Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and its Transformations Critical Anthropological Perspectives

About this book

This volume provides a critical examination of the uses and abuses of indigenous knowledge. The contributors focus on a series of interrelated issues in their interrogation of indigenous knowledge and its specific applications within the localized contexts of particular Asian societies and regional cultures.In particular they explore: the problems of translation and mistranslation in the local-global transference of traditional practices and representations of resource management; the match and mismatch of practical reasoning in indigenous subsistence regimes and their depictions by outsiders; and the developmental and political consequences of contemporary ethnic and regional claims rooted in an ideology of "traditional" indigenous knowledge.

Contents

Ethnobiology and ethnoecology in the context of national laws and international agreements affecting indigenous and local knowledge, traditional resources and intellectual property rights. "we wander in our ancestors' yard" - sea cucumber gathering in Aru, eastern Indonesia; the construction and destruction of "indigenous" knowledge in India's joint forest management programme; claims to knowledge, claims to control - environmental conflict in the Great Himalayan National Park, India; locating indigenous environmental knowledge in Indonesia; "indigenous" regionalism in Japan; the use of fire in north-eastern Luzon (Philippines) - conflicting views of local people, scientists and government officials; indigenous knowledge versus Jungli thinking - a case study of natural rubber production; enclaved knowledge - indignant representations of environmental management and development among the Kalasha of Pakistan; endangered forest, endangered people - environmentalist representations of indigenous knowledge; indigenous knowledge - prospects and limitations.

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