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PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: A SOURCEBOOK >
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ID: 85049Added: 2005-07-18 15:55Modified: 2007-03-25 19:30Refreshed: 2009-07-01 13:28 
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Document(s) 19 of 34
Anthropologists have studied local knowledge since the 1960s, with a set of formal techniques and theory called ethnoscience (for example, Berlin, 1992 and Conklin, 1962, among many others that could be cited). The American anthropologist Eugene Hunn's thoughtful book The Big River describes how Indians along the Columbia River still rely on and know a great deal about wild plants (Hunn, 1990). The Land Against Time by the British anthropologist Paul Sillitoe is an encyclopaedic description of environmental knowledge of the Wola people in Highland New Guinea. Sillitoe shows that for some subjects (e.g., sweetpotato varieties), local knowledge is astoundingly complex. For other topics, local knowledge is fragmentary or incomplete (e.g., pests and diseases and geology) while for others (like soils) local knowledge is deep and detailed, yet bears little resemblance to modern scientific accounts of the same subject (Sillitoe, 1996). There are four basic types of local knowledge (deep, shallow, missing and mistaken), depending on whether the things in the natural world are important to people or not, and if they are easy or difficult to observe.
Table 1 is a simple way to classify knowledge which we have found useful – it is very important that whenever dealing with farmers on a specific issue that we as scientists are clear in our own minds about which of the boxes we are working in. It is an example of a way to formalize knowledge, which is a basic function of science.
Source: Adapted from Bentley and RodrÍguez, 2001. What is Ethnoscience?The gist of ethnoscience is learning local categories for things (insects, plants, diseases, people, etc.) and the meanings of those categories. By understanding how people use their language, we get insights into how they see the world. Hence, folk categories of knowledge are formed by mental concepts attached to word labels. These concepts are organized into taxonomies, which are usually hierarchical ("kinds of things," e.g., a dog is a kind of animal.) All languages use taxonomies, although there is a fair amount of leeway in how taxonomies are formed, e.g., Quechua may not classify the condor as a bird. Many languages spoken in the Amazon do not have words for "parrot."
This is especially true for insects, which local people often lump into broad categories which include arthropods, worms, even rodents and lizards (Brown, 1984). These are actually minor differences in classification and do not mean that local people misunderstand the way the world is put together. Brent Berlin (1992) has proposed six levels of folk taxonomies, which are repeated cross-culturally: (1) Kingdom; (2) Life form; (3) Intermediate; (4) Generic; (5) Specific; and (6) Varietal. Each of these levels has its own linguistic properties. Most striking is that folk taxonomies use generic and specific labels much like Linnaean names: e.g., Honduran farmers use the term hielo negro (where "hielo" is the generic term for most plant disease and negro is the specific name for severe disease). Folk taxonomies make much use of residual categories, e.g., "just a bug" to label left-over, or under-classified organisms. Some folk taxonomies are in the form of partonomies, or sets of categories that are "parts of" another, e.g., parts of an ox plough, or parts of a plant or of an insect.
Sometimes there is a 1:1 correspondence between folk and scientific categories, but often there is not, e.g., the concept of hielo is applied to 30-40 different bean diseases in Honduras. It is a concept of real world phenomena, but does not have any simple analogue in scientific terms (Bentley, 1991). The structure of folk taxonomies is heavily influenced by whether the organisms that are being classified are easily observed and culturally important (see Bentley and RodrÍguez, 2001). Eliciting frames (for fieldworkers) include a few simple questions like:
Other Formal Properties of Folk KnowledgeEmic and EticThese are two concepts borrowed by anthropologists from the linguistic notions of phonemic and phonetic. Roughly, emic is local knowledge and etic is scientific knowledge. An emic concept cannot simply be described in terms of a scientific name. This is especially true of folk entomology. It is a poor definition to say that "cogollero" (fall armyworm) is Spodoptera frugiperda. A better definition would be:
Emic and etic descriptions can also be given for behavior. For example, when a Honduran campesino uses magical rites to control grass loopers, an entomologist may give one (etic) analysis of why the magical rites seem to control the insects, while an anthropologist may provide another (etic) analysis of how the rite functions. After the rituals, the farmers may think God has answered their prayers and eliminated the pest, while a well-informed entomologist would say that the loopers have pupated. Meaning and KnowledgeScientific categories are based on semantic premises of necessary and sufficient conditions: an insect either is or is not a Coleoptera. It cannot be partially Coleoptera. As the above fall armyworm example suggests, folk categories may be defined so that some objects "almost" or "barely" meet the definition. For Honduran campesinos, small cogolleros are still cogolleros, but the bigger ones are better or more proper examples of a cogollero. And the same insect when found in a maize ear, is called an elotero, which is almost a cogollero, but not quite. LoreDefining a set of folk categories is a good start to describing folk knowledge, but local people have a deeper understanding for each of those concepts, which we also need to know if we are going to work with rural people as colleagues in research. The Sociology of KnowledgeThis is may be rather complex, with different people (women, elders, ritual specialists) knowing certain things. Games and drawings can be used to elicit some of these differences (Nazarea-Sandoval, 1995). However, much of folk knowledge is shared by the entire group of people (Hays, 1983).
