Welcome to Durham and this TAA Seminar, entitled "Local Knowledge in Tropical Agricultural Research & Development", which we hope might start a tradition of seminars here in the North-East. I thank you for your interest in this, what I think is, important topic, and taking the trouble to travel here today (some of you having undertaken considerable journeys). Perhaps I should introduce myself, I am Paul Sillitoe, and I wish to take a few minutes to introduce the seminar topic. I have drawn up a programme for what I hope will be an enjoyable day, but wish to stress that I should like these sessions to be as "participatory" as possible, and encourage discussion of the many important issues that characterise indigenous knowledge work in development. So I should like to think of the sessions as catalysing debate rather than as forum for the presentation of paper after paper - which is not an invitation for a free-for-all but one to contribute (please) as points occur to you.
10.30 Arrival and coffee
11.00 Morning Session:
Welcome & Introduction P. Sillitoe
Presentation J. Barr, P. Dixon & M. Alam, Systems Project and Local Knowledge in Bangladesh Click for paper
Presentation A. Bicker, Grass-roots Farmer Training Project in Pakistan Click for paper
Presentation F. Sinclair & L. Joshi, Agroforestry and Local Knowledge in Nepal Click for paper
Presentation F. Harris, Local Soil Management in Nigeria Click for paper
Presentation R. Shiel Soil Management by Shona, Zimbabwe Click for paper
13.00 Buffet lunch
14.00 Afternoon Session
Presentation D. Fielding, Indigenous Veterinary Medicine Click for paper
Presentation R. Dutton, Local Issues & Pastoralism in Jordan Project Click for paper
Presentation C. Gullick Indigenous Knowledge in the Caribbean? Click for paper
15.00 Open discussion
16.30 Tea and dispersal
The focus of the seminar is the appearance, within the broad context of the recent participatory approach to development, of a new field of specialism that has come to be called among other things local (or indigenous) knowledge research. This is an emerging area of expertise, in the process of establishing a place for itself within development practice. The seminar is a response to correspondence and a challenge in the TAA Newsletter to demonstrate that local knowledge research has anything to offer in the context of development and tropical agriculture work. Some of us have written to the Newsletter in support of local knowledge research (see Richards 1994, Shultz 1994, Sillitoe 1994, 1998, Boa 1996, Seager 1997), others question or reject it outright (see Simmonds 1994, 1996, Coulter 1997, Tuley 1997).
To give you a flavour of the two points of view that I anticipate we shall debate today, Norman Simmonds (1994:33) writes about "the negation of the anthropological view that only the exalted social view will suffice, that the scientist-user combination is not enough. I can think of very little anthropology that really affected agricultural outcomes, and that was done by those who bothered to learn the serious technology. Glimpses of the obvious are no substitute for the hard graft of sensible technology and local good sense". And John Coulter (1997:32) opines that "Of course social anthropologists would be delighted to have more and more funding to study local people but we will never have enough information nor enough money to do all the things they would like to do; many things are interesting but they are not all important. I think that it would be extremely helpful to the natural scientists if the sociologists could set out, in words the former could understand, their seminal ideas which have made a major impact on agricultural production".
Representing the other point of view we have Eric Boa (1996:23), who observes "We’ve all come across the misguided attempts to ‘improve’ crops which fail to consider aspects of that crop important to farmers. The failure of the scientist is due to ignorance of local people. That’s where the sociologist - or social anthropologist, to be more precise - brings pertinent and essential skills . . . without a deeper understanding of what drives local communities, of the limits within which farmers are prepared to do new things and improve old ways, all the efforts of tropical agriculture à la Norman, will come to nowt". And Paul Richards (1994:17) writes that "although it is gratifyingly fashionable to call for the involvement of anthropologists in the design and implementation of rural development I am not convinced that they have very much to add form a distinctive disciplinary point of view. . . . This said, however, it seems to be that there are some points at which anthropologists can be useful if the process of developing new technological resources of the sort that usefully empower rural groups to elaborate new futures of their own devising. But this facilitative role in technology generation depends on being technologically literate".
