Participation and Local Knowledge

Aim of this session

The general purpose of this lecture is to introduce participation and local knowledge in a combined way and explicitly link the two topics. The specific aim related to participation is to show that participation goes beyond mere communicative aspects and involves a political dimension. The specific aim related to local knowledge is to explain that general attributes of local knowledge make it a specific kind of knowledge found in all societies. 

Links to transdisciplinary research and teaching

Local knowledge as a topic, as well as participation as an aim and related set of methods, are both used in application-oriented and action-oriented research. Participatory methods are mostly used in development and within urban planning. The most popular methods, such as Rapid Rural Appraisal, are useful but are frequently realized in a too quick form. This is the case, if already short stays are reduced to only some hours of contact with the people. Local knowledge research is mostly done in the realm of development. This means that it is problem-and solution-oriented. But even such applied research needs well-defined methodologies, and that requires a clear theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of local knowledge. 

If participation is our aim in transdisciplinary research (TDR), then textbook methods for unlocking local knowledge demand considerable modification. The challenge is to simplify and adapt the methodology without localizing it so much as to prevent comparison and generalization. The localization aspect is often forgotten in applying participatory methods, because it needs time and cultural grounding.

When used in TDR, local knowledge should not be oversimplified, and hopes that it can be utilized should not be overly optimistic. Local knowledge is hard to grasp conceptually, and its application within the context of development is ambiguous. However, local knowledge could be the medium through which empowerment and self-reliance of local communities is attained.

Summary of main points

Participation is about sharing and inclusion in social relations within the political realm. When the term is used in the social sciences, it mostly refers to measures that aim to allow the expression of opinions and enable people to have an influence on processes so they can have their voices heard or be empowered to have a lead in decision-making. When used within development-related work or within TDR projects, participation most often pertains to methods of participation. These methods aim to include all people involved and crate a collaboration of different stakeholders in a common project of knowledge production for solving practical problems. 

Local knowledge consists of information and capabilities related to the performance of acts. Usually it is gained through long-term experience, has a certain basis in localized cultural contexts and is thus spatially limited. Nevertheless, local knowledge is not necessarily confined to one locale or specific ethnic group. Debates about local knowledge are heavily biased toward issues connected with its potential uses for development or the conservation of biodiversity or the use for developing biomedical remedies. 

The lecture asks whether local knowledge might have some general structural aspects despite its tremendous diversity. It is proposed that local knowledge should neither be equalized with science nor contrasted with science in any essentialist way. 

Local knowledge shares some attributes with empirical scientific knowledge. The question is whether some of these qualities are lost if local knowledge is formalized and de-localized. Using ethnographic examples, ten general qualities of local knowledge are presented. The examples used are primarily from Indonesia and Malaysia and are related to knowledge about environmental and migration issues. The lecture proposes that local knowledge might be a specific form of knowing and rationalizing found in all societies. Thus, local knowledge could be analyzed as a human universal.

It is important not to confound knowledge with information. Knowledge is not information, but experience. Knowledge in general, not only local knowledge, is action-oriented and often not explicit (or codified), but tacit. Knowledge may be conceived of as related to the purposeful coordination of action. 

Use of reading material

Trainers might use parts of the Powerpoint presentation presentation. Some parts might be reduced or enhanced according to students’ interests and/or stakeholders’ needs.

 In case more details are required, instructors or trainers might be interested to consult these publications which deal withthese topics and methods:

Antweiler, Christoph (2004): Local Knowledge Theory and Methods. An Urban Model from Indonesia”. In: Alan Bicker, Paul Sillitoe & Johan Pottier (eds.) 2004: Investigating Local Knowledge. New Directions, New Approaches:1-34. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing

Antweiler, Christoph (2002): Rationalities in Makassar. Cognition and Mobility in a Regional Metropolis in the Indonesian Periphery. In: Peter Nas (ed.): The Indonesian Town Revisited. Münster etc.: Lit Verlag und Singapore: ISEAS: 232-261 (Southeast Asian Dynamics, 1)

Antweiler, Christoph (1998): Local Knowledge and Local Knowing. An Anthropological Analysis of Contested ´Cultural Products´ in the Context of Development. In: Anthropos 93,4-6:469-494

Handwerker, Ward Penn (2001): Quick Ethnography. Walnut Creek etc.: Altamira Press

Lassiter, Luke Eric (2005): The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago and London: The Chicago University Press (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing)

PLA Notes. Notes on Participatory Learning and Action. Online: http://www.planotes.org.

