The project has formally ended, but the work continues!

We published the book Plurinacionalidad y Justicia Epistémica, with Abya Yala (edited by Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez and Paola Minoia), and a Special Issue titled “Education and socio-environmental justice in the pluriverse” (edited by Paola Minoia and José Castro-Sotomayor) is forthcoming in the journal Globalizations.

Moreover, here are some articles and a book chapter that have been published, with the links to read them online:

– Arias-Gutiérrez, R. I., & Minoia, P. (2023). Decoloniality and critical interculturality in higher education: experiences and challenges in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Forum for Development Studies, 50(1), 11-34. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2023.2177562

– Castro-Sotomayor, J., & Minoia, P. (2023). Cultivating postdevelopment from pluriversal transitions and radical spaces of engagement. In H. Melber, U. Kothari, L. Camfield, & K. Biekart (Eds.), Challenging global development: towards decoloniality and justice (pp. 95-116). (EADI Global Development Series ). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30308-1_6

– Minoia, P., Tapia, A., & Kaukonen Lindholm, R. E. (2024). Epistemic territories of kawsak sacha (living forest): cosmopolitics and cosmoeducation. Globalizations. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2024.2308332



Book release: “Plurinacionalidad y justicia epistémica. Retos de la educación intercultural en la Amazonía ecuatoriana”

En Ecuador, con el fin de empoderar a las diferentes nacionalidades y pueblos que forman el Estado Plurinacional, se estableció el programa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (EIB). El objetivo: integrar diversos idiomas locales, conocimientos y prácticas pedagógicas en la educación, basada en la filosofía de sumak kawsay centrada en la comunidad, ecológicamente equilibrada y culturalmente sensible. La implementación del programa ha experimentado restricciones en la última década que han debilitado el programa omitiendo realidades culturales y saberes ancestrales.

Este libro aborda la implementación de la interculturalidad en la educación, con enfoque en la región amazónica y en los ciclos curriculares superiores. Ha confrontado situaciones educativas en la provincia de Pastaza, observando la aplicación de la EIB en unidades educativas de las zonas kichwa, shuar y sapara, con especial atención en el bachillerato y educación universitaria, es decir, aquellas instancias que preparan a los jóvenes para la vida adulta.

The book narrates how the great political and cultural project of educational interculturality, instrumental for recognizing the ancestral knowledge of the various Ecuadorian peoples as valid knowledge for all within the plurinational state, is applied to the Amazon region.

Arias-Gutiérrez, R., & Minoia, P. (Eds.) (2023). Plurinacionalidad y justicia epistemica. Retos de la educación intercultural en la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. Ediciones Abya Yala

Índice

Introducción: La educación como revitalización cultural y ecológica para las nacionalidades amazónicas (Paola Minoia y Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez)

Capítulo I: Políticas públicas educativas y lucha del movimiento indígena por una interculturalidad decolonial (Paola Minoia y Andrés Tapia)

Capítulo II: Características de la inserción de los pueblos y nacionalidades
indígenas en el sistema escolar (Tito Madrid y Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez)

Capítulo III: Del discurso hacia la estructura: interculturalidad en las universidades amazónicas (Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez, Manuel Pérez y Paola Pozo)

Capítulo IV: Educación intercultural y agencia de comunidades indígenas:
una mirada desde el territorio sapara (Riikka Kaukonen Lindholm y Mariano Ushigua)

Capítulo V: Acceso de jóvenes indígenas a los colegios en la provincia de Pastaza (Johanna Hohenthal y Ruth Arias-Gutiérrez)

Capítulo VI: Calendarios vivenciales: creando vínculos entre las comunidades
indígenas y el bachillerato (Tuija Veintie, Anders Sirén y Paola Minoia)

Capítulo VII: Interculturalidad en el aula: experiencias de acompañamiento
a los estudiantes de culturas minoritarias en Pastaza (Rosaura Gutiérrez Valerio, Juan J. Leiva Olivencia e Itaya Corina Andy Malaver)

Capítulo VIII: Intervenciones de diseño participativo: apoyando redes
de cuidado universitarias en tiempos de Covid (Nathaly Pinto, Xavier Barriga-Abril, Katy Machoa y Paola Minoia)

 