Changes in development practice: The emergence of local knowledge ideas and practice has depended crucially on a sea-change recently in the paradigms that structure conceptions of development. The dominant development paradigms until a decade or so ago were modernisation, the classic transfer-of-technology model associated with the political right, and dependency, the marxist informed model associated with the political left. They are both blind to local knowledge issues.
The modernisation approach ---- not only dismisses local knowledge but also views it as part of the problem, being non-scientific, traditional and risk-adverse, even irrational and primitive.
The dependency approach ----portrays poor farmers as helpless victims, local knowledge is again side-lined, this time as the view of the powerless.
The new bottom-up oriented development paradigms that have recently emerged to challenge these top-down perspectives are the market-liberal and neo-populist, both giving more credence to local perspectives but otherwise mirroring the same political divide, the former associated with the political right, and the latter associated with the political left.
The market-liberal approach ----although it accords more attention to local knowledge, it is largely as market information relating to available technical options, how it will influence choice and the appropriateness of the various options to farmers' environments and households.
The neo-populist approach ----The participatory focus gives potential prominence to local knowledge, which is taken seriously and afforded a role in problem identification, research and so on.
The shift to the bottom-up view and the end of the so-called Cold War is improbably coincidental, overseas aid no longer being imposed so blatantly to advance hegemonies in different parts of the world with the collapse of one of the superpowers, allowing for the potentially more politically volatile expression of poor peoples' views.
These different development approaches do not exclude one another. They are often combined in programmes. Regarding the more recent grass-roots approaches that advocate local knowledge research, both technological and socio-political issues feature to an extent, inextricably entwined. The mixing is applaudable, striving to reach a consensus. There is perhaps nothing new here, as illustrated by the foregoing comments quoted from the Newsletter, with the association on the one hand of technological advances and improvements with natural scientists and hard systems, and on the other of empowerment of the poor and disadvantaged with social scientists and soft systems approaches. And while there is nothing new in supporting attempts to encourage a rapprochement between these positions, as hopefully we shall endeavour in today’s seminar, promoting debate and furthering understanding of the issues we should not underestimate the difficulties and frustrations of such work, which at root come down to differences in values and priorities.
What is indigenous knowledge? Some papers in this seminar will probably address this question, for the content of indigenous knowledge is currently unclear. It may relate to any knowledge held collectively by a population, informing interpretation of the world, particularly in development currently that pertaining to natural resource management. It is conditioned by society, being culturally relative understanding learned from birth, and informs how people interface with their environments. It is difficult from this definition to see where local knowledge differs from anthropology, which while defined in dictionaries as 'the study of humankind', largely concerns the documentation and understanding of cultures worldwide. The difference is one of emphasis. Research in local knowledge relates to development issues and problems, its objective is to introduce a locally informed perspective into development, to promote an appreciation of indigenous power structures and know-how. Research in anthropology, on the other hand, is more of an intellectual pursuit, its objective being to further our understanding of the human condition, ultimately to how our socio-cultural and biological heritage contribute to our uniqueness among animals.
In some regards, local knowledge is the, some would argue long overdue, introduction of a more overt anthropological perspective and awareness into development, bringing anthropology to bear on its urgent problems, it having recently become popular beyond the discipline to point out that indigenous peoples have their own effective 'science', and that to assist them we need to understand something about it. By furthering our understanding of agricultural, forestry and livestock herding regimes, it should promote culturally appropriate and environmentally sustainable interventions as people increasingly commercially exploit their natural resources.
Approaches to local knowledge and natural resources: The history of indigenous knowledge enquiries stretches back, strictly speaking, to the start of anthropology. But as it relates to natural resources, and more specifically to development work, it has a considerably shallower pedigree. Its beginnings in development are dated to the appearance of some provocative works around the early 1980s although some pioneering applied work predates these.
