Negotiating Local Knowledge Power and Identity in Development

by Pottier, Johan; Bicker, Alan; Sillitoe, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780745320069
• ISBN10: 0745320066
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-20
• Publisher: Pluto Press

Summary

The contributors to this volume offer an original approach to debates about indigenous knowledge. Concentrating on the political economy of knowledge construction and dissemination, they look at the variety of ways in which development policies are received and constructed, to reveal the ways in which local knowledges are appropriated and recast, either by local elites or by development agencies.Until now, debates about indigenous knowledge have largely been conducted in terms of agricultural and environmental issues such as bio-piracy and gene patenting. The contributors to this volume break new ground by opening up the theoretical debate to include areas such as post-war traumatic stress counselling, representations of nuclear capability, architecture, mining, and the politics of eco-tourism. Their findings have important implications for anthropology, development studies and other related disciplines.

Author Biography

Johan Pottier teaches in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS, University of London.
Paul Sillitoe is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Durham.
Alan Bicker is at the Dept of Anthropology, University of Kent
at Canterbury.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Negotiating local knowledge: An introduction	p. 1
A possible explanation for the lack of explanation; Or, 'why the master builder can't explain what he knows': Introducing informational atomism against a 'definitional' definition of concepts	p. 30
Explosive narratives: The articulation of 'nuclear knowledge' in Mumbai	p. 51
Knowledge interfaces and practices of negotiation: Cases from a women's group in Bolivia and an oil refinery in Wales	p. 74
Anti-social 'social development'? Governmentality, indigenousness and the DFID approach on Montserrat	p. 98
'All been washed away now': Tradition, change and indigenous knowledge in a Queensland Aboriginal land claim	p. 121
Managing natural resources in eastern Algarve, Portugal: An assessment of the policy uses of local knowledge(s)	p. 155
Interfaces of knowledge: The revival of temples in West Hunan, China	p. 171
The global flow of knowledge on war trauma: The role of the 'Cinnamon Garden culture' in Sri Lanka	p. 189
Modern information warfare versus empirical knowledge: Framing 'the crisis' in Eastern Zaire, 1996	p. 215
Playing on the Pacific ring of fire: Negotiation and knowledge in mining in Papua New Guinea	p. 241
From seduction to miscommunication: The confession and presentation of local knowledge in 'participatory development'	p. 273
The still waters of the Nile	p. 298
List of Contributors	p. 322
Index	p. 326
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