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Traditional knowledge

About: Traditional knowledge is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 10825 publications have been published within this topic receiving 202790 citations. The topic is also known as: indigenous knowledge & indigenous knowledge system.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Ethnobotany remains an underdeveloped discipline in southern Africa and there is an urgent need to systematically document indigenous knowledge on traditional plant use before it becomes irretrievably lost to future generations.

71 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a strategy for small farm development in the Third World is suggested, emphasizing preservation of traditional farming systems while maintaining biological and genetic diversity, which can provide important guidelines for the design of cropping systems that allow low-income farmers to produce subsistence and cash crops with minimal dependence on external inputs.
Abstract: A strategy for small farm development in the Third World is suggested, emphasizing preservation of traditional farming systems while maintaining biological and genetic diversity. Basing agricultural development on indigenous knowledge, technology, and social organization can provide important guidelines for the design of cropping systems that allow low-income farmers to produce subsistence and cash crops with minimal dependence on external inputs. Suggested alternative agricultural strategies are based on diverse farming systems that achieve moderate to high levels of productivity by manipulating and exploiting resources that are internal to the farm. The resulting systems are more sustainable and economical, thus increasing the equity of the system. Several rural development programs in Third World countries, especially in Latin America, that incorporate these agroecological principles are discussed. In contrast to approaches that have been transferred from the United States without necessarily being suited to the circumstances of small farmers, and which require the purchase of expensive external inputs, these programs include sustainability, stability, and equity as goals, along with increased production. Rural development strategies based on peasant systems that are biologically and economically stable are proving to be a viable survival alternative for a great portion of the impoverished rural population in the Third World.

71 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare a sequence of historical and contemporary scientific texts and maps about the migrations and stock structure of cod in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence with text and maps generated by the authors through the collection, aggregation and interpretation of commercial fish harvesters' ecological knowledge.
Abstract: Some recent scholarship has focused on integrating local and/or traditional knowledge with conventional scientific information in fisheries management to improve the factual foundation of and strengthen support for management decisions. This article compares a sequence of historical and contemporary scientific texts and maps about the migrations and stock structure of cod in the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence with texts and maps generated by the authors through the collection, aggregation and interpretation of commercial fish harvesters’ ecological knowledge. We find that the relationship between fisheries science and harvesters’ ecological knowledge is dynamic and has changed over time, and that both are ‘situated’ socially and ecologically. Overall, each paints an incomplete picture of cod movements and stock structure but the knowledge of harvesters provides a valuable complement to scientific information, particularly at the local scale, and has the potential to contribute to the identification of local cod stocks that are new to science and management. We end by considering how this case study informs the larger discussion about the challenges and potential benefits of the so-called integration project to bring together science and the ecological knowledge of fish harvesters.

71 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that durable models of environmental relationships already exist in approaches of place-based peoples, whose values connect people to their environments, provide guidance on appropriate behaviors, and structure sustained people-place relationships.
Abstract: The prevalence of widespread, human-caused ecological degradation suggests that fundamental change is needed in how societies interact with the environment. In this paper we argue that durable models of environmental relationships already exist in approaches of place-based peoples, whose values connect people to their environments, provide guidance on appropriate behaviors, and structure sustained people-place relationships. To illustrate, we identify and discuss concordant values of indigenous peoples at opposite ends of the Pacific Ocean: the Māori of Aotearoa (New Zealand), and First Nations of the West Coast of Canada. We find that values of relatedness to, respect of, and reciprocity with other species and places correspond with sustained long-term relationships between people and places, and illustrate with examples from both regions. We propose that by integrating a values-led foundation into management broadly, values-led management could enable similar sustained relationships in places where they have been recently disrupted or where they are altogether lacking. We characterize values-led management as being founded on values that underpin stewardship-like relationships between people and place and that in turn guide related objectives, policies, and practices. We examine two contemporary values-led management plans that follow this structure, and provide additional examples of emergent values-led approaches elsewhere. From these we compile a set of questions that might guide the conception of place-based values-led management in decolonizing contexts, in contexts where people have a desire for place-based approaches but have not yet distilled foundational values for guidance, or in contexts where people have a united set of values but have not yet translated them into specific management approaches. We conclude by discussing both the challenges and learning opportunities that the resumption, or commencement, of values-led management might entail.

71 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
03 Sep 2015-Compare
TL;DR: The authors argued that there exist fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on the nature and transmission of knowledge that make education policy transfer in China challenging, and further proposed that China borrow education policy judiciously by integrating foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge, t...
Abstract: Recent education reform in China reflects the global trend of education policy borrowing from Anglophone countries such as the USA. The reform in China essentially advocates shifting from knowledge reproduction and didacticism to knowledge construction by students through a learner-centredness approach. Aware of the trend of borrowing policy from ‘Western’ countries, some educators in China use the proverb ‘the West wind has overpowered the East wind’ to describe this phenomenon. This paper examines the cultural factors that influence education policy borrowing in China by drawing upon Johnson’s metaphors of the ‘politics of selling’ and the ‘politics of gelling’. This paper argues that there exist fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on the nature and transmission of knowledge that make education policy transfer in China challenging. This paper further proposes that China borrow education policy judiciously by integrating foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge, t...

71 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
2023468
2022966
2021533
2020645
2019629
2018616