and what for and then write with responsibility toward those for whom we claim to write.