Presentación: PICTOGRAMAS, COMUNICACIÓN INTERCULTURAL Y DISEÑO PARTICIPATIVO

Durante el 22 y 23 de julio, parte del grupo de investigación participó en parte de una serie de conferencias virtuales organizadas por el Grupo de Interés Especial (Special Interest Group–SIG, en inglés) en Diseño Pluriversal de la Sociedad de Investigación en Diseño (Design Research Society –DRS, en inglés): Pivot 2021: Desmontaje/Montaje, herramientas para futuros alternativos. Las conferencias se centraron en mantener conversaciones interculturales sobre la descolonialidad y la transformación social. Con el objetivo de identificar herramientas y prácticas de desmantelamiento y reensamblaje que podrían favorecer formas de remodelar la presencia humana en la Tierra, así como casos concretos de creación de futuro alternativo en todo el mundo.

VIDEO DE LA PRESENTACIÓN

Continue reading “Presentación: PICTOGRAMAS, COMUNICACIÓN INTERCULTURAL Y DISEÑO PARTICIPATIVO”

Presentation: PICTOGRAMS, INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

During July 22-23, part of the research group participated in part of series of virtual conferences organized by the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Design Research Society (DRS): Pivot 2021: Dismantling/Reassembling, tools for alternative futures. The conferences focused on sustaining intercultural conversations about decoloniality and societal transformation. Aiming to identify tools and practices of dismantling and reassembling that could favor ways of reshaping human presence on Earth, as well as concrete cases of alternative future-making from all around the world.

VIDEO PRESENTATION

Continue reading “Presentation: PICTOGRAMS, INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND PARTICIPATORY DESIGN”

Academy of Finland’s Programme for Development Research: Webinar on Tuesday 14 December at 10.00–15.30

We have participated in the Webinar organized by the Academy of Finland in cooperation with the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have presented our team and project location, and then the research focus, methodology and preliminary findings. Here below I report some excerpts from the presentation, but first of all, I have acknowledged all research collaborators. Their names are in the following slide.

“The theme of our research project is located at the intersection between the accomplishment of the right to education for all, as stated by the SDG4, and the right to pertinent education, as stated by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights for Indigenous Peoples of 2007. In a country that is Plurinational by Constitution, Education contributes significantly to reinforcing political emancipation and territorial self-determination of indigenous peoples. This intersection has been articulated through programmes of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE). For indigenous students, IBE means to support emancipatory pathways via revitalization of traditional languages, land-based knowledges, and philosophies of life that respect humans and non-humans in nature. These components form a whole that can maintain their identities against rural-urban migration and assimilation into the urban-Hispanic hegemonic culture. Intercultural education is an education that can represent a way for young indigenous people to exit marginalization and poverty, not as individuals but within their own communities and indigenous nationalities. The preservation of indigenous communities on their lands can guarantee protection of ecological diversity against land use changes, and especially deforestation and extractive mining that cause environmental and climate changes.

In methodological terms, we looked at different policies of education and their contingent impacts in terms of access, pedagogies and results, through different tools. The research methodology has been mainly qualitative and we have used interviews, walking interviews, focus groups, mapping, and projects of caring through design in times of Covid-19.

Some of the research foci have been:

  1. Analysis of policies, conflicts and negotiations on education between State ministries and indigenous organizations; considering that in some cases, they were not alone but closely linked to negotiations for territorial rights and environmental planning. Examples are Planes de Vida (life plans) of the kichwas that see students as important agents.
  2. Analysis with statistics on schooling of indigenous and rural peoples in Pastaza; and statistics of students of the Universidad Estatal Amazonica (UEA) that self-identify as members of indigenous nationalities. There has been an increase of students who identify as Indigenous at the national level and in the UEA in the past years. The work has also provided an analysis of the problems in the transition between secondary and tertiary education, and between school and work related to the acquired education.
  3. Analysis of school topics and their reference to environmental sustainability; and of educational materials and pedagogies that have been used with the aim to revitalize indigenous knowledge, onto-epistemic plurality and inter-generational learning.
  4. Analysis of home-school mobility and school accessibility, especially considering some recent turbulences (or challenges) posed by the Organic Law on Education, by strikes, and by Covid-19: showing the importance to integrate socio-cultural, territorial and mobility justice perspectives into the global agenda of quality education, and also looking at the importance of the envirionmental and territorial engagement of students who attend schooling in their communities. .
  5. Accessibility has also been studied in terms of digital divide especially during the Covid-19 that has exacerbated educational inequalities, to which the state response has been weak. The UEA has self-organised distribution of laptops and gigabites thanks to other private funding. A subproject has build networks of information and care between the UEA and student of the Pontificia Universidad Catholica del Ecuador.

