Gustavo Esteva

"Reclaiming the Commons: Alternatives to Education at the Grassroots"

Tuesday, March 3
Noon, Multicultural Center (Bryan Center Lower Level)

Please RSVP to vcw@duke.edu by Friday, Feburary 27.  Thanks! 

A talk by Gustavo Esteva

• What are the aims of education in the context of the neoliberal global economy? How does this notion of education relate to the notion of “living as learning within grassroots cultures”?
• To what extent does multicultural education succeed or go awry in promoting a plurality of cultures and supporting community life?
• Where do the concepts of place, commons, and community fit in education?
• What role does education play in “development?” In what ways is education a “trojan horse of recolonization”? 
• How do those labeled as “the uneducated, the miseducated, the undereducated” relate to the educational enterprise? How can we understand “dropouts” in this context?
• What does it mean to reclaim learning at the grassroots?

Co-sponsored by the Latino Graduate Student Association, Prism, Latino/a Studies in the Global South, Cultural Anthropology, Hart Leadership Program, Duke Engage, Community Service Center, International House, Franklin Humanities Institute, Cultural Anthropology, Literature, International Comparative Studies.

Gustavo Esteva is a prominent Mexican writer and social activist whose life has been a multi-faceted, courageous, and pioneering intellectual journey. Esteva is the author of 30 books and scores of articles that have made significant contributions to scholarly fields from economics to cultural anthropology, philosophy to education. A strong voice for indigenous people, campesinos, and urban migrants, the core of Esteva’s thought is a challenge to the validity of social systems that subordinate traditional community values and institutions to the priorities of the global marketplace.
 
Intercultural communication, a discipline dedicated to the theory and practice of hospitable and rigorous cross-cultural encounters, is a major focus for Esteva and a field where he is regarded as an international authority. He is also among the intellectual founders of the field of post-development studies, an interdisciplinary study of alternatives to Western forms of development. The late philosopher and theologian Ivan Illich was influence, friend, and collaborator with Esteva. In one of his most important books, Escaping Education, Esteva expands upon Illich’s work by bringing a non-Western cultural perspective to the analysis of modern education as a dehumanizing endeavor.
 
Esteva, who now lives in a small Zapotec village outside the city of Oaxaca, began his career in a very different place. As a young man in the 1950s, he started work with international corporations such as IBM and Procter & Gamble, believing that capital progress was the best way to eliminate poverty and inequality in Mexico. In 1961, Esteva moved to the public sector, convinced that the government was a more effective way to promote social change. His career in the Mexican government included work under the 1970s presidency of Luis Echeverria, where Esteva rose to become director of a national rural development agency.
 
A pivotal moment in Esteva’s career and philosophy came with the earthquake that struck Mexico City in 1985. Where the government’s response fell short, Esteva found that those most affected by the crisis, the poor and the marginalized, organized quickly and effectively. Inspired by the examples of communities exercising their collective will, Esteva began to orient his life toward working to support the self-determination of peasant and indigenous communities.
 

Spring 2009 Programs:  Ask the Sexperts | Gustavo Esteva | Polynesian/Hawaiian Dance | Proof Through Pictures | Black News Media | Leonard Cruz Dance Workshop