The Lokavidya Standpoint

Do the people who grow or cook the food we eat “know” something? If so, did they acquire this knowledge at school or college? If not, what is the status of their knowledge? Is there more to their knowledge than skill, pretending for a moment that knowledge is something more than “just” skill? If yes, how did they acquire the knowledge? Do the conditions that generate such knowledge need to be nurtured? Do these conditions involve the living presence of a human community through which the experience behind the knowledge is imparted through multiple traditions, no less than serving as the receptacle for what is produced?

Such are the fundamental cognitive questions prompted by the volume under review. The book brings together a set of valuable contributions made at a conference of the Lokavidya Jan Andolan at Vidya Ashram in Sarnath in November 2011. The essays in the collection have been grouped under five themes: transition to knowledge society, epistemics and politics of lokavidya, economics of lokavidya, lokavidya and the university, and Lokavidya Jan Andolan.