[P2P-F] Lokavidya Jan Andolan (People's Knowledge Movement) First International Conference, 12-14 Nov. 2011, Vanarasi, India

Sat Jun 11 13:14:55 CEST 2011

Dear Amit, I have posted it on our Ning blog, as well as tweeted and
facebooked it,

also here copied on our mailing list,

Michel

On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 12:57 AM, Amit Basole <abasole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Michel
> Hope this note finds you well. I am writing to inform you of a meeting that
> Vidya Ashram is organizing in Varanasi, India this coming November. The call
> for participation in English is below. The call is also available in
> Spanish, Italian and French, if needed (all the versions are available on
> http://lokavidyajanandolan.blogspot.com/).
> We will be grateful if you can publicize this call in your networks. We
> expect several mass organization to participate from within India, but are
> hoping for some international presence as well. Do let me know if you have
> any questions.
>
> Regards
> Amit
>
>
> CALL FOR PARTICPATION
>
> *LOKAVIDYA JAN ANDOLAN *
>
> *(PEOPLE’S KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENT)*
>
> FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
>
>  12-14 NOVEMBER, 2011, VARANASI, INDIA
> Vidya Ashram (www.vidyaashram.org) invites you to participate in the First
> International Conference of the *Lokavidya Jan Andolan* to be held on 12-14
> November, 2011, in Vidya Ashram, Sarnath, Varanasi, India. We will also be
> holding an online preparatory dialog from 1st July to 31st August. We invite
> you to participate in this dialog as well. Please visit
> http://lokavidyajanandolan.blogspot.com or write to vidyaashram at gmail.com for
> latest information.
>
> *SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE KNOWLEDGE STANDPOINT*
>
> * *
>
> In India displacement of people from their land, their houses and their
> work has emerged as the single largest concern of the social movements.
> Movements of peasants against forced acquisition of land and for
> remunerative prices , movements of  *adivasis* (indigenous people) and
> local communities for local control of natural resources and against
> ecological and environmental destruction, movements of slum dwellers for
> civic and social facilities, and the movements of hawkers and artisans
> against systematic demolition of the local markets and inroads  by the
> corporations and the global market, have all converged to become a single
> movement against displacement and eviction, though managed and organized
> separately. Those trying to organize these people are struggling to find
> pathways to confront the ruling dispensation.
>
>
>
> All these people, the displaced, the communities they belong to, have never
> gone to college and live by the knowledge they posses, called *lokavidya*,
> which they have acquired from elders, from peers, in the community, at the
> site of work, through experiments and by their own genius. Displacement
> alters the conditions of their life in such a way that *lokavidya *is no
> more able to serve their life needs and thus turns them into sources of
> cheap labour.  It is this severance of *lokavidya* from their lives, which
> needs to be fought at all costs. In fact *lokavidya*, that is people’s
> knowledge, skills, ways of thinking, values, methods of organization,
> aesthetic and ethical sensibilities, in short, their *world of knowledge
> as a part of their own world*, is the main source of their strength.*Lokavidya
> * is also what is common to this multitude, which is at the receiving end.
> It is important to understand that the emancipatory pathways today traverse
> through the world of knowledge. The *Lokavidya* standpoint is the people’s
> standpoint in the Age of Information.
>
>
> *LOKAVIDYA**-KNOWLEDGE CLAIM*
>
> Peasants and indigenous people the world over are in a new mood of
> assertion. Expressing, articulating and representing in ways that are their
> own, these people are staking a claim to their inalienable right to live by
> their own knowledge, values and belief systems and acquire knowledge that
> they deem fit for them. Asia, Africa, South America, everywhere a new kind
> of turmoil is in the making, promising to produce a new unity of the
> oppressed and the dispossessed, this time based on what is common in their
> understanding of the world around them, in their relationship with nature,
> namely based on *lokavidya*.
>
>
>
> This means that peasants and *adivasis*, artisans and women, pavement
> retailers and workers need to stake a claim for *lokavidya*. *This is not
> a claim for survival, this is a claim to build a new world.* They need to
> claim that a radical challenge to capital and commercialization of knowledge
> can be posed only by *lokavidya*. They need to also claim that only *
> lokavidya* provides the knowledge bases for a society based on truth, on
> social and economic equality. We need to understand that until these claims
> are staked we shall remain prisoners of our preconceived notions of radical
> social change, without effect. Such a *lokavidya*-knowledge claim can give
> birth to a new imagination, new thought in the realms of economics, society,
> politics and culture. The process of giving shape to such claims is the
> process of *Lokavidya Jan Andolan.*
>
>
>
> *LOKAVIDYA JAN ANDOLAN  **(LJA)*
>
> The global economic and ecological crises have exposed the thought and
> institutions that have enriched a few by making the majority starve and by
> bringing nature to the brink of destruction. Lokavidya Jan Andolan is a
> knowledge movement of this majority, that is of those people, who have been
> dubbed as the ignorant masses by the science establishments, the
> universities and  the modern state. The idea that there is a sea of
> knowledge outside the university is not alien to most people in the world.
> Knowledge is widely spread in society and the idea that knowledge is widely
> spread, has a very wide spread too. That is, people know and they know that
> they know. And yet neither these people nor the knowledge they possess have
> dignity in society. Their knowledge has no economic returns, so people are
> poor. It has no respect in the public domain, so people are culturally
> marginal. It has no clear relation with peoples’ organizations, therefore
> people are politically irrelevant. There is a need for a political movement,
> a space where people can mobilize on the basis of their knowledge. This
> movement is the *Lokavidya Jan Andolan.*
> The conference is an attempt to bring together the organizers of the
> movements of peasants and artisans, indigenous peoples and small
> trades-people, women and youth on a knowledge platform, which is a platform
> of their knowledge, lokavidya. It is from this platform that the claim can
> be staked that it is in lokavidya that the solution lies.
>
> *KNOWLEDGE MOVEMENTS WORLDWIDE*
>
> * *
>
> The world is witnessing a new kind of movement, a people’s knowledge
> movement with entirely new political imaginations. The ideas of lokavidya in
> India, Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia, Rights of Nature in Ecuador, Food
> Sovereignty by the International Peasants Movement Via Campesina, and
> Cognitive Capitalism and the idea of Knowledge Liberation in Europe and
> America are indications of a churning hitherto unknown to political debates.
> There is an insistence in all these that people are knowledgeable and that
> their knowledge and beliefs are not inferior in any way to knowledge doled
> out in the name of science. There is an understanding that the damage done
> to people and nature over the past centuries, which is multiplied manifold
> in this digital era of the New Empire, is correctable only by those who have
> not been fully subsumed into the systems of modern knowledge.
> Lokavidya Jan Andolan argues that these and all such struggles worldwide
> constitute a new fraternity of struggles, building a worldwide knowledge
> movement of the people, a movement of people’s knowledge, a movement of
> knowledge in society. THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF LOKAVIDYA JAN
> ANDOLAN VENUE: Vidya Ashram, Sarnath, Varanasi, India DATES: November
> 12-14, 2011 SESSIONS: The first two days of the conference will have three
> thematic sessions, namely ·      The idea of  *lokavidya *and people’s
> knowledge movement, ·       The struggles that underline and make space
> for such an idea and ·       The strategy and organization of the
> Lokavidya Jan Andolan The third day will be devoted to the role and place
> of language, art, media and philosophy in the *Lokavidya Jan Andolan. *Those
> not working with the idea of *lokavidya* will also get ample time to
> articulate their views on the idea and practice of a people’s knowledge
> movement. Participants are expected to make their own arrangements for
> travel to Varanasi. Vidya Ashram will take care of local lodging and
> boarding. You can also contact the following people for more information. Sunil
> Sahasrabudhey            Varanasi            *budhey at gmail.com*<budhey at gmail.com>
> +91-9839275124 B. Krishnarajulu            Hyderabad
> kkbandi at gmail.com            +91-9866139091 Amit Basole
> Boston                        abasole at gmail.com            +1-6176867437 We
> look forward to seeing you in Varanasi. Vidya Ashram Sarnath, Varanasi,
> India www.vidyaashram.org
>
>
>
>
> --
> Amit Basole
> Department of Economics
> University of Massachusetts, Amherst
> http://www.people.umass.edu/abasole/
> http://thenoondaysun.blogspot.com/
> http://vidyaashram.org/
> http://sanhati.com/
> http://www.edu-factory.org/
>

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