Hacia la democratización del conocimiento

In the context of the substantive functions of the university, analyzing and acting on the socioeconomic reality of the country should be one of the purposes to address the changing reality of communities excluded by an economic and political model, the foundation of which is based on having instead of being, where the acquisition of knowledge seems to be reserved only for the middle and upper classes. Therefore, the goal is to expose the levels of social and economic inequality in Colombian society, as a natural expression of social injustice. For this purpose, the paper reviews the concepts of justice by Rawls; poverty , by Amartya Sen, and the rise of democracy , using the eighteenth century’s European Enlightenment and its impact on the Colombian Constitution of 1991 as reference in order to compare it with its implementation in the reality of citizens. Finally, the university’s intervention in the poorest communities is considered as necessary, to guide the knowledge of their own reality and the conceptual implementation in their different trades or activities, thus proposing a methodology such as the Participatory Action Research (PAR), where a leading role is given to the participation of the community, immersed in their different issues.