Awareness of the contribution that local knowledge insights might make in development has grown in part out of farming systems research, which emerged in the 1960s when the complexity of natural resource management in diverse and risk-prone environments was realised. It promoted, together with agroecology etc., a more comprehensive understanding of production. It introduced a systems perspective and went on-farm, realising that farms are more complex than any experimental station. The systems emphasis is anthropological in tone. In taking trials on-farm, it sought to address problems under farmers' management constraints, and understand their practices and calculations to advance technologically more acceptable interventions. There are many variants but broadly speaking farming systems research features multidisciplinary teams documenting and analysing the complex components - environmental, socio-economic, agronomic etc. - that comprise farm-household livelihoods, informing their members' multiple objectives, acknowledging their dynamic nature and capacity for change. Agronomists and agricultural economists have dominated, concentrating largely on the collection of data suitable for statistical investigation and model building. But considerable problems have emerged with the farming systems approach in development.
It is criticised for being too ambitious in trying to understand complex systems. The implication that researchers have to encompass the entire system is reflected in an inability to focus tightly on identified researchable constraints, and promote meaningful problem-centred, interdisciplinary co-operation. It is data-hungry and data-extractive, preoccupied with documentation not analysis. Its idea of system is limited, as illustrated by its narrow farm focus and tendency not to see beyond the farm boundary. It has confined research largely to professionals, limiting farmer participation, focusing too exclusively on optimising production through the intervention of ‘experts’. In denying users’ perspectives a place, it promotes a western conception of farming and privileges scientific analysis. Its conception of farming systems, as static structures, not allowing for change and farmers’ manipulations, hinders appreciation of lived experience, which is central to different user groups’ understanding where farming strategies are diverse. A large flaw from an anthropological viewpoint is the short time frames in which it was thought research could be conducted to achieve understanding of highly complex socio-cultural systems. This contributed to the perceived failure of farming systems research to address development issues pertinently.
Many recommendations have consequently proved largely irrelevant to resource-poor farmers. In response to criticism farming systems research has encompassed participatory methods and farmer decision-making, moving from commodity perspectives towards a better accommodation of farm complexity. It increasingly recognises that in any complex system involving humans, different stakeholders will have a range of perspectives informed by their differing aspirations, viewpoints and goals. Acceptance of participatory approaches has introduced a new analytical dimension - the generation of qualitative data requiring interpretative analysis. Many methodological problems remain, for example how can scientists focus in on constraints of a researchable kind without losing the overall systems view? There is a key role for local knowledge here, it being embedded by definition within the wider context.
The other strand in the emergence of local knowledge in development comprises the participatory approaches which have affinities with farming systems research. They are a growing family of techniques with associated battery of daunting acronyms, which have emerged as an attempt to bring development practice nearer to people, arising from growing dissatisfaction with expert-led top-down approaches. They are a flexible and fast evolving suite of methods, intended to enable local people to take part in research and decision making to plan, act on and evaluate development proposals. They encourage them to analyse their own problems and facilitate the communication of their thoughts to others, furthering understanding of the poor through involvement. Those in favour argue they promote a better fit between proposed research and technological interventions, more effectively identify constraints on the poorest and better adjust projects to prevailing environmental conditions through on-farm work. The joint enterprise, or stakeholder participation approach poses some of the most challenging and stimulating problems in development today.
A major issue is how to facilitate meaningful participation. This problem comprises two parts: firstly, determining what technological alternatives might be culturally and environmentally appropriate, and secondly, informing people about these, and the possible social, ecological and other consequences of any choices. Local knowledge research can, and should, play a key role in both stages. It is not always clear in farmer participatory development how the link is established and operates between our scientific research capacity with its technological possibilities, and the experimenting farmers with their problems and ideas, although all manner of methods have been pioneered. They are methodologically eclectic, mixing semi-structured interviews with observation, particularly favouring techniques that draw people in (ranging from participatory mapping with all manner of media, and diagrams and calendars using stones, beans, and twigs, to game play and theatricals, to more conventional paper and pen participatory surveys). They aim to involve a range of people from any community, seeking to include those who may be marginalised such as the very poor and women.
