Download Free Investigating Local Knowledge Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Investigating Local Knowledge and write the review.

Originally published in 2004. Local knowledge reflects many generations of experience and problem solving by people around the world, increasingly affected by globalizing forces. Such knowledge is far more sophisticated than development professionals previously assumed and, as such, represents an immensely valuable resource. A growing number of governments and international development agencies are recognizing that local-level knowledge and organizations offer the foundation for new participatory models of development that are both cost-effective and sustainable, and ecologically and socially sound. This book provides a timely overview of new directions and new approaches to investigating the role of rural communities in generating knowledge founded on their sophisticated understandings of their environments, devising mechanisms to conserve and sustain their natural resources, and establishing community-based organizations that serve as forums for identifying problems and dealing with them through local-level experimentation, innovation, and exchange of information with other societies. These studies show that development activities that work with and through local knowledge and organizations have several important advantages over projects that operate outside them. Local knowledge informs grassroots decision-making, much of which takes place through indigenous organizations and associations at the community level as people seek to identify and determine solutions to their problems.
A timely and up-to-date volume that presents a genuine contribution to the debates over indigenous knowledge.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book explores the critical role that local knowledge plays in public policy processes as well as its role in the co-production of policy relevant knowledge with the scientific and professional communities. The authors consider the mechanisms used by local organisations and the constraints and opportunities they face, exploring what the knowledge-to-policy process means, who is involved and how different communities can engage in the policy process. Ten diverse case studies are used from around Indonesia, addressing issues such as forest management, water resources, maritime resource management and financial services. By making extensive use of quotes from the field, the book allows the reader to ‘hear’ the perspectives and beliefs of community members around local knowledge and its effects on individual and community life.
Do Glaciers Listen? explores the conflicting depictions of glaciers to show how natural and cultural histories are objectively entangled in the Mount Saint Elias ranges. This rugged area, where Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory now meet, underwent significant geophysical change in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which coincided with dramatic social upheaval resulting from European exploration and increased travel and trade among Aboriginal peoples. European visitors brought with them varying conceptions of nature as sublime, as spiritual, or as a resource for human progress. They saw glaciers as inanimate, subject to empirical investigation and measurement. Aboriginal oral histories, conversely, described glaciers as sentient, animate, and quick to respond to human behaviour. In each case, however, the experiences and ideas surrounding glaciers were incorporated into interpretations of social relations. Focusing on these contrasting views during the late stages of the Little Ice Age (1550-1900), Cruikshank demonstrates how local knowledge is produced, rather than discovered, through colonial encounters, and how it often conjoins social and biophysical processes. She then traces how the divergent views weave through contemporary debates about cultural meanings as well as current discussions about protected areas, parks, and the new World Heritage site. Readers interested in anthropology and Native and northern studies will find this a fascinating read and a rich addition to circumpolar literature.
In essays covering everything from art and common sense to charisma and constructions of the self, the eminent cultural anthropologist and author of The Interpretation of Cultures deepens our understanding of human societies through the intimacies of "local knowledge." A companion volume to The Interpretation of Cultures, this book continues Geertz’s exploration of the meaning of culture and the importance of shared cultural symbolism. With a new introduction by the author.
This is a guide to interpretative techniques and methods for policy research. The author describes what interpretative approaches are and what they can mean to policy analysis, and then shifts the frame of reference from thinking about values as costs and benefits to thinking about them more as a set of meanings.
Discover how conservation can be made more effective through strengthening links between science research, policy and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
DIVClaims that the problematic communication gap between experts and ordinary citizens is best remedied by a renewal of local citizen participation in deliberative structures./div
Effective community development means that many different stakeholders have to work together: governments, development organizations and NGOs, and most importantly, the people they serve. Knowledge Partnering for Community Development teaches community development professionals how to mediate community needs and development agendas to make community-based solutions for development challenges. Based on the newest research in community and global development, Eversole shows readers a strong research and theoretically based framework for understanding local development processes, and gives them the skills to turn this into cutting-edge practice. Each chapter features global case studies of innovative community-state partnerships, and practical application exercises and strategies for professionals looking to bring new approaches to their research. Knowledge Partnering for Community Development is essential for community workers and students of community development looking to bridge the gap between research insight and best practice between community actors.
Drawing on cultural, social, and environmental history, as well as the histories of science and medicine, this book shows how, amidst a growing reaction against exotic imports -- whether medieval spices like cinnamon or new American arrivals like chocolate and tobacco -- early modern Europeans began to take inventory of their own "indigenous" natural worlds.