Investigating Local Knowledge

New Directions, New Approaches

Paul Sillitoe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429581243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Originally published in 2004. Local knowledge reflects many generations of experience and problem solving by people around the world, increasingly affected by globalizing forces. Such knowledge is far more sophisticated than development professionals previously assumed and, as such, represents an immensely valuable resource. A growing number of governments and international development agencies are recognizing that local-level knowledge and organizations offer the foundation for new participatory models of development that are both cost-effective and sustainable, and ecologically and socially sound.

This book provides a timely overview of new directions and new approaches to investigating the role of rural communities in generating knowledge founded on their sophisticated understandings of their environments, devising mechanisms to conserve and sustain their natural resources, and establishing community-based organizations that serve as forums for identifying problems and dealing with them through local-level experimentation, innovation, and exchange of information with other societies. These studies show that development activities that work with and through local knowledge and organizations have several important advantages over projects that operate outside them. Local knowledge informs grassroots decision-making, much of which takes place through indigenous organizations and associations at the community level as people seek to identify and determine solutions to their problems.

Chapter 1
Local Knowledge Theory and Methods: An Urban Model from Indonesia

Christoph Antweiler

Seek simplicity, but distrust it.

Georges Devereux (1967)

Indigenous or local knowledge is both universal and specific and defies any simple essentialism. Local knowledge is neither indigenous wisdom nor simply a form of science, but a locally situated form of knowledge and performance found in all societies. It comprises skills and acquired intelligence responding to constantly changing social and natural environments. The situated, systemic character and inherent variety of local knowledge demand multi-focussed accounts. This paper argues with a general model of local knowledge and an urban example for the importance of an explicit methodological basis of the use of local knowledge in development.

The application of local knowledge in development is less a technological than a theoretical and political problem. To make local knowledge truly relevant to development, we need more methods that allow ‘thick’ contextualized descriptions of such knowledge, which are also comparative and allow research on large populations. Participatory methods are useful but they generally result from tinkering and are based on a mixture of methodological aims and political ideals. To be serious and effective, methods should be based on an explicit theory of local knowledge which goes beyond simple assertions that it is complex, variable, wise and sustainable. The model of local knowledge presented is based mainly on recent cognitive anthropology, added by insights from psychology of knowledge and sociology of knowledge.

Urban knowledge is understudied in the local knowledge field and only recently used to assess needs and improve urban life in poor countries. This paper draws on an example of urban knowledge to discuss general theoretical, methodological and applied issues. The selected case is from Indonesia, a country with a developmentalist ideology, strong urban local government and a lot of old and new participation talk. I show that theoretically grounded, yet carefully adapted methods are a fruitful way for local knowledge research. In this vein, methods from cognitive anthropology are a good basis to develop participatory methods in urban areas with their high heterogeneity and ambiguity (e.g. in cultural and land tenure terms) and the importance of local government and planning. It is concluded that a systematic but localized approach is useful for the proper and humane use of local knowledge in development and for encouraging alternative forms of modernity.

This chapter uses an anthropological study of urban residential knowledge in the multiethnic provincial city of Makassar, South Sulawesi, to show the potentials and difficulties in empirical local knowledge research. The applied question is how can we use the knowledge and sentiments of urban dwellers in participatory planning of public and residential areas? One method seldom used so far in anthropology and development work that has considerable potential is the repertory grid technique originating in constructive psychology.

Participation in development, the theme of this book, requires two things: (1) a political commitment to the ideal that people should decide themselves about development aims and measures (cf. Arce and Long 1999); and (2) knowledge that is relevant to real life, real time and real space. These are necessary for participatory development, be it in poor or prosperous countries or regions. This paper mainly concerns the second knowledge requirement of participation in development. If we aim at an enablement of people in market, political and community terms (Burgess et al. 1997: 140), we need what, in the context of sustainable development in modern industrial societies, has aptly been called a ‘citizen science’ (Irwin 1995). The paper aims to strengthen approaches that try to use scientific knowledge, layman’s knowledge and contextualized local knowledge in combination (Antweiler 1998). Beyond pure knowledge, it stresses people’s ways of knowing and their experiences, sentiments and loyalties of belonging (Abram and Waldren 1998; Lovell 1998), often overlooked in local knowledge studies.

Current research into and use of local knowledge in development encourages many distortions. Local knowledge cannot be grasped by using simple dichotomies such as ‘science versus wisdom’, ‘science versus belief’, ‘scientists versus folk’ or ‘ethnoscience versus technoscience’. These binary contrasts import hierarchies and essentialist and often orientalizing distortions. Local knowledge should not be thought of as a kind of science. On the one hand, ‘Western science’ comes in many varieties; on the other hand it subscribes to specific ideals and criteria (e.g. of validity and parsimony). Local knowledge may share some features with science and some with other ways of knowing. We must think of it as resulting from a universal human capability, but having specific culturally and environmentally situated content in every instance.

