PAUL S I L L I T O E

What, know natives? Local

knowledge in development

There is a revolution occurring in the pursuit of ethnography, yet strangely, and

disconcertingly, many anthropologists seem blithely unaware of it. What is happening
beyond academe? The change has to do with the shift in emphasis that is occurring in
the development world from a focus on the ‘top down’ imposition of interventions to
a ‘grassroots’ participatory perspective. It is as if countless graffiti messages, iconising
unrepresented views, have finally registered. The implications, and opportunities, for
anthropology are considerable.’
The time has come for anthropology to consolidate its place in development
practice, not merely as frustrated post-intervention critic but as implementing partner
(Rew 1992). There are growing demands for its skills and insights. The development
fraternity has been casting around over several years for alternative approaches with
mounting evidence of resources wasted in ill-conceived, frequently centrally imposed
schemes that have not only failed to improve matters in lesser developed countries but
have on occasion made them worse (Chambers 1983, 1996; Hill 1986; Hobart 1993).
While some anthropologists are abreast of these changes, engaging in development
related work (many of them as they seek to build careers outside resource-starved
academia), the discipline has yet fully to acknowledge and act on them. Anthropology
needs to foster the potential of the new relationship emerging with development,
building on its maligned applied anthropological tradition, according some priority
and giving disciplinary creditability to this work. There is a need for mutual
professional support, guidelines for practice, contributions to new and appropriate
methodologies, institutional capacity building and assistance networks, and so on.
The discipline needs to turn from over-interest with social philosophy, literary
criticism and so on to engage more with development problems, or face further proba-
ble diminution in the current political and economic climate, evidenced in the current
upsurge of hand-wringing literature on the discipline’s future (Ahmed and Shore 1996;
Moore 1996; Wallman 1992). But there is more at stake here than disciplinary self-
interest. Many of the people anthropology studies are poor, marginalised and dis-
advantaged, and where it can, it should do something to assist them. If anthropologists

1 I acknowledge lively discussions with Peter Dixon, Piers Blaikie, Kate Brown, Lisa Tang and
Louise Shaxon on the issues discussed in this paper, and also the participants at both a Department
for International Development, then an Overseas Development Administration workshop, on
socio-economic methodologies in renewable natural resources research (Farrington 1996), and at
Edinburgh University Anthropology Department’s demi-centenary conference ‘Boundaries and
identities’, at which I presented parts of this paper to the ‘Development, ecology and environment’
session.

6,2,203-220.@ 1998 European Association of Social Anthropologists

Social Anthropo/og)r(1998), 208
in the colonial era have been condemned, somewhat erroneously on occasion, as
contributing to the disempowerment of colonised populations (Goody 1995), then
post-colonial anthropologists should beware being labelled as comfortable intellectual
liberals who ignored the plight of the poor while building careers on their cultural
backs. Until recently we could argue that the development world shut us out by its
concern for top-down transfer of technology, not thinking that it needed to know about
assumed beneficiaries: a position vividly caricatured in a cheeky student graffito - Chad
peering over his wall, saying ‘What, no natives?’. But it no longer pertains (Haile 1996).
We are obliged to take up the challenge, difficult ethical dilemmas and all.
What is the focus of the revolution that concerns anthropology? It is the
appearance, within the broad context of the recent participatory approach to develop-
ment (Farrington and Martin 1988), of a new field of specialism that in development
circles has come to be called among other things local knowledge? This is an emerging
area of expertise, in the process of establishing a place for itself within development
practice (Brokensha, Warren and Werner 1980; Warren 1991). It has recently become
popular beyond anthropology to point out that indigenous peoples have their own
effective ‘science’ and resource-use practices (Morrison et al. 1994), and that to assist
them we need to understand something about their knowledge and management
systems (Atte 1992; Gladwin 1989; McCorkle 1989). There is a growing acknowl-
edgement that effective development assistance benefits from some understanding of
local knowledge and practices, as some anthropologists have argued for decades (Pitt
1976; Warren and Cashman 1988). This review picks up on this anthropologically self-
evident point, summarises the recent emergence of this field and current interests
within it.

W h a t is local knowledge?
Local knowledge in development contexts may relate to any knowledge held col-
lectively by a population, informing interpretation of the world. It may encompass any
domain in development, particularly that pertaining to natural resource management
in particular. It is conditioned by socio-cultural tradition, being culturally relative
understanding inculcated into individuals from birth, structuring how they interface
with their environments. According to this definition, it is difficult to see where local
knowledge differs from anthropology as studied for the greater part of this century
(Brookfield 1996). While grandly defined in dictionaries as ‘the study of humankind’,
the discipline has largely concerned itself with the documentation and understanding
of socio-cultural traditions worldwide, which encompasses local knowledge by
default. In this event, what is the difference between them? It would appear to be one
of emphasis. Research in local knowledge relates to development issues and problems;
its objective is to introduce a locally informed perspective into developmenq 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 elucidate how our
socio-cultural and biological heritage contribute to our uniqueness among animals. In
2 All manner of other acronyms are to be found in the literature for LK, such as RPK (rural people’s
knowledge), ITK (indigenous technical knowledge), TEK (traditional environmental knowledge),
and IAK (indigenous agricultural knowledge). I prefer LK as the simplest acronym of widest
currency.

