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.

Opening doors to native knowledge

Abstract: Scientific and local cultures seek common ground for tackling climate-change questions in the Arctic. (Read more.)

Negotiating the Nagoya Protocol: Indigenous Demands for Justice

Abstract: In October 2010, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization. One impetus behind the Nagoya Protocol was the mandate to address the unjust impacts—such as the loss of access to resources, exploitation of traditional knowledge, and expropriation of rights to resources—of the global demand for genetic resources on indigenous peoples and local communities (ILCs). Using collaborative event ethnography, this article demonstrates the limited nature, scope, and engagement of the ILC justice discourse in the negotiations, despite the supposedly inclusive nature of the CBD. I attribute the constrained discourse in part to the existence of a justice metanorm as evidenced through the emergence of shared meanings and prescriptive status of justice instruments.

Indigenizing the Western concept of university: the Chinese experience

Abstract: Modern universities are uniquely European in origin and characteristics. With the diffusion of the European model into the university throughout the world, the heritage of colonialism and the fact that contemporary universities are Western institutions without much linkage to their indigenous intellectual traditions are the fundamental reasons for the failure of non-Western societies to effectively establish their modern higher education systems. In China, the integration between the Chinese and Western ideas of a university remains unfinished despite many efforts to indigenize the Western concept since the nineteenth century. This article examines and compares the characteristics and development of medieval European universities and traditional Chinese higher learning institutions. In contrast to most existing studies on higher education, which have overwhelmingly portrayed the powerful influence of economic and political realities, this article adopts a cultural perspective on the development of Chinese higher education, calling for the return of culture in the analyses of higher education development and arguing that Chinese universities have considerably improved their hardware but not their software. In the current great leap forward of the Chinese higher education, attention to institutions and cultural establishments is usually absent.

Indian time: time, seasonality, and culture in Traditional Ecological Knowledge of climate change

Abstract: Western climate science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) represent complementary and overlapping views of the causes and consequences of change. In particular, observations of changes in abundance, distribution, phenology, or behavior of the natural environment (including plants and animals) can have a rich cultural and spiritual interpretation in Indigenous communities that may not be present in western science epistemologies. Using interviews with Indigenous elders and other Traditional Knowledge holders, we demonstrate that assumptions about the nature, perception, and utilization of time and timing can differ across knowledge systems in regard to climate change. Our interviewees’ focus on relationality predisposes them to notice interactional changes among humans and other species, to be sensitive to smaller scale examples of change, to be more likely to see climate change as part of a broader time scale, and to link changes to a greater suite of socio-political phenomena, including the long arc of colonialism. One implication of this research and the interactions among humans and other species is that policies restricting Native and non-Native access to resources (i.e., hunting and fishing) to certain calendar seasons may need to be revisited in a changing climate.

Climate Change, Water Practices and Relational Worlds in the Andes

Abstract: Climate change translates into insecure water provision and produces new uncertainties for farmers and politicians in Colca Valley, Southern Peru. Anthropological studies of climate change have mainly focused on adaptation, resilience and so-called indigenous traditional knowledge. This article argues that a stronger ethnographic focus on material practices – including knowledge practices – can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of climate change effects, responses and forms of water management. The author aims to see responses to climate change as more than cultural representations, and therefore focuses on water practices and the realities that these practices make, as well as the relational webs of humans, environment, infrastructure and other-than-human beings. The article explores different practices that enact multiple versions of water, and multiple – yet related and entangled – water worlds. The author suggests that this has implications for how we understand politics of climate an...