Handing Down of Culture | Chapter 15 | Carole Levesque

Chapter 15 | Carole Levesque

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3. some avenues to explore

When, as happens in many studies, Indigenous knowledge is seen as a source of information or geographical data, this is already a conceptual distortion. There is no doubt that Indigenous knowledge contains relevant information about the natural world: people living in close interaction with nature obviously develop an expertise and practices that are tested and proven through experience. But Indigenous knowledge is much more than information, just as science cannot be reduced to data alone. Knowledge, in whatever form, essentially develops and is renewed through the relations it brings into play between individuals; it crystallizes expectations about the social world and the natural world. Together with skills, experiences and representations, various forms of knowledge constitute dynamic and autonomous wholes. Consequently, Indigenous knowledge cannot be isolated from, compared to or contrasted with scientific knowledge; nor can it be integrated into the latter because, in expressing different views of the world, it takes certain social skills and requires that different paths be followed for this knowledge to be applied and reproduced.

The question of social skills, of how knowledge is produced and how it is applied, is not neutral. Knowledge does not develop and does not evolve in a vacuum, cut off from the real world and from human beings (Barth, 2002). Recent works by a number of philosophers, sociologists and historians of science in fact highlight the social and historical conditions influencing the production of scientific knowledge, for example, and the rules, mechanisms and motivations that affect how this knowledge is circulated and how it is transmitted (Barnes, Bloor and Henry, 1996; Bourdieu, 2001; Latour and Woolgar, 1986). The processes influencing the development, transmission and use of knowledge continually interfere with its content, whether this knowledge is produced by scientists, or by Indigenous hunters.

Also, when questions about the knowledge shared by Indigenous people lead to a challenging of science, we again need to ask what kind of science we are talking about. Science is generally viewed as a “unidirectional” and homogeneous whole. And yet it is clear that the methods and expertise of specialists in the natural sciences are very different from those of social scientists. The two types of science are not necessarily opposed, but there is a difference in their essence. Even within the social sciences, the differences in approach and focus are such that one cannot necessarily assume that all scientists are talking about the same thing or work in the same way. A relevant example here is the holistic perspective that is said to represent a particularity of Indigenous knowledge. When this is discussed in the absolute, we tend to lose sight of the fact that ecology is also based on a holistic understanding of environmental phenomena; and we also tend to lose sight of the fact that anthropology, in studying the human condition, is primarily characterized by a global and integrated approach, and that relations between human beings and nature have long been an especially fruitful area for the production and renewal of knowledge in this discipline.

When authors like Berkes (1999) and Stevenson (1996), for instance, stress how important it is to not isolate knowledge from the context in which it is embedded, and emphasize the philosophy or worldview that underlies actions and practices, we can clearly see how close this type of approach is to the many avenues explored by generations of anthropologists in their study of culture. In some cases, the resemblance is so marked that we might ask whether the study of Indigenous knowledge has not in fact become a new way of considering culture and attempting to understand its mechanisms and manifestations, or indeed, a new way of defining the anthropological challenge. We have to ask such a question when one of the main tendencies in current research on traditional knowledge is to view everything that concerns Indigenous people, in any field, as a component of traditional knowledge.

Moreover, as we have already stressed, the question of Indigenous knowledge is an integral part of the movement of affirmation that is currently dominating relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Indigenous people are seeking recognition based on their knowledge. This whole area of Indigenous knowledge brings into sharp focus the stumbling blocks in our own relationship with knowledge and the power often associated with knowledge. What is at stake with knowledge, whether it is denigrated or not, and whether or not we understand what this knowledge consists of, is the expression of a difference, and an affirmation of identity. In a way, we again find ourselves struggling with the issue of human rights, which was so dominant a concern in the debates of the 1970s and 1980s. This time, however, in today’s “information society,” we are dealing with the ultimate expression of modernity: that is, knowledge.

Chapter 15, continued >