Whose Knowledge? Epistemological Collisions in Solomon Islands Community Development
Whose Knowledge? Epistemological Collisions in Solomon Islands Community Development
Date
2002
Authors
Gegeo, David Welchman
Watson-Gegeo, Karen Ann
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University of Hawai'i Press
Center for Pacific Islands Studies
Center for Pacific Islands Studies
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Abstract
We show in this article how modernization, disguised as “community development,”
continues to fail rural villages in Solomon Islands despite the supposed
movement toward a more people-centered, bottom-up philosophy in development
education and practice. We focus on the case study of a Kwara‘ae (Malaita island)
rural, locally owned and operated project aimed at giving unemployed male youth
a stake in the community and preventing their off-island migration. Successful for
a decade, the project was destroyed by the intervention of a retired government
official who, because of his education, training, and work with outside development
agencies, imposed a modernization framework, including centralization of
leadership and the valuing of Anglo-European knowledge over indigenous knowledge.
While agreeing with the theoretical argument for indigenous knowledge in
development, we argue that it is equally important that development be guided by
people’s indigenous epistemology/ies and indigenous critical praxis for (re)constructing and applying knowledge.
Description
Keywords
rural development,
community development,
youth,
indigenous epistemology,
Kwara'ae,
Solomon Islands,
Oceania -- Periodicals.
Citation
Gegeo, D. W., and K. A. Watson-Gegeo. 2002. Whose Knowledge? Epistemological Collisions in Solomon Islands Community Development. The Contemporary Pacific 14 (2): 377-409.
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