Negotiating Local Knowledge Power and Identity in Development

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

• ISBN13: 9780745320076
• ISBN10: 0745320074
• Format: Hardcover
• 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	vii
Negotiating local knowledge: An introduction	1	(29)
Johan Pottier
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	30	(21)
Trevor H.J. Marchand
Explosive narratives: The articulation of `nuclear knowledge' in Mumbai	51	(23)
Raminder Kaur
Knowledge interfaces and practices of negotiation: Cases from a women's group in Bolivia and an oil refinery in Wales	74	(24)
Alberto Arce
Eleanor Fisher
Anti-social `social development'? Governmentality, indigenousness and the DFID approach on Montserrat	98	(23)
Jonathan Skinner
`All been washed away now': Tradition, change and indigenous knowledge in a Queensland Aboriginal land claim	121	(34)
Benjamin Richard Smith
Managing natural resources in eastern Algarve, Portugal: An assessment of the policy uses of local knowledge(s)	155	(16)
Manuel Joao Ramos
Antonio Medeiros
Pedro Sena
Goncalo Praca
Interfaces of knowledge: The revival of temples in West Hunan. China	171	(18)
Mary Rack
The global flow of knowledge on war trauma: The role of the `Cinnamon Garden culture' in Sri Lanka	189	(26)
Alex Argenti-Pillen
Modern information warfare versus empirical knowledge: Framing `the crisis' in Eastern Zaire, 1996	215	(26)
Johan Pottier
Playing on the Pacific ring of fire: Negotiation and knowledge in mining in Papua New Guinea	241	(32)
Paul Sillitoe
Robin A. Wilson
From seduction to miscommunication: The confession and presentation of local knowledge in `participatory development'	273	(25)
Dario Novellino
The still waters of the Nile	298	(24)
Stan Frankland
List of Contributors	322	(4)
Index	326