Participatory methods seek to combat the domination of urban-based development professionals and reverse some of their work practices. The emphasis is on listening and learning from people, not lecturing to them, on informality and sensitivity. They encourage farmers' experimentation, encouraging them to amend and design trials. The outsider team, preferably comprising a range of disciplinary backgrounds to promote different perspectives on problems, seeks to catalyse and facilitate reflective action, and act as a conduit to report the findings to policymakers, planners and politicians. The further it can withdraw and hand over to the community the better, allowing people to follow their own lines of enquiry. The approaches vary widely in the scope they afford farmers to participate, from consultation (outsiders retaining control), to collaboration (co-operation as equal partners), to collegiate (insiders making research decisions). A number of problems attend participatory approaches, including lack of compatibility between farmer-led and scientific approaches and data analysis quandaries with unorthodox experiments, difficulties in selecting participants (preventing wealthier and more powerful community members dominating and directing research to their benefit), and the limited influence that farmers have over policy decisions. The methods employed - maps, diagrams and so on - are not culturally neutral but subject to manipulation, failing to access local knowledge with the subtlety demanded by anthropological experience. Furthermore, deciding what to highlight is also an individually informed judgement, the drawer, game-player or whoever controlling the representation and manipulating it according to their interests.
The agenda for local knowledge research: Many persons with disciplinary backgrounds other than anthropology are engaging in this work (agricultural economists and human geographers, even foresters and plant pathologists). It is difficult as a consequence to define the intellectual stance of local knowledge studies, which are currently very heterogeneous in their approaches, reflecting a healthy interest in any academic approach if relevant to enquiries and developmental problems, although the majority feature straight ethnographic accounts. The result is that local knowledge research currently lacks methodological coherence, indeed it is caught in a battle of perspectives as practitioners tussle in arguments characterised as right versus left, natural versus social science, hard versus soft systems and so on.
There is a danger that local knowledge research might be sold short, as evidenced in practices like Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). The problems encountered in trying to understand something about others' socio-cultural conditions are considerable and should not be fudged in simplistic methodologies. We need to ensure that interest shown in local knowledge results in its successful incorporation into development practice, misrepresenting the difficulties will not further this in the long run but lead to disillusionment on the part of other development specialists. And as correspondence in the TAA Newsletter evidences, there are several persons waiting to say ‘I told you so’.
In distinguishing between indigenous and scientific knowledge traditions, we need beware of privileging one above another. It is questionable to privilege scientific discourse as its costs, both environmental with pollution, non-sustainability etc., and social with redundancy, alienation etc. become increasingly evident. Nor should we put local knowledge in the "driving seat". It is undeniable that scientific knowledge underpins technological change, allowing human-beings to interfere with, and extend considerable control over nature, and that it is the dissemination of this technology for the betterment of humankind that underpins the notion of development. It is the wish of the majority of the populations of lesser developed countries to share in this technological advance, not just to increase their standard of living, but sometimes to stave off starvation, sickness and death, particularly with the relentless expansion of some populations.
It is difficult territory. Advocates of local knowledge in development argue that we should aim to play off the advantages and disadvantages of different perspectives to improve our understanding of problems. But conflict is inherent because we are not just talking about furthering understanding but of employing knowledge to effect some action, and sometimes the values that inform them are not readily reconcilable. Perhaps the aim should be equitable negotiation, which is a central tenet of participatory development. The negotiations become far more complex but the development initiatives are more likely to be appropriate for more people and hence more sustainable. It will involve the reconciliation of tensions evident between the natural and social sciences, conveying local knowledge to natural scientists such that they can appreciate its relevance. This is the way forward, not contend that one or other is irrelevant.