Series Editors' Preface
Seana McGovern's Education, Modern Development, and Indigenous Knowledge: An Analysis of Academic Knowledge Production is a welcome second volume in our Indigenous Knowledge Series with Garland Publishing. In the discourse of modern development and education indigenous knowledge has played a minor role. Such a recognition, McGovern posits, provides an excellent vantage point to better appreciate the complex ways that power shapes academic knowledge. It also helps practitioners gain the ability to see the educational process in a way that leads to socially just and culturally sensitive practices. Educators in general will profit from a serious reading of McGovern's work; professionals working in international and comparative education will be especially drawn to the challenges the author presents to their fields. Indeed, it is our opinion that after McGovern's confrontation of such fields with the implications of indigenity, they can never again operate in the same comfortable manner.
Our main concern in this series involves what happens when indigenous knowledge encounters the verities of the academy. Such encounters are complex and ambiguous and marked by risks to all who are involved with them. We, however, believe that the risks are worth the potential benefits to be gained. McGovern's analysis will rankle the gatekeepers of various fields, but the multi-dimensional usefulness of her assertions justify the rancor. Scholars from around the globe will profit from the serious study of indigenous knowledge. As the “normal science” of the academy is challenged by the questions indigenous knowledges raise about the nature of our existence, our consciousness, our “globalized” future, new forms of curriculum and pedagogy will develop that will undermine the deskilled rationalized form such processes too often take.
An appreciation of indigenous epistemology—as illustrated by McGovern's work—provides Western peoples with another view of knowledge production in diverse cultural sites. Transformative possibilities emerge, as individuals come to understand the hidden process of knowledge legitimation. An awareness of these epistemological dynamics leads to new questions concerning the Western scientific faith in Cartesian-Newtonian foundationalism, as well as the certainty and eth-nocentrism surrounding it. In this context many observers may come to understand that the knowledge-certification process is structured as much (or more) by socio-cultural and political factors than by simply a universal form of disinterested reason. Regardless of how one ultimately answers the questions raised by this confrontation, the need for a reassessment of the criteria for judging knowledge claims is apparent. Here rests the power of Education, Modern Development, and Indigenous Knowledge: An Analysis of Academic Knowledge Production whether one agrees with McGovern or not, the questions she raises at the very least demand new forms of study.
As we conceptualized the series, we hoped that students of indi-geneity would ask questions that led to a more humble and empathetic Western perspective toward indigenous peoples and their understandings of the world. We believe that McGovern has profoundly succeeded in this context, as she studies colonial educational practices that harm a variety of peoples—indigenous peoples in particular. While in no way claiming to speak for the indigenous people, McGovern operates as an informed ally who can influence insensitive pedagogies operating under the rubric of development. Operating with an understanding of indigenity McGovern undermines the self-assurance of many Western educators who believe that so-called undeveloped peoples can be “educated” via Western modes of scholarship to plan, manage, and organize themselves and their societies in a way that leads to Western notions of progress and civilization. The “order” educators have sought for “underdeveloped” peoples and the education that facilitates it hold frightening possibilities for those insightful enough to see through the blinding rationality on which they are grounded. McGovern possesses such insight.
Joe L. Kincheloe, Ladislaus Semali, Series Editors