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 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.
Anthropology needs to pay it attention or else others will supplant it in
development contexts. There is evidence that many are ready to d o so; agricultural
economists and human geographers, even foresters and plant pathologists, are stealing
our disciplinary clothes and wearing them to less effect. This is unfortunate for both
anthropology and development, the discipline having wide experience of these issues.
There is a danger that others might sell the discipline short, using its intellectual capital
in attempts to further their work, as evidenced in practices like Rapid Rural Appraisal
(RRA) and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) (Chambers 1987; Gujit and Cornwall
1995). The problems encountered in trying to understand something about others’
socio-cultural traditions are considerable and not to be glossed over in glib method-
ologies (Richards 1995). Anthropologists have been wrestling with these problems
ever since they entered the field, and should be there to ensure that the recent interest
shown in local knowledge results in its successful incorporation into development
practice: misrepresenting the difficulties that attend its excogitation will not further
this in the long run but lead to disillusionment on the part of other development
specialists.
The current debate over whether it is justifiable to distinguish between local and
western knowledge illustrates the need for an anthropological contribution, for it
ultimately questions the discipline’s existence (Agrawal 1995: Indigenous Knowledge
and Development Monitor 1995, 1996). It is argued that the conflation of others’
knowledge traditions into a single local meta category distinct from the western
scientific one is insupportable because it overlooks differences within each tradition
and similarities between various indigenous and scientific perspectives. It fails on three
grounds: substantive because of similarities in the essentials and content of these
different knowledge systems; epistemological because of certain similarities in the
methods used to investigate reality; and contextual because science is no less culturally
located than other knowledge traditions.
Furthermore, and perhaps more disturbing than the foregoing parody of the
anthropological perspective, it is argued that distinguishing between others’ knowl-
edge traditions and ours privileges the scientific perspective (Nader 1996). First, few if
any anthropologists, would wish to imply that there is any difference in the thought
processes of humans from different cultures, and certainly not in their cognitive
capacities. Many would agree that there are substantial similarities and overlaps in the
substantive contents of various non-western and western knowledge systems (LCvi-
Strauss 1966; Atran 1990). If this were not so, it is difficult to conceive how we could
communicate with one another. Second, it is undeniably questionable to attempt to
distinguish scientific from any other knowledge on formal grounds: that it is more
objective, for example, or exclusively tests deductive models using experimentation
while others d o not. (Local farmers are probably some of the world’s more avid
experimenters: Richards 1989; Johnson 1972; Rhoades 1987.) Third, scientific knowl-
edge is indisputably anchored culturally in western society, where it largely originated
(Pickering 1992), although with the contemporary communications revolution and
cultural globalisation, hybridisation is occurring and blurring distinctions between
scientific and other knowledge on socio-cultural grounds.
Should this paper abandon its attempt to discuss local knowledge in development,

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE I N DEVELOPMENT 201

which necessarily involves some distinction between it and scientific knowledge, in the
face of this critique, given the differences within, and similarities between, these
knowledge traditions? I think not. This dichotomy overlooks anthropological knowl-
edge, which sits uneasily between the scientific and indigenous perspectives. It is a
strange hybrid understanding, involving both others and our occidental selves, as the
reflexive debate of the past decade has affirmed. Its existence challenges any attempt to
dispose of our notions of the scientific and indigenous, or the global and local. It will
be necessary first to demolish the discipline of anthropology and reveal its ethno-
graphic heritage as misconstrued. Currently, in different parts of the world, we find
people with different cultural traditions and histories that continue to condition in
significant regards their views of the environment, life and so on. A New Guinean’s
knowledge of the natural world differs from an Eskimo’s, and both differ from an
English scientist’s understanding, and not only because they inhabit strikingly
different natural environments. They concern different issues and priorities, reflect
different experiences and interests, and will be codified in different idioms and styles,
which we come to understand to varying, currently debated, extents. They are
informed by different cultural repertoires that have evolved over generations, albeit
not in isolation - being influenced by others, having some points of similarity and
overlap, yet maintaining a distinctiveness, with the contrast between different tradi-
tions until recently correlating closely with geographical distance. If we cannot agree
on this, then the discipline of anthropology has been an act of imagination, and
contemporary reflexive post-modern worries illusory.
If we take several people looking at a wooded hillside, they all see the same natural
landscape but they may perceive it, know and think about it, entirely differently,
according to their culturally conditioned understanding and experiences. A shifting
cultivator will see potential swidden sites, assessing their value by a range of criteria
such as species composition indicating fertility status, tenure rights at different
locations and so on. A local entrepreneur might see a tourist location, perhaps a hotel
with forest views and outdoor pursuits. A forester may see a mature standing crop,
calculating its value according to whether it is harvested sustainably or clear-felled,
with attendant erosion risks. A western conservationist might see a beautiful natural
environment that demands protection against any human depredations, as the habitat
of endangered wildlife. When those with different views come together, as in the
development process, they have to negotiate some shared understanding of each
others’ perspectives of the hillside or whatever, and reach some consensus about it,
with power relationships influencing the outcome. The words they use will reflect
their priorities: are they going to manage, develop, exploit or protect the forest?
Advocates of local knowledge in development argue that we should aim to play
off the different perspectives, the strengths and weaknesses, advantages and dis-
advantages of different knowledge traditions to improve our overall understanding of
issues and problems by generating synergy between them. But conflict is inherent in
the process too because we are not just talking about furthering understanding and of
advancing more rounded views, but of employing the knowledge to effect some action.
Sometimes the values that underpin them are not readily reconcilable. Perhaps the aim
should be equitable negotiation, which is a central tenet of local knowledge in
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.

