The critical and decolonial quest for intercultural epistemologies and discourses

ABSTRACT

The Introduction to this Special Issue – Journal of Multicultural Discourses (JMD) starts the discussion about the terminologies currently used to describe the structures and relations in culturally diverse societies and provides a critical analysis of the academic debates and different accounts of the related issues. Finally, this Special Issue gives evidence of different types of praxis, that is, of different conceptual frameworks in articulation with practical implementations in different fields which nonetheless represent one vision of one particular experience in one context, that are indicative of possible perspectives and approaches already proved to be feasible, but not representative of general conclusions. It includes some articles which provide us with different philosophical, sociological and pedagogical perceptions, approaches and decisions to deal with the praxis of cultural diversity in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural
• cultural diversity
• critical interculturality
• multicultural
• epistemologies
• decolonial

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the JMD Chief Editor, Professor Shi-xu and the contributors of this Special Issue for their enduring support and patience. I must also acknowledge my gratefulness to the European Commission for awarding me a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant which enabled me to expand my intercultural knowledge and experience as well as to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, which has funded my participation in conferences where I have been able to share and discuss my ideas. I must also express my deep appreciation to the North–South Library staff as well as to some very special colleagues at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, for their academic and heartfelt companionship throughout the hardships and the joys of a long research path.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Manuela Guilherme has been a senior researcher at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra since 2002. She was awarded a PhD degree in Education by the University of Durham, UK (2000) and completed a 2-year postdoctoral programme at the Universidade de S. Paulo (2016). She has coordinated several international projects funded by the European Commission, from whom she was also awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellowship (2014–17).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Commission and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.