It is important firstly to listen to people. In addition we need direct, systematic and comparative yet culturally sensitive methods to capture the situated character and variety of local knowledge. Knowledge may be stored in people’s heads and written documents, in routine practices and in material objects. Such methods are necessary to reveal common patterns among bodies of local knowledge. Furthermore, these methods should allow the study of larger populations, if local knowledge is to be relevant to development measures or counter-development.

After discussing basic conceptual ambiguities around the notions of indigenous knowledge and local knowledge (1) an example of urban knowledge is introduced (2). Based on that and the few theoretical works available a general model of local knowledge is presented comprising ten interrelated characteristics (3). Using this model several straightforward anthropologically tested methods are presented to supplement current participatory methods (4). Finally, technical and cultural adaptations of a textbook method are discussed (5).

1. Local knowledge: an ambiguous and ideologically loaded concept

Local knowledge certainly has a potential for use in development contexts (Honerla and Schröder 1995; Pasquale et al. 1998; Sillitoe 1998a), but its concrete mobilization in development is ambiguous. Theoretical, judicial-ethical and practical problems abound. Firstly, there is the unresolved epistemological status of local knowledge (Agrawal 1995; Antweiler 1998). The diverse terms and abbreviations for it reflect several – and often implicit – epistemological assumptions and diverse political agendas (table 1.1). Each of the terms has its drawbacks, but I prefer ‘local knowledge’, because it connotes one important dimension, situatedness in local culture and environment and avoids some connotations of other terms.

Knowledge pertaining to facts as well as skills and capabilities are local to the extent that they are acquired and applied by people with respect to local objectives, situations and problems. This knowledge is also local in that practices, i.e. problem solutions, draw on locally available raw materials and energy sources. ‘Local’ here is not to be understood in a strict sense as referring to a location, but rather as knowledge being culturally and ecologically situated. Local knowledge may also relate to larger regions; for instance among people that move on a routine basis (nomads, commuters, seasonal migrants), such knowledge might refer to routes or several locales.

Table 1.1 Local knowledge terms: semantic analysis

Such knowledge is most often called indigenous knowledge, but that sees it primarily in relation to, or in opposition to, Western scientific knowledge. This notion restricts the knowledge to specific peoples and implies uniqueness with the problems of essentialism, hierarchization, orientalism (and occidentalization of Western science). Furthermore, terms like indigenous knowledge and traditional knowledge suggest stasis, romanticism and aboriginality, whereas it comprises a pastiche of transmitted knowledge and recent invention (Sillitoe this volume). These terms invite deeply ingrained idealizations as well as negative prejudices (examples in Nygren 1999: 271–276). The term indigenous itself is vague and politically loaded. Today the term indigenous peoples is used frequently in international documents and it is impossible to use indigenous in any morally neutral or apolitical way (Ellen and Hollis 2000: 3). Many environmentalists and some social movements portray indigenous peoples as ‘eco-saints’. Some see their knowledge as an antidote to some of the world’s problems. In development circles it is often equated with sustainability (cf. Murdoch and Clark’s 1994 ‘sustainable knowledge’). These idealizations are as distorting as earlier views of the ‘primitive mind’ or ‘traditional mentality’ seen as irrational and thus as a scapegoat for underdevelopment. Another danger is that terms like indigenous or local knowledge will suffer the fate of the increasingly hollow word participation in the development scene, with which they are currently associated.

In addition to these terminological problems revealing theoretical ambiguities there are real-world dilemmas about authorship, access and control, and of the management of knowledge. These are partly similar to those in any institution or community producing knowledge, be it a clan, a university or a software company. We depend on producing and disseminating knowledge, but must ensure that in some respects it remains the owner’s property (Harrison 1995 for examples). Currently we face many difficult juridical and ethical problems of the ownership of knowledge, which are unresolved (see Greaves 1994; Posey and Dutfield 1996; Brush and Stabinsky 1996; Shiva 1997; Agrawal 1998; Strathern et aL 1998).

The application of local knowledge in development is less a technological than a theoretical and political problem. Local knowledge is often talked of and idealized by development experts as well as their critics, be it as other people’s ‘science’ or as ‘true wisdom’. Local knowledge has strengths and weaknesses in development contexts (DeWalt 1994; Antweiler 1998), both due to its culturally as well as locally situated character. The case from Indonesia presented here demonstrates the complicated nature of local knowledge, its potentials within development and the theoretical challenges.

2. Citizens as experts: urban knowledge in Indonesia

‘Partisipasi’ in a developmentalist state

Indonesia is a country experiencing high rates of intra-national migration and urbanization (Nas 199...