Ways of Knowing

To understand how our urban world is changing, we need to investigate how seemingly technical or natural objects are embedded in our understanding, or in brief, to acknowledge that knowledges (in plural) are political. There are multiple ways of knowing our environment and these multiple ways matter in how we engage with it. Understanding of some influential groups take precedence over other understanding, which we call knowledge hegemony. Therefore, it is important to understand plural knowledges, who produces them, and how some of them become hegemonic. We, the authors of this book, embarked on an investigation to uncover these different lenses and how they affect the way we live in our cities. The investigations were based in Colombo, Sri Lanka. This illustrated book presents some of our findings and questions we engage(d) with.