Shortly after the giant bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes came down at the University of Cape Town, student protestors called for the decolonisation of universities. It was a word hardly heard in South Africa's struggle lexicon and many asked: What exactly is decolonisation? This book brings together some of the most innovative thinking on curriculum theory to address this important question.
In the process, several critical questions are raised:
- Is decolonisation simply a slogan for addressing other pressing concerns on campuses and in society?
- What is the colonial legacy with respect to curricula and can it be undone?
- How is the project of curricula decolonisation similar to or different from the quest for post-colonial knowledge, indigenous knowledge or a critical theory of knowledge?
- What does decolonisation mean in a digital age where relationships between knowledge and power are shifting?
Strong conceptual analyses are combined with case studies of attempts to `do decolonisation' in settings as diverse as South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Mauritius. This comparative perspective enables reasonable judgments to be made about the prospects for institutional take-up within the curriculum of century-old universities. Decolonisation in Universities is essential reading for undergraduate teaching, postgraduate research and advanced scholarship in the field of curriculum studies.
