Lokvidya

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Indian epistemological concept referring to people's knowledge.

Description

Explanation from Avinash of the India-based Knowledge-sialogue mailing list:


"The term is constituted from two terms 'loka' and 'vidya' which have complex resonances in Indian languages, but the concept of lokvidya is not something ancient. It was forged in the process of grappling with the questions of comtemporary politics of knowledge. In the background of certain debates, what was to be the Third Congress of Traditional Sciences at Varanasi, India in 1998 was renamed 'Lokvidya Convention', i,e, Convention on People's Knowledge.

So it is a concept (and a standpoint) in progress, created specifically to re-position the direction of politics. It acquires a richness of connotation, because 'lok' has a double meaning - it means both 'world' and 'people', and these two meanings have existed simultaneously. Vidya is any kind of knowledge that exists concretely in society - it can range from specific individual competencies, to esoteric bodies of knowledge, to art and science and knowledge of communities like agricultural knowledge of farmers. For example, you possess Internet vidya or computer vidya, which many people do not possess. But your vidya is not the same as that of Bill Gates, because it is informed by a different set of values, maybe even a different logic, even though you may share some competencies with him.

'People's knowledge' seems to be an appropriate translation, and it should be seen not completely divorced from the earlier formulations of proletarian knowledge, traditional non-western knowledge etc. But it cannot be equated with them. Just as Gramscian 'hegemony' cannot be equated with 'superstructure' , because it was formulated specifically to address the limitations of the latter. So my suggestion would be to use the word 'lokvidya' freely whether in criticising it or reformulating it. You must have noticed that each one of us tries to construct it slightly differently. And this should be valued.

Perhaps we can say that it is knowledge in society that exists outside of the institutinal structures of authority like science or religion. It has no institutional structures of its own, it sustains itself in the activities of ordinary life. Of course, none would like to say that all institutionally created knowledge should be rejected. What is being argued is that people as epistemic beings should have a free relation with any authoritative knowledge in society. And people are bearers of knowledge traditions, which need not be just experiential or practical, which may have its own organisation. Life of a society has this substratum of knowledge and activities and any social or political order which takes away its freedom is tyrannical. Science excluded this knowledge epistemically and was partisan to a tyrannical social and political order, especially in non-western societies. The order that subsequently emerged in the postcolonial societies has worked out some combination of science and tradition. But the tradition has been limited to certain institutionalised forms of authority interpreted anew. People's knowledge or lokvidya remained excluded. Now in the information age this straturm of knowledge and activities is recognised in some manner, but the question is whether a new form of tyranny is taking shape. And whether the management of knowledge based on ICTs is at the core of this new order. When we speak of knowledge management we are not speaking of a specific branch of management, but to an order of knowledge. Unlike science it is not a static order or a static organisation of knowledge and knowledge activities but a dynamic machine. And if there is a new knowledge machine, as part of an emerging global order, how can it be separate from the other developments like US wars, explosion of media, and the neoliberal economic order?"