Decolonizing Knowledge to Eradicate Poverty


  •  Maria Evelinda Santiago-Jimenez    

Abstract

Poverty studies need to be carried out in new ways since the established ones have not had the support to catalyze policies that eradicate it. So it is, that has increased the number of poor. The objective of this essay proposes a different manner of generating knowledge about poverty. Here it is established that, instead of observing deficiencies, we look at potentialities that support the generation of transdisciplinary alternatives to reconstruct life projects. This document presents a reflective analysis - method used - on the concept of the decolonization of power with the objective of justifying the urgency on the decolonization of the academic knowledge that is cultivated on the poverty. It is considered the need to include the thinking of the poor about how they look at themselves and how they manage to "bullfight" the uncertainty and the social and ecological complexity in which they live. But not to create charity, or paternalistic projects, but so that this procedure is taken as potentialities. Finally, this paper proposes that theory and practice shall be built on an alliance of - erudite and daily knowledge - to form knowledge-generating chains. In order to create solutions "handcrafted, born of a strong sense of community: intercultural and interdisciplinary - based on the pluri-diverse and the multi-universe. This would trigger a new look on poverty, remove adverse labels to place potentialities, strengths and hopes of all those individuals who have survived the grievance and adversity that the one-dimensional vision has imposed.



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