Key Questions
There are four key questions we use to structure discussion throughout
the unit and the structure we want you to use when you begin addressing
the issues in this unit. These
questions form the basis of the structure in which you need to address
the issue you explore as part of your assessment for this unit.
The Key Questions text provides you with a more detailed
explanation of these questions and some interesting examples to
illustrate what each question is getting at.
1. What is at stake?
2. What is the status quo?
3. What are the alternatives?
4. What happens when different knowledges speak
to each other?
1. What is at stake?
This question asks you to think about the epistemological issues
that might be at stake when knowledge systems come into contestation.
What are we questioning when we challenge our thinking in a particular
knowledge system?
This requires us to go back and discuss some of the basic philosophical
questions about how we know, what we know and why we know it. Epistemology
is the branch of philosophy that deals with these sorts of questions
and we need to get a very basic handle on some epistemological issues
to help us challenge our own knowledge and ideas here.
To explore this question further, read Chapter 1 from your Key
Questions text.
2. What is the status quo?
You can't get to understand the perspective that other people are
coming from without coming to grips with your own, or the accepted
way of thinking about things in your culture:
- What is the status quo for you?
- What do you and what does your culture accept as being 'given'?
- What knowledge and understandings are taken as being 'natural'
and 'taken-for-granted'?
By understanding the utter dependence of you own knowledge upon
your social and cultural upbringing and the history of your culture,
you open yourself up to the consideration of the strength and legitimacy
of other systems of knowledge.
Explore this question further by reading Chapter 2 in your Key
Questions text.
3. What are the alternatives?
If your system of knowledge becomes less taken-for-granted and
increasingly contingent upon history and culture, you need to ask
yourself, 'Are there other ways of looking at the world, or this
issue in particular?'.
Other systems of knowledge exist all around you, often right in
front of your nose. You might not see them because you haven't been
required to look. You might not see them because your cultural perspective
renders them invisible. Contesting the superiority of your knowledge
system, opens up the possibility of exploring the potential of other
knowledge systems.
To explore this question further, read Chapter 3 from your Key
Questions text.
4. What happens when different knowledges speak
to each other?
There is so much potential in being aware of the legitimacy of
other knowledge systems in the added dimensions it will bring to
resource management practices. That is the purpose of exploring
our understanding of our own worldview and that of other groups
and cultures.
This question is to prompt you to think about how different systems
might complement each other, how their contestation might draw out
interesting, novel and successful ways of managing resources. We're
not talking about legitimising other systems of knowledge and appropriating
them for ourselves. It's not about taking the best parts and those
bits that are convenient for our own use.
Its more about what happens when you make space for other knowledge
systems and explore what happens when different systems contest
each other and negotiate practical outcomes to real, everyday resource
management issues.
You can explore this question further by reading Chapter 4 from
your Key Questions text.
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