Memory LoadThere is some suggestion that people can hold about 500 names in their head, 500 personal names of people, 500 names for plants, 500 place names, etc. This has obvious implications for folk entomology. ChronologiesSome folk knowledge is organized into chronologies, e.g., the folk phenology of maize in Honduras. Alternative ClassificationsPovinelli (1990) claims that the Emiyenggal and Batjemal peoples of Australia classify animals in four different kinds of taxonomy (habitat, morphology, function, food criteria) depending on context. In fact, agricultural scientists do the same thing, with alternate classifications by phylogeny (e.g., horse is a kind of equine) or by function (horse is a kind of livestock). Integrated pest management (IPM) experts routinely classify diverse organisms into special categories like "pests of maize" or "pests of coffee" which are not at all phylogenetic. Regional SynonymsUnlike scientific classifications, folk taxonomies may use different labels for similar categories, from one place to the next. Farmer ExperimentsFarmers constantly experiment, but we often do not pay enough attention to them. Noticing farmer experiments is important for deciding how we can work with farmers as colleagues (Table 2).
Smallholder farmers have knowledge, and it is organized in ways that are not as strange as they seem. Farmers also conduct experiments. In other words, (many) farmers are knowledgeable and creative, which is something researchers look for in choosing colleagues. However, farmer experiments are organized in remarkably different ways from those of formal research (Table 3).
Filling in Gaps in KnowledgeWe have suggested above that there are four kinds of knowledge. Whether researchers decide there are four, three, or six kinds of knowledge is not quite as important as whether they make a serious effort to inventory farmer knowledge during the first phase of the project, as part of the assessment of research demand. Use that inventory now to prepare training sessions with the communities. During the demand assessment phase, researchers learn from farmers, and now they should return the favor, helping farmers to understand some key scientific concepts.
Each researcher has to understand what farmers know, do not know, or misunderstand, and whether the available scientific knowledge is relevant or whether it needs fundamental research. It is no longer enough to develop techniques on-station and then blame extensionists when farmers reject the ideas. Researchers may be increasingly exhorted to not only develop new knowledge but also promote it and ensure that it is put to use. In order to do this they have to create a framework of the relevant knowledge and its use and place themselves and the farmers and extensionists within that structure. Making a table or a diagram is probably the easiest way to clarify what each group of stakeholders knows. Once they have done this, they may find their work more satisfying and easier to defend against critics. Here we offer a few ideas, based on the four types of local knowledge (Table 4).
ConclusionLocal knowledge is complex, but with certain irregularities. It may seem haphazard at first glance, but it is structured. It has formal properties. Folk biology is structured like formal biological knowledge, in some ways, but not in others. There is, of course, more to it, but the technical literature is fairly accessible. Readers who are interested can read some of the references cited below.
Local knowledge should neither be romanticized nor looked down upon. Learning the local knowledge of any topic takes some time, but it is worth doing. Whether for extension or research, learning what the local people think and know is the foundation for collaborating with them as colleagues. ReferencesBentley, J.W. 1991. Que Es Hielo? Percepciones de los Campesinos Hondurenos Sobre Enfermedades del Frijoly Otros Cultivos. Intercencia 16(3): 131-137. Bentley, J.W. and G. Rodriguez. 2001. Honduran Folk Entomology. Current Anthropology 42(2): 285-301. Berlin, B. 1992. Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brown, C.H. 1994. Language and Living Things: Uniformities in Folk Classification and Naming. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Conklin, H.C. 1962. Lexicographical Treatment of Folk Taxonomies. International Journal of American Linguistics 28, Part 2(4): 119-141. Hays, T.E. 1983. Ndumba Folk Biology and General Principles of Ethnobiological Classification and Nomenclature. American Anthropologist 85: 592-611. Hunn, E.S. 1990. Nch'i-Wana, "The Big River": Mid-Columbia Indians and their Land. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Nazarea-Sandoval, V.D. 1995. Local Knowledge and Agricultural Decision Making in the Philippines: Class, Gender and Resistance. Cornell University Press. Povinelli, E. 1990. Emiyenggal and Batjemal Folk Classifications, Cox Peninsula, Northern Territory: Figuring Continuity and Contingency. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2: 53-59. Sillitoe, P. 1996. A Place Against Time: Land and Environment in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. London: Harwood Academic Publishers. Contributed by:
Document(s) 19 of 34
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Folk knowledge is local, with no pretence to describing the world in universal terms.
Folk taxonomies do not usually fill each of the six taxonomic levels; many are left blank.
Folk knowledge is (usually) stored mentally, which constrains memory. An entomologist can have many more names for insects because they can be stored in writing.
Have names for things (e.g., organisms) in the real world.
Use binomial labels, for some things.
Organize categories into taxonomies.