Until 30.12.21 you can watch the replay from the webinar here. The presentation of our project starts at the 1:45′.

Three chapters in the book: Situating Sustainability: Handbook of Contexts and Concepts

Our Helsinki-based team has participated in the book Situating Sustainability: Handbook of Contexts and Concepts edited by C. Parker Krieg and Reetta Toivanen, published in November 2021, with three conceptual chapters that refer to our research within the project “Goal 4+ Eco-cultural Pluralism in Ecuadorian Amazonia”. The three chapters deal with the concepts of: Anthropocene from the indigenous perspective of the Kawsak Sacha (living forest); Intercultural Bilingual Education experiences in Ecuador; and Politics of Scales informing territorial strategies of indigenous peoples.

Chapter 3: Anthropocene Conjunctures: The Anthropocene is the proposed name for a new geologic era in which humans are held to be a defining agent of planetary history, largely by the effect of fossil fuel use in industrial societies. This chapter contextualizes the rise of Anthropocene discourse across academic disciplines and provides critical examples from an ‘ecomodernist’ institute located in California, and from the indigenous Kichwa people of Ecuador and their strategies of political ecology based on the kawsak sacha (living forest) principle. The chapter illustrates the pitfalls and potential offered by this new periodization of anthropogenic change and the definition of the anthropos that the term calls into question. Drawing on posthumanist geography and cultural studies, it also challenges the centrality of the human agency.

Krieg, C. P., & Minoia, P. (2021). Anthropocene Conjunctures. In R. Toivanen, & C. P. Krieg (Eds.), Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts (pp. 39-50). Helsinki University Press. https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-14-3

Chapter 5: Education: This chapter illustrates the transformative role that national education systems can play in working toward Sustainable Development Goals. Offering comparative examples from the ‘plurinational state’ of Ecuador and the ‘Northern European welfare state’ of Finland, the chapter discusses diverse approaches to sustainability through education within global discourses and national education policies in two different contexts. The chapter highlights the potential of teaching languages, critical thinking and global consciousness, and cultural alternatives to high-consumption lifestyles. In the first example, it examines the buen vivir (good living) principle in the context of Intercultural Bilingual Education in the Latin American plurina­tional, pluricultural, and multiethnic state of Ecuador.

Veintie, T., & Hohenthal, J. (2021). Education. In C. P. Krieg, & R. Toivanen (Eds.), Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts (pp. 63-77). Helsinki University Press. https://doi.org/10.33134 /HUP-14-5

Chapter 7: Scales: This chapter rethinks scales as an opportunity for sustainability studies to engage with decolonial strategies that stand against the confinement of Southern studies as local knowledge, compared to the Western knowledge that is seen as universal. Politics of scales inform sustainability science to focus carefully on peoples’ institutions, territories, and territorialities as contingent levels of power interactions. Examples are offered by the plurinational ‘scale jumping’ as rescaling strategies played by indigenous organizations in Ecuador in relation to the central powers, to affirm the plurinational identity of the state; and by kinship networks in Northeast Madagascar. These strategies redefine the western ordering of scales and redress complicated histories of ecological and social colonization.

Minoia, P., & Mölkänen, J. (2021). Scales. In C. P. Krieg, & R. Toivanen (Eds.), Situated Sustainability : A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts (pp. 91-104). Helsinki University Press. https://doi.org/10.33134 /HUP-14-7

Oportunidades en la práctica intercultural en la Universidad Estatal Amazónica

Texto: Ruth Irene Arias Gutiérrez

Por el séptimo aniversario de creación de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Vida de la Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA) y la celebración del Día Mundial del Medio Ambiente, se presentó la II Convención Científica Internacional UEA 2021, entre el 31 de mayo al 04 de junio, donde se ofrecieron las participaciones de las investigadoras del proyecto “Pluralismo ecocultural en la educación de calidad en la Amazonia ecuatoriana”, en el Primer Congreso de Plurinacionalidad, Saberes Ancestrales y Gestión del conocimiento.

