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    The document discusses how colonial legacies and globalization undermine and marginalize African indigenous knowledge. It argues that colonialism and globalization are interconnected processes that create antagonistic social contexts for indigenous communities and post-colonial education in Africa. For social development and school curriculum, the author argues that no single group has a monopoly on knowledge and that education should be based on recognizing diverse knowledges and creating hybrid knowledge systems.

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    The document discusses how colonial legacies and globalization undermine and marginalize African indigenous knowledge. It argues that colonialism and globalization are interconnected processes that create antagonistic social contexts for indigenous communities and post-colonial education in Africa. For social development and school curriculum, the author argues that no single group has a monopoly on knowledge and that education should be based on recognizing diverse knowledges and creating hybrid knowledge systems.

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    The document discusses how colonial legacies and globalization undermine and marginalize African indigenous knowledge. It argues that colonialism and globalization are interconnected processes that create antagonistic social contexts for indigenous communities and post-colonial education in Africa. For social development and school curriculum, the author argues that no single group has a monopoly on knowledge and that education should be based on recognizing diverse knowledges and creating hybrid knowledge systems.

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    Book Edcoll 9789087904401 BP000005-preview

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    Mark Zed Dela Cruz
    The document discusses how colonial legacies and globalization undermine and marginalize African indigenous knowledge. It argues that colonialism and globalization are interconnected processes that create antagonistic social contexts for indigenous communities and post-colonial education in Africa. For social development and school curriculum, the author argues that no single group has a monopoly on knowledge and that education should be based on recognizing diverse knowledges and creating hybrid knowledge systems.

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    EDWARD SHIZHA

    4. GLOBALIZATION AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE


    An African Post-colonial Theoretical Analysis

    INTRODUCTION

    The question of African identity and the legitimating of African indigenous


    knowledge in the current global knowledge network is a matter of paradox. The
    legacy of colonialism bifurcates the identities that contemporary Africans assign to
    their social beings. In addition, globalization is denting the transformation process
    that is needed for Africans to be masters of their political, economic, social and
    cultural lives. African education policy makers are faced by a daunting task to
    incorporate and integrate indigenous knowledge systems into the school
    curriculum. The challenges from globalization rekindle the colonial memories that
    reify Eurocentric cultural values and pre-dispositions which are considered
    scientific or empirical for the official curriculum in Africa. However, post-colonial
    education suffers from a crisis of identity formation and is, to a large extent,
    located in contradictions of knowledge, place, context and belonging (McCarthy,
    2005). Although African educationists attempt to distance current educational
    practices from colonial legacies, the reinscription of post-colonial education still
    suffers from remnants of colonial identity and the problem of indigenous
    knowledge and African identity is a result of colonial mentality and the influence
    of “English rustics in black skin” (Sidney Greenfield in McCarthy, 2005). African
    leaders, policy makers, legislators and academics have enormous appetite for
    Western symbolic culture, while they pretentiously and ceaselessly denounce
    imperialism. As post-colonial theorists and writers, we are all children of that
    illogicality. We often present the analysis of the centre—periphery relations within
    a zero-sum framework, in which agency, power, and moral responsibility emanate
    and flow from the centre (Behdad, 1993). Commenting on the conflict of interests
    among post-colonial theorists who write on issues of identity, McCarthy (2005)
    asserts,
    One of the limitations in current post-colonial theory and methodology
    regarding the analysis of racial identity and centre-periphery relations—and
    indeed this is true of other critical minority discourses such as Afrocentrism
    and multiculturalism—is the failure of proponents to account for
    contradictory interests and affiliations (p. 1).

    Ali A. Abdi and Shibao Guo (eds.),


    Education and Social Development: Global Issues and Analyses, 37–56.
    © 2008 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
    SHIZHA

    While we should not present ourselves as proxies for the oppressed, we should
    open up debate on those relationships that inflict poverty and underdevelopment in
    Africa and those ideologies that undervalue and marginalize African indigenous
    knowledges.
    This chapter discusses how colonial legacies and globalization are implicated in
    the undervaluing and in the process of marginalization. In the chapter, I argue that
    colonialism and globalization are two sides of the same coin when it comes to how
    they affect development and socio-cultural issues in Africa and African education.
    There are connections and continuities between the two hegemonic processes on
    how they create antagonistic social contexts in indigenous communities and in
    post-colonial education. My argument, in relation to educational programmes, is
    that no one group or culture has a monopoly on intelligence and what defines
    knowledge. Therefore, social development and school curriculum in post-colonial
    education should be founded on the principle of the heterogeneity of all
    knowledges and creating third spaces through hybridization of knowledges.

    INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND COLONIZATION

    What faces indigenous people and minorities today is not at all new. Historically,
    indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean were under
    the repression of classical colonialism that treated them as second-class citizens.
    According to Kelly and Altbach (1984, p. 3), classical colonialism is “the process
    when one separate nation controls another separate nation.” Within the colonized
    states, internal colonization imposed alien value systems that altered the lives of
    those who were colonized. Kelly and Altbach (1984, p. 3) identify internal
    colonization as “the control of an independent group by another independent group
    of the same nation-state.” This form is under which the treatment of the indigenous
    people of North America and Australia fall. Although the context of the situation is
    different, the intent of the “colonizers” is identical. Colonization involves issues of
    race and equity and equality issues (Dei, 2002), with those considering themselves
    to be superior placing themselves in positions of advantage while disadvantaging
    others. Throughout human history, the cultures and livelihoods, even the existence,
    of indigenous peoples have been endangered whenever politically and economically
    dominant people have expanded their territories or settlers from far away have
    acquired new lands by force (IRIN, 2007).
    Indigenous peoples are generally located in areas considered to be the least
    hospitable of the world. They were relocated to these places by colonial regimes
    which possessed and colonized all the rich and productive lands of the countries
    they invaded (Deruyttere, 1997). The range of those defined as minorities requiring
    protection is huge, including groups as diverse as the Roma people of Albania, hill
    people in Bangladesh, pygmies across Central Africa, the Ogoni people of Nigeria,
    the Chagos islanders, the Bagobo warriors in the Philippines, Alaskan native Inuit
    peoples in the United States and Tibetan ethnic groups in China (IRIN, 2007). In
    South America, indigenous communities are found in the arid mountainous regions
    of the Andes and the remote tropical rainforest areas in the Amazon and Orinoco

    38

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