EQUALITY, INCLUSION AND PARTICIPATION

Thematic Area:

Under this theme, critical scholarship addresses the (re)production of privilege, power and dispossession in specific historical and cultural contexts. Usually, the examination of inequality focuses on the following categories: nationality, race, class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. While not downplaying the significance of these established categories, IERI’s research interest is also directed at exploring emerging forms of inequality as well as new forms of resistance to them. We recognise that knowledge and innovation systems become dominant or peripheral through strategies of power, privilege, and participation. Consequently, analyses of non-hegemonic knowledge systems are required to foster more inclusive social relations.

Innovation is currently recognised as a vital driving force of economic change. Initiatives to promote innovative activities are quickly spurring in emerging economies as a means to facilitate economic growth. However, innovation as exclusively located in private commercial firms is also prone to create regional imbalances, inequality and social exclusion, which constitute major constrains to achieve the desirable long term objectives of sustainable and equitable development. This situation is becoming evident in emerging economies, such as South Africa, where positive rates of economic growth coexist with growing rates of poverty, hunger and exclusion of large segments of the population. In this regard, we understand the importance of revising the role of knowledge and innovation in shaping inclusive, equitable and sustainable development trajectories, with a larger focus on understanding the social dimensions of participation and its impact on improving the quality of life for all members of society.