La ocasión se hizo propicia para discutir las oportunidades de construir un entorno intercultural y decolonial en la universidad, en el territorio amazónico, porque se ha constatado a nivel nacional que los pueblos indígenas tienen menor acceso a servicios públicos básicos, infraestructura y educación superior; así como han experimentado la colonización y el despojo de tierras, recursos y conocimientos, mientras la escolarización ha contribuido a su asimilación a la sociedad dominante, obstaculizando la reproducción de las subjetividades ecológicas indígenas y las prácticas sociales (Rival, 2000). Sin embargo, las universidades también tienen el potencial de contribuir al empoderamiento de las poblaciones indígenas y ayudar a cambiar las relaciones de poder desiguales al reconocer y apoyar el conocimiento que tienen (Wilson, 2004).

Continue reading “Oportunidades en la práctica intercultural en la Universidad Estatal Amazónica”

From discourse to structure: intercultural education from the experience of the Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA) – EADI ISS Conference 2021, 5 – 8 July 2021, The Hague

The text is an excerpt from the paper that Ruth Arias (UEA) has presented at the Conference.

In her presentation at the EADI ISS Conference 2021 – Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice, Ruth Arias from the Universidad Estatal Amazonica (UEA) has spoken of the necessity of interculturality as a central axis of the Pluricultural State. However, interculturality is a challenge in Ecuador, and especially in higher education. Indigenous and Afro-descendant students access and complete their studies in alarmingly inequitable conditions (Mato, 2008). Policies to modify monocultural higher education need to address structural problems of the population they are intended to serve (Cuji, 2012). This aspect is not only related to the education sector, but is overall political.

The talk started with a video self-produced by Mariana Canelos (Student of Communication), Indira Vargas (Tourism Engineering graduate), Dixon Andi (Environmental Engineer, Laboratorio de plantas) and edited by Mario Rodríguez Dávila y Diego Lucero Rivas. The three UEA students and graduates, from the kichwa nationality, have presented their point of view on interculturality in higher education.

 

Continue reading “From discourse to structure: intercultural education from the experience of the Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA) – EADI ISS Conference 2021, 5 – 8 July 2021, The Hague”

Working group session: innovating pedagogical practices and alternative conceptualisations of development emerging from local communities in Latin America

 Compiled texts from authors’ presentations and abstracts.

Our research group participated in the 6th joint Nordic Development Research Conference, held online from 21 to 22 of June, by the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The conference is organized jointly by the Finnish Society for Development Research, the Danish Association of Development Researchers in Denmark, the Norwegian Association For Development Research, and the Swedish Development Research Network., usually attracting development researchers and policy-makers from Nordic countries and research collaborators from the global South. This year’s theme: Development, Learning and Education: Post-pandemic Considerations, invited participants to reflect on development, learning and education and how pressing global crises, as climate change and COVID-19, intensified pressures for radical transformations that challenge conceptualizations of “learning” as well as “unlearning” in development.

Continue reading “Working group session: innovating pedagogical practices and alternative conceptualisations of development emerging from local communities in Latin America”

II CONVENCIÓN CIENTÍFICA INTERNACIONAL UEA 2021

Texto: Riikka Kaukonen Lindholm

[Click here for English version]

A finales de mayo y principios de junio, las integrantes del grupo de investigación participaron en la II Convención Científica Internacional organizado online por la Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA). Con el discurso inaugural del rector David Sancho, la convención brindó una plataforma para conversaciones científicas en torno a tres temas diferentes: Plurinacionalidad, Saberes Ancestrales y Gestión del Conocimiento; Turismo Urbano, Patrimonio y Desarrollo Territorial; Gestión Ambiental y Conservación de la Biodiversidad, que representan áreas de estudio importantes para la UEA, que trabaja para desarrollar la investigación y la educación superior en la región Amazonía de Ecuador. Nuestro grupo de investigación contribuido en la parte del programa del congreso sobre el tema Plurinacionalidad, Conocimiento Ancestral y Gestión del Conocimiento coordinada por el rector Oliver Meric. Continue reading “II CONVENCIÓN CIENTÍFICA INTERNACIONAL UEA 2021”