The widespread adoption of bottom‐up participation as opposed to top‐down modernisation approaches has opened up challenging opportunities for anthropology in development. The new focus on indigenous knowledge augurs the next revolution in anthropological method, informants becoming collaborators and their communities participating user‐groups, and touches upon such contemporary issues as the crisis of representation, ethnography's status with regard to intellectual property rights, and interdisciplinary cooperation between natural and social scientists. Indigenous‐knowledge studies are challenging not only because of difficulties in cross‐cultural communication and understanding but also because of their inevitable political dimensions. Contributing to development which intervenes in people's lives, these studies engage with them in novel ways.

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The development of indigenous knowledge: A new applied anthropology.

An appreciation of the dynamism of the links between soil resources and society provides a platform for examining food security over the next 50 years. Interventions to reverse declining trends in food security must recognize the variable resilience and sensitivity of major tropical soil types. In most agro-ecosystems, declining crop yield is exponentially related to loss of soil quality. For the majority smallholder (subsistence) farmers, investments to reverse degradation are primarily driven by private benefit, socially or financially. "Tragedy of the commons" scenarios can be averted by pragmatic local solutions that help farmers to help themselves.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/302/5649/1356.full.pdf

Tropical Soils and Food Security: The Next 50 Years

Struggling with sustainability: A comparative framework for evaluating sustainable development programs

Rethinking soil and water conservation in a changing society : a case study in eastern Burkina Faso

Owners and managers of homegardens have extensive knowledge of plants, their uses, and ecosystemic processes. This knowledge might be highly valuable for many purposes. To enhance ethnobotanical re...

/pdf/tools-and-methods-for-data-collection-in-ethnobotanical-tjcgw2sc3d.pdf

Tools and Methods for Data Collection in Ethnobotanical Studies of Homegardens

Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction 1 1 Rice cropping practices in Nepal: indigenous adaptation to adverse and difficult environments 6 2 Farmer-based experimentation with velvetbean: innovation within tradition 32 3 Side-stepped by the Green Revolution: farmers' traditional rice cultivars in the uplands and rainfed lowlands 50 4 Environmental dynamics, adaptation and experimentation in indigenous Sudanese water harvesting 64 5 The indigenization of exotic inputs by small-scale farmers on the Jos Plateau, Nigeria 80 6 Farmer management of rootcrop genetic diversity in Southern Philippines 92 7 Farmer experimentation in a Venezuelan Andean group 113 8 Indian farmers opt for ecological profits 125 9 Indigenous agricultural experimentation in home gardens of South India: conserving biological diversity and achieving nutritional security 134 10 Living local knowledge for sustainable development 147 11 Varietal diversity and farmers' knowledge: the case of the sweet potato in Irian Jaya 158 12 The indigenous concept of experimentation among Malian farmers 163 13 Umnotho Wethu Amadobo: the clash between indigenous agricultural knowledge and a Western conservation ethic in Maputaland, South Africa 172 14 Local-level experimentation with social organization and management of self-reliant agricultural development: the case of gender in Ara, Nigeria 184 15 Chinese farmers' initiatives in technology development and dissemination: a case of a farmer association for rural technology development 192 Notes 199 References 202

Michael D. Warren

Papers

Biological and cultural diversity : The role of indigenous agricultural experimentation in development