Indigenous knowledge and applied anthropology: Questions of definition and direction

Human Organization, Fall 1998 by Purcell, Trevor W

In a 1987 global survey of the condition of indigenous peoples, Julian Burger examined definitions used by the United Nations, and by indigenous people themselves, including the World Council of Indigenous Peoples. His definition, my own interpretation of the use of indigenous in the International Labor Organization Convention 169 (International Labor Organization 1989), and its usage in periodicals like Cultural Survival Quarterly, the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, and Indigenous Affairs, are the basis of my construction of the following working definition. Indigenous people are existing descendants of non-Western4 peoples who, in general, continue to occupy their ancestral lands even after conquest by Westerners, or who have been relocated forcibly in the process of colonization. Indigenous people maintain a cultural complex that sets them apart from the Western socio-cultural tradition (Bodley 1990,1996; Burger 1987; Cultural Survival Quarterly 1992:73). Indigenous people, therefore, stand in a historical relationship of conflict and asymmetry vis-a-vis Europeans in that the construction of capitalism was largely achieved through the exploitation of land, labor and symbolic resources previously controlled by non-Europeans. This definition takes into account two key historical/political factors. First, indigenous peoples' drive for self-determination which has contributed to the new emphasis on the application of non-Western knowledges; and second, the location of the process within a global historical conflict of domination and struggle, and the challenge to Western cultural hegemony which inheres in that conflict.

The definition of indigenous knowledge (as distinct from indigenous people) follows logically, to a degree, from the definition of indigenous people. Broadly speaking, indigenous knowledge is the body of historically constituted (emic) knowledge instrumental in the long-term adaptation of human groups to the biophysical environment. The human group and the biophysical environment mediated by this knowledge constitute human ecology (Bennett 1976; Moran 1990). Based on the history of its usage in applied anthropology, the term knowledge here is meant to have a more delimited meaning than the term culture;5 it is meant to denote that which is directly functional in long-term survival. The reason is not simply a matter of antecedent usage; it is intended to place indigenous knowledge on an equitable epistemological plane with - but in analytic contrast to - Western instrumental scientific knowledge (I discuss this further below). Anthropologists, however, understand culture to be a relatively integrated whole. Therefore, depending on the circumstances, any aspect of culture that functions toward the long-term survival of a group may theoretically be treated as indigenous knowledge, according to the definition sketched here (Barsh 1997; Dove and Kammen 1997; Kurin 1983).

The concept of indigenous people has definitional problems similar to those of indigenous knowledge. The definition of indigenous people is limited by the criterion of "ancestral territory," while the definition of indigenous knowledge is not. The primary concern here is with a view of indigenous knowledge which, by this definition, allows us to consider the knowledge system of people who are not indigenous by the criterion of ancestral territory. These people, as with specific groups of Africans in the diaspora (e.g., Saramaka Maroons and Gullah people of the Carolinas), may retain a more coherent body of ancestral knowledge than, for example, some relatively assimilated native Central or South American campesinos who are indeed indigenous by the criterion of territory. The definition also suggests that while there is clearly indigenous knowledge in the Western world across many ethnic groups, the body of Western knowledge that is judged to be founded on scientific criteria may be too abstracted from any specific cultural genesis (as discussed earlier) to be considered indigenous.