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.

Representing Traditional Knowledge: Resource Management and Inuit Knowledge of Barren-Ground Caribou

Abstract: Comanagement regimes in Canada's North rarely include indigenous systems for understanding the environment. Mapped representations and accompanying narratives illustrating the collective knowledge of indigenous hunters can make unique management contributions. Both the multigenerational knowledge of indigenous communities and opportunities allowing a discussion of diverse ways of interpreting environmental observations are crucial to involving indigenous learning systems within current regional wildlife management. It is not just the factual “data” of indigenous hunters that are relevant to resource management. It is the opportunities for social learning or for resource managers to understand how indigenous hunters learn about the environment that are directly relevant to resource management decision making.

“Indigenous knowledge” : Conceptions and misconceptions

Abstract: ‘Indigenous knowledge’ is a relatively recent buzz phrase that, amongst other things, constitutes part of a challenge to ‘western’ education. Apologists of indigenous knowledge not only maintain that its study has a profound effect on education and educational curricula but emphasise its significance in antiracist, antisexist and postcolonialist discourse, in general, and in terms of the ‘African Renaissance’, in particular. In this paper, I argue the following: (1) ‘indigenous knowledge’ involves at best an incomplete, partial or, at worst, a questionable understanding or conception of knowledge; (2) as a tool in antidiscrimination and anti-repression discourse (e.g. driving discussions around literacy, numeracy, poverty alleviation and development strategies in Africa), ‘indigenous knowledge’ is largely inappropriate. I show, further, that in the development of ‘knowledge’, following some necessary conceptual readjustments in our understanding of this term, there is considerably greater common ground than admitted by theorists. It is this acknowledgement, not lip service to a popular concept of debatable relevance, that has profound educational and ethical consequences.

Cultural Erosion of Balinese Indigenous Knowledge of Food and Nutraceutical Plants

Abstract: The island of Bali has several traditional Aga villages that survive under the pressures of an intense tourist industry and agricultural changes. In order to understand possible impacts on traditional ethnobotanical knowledge (TEK) in Bali, we interviewed local people living in 13 traditional villages regarding the number of known plants and their uses. We analyzed socioeconomic factors influencing change of such knowledge at both individual (informant) and community (village) level. We identified a total of 149 food and nutraceutical plants being used in the study area. Neither gender, occupation, income, nor level of formal education had a significant effect on TEK. However, informant’s age and village status were found to play an important role in the retention of TEK at an individual level. At the village level, the use of Internet/smart phones was an important predictor of cultural erosion.

Local knowledge about fodder plants in the semi-arid region of Northeastern Brazil

Abstract: This study evaluated local knowledge of the fodder plants of the Caatinga in northeast Brazil (seasonal dry forest). Specifically, the goal was to catalog local knowledge regarding the use of native and exotic forage plants in two rural communities located in the state of Paraiba (northeast Brazil), to provide information for nutritional investigations and to verify how the knowledge of these resources is distributed. The communities were followed for three consecutive years, and interviews were conducted with 44 families (20 men and 24 women). Nine of these individuals were determined by the snowball technique to be key informants who held more specific knowledge about the topic. The data were structured into a database and statistically analyzed. Overall, 136 plants from 37 families and 113 genera were cited, and the knowledge of men was at a higher level than that of women (p < 0.05). Participants demonstrated a sophisticated knowledge of nutritional characteristics such as nutritional value, palatability, availability and productivity. Native plants were highlighted over the exotic, especially for species of the families Cactaceae, Bromeliaceae and Fabaceae. The great diversity of plants cited by the informants demonstrates the potential of local vegetation and the importance of traditional knowledge in the research process and in the characterization of forage resources. This diversity also favors the selection of promising species for future biotechnological investigations.