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 It is obscurantism to argue in effect that we should not distinguish between
different cultural traditions - of which knowledge systems are, after all, a part -
whether the scientific one of western society o r the mother earth tradition of Plains
Indians. They are not the same, although the current trend towards global culture and
history is eroding distinctions between different culturally specific knowledge sys-
tems. The tussle for prominence - of which the indigenous versus scientific knowledge
debate is an aspect - looks set to be on-going, with interminable battles over the ‘big’
intractable issues like ideology, values and belief, defining who we think we are, why
we are here, the proper way to live, and so on. A linguistic analogy illustrates the
position, language commonly being taken as an important discriminating marker in
distinguishing one socio-cultural heritage from another, and language constantly
changing processually like other aspects of these traditions, including knowledge.’ The
adoption of some foreign words - like satellite, television, fertilisers o r whatever - does
not make distinguishing one language from another problematic; likewise the position
currently with indigenous and exogenous knowledge. Human beings have been doing
this for millennia: it is what interests diffusionist theory. But clearly, if the borrowing
process exceeds a certain indeterminate rate we shall have to revise our discrimina-
tions.
The implication of distinguishing between different knowledge traditions,
whether different folk ones or indigenous and scientific, is not that one is necessarily
privileged above another. Any privileging that occurs is not inevitable. It is dubious
indeed to privilege scientific discourse as its costs, both environmental with pollution,
non-sustainability etc., and social with redundancy, alienation etc., become increas-
ingly evident. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that scientific knowledge has underpinned
massive technological change, allowing human beings to interfere with, and extend
awesome control over, nature. It is the dissemination of this technology for the
betterment of humankind that underpins the notion of development (even where it is a
cynical front to further political control). 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.

Approaches t o local knowledge and natural resources

The history of local knowledge enquiries stretches back, strictly speaking, to the start
of anthropology, whenever one cares to date it. But as it relates to natural resources,
and more specifically to development work, it has a considerably shallower pedigree.
There are two strands to the evolution of these ideas, which although they have
influenced one another to a limited extent, have remained largely independent. It is one
of this paper’s tenets that they should come closer together. These two strands are the
academic and development approaches. The study of indigenous knowledge issues
related to natural resources in academia over the last four or five decades falls into two
broad categories: ethnoscience and human ecology (Meehan 1980). It has involved a
range of disciplines within the human and environmental sciences.
Ethnosczence refers to local knowledge systems that relate broadly to biological
phenomena, comprising a number of sub-fields like ethnobotany, ethnozoology,

3 I am grateful to Jeff Bentley for suggesting this useful analogy

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE I N D E V E L O P M E N T 207

ethnomedicine and so on. Two approaches have emerged within this tradition. O n e is
the study of taxonomic systems, with an interest particularly in classification pro-
cesses: largely an intellectual pursuit. Among the interesting debates that characterise
it, is a concern for the nature of human classification abilities, a debate which boils
down to, on the one hand, those who argue that human classificatory behaviour
follows a universal pattern, and on the other, those who maintain a culturally
relativistic stance. It mirrors in some regards the foregoing debate about the desirabil-
ity or otherwise of distinguishing local from scientific knowledge, and revolves around
the tension inherent in any anthropological investigation between the differences and
similarities that characterise human beings from different cultural backgrounds, and
how these condition our shared humanity (see Berlin 1992; Brown 1984; Atran 1990;
Ellen 1993; Riley and Brokensha 1988; Sillitoe 1996). Another debate concerns the
human compunction to classify. Again two sides have emerged, one arguing that it is
the