On the Indigenization of Academic Discourse

Abstract

The institutional & theoretical dependence of Third World scholars on Western social science has resulted in "the captive mind," ie, a mind that is uncritical & imitative in its approach to ideas & concepts from the West. One reaction to this has been the call to indigenization. However, indigenization itself encounters a number of difficulties that are analyzed here in terms of the relationship between discourse & power. The works of Michel Foucault are found to be useful for this project. Efforts to overcome the problem of imitation face several obstacles as a result of the colonial encounter & the continuing tradition of Western social science in the Third World, including various internal & external procedures of exclusion. Indigenization is an attempt to create a counterdiscourse to the hegemony of Western discourses on development, but must be distinguished from nativism, which refers to the wholesale rejection of Western knowledge. Modified AA.