Pelto, Pertti J. (2013): Applied Ethnography. Guidelines for Field Research. London & New York: Routledge and Left Coast Press (Developing Qualitative Inquiry, 12)

Pretty, Jules et al. (1992): Participatory Learning and Action: A Trainers Guide. London: International Institute for Environment and Development (especially p. 234-246)

Schönhuth, Michael & Uwe Kievelitz (1995): Participatory Learning Approaches: Rapid Rural Appraisal / Participatory Appraisal. An Introductory Guide. Roßdorf: GTZ (especially p. 43-62)

Simarmarta, Hendricus Andy & Hornridge, Anna-Katharina & Christoph Antweiler (2019): Assessing Flood-related Vulnerability of Urban Poor: An Empirical Case Study of Kampung Muara Baru, Jakarta. In: Paul Rabé, R. Parthasarathy, Zhang Bing, and Greg Bracken (eds.): Future Challenges of Cities. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (AUP) and International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and Urban Knowledge Network Asia (UKNA)

Slocum, Nikki (2003): Participatory Methods Toolkit. A Practicioner´s Manual. www.kbs-frb.be or www.viWTA.be or www.unu.cris.edu

Storey, Donovan & Regina Scheyvens (eds.) (2003): Development Fieldwork. A Practical Guide. London etc. Sage Publications

Instructors and trainers might discuss some of the problems of participatory methods. Participatory methods are rapid, cheap and generally more inclusive than survey methods. But they present problems if you try to scale them up. They are theoretically ungrounded as a result of tinkering. They are laden with (often hidden) political agendas and they generally omit the larger cultural context. 

Additional comments to the presentation

Local knowledge research in the realm of TDR and development is problem-oriented, but even such research needs well-defined methodologies. That requires a clear theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of local knowledge. The kernel of local knowledge should be seen in a form of knowledge and performance found in all societies, comprised of skills and acquired intelligence which are culturally situatedand respond to constantly changingsocial and natural environments. 

Especially since the 1990s, the status of local knowledge as a special form of intellectual property has stood at the centre of scientific as well as practice-oriented exchanges.

Cognitive anthropological methods are applicable, provided that textbook versions are considerably simplified and adapted to the local cultural setting. Participatory methods often used in development are useful, but are frequently used in too shortened forms (e.g. some hours) and lack theoretical grounding. 

In urban situations, besides knowledge about dwellings, space and mobility options, knowledge of prices, unwritten rules of the public sphere and of bureaucracy are particularly important. Such knowledge could be used both to counter dominant official regulations and to enrich expert knowledge. If local knowledge research was less idealistic, hurried, more systematic, multi-focal and context-sensitive, this would make development, and specifically urban planning, more effective and participatory. The aim would be towards community enablement. 

Reflections

A central question for TDR approaches and research on local knowledge in the future is to find cross-cultural patterns. Particularistic documentation of the local specifics will remain a key research area, but it is necessary to go beyond that practice and ask what the general properties are of local knowledge found throughout the varieties of western social milieus and the diversity of nonwestern cultures. These general questions pertain not only to the very content and character of local knowledge. Research on general-process properties of local knowledge must increase after that knowledge has been empirically found. What are general properties of the dissemination, documentation, and conservation (archives, data pools)? What are the general effects of the inevitable standardization and de-localization (de-contextualization) involved within these processes? What is gained and what is lost when local, predominantly oral knowledge makes the transition into printed books like this one?

The kernel of local knowledge is a form of cognition and performance that probably exists in all societies. Local knowledge comprises skills and acquired intelligence, which are action-oriented, culturally situated, and responsive to constantly changing social and natural environments. Given that the general properties of local knowledge as outlined in the above model (or a variant of it) will pass additional empirical cross-cultural tests, local knowledge might be regarded as a human universal. People may live differently in this world, but they do not live in different worlds.

Local knowledge consists of factual knowledge as well as skills and capabilities, most of which have some empirical grounding. Since it is locally and culturally situated, and is thus a "social product", local knowledge is often barely conscious and only partially verbalised, even though it may be complex and comprehensive. Local knowledge is instrumentalised and idealised by development experts as well as by their critics, be it as "science" or as "wisdom". But activities based on local knowledge are not necessarily sustainable or socially just, and the knowledge most often is not shared by all the members of a group. 

Within the context of TDR work and development measures, local knowledge has strengths as well as weaknesses, both of which result from its local and situated character. Sociologists and anthropologists have revealed that local knowledge is more than just technical and environmental knowledge, and that it consists of several forms of knowledge and knowing. Different assumptions, methods and divergent motives characterise anthropological approaches to local knowledge. Especially relevant to development measures is knowledge of processes. The promotion of local knowledge for development aims should not be restricted to the extraction of local knowledge for the sake of, for example, bioprospection for corporations of industrialised countries. As much as documentation of valuable information on autochthonous practices is emphasised in the study, the potential of contemporary local knowledge still needs to explored. 

Local knowledge does not present itself as a comprehensive knowledge system, which could be applied simply as a counter-model to western knowledge systems. On the contrary, deteriorating social and political structures in the communities and the lack of endogenous development perspectives hamper the effective application of local knowledge. A lack of communal conflict solving mechanisms and the absence of execution of normative functions to ensure an equal access to scarce natural resources has direct influence on the information and knowledge management within communities. Rapidly changing frame conditions outgrow the capacities of adaptation of the local knowledge system to current living conditions. The communal knowledge systems are often in danger of degenerating into individual knowledge on survival, and can lead to the exploitation of natural resources in the final analysis.