Can this taxonomic scheme (techne, episteme, and technai) apply to the interactions between Western-mode agronomists and Oaxaca’s indigenous population? What does it mean that Marglin’s essay employs the attitude and technique of episteme in order to make these claims? “But what is culture? We are all accustomed to thinking of culture as a set of rules, largely tacit […]

From Stephen Marglin’s “Towards the Decolonization of the Mind”: What is the nature of choice for the indigenes of Oaxaca in the implementation of agricultural modernization? Are they left with the choice of retaining traditional agricultural techniques and philosophies? What choices did they make? What do their ‘revealed preferences’ (see Marglin) indicate about both agricultural […]

Schaffer and Shapin’s “playing the stranger” to eschew the “self-evident method” as a methodology for questioning the basic assumptions of the Western episteme on behalf of indigenous epistemes