Local Knowledge Matters

Explores the critical role that local knowledge plays in public policy processes as well as its role in the co-production of policy relevant knowledge with the scientific and professional communities.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book explores the critical role that local knowledge plays in public policy processes as well as its role in the co-production of policy relevant knowledge with the scientific and professional communities. The authors consider the mechanisms used by local organisations and the constraints and opportunities they face, exploring what the knowledge-to-policy process means, who is involved and how different communities can engage in the policy process. Ten diverse case studies are used from around Indonesia, addressing issues such as forest management, water resources, maritime resource management and financial services. By making extensive use of quotes from the field, the book allows the reader to ‘hear’ the perspectives and beliefs of community members around local knowledge and its effects on individual and community life.

This book illustrates the growing need for real understanding of local knowledge strategy and its power to assist in positive change.

A timely and up-to-date volume that presents a genuine contribution to the debates over indigenous knowledge.

In essays covering everything from art and common sense to charisma and constructions of the self, the eminent cultural anthropologist and author of The Interpretation of Cultures deepens our understanding of human societies through the intimacies of "local knowledge." A companion volume to The Interpretation of Cultures, this book continues Geertz’s exploration of the meaning of culture and the importance of shared cultural symbolism. With a new introduction by the author.

The climate is changing, and the people in the Arctic are facing huge challenges. Many rely on natural resources for both subsistence and income. Successful adaptation to climate change and the sustainable use of resources require observation of the environment. Scientific knowledge of the environment is incomplete, and conventional scientific monitoring is logistically difficult. Arctic citizens observe the environment all year-round. Their observations and knowledge are, however, not systematically used in the political decision process. An international symposium was therefore organized to encourage Arctic cooperation, and to exchange experiences, on the use of citizens’ knowledge and observations to document natural resources and inform the political process. The meeting drew participants from all the Arctic countries. Their discussions and conclusions are presented in this report.

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.

"Technological capability has led, through Euro-American global domination, to the muting of other cultural views and values, even threatening their continued existence. There is a growing realization that the diversity of knowledge systems demand respect; some refer to them in a conservation idiom as alternative knowledge banks. The scientific perspective is only one. We now have many examples of the soundness of local science and practices, some previously considered 'primitive' and in need of change. However, this book goes beyond demonstrating the soundness of local science and arguing for the incorporation of others' knowledge in development, to maintain that we need to look quizzically at the foundations of science itself and further challenge its hegemony, not only over local communities in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and elsewhere but also the global community.--Publisher