Vol. 12 No. 02 (2024)
Journal Space and Culture, India

Editorials

People-Centered Social Innovation as an Epistemological Alternative for Critical Recentering of People in the Development Agenda

Published 2024-09-27

  • Swati Banerjee

Swati Banerjee
Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai

Abstract

There are many complexities in today’s world, and alternatives are needed to open up spaces for truly reconfiguring people-centeredness in the current development agenda. This editorial piece, therefore, envisages a shift in the development narrative through the conceptualisation of people-centered social innovation that provides an epistemic alternative. The effort is to accelerate people-centered change through critically recentering people, especially marginalised groups and communities. This includes understanding the contextual and structural inequities, people’s knowledges and agency emerging from their embedded context, and institutionalising empowering spaces for actors that turn the wheel of social relations for epistemic justice.

Keywords

People-Centered Social Innovation, Social Innovation, Epistemological Justice, Development Alternatives, Epistemologies of the Marginalised

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