Indigenous knowledge and applied anthropology: Questions of definition and direction

Human Organization, Fall 1998 by Purcell, Trevor W

The word indigenous has been used to refer to specific groups of people defined by the criteria of ancestral territory, collective cultural configuration, and historical location in relation to the expansion of Europe. Since the 1980s, however, the term has evolved beyond its specific empirical reference. Combined with the term knowledge, it has come to signify a social science perspective as well as a philosophical and ideological position that rests on recognition of the role of knowledge in the power relations constituted by the expansion of Europe. This article outlines the evolution of this perspective and its relationship to applied anthropology. It argues that the perspective is based on a humanistic unease with the effect of westernization on indigenous peoples, and that this humanistic thinking has deep roots in applied anthropology. Recent studies that support the use of indigenous knowledge in planned social change (development) follow in this vein, and constitute a critique of aspects of Western knowledge. The paper concludes that applied anthropologists should pay greater attention to facilitating the praxis of indigenous autonomy.

Key words: applied anthropology, indigenous knowledge, knowledge systems, indigenous autonomy, development

Since the 1980s the term indigenous has evolved beyond its specific empirical reference to a group of people defined by ancestral territory and common cultures. Combined with the term knowledge it has come to signify a methodology, a social science perspective, and even philosophical and ideological positions, all of which rest on the recognition of the asymmetrical place of knowledge in the power relations historically constituted by the expansion of Europe. This article briefly traces the development of this perspective as it relates to applied anthropology. I argue that the growing emphasis on the use of the knowledge systems of the people among whom applied anthropologists work arises from recognition of the need to balance some inadequacies of Western knowledge in development contexts with local knowledge that is more appropriate to the occasion.

I further argue that this recognition has deep roots in a more general dissatisfaction with the process of Westernization, a dissatisfaction linked to a humanist tradition associated with the study and understanding of non-Western peoples. I attempt to demonstrate -- admittedly all too briefly - that this thinking has firm roots in applied anthropology, and that, with ample help from indigenous resistance outside of the academy, one effect has been to promote greater autonomy for those adversely transformed in the process of westernization.1 This process forms the empirical foundation for discourse that confronts the question of what is considered relevant knowledge for longterm survival in the face of entrenched hegemonic relations and global ecological threat. Social scientists have a moral responsibility to engage the question of what is efficacious knowledge given the needs of a particular historical moment. By conceptually separating knowledge from culture and problematizing knowledge and its application, scholars are inserting culture/knowledge into the contemporary discourse as a component of power relations, beyond the notion of cultural division of labor, beyond race, and beyond ethnicity. At a more abstract level, another effect has been an implicit critique of the role of Western knowledge in global development. To establish a modicum of clarity, I attempt to give a working definition of indigenous knowledge, as a perspective.

Indigenous People, Indigenous Knowledge: Working Definitions

Since the epistemological revolution of the 17th century, legitimate knowledge in the Western world has been associated with the process of passing scientific muster. That is, knowledge is understood as that which carries the attributes of incontrovertibility (although at times probabilistic rather than absolute), objectivity, rationality, testability, and finally, the bedrock of positivist legitimacy, replicability or verifiability. Verifiability and replicability imply that not only may something be known, but that the method(s) of discovery must also be known, and further, that the "knowledge" must contain the element of explanation. We should know the causal - or at least the correlational-relations associated with that which is "known."

Minimally, any proposed link between phenomena and knowledge should rest on a testable hypothesis, and the requirement for testable hypothesis partly defines the quality or type of explanation that is acceptable. A "spiritual" healer may explain a persistent headache not as resulting from physiological phenomena but from neglect of an ancestor. The plausibility of this explanation rests on intuitive understanding within the symbolic structure of the healer's culture. A scientific explanation, however, must be demonstrable outside of any unique symbolic structure; it must have universality under specified empirical methodological conditions independent of the practitioner's belief.