Page 375 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

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including communities of practice. An examination of the assumptions and root
metaphors that are deeply entrenched in the experience of the “commons” is a starting
point for doing so. Within the context of diverse intergenerational communities,
citizens, including youth and teachers, can serve as mediators and actors in deciding
what counts as legitimate knowledge.
The notion of hybridity is important in Carter and Walker’s discussion of the
spatiality of borders and boundaries. They point out that the tensions created when
potentially contradictory discourses overlap in hybrid spaces can be generative in
nature. Indeed, for indigenous peoples, these hybrid spaces already exist and we need
to draw on them. Carol Brandt, for example, in her work with Navajo college students,
describes these hybrid spaces as “locations of possibility” (Barnhardt et al., 2008).
Carter and Walker note Pieterse’s historical description of hybridity as “the common
practices of mixing that have always existed in all human knowledge and practices.”
Yet, at the same time, while reflecting on the way in which hybrid spaces and the
changing knowledge and practices they entail contribute to a more dynamic envision-
ing of borders, there is a paradox. In the natural world, if we hybridize too much,
through the introduction of genetically modified organisms, there is an inherent
danger that the hybridized spaces of species might actually become more terminal.
June: Some parallels can perhaps be drawn between the notion of hybridity and
that of “collateral learning” espoused by Aikenhead and Jegede (1999). Both point
to attempts at mixing with outcomes that can be fluid. The degree of mixing or the
performance in the interstitial spaces will depend, at least in part, on the background of
the actors. But even in discussing hybridity, we may be putting borders around actors
that might not be entirely appropriate. For example, the western-trained scientist
who is from an economically marginalized country might perform differently in the
interstitial spaces when dealing with indigenous knowledge than a western-trained
scientist, from a more economically advantaged country, who may have had little
exposure to indigenous knowledge systems. Further, indigenous knowledge systems
in different contexts may themselves have undergone some mixing over time,
making the situation even more complex.
Deb: Your comments point to the complexity surrounding notions of hybridity and
border crossing. Carter and Walker argue that the border crossing idea is not com-
plex enough to bring both contemporary western science and Aboriginal thinking
together. They maintain that it is necessary to bring them together if Aboriginal
thinking is to be given higher status, particularly in light of their struggles to dissolve
or challenge an affirmation of western science. The inherent assumption is that
Aboriginal science will be recognized as legitimate if it is hybrid. I think it is
important to reorient the conversation surrounding traditional ecological knowl-
edge (TEK) to focus on an important distinction that has largely been missed,
namely, the vulnerability of knowledge that is associated with the creation of hybrid-
ized space. Hybridized spaces implicitly create difference and subject knowledge
to hierarchies (and Aboriginal knowledge may not fare well in the process). And as
pointed out previously, in the natural world when we hybridize too much, the
hybridized spaces in nature become threatened.