| 1. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-
(författare)
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Educating for decolonization: Interculturality in the Andes
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.
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| 2. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-
(författare)
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Impossible Interculturality? : Education and the Colonial Difference in a Multicultural World
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An increasing number of educational policies, academic studies, and university courses today propagate ‘interculturality’ as a method for approaching ‘the Other’ and reconciling universal values and cultural specificities. Based on a thorough discussion of Europe’s colonial past and the hierarchies of knowledge that colonialism established, this dissertation interrogates the definitions of intercultural knowledge put forth by EU policy discourse, academic textbooks on interculturality, and students who have completed a university course on the subject. Taking a decolonial approach that makes its central concern the ways in which differences are formed and sustained through references to cultural identities, this study shows that interculturality, as defined in these texts, runs the risk of affirming a singular European outlook on the world, and of elevating this outlook into a universal law. Contrary to its selfproclaimed goal of learning from the Other, interculturality may in fact contribute to the repression of the Other by silencing those who are already muted. The dissertation suggests an alternative definition of interculturality, which is not framed in terms of cultural differences but in terms of colonial difference. This argument is substantiated by an analysis of the Latin American concept of interculturalidad, which derives from the struggles for public and political recognition among indigenous social movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. By bringing interculturalidad into the picture, with its roots in the particular and with strong reverberations of the historical experience of colonialism, this study explores the possibility of decentring the discourse of interculturality and its Eurocentric outlook. In this way, the dissertation argues that an emancipation from colonial legacies requires that we start seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.
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| 3. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-
(författare)
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Interculturality for decolonization: Indigenous alliances in South America, Geopolitics of Knowledge and Subaltern Paradigms
- 2013
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.
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| 4. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-
(författare)
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Kista folkhögskola - den första muslimska folkhögskolan
- 2011
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Ingår i: Mångfaldig (folk)bildning för det offentliga samtalet?. - Stockholm : Folkbildningsrådet. - 9789188692474 ; , s. 49-67
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Denna rapport är resultatet av ett ettårigt forskningsprojekt som Folkbildningsrådet finansierat. Projektet har genomförts av en grupp forskare vid Linköpings universitet: Lisbeth Eriksson, Martin Lundberg, Thomas Winman och Robert Aman.Forskarna undersöker hur olika religiösa och etniska gruppers skapande av “egna” folkbildande verksamheter kan förstås. I rapporten beskrivs de processer som lett fram till etablerandet av Kista folkhögskola, Agnesbergs folkhögskola, studieförbundet Ibn Rushd samt Samernas utbildningscentrum.
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| 5. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Mångfaldig (folk)bildning för det offentliga samtalet? : Tre minoriteters egna bildningsverksamheter
- 2011
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Folkbildningen i Sverige har, i en mening, varit oförändrad under lång tid, men som vi ser det sker nu ett trendbrott. Nya intressenter eller nya aktörer börjar ta andelar av den begränsade statsbidragsberättigade folkbildningen. Vad kommer det att leda till? Många inom folkbildningen talar i dag om att folkbildningen är omodern och vi undrar om nyetablerandet av folkbildningsverksamhet är ett tecken på det eller finns det helt andra utgångspunkter för denna (Eriksson, 2008)? Det övergripande syftet med studien är att få en fördjupad förståelse av vad det är som händer. Vi är intresserade av två olika frågeställningar. Den första handlar om varför. Vad finns det för motiv och bevekelsegrunder bakom olika etniska eller religiösa gruppers skapande av ”egna” folkbildande verksamheter? Vad är det som gör att de väljer en segregerad organisatorisk lösning framför en integrerad sådan? Den andra frågan rör processen. Vi vill beskriva den process som lett fram till att muslimer, romer och samer agerar på detta sätt. Här är både processen inom grupperna och processen i samhället av intresse. Vi ställer oss frågan om det finns någon relation mellan dessa processer. Finns det företeelser i samhället i stort som kan förklara vad som sker inom folkbildningen och vice versa? Det är också av intresse att se om det finns likheter eller olikheter i de olika gruppernas processer. Frågorna kan preciseras på följande sätt: Hur kan olika religiösa och etniska gruppers skapande av ”egna” folkbildande verksamheter förstås? Hur kan den process som lett fram till detta beskrivas; dels utifrån vad som skett och sker i samhället, dels utifrån de olika gruppernas perspektiv? För att kunna besvara dessa frågor har vi studerat fyra olika fall, fyra empiriska exempel. Som vi nämnt tidigare har vi valt att studera det romska initiativet att starta en egen folkhögskola i Agnesberg utanför Göteborg, det muslimska initiativet i Kista utanför Stockholm att göra detsamma samt det muslimska studieförbundet Ibn Rushd. Vi har dessutom valt att studera samernas situation i detta sammanhang.Muslimerna och romerna har valts med anledning av deras initiativ till egen folkbildande verksamhet, medan samerna valts då deras utveckling skulle kunna tolkas som den motsatta. De har tidigare haft en egen folkhögskola som nu avvecklats. Samerna har status av att vara en nationell minoritet, vilket även romerna har, men inte muslimerna. Muslimer, romer och samer är dock alla tre exempel på minoritetsgrupper i det svenska samhället. Detta aktualiserar frågor kring mångkultur, integration/segregation och majoritetssamhällets möte med minoritetsgrupper.
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| 6. |
- Aman, Robert, 1982-
(författare)
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The Cultural Other : The Reproduction of Coloniality
- 2012
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This paper scrutinizes how the discourse on interculturalism unfolds in the rapidly growing discipline on the subject by analyzing how it is produced in a local context – a university course. Interculturalism refers to interaction between cultures and the importance of fostering and guiding such relations, whereby educational courses on interculturalism becomes the primary instance to fulfill the ambition of governing bodies (e.g. EU, UNSECO) by shaping subjects with desired competences to enact in a culturally diverse world. Based on an empirical material comprised of semi-structured interviews with an ensemble of students who successfully have completed one of these courses on interculturalism, the paper develops a critical interrogation of those core ingredients, meanings and definitions which the students attaches to interculturalism. With interculturalism presupposing cultural diversity, I will illustrate the ambivalent nature of executing cultural boundaries and the risk of appropriating coloniality in the quest to rhetorically legitimize interventions in the name of modernization and social development.
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| 7. |
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