Insisting upon people's knowledge to resist developmentalism

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This study deals with a critique of modernization and its agents as a hinderance to the recognition of peasant communities as producers of knowledge. It focuses on how pre-colonial knowledge production by peasant communities was destroyed by the penetration of a capitalist mode of production during the advent of colonialism. This suppression of peasant communities knowledge is show by tracing the history of the Pare peasant communities since 1500 till the post colonial period. The study reveals that though the suppression of peasant communities' knowledge in production, political action, social organization, and ecological management continues to take place, it is still produced and can be rescued from disappearing. This study argues that the peasant communities continue to be regarded as primitive and ignorant even after Colonialism. Through the top-down approach to development, peasant communities continue to receive directives from above. They are not regarded as subjects of their own history. This gap between the peasant communities and the elites who are agents of modernization continues to widen while peasant communities resort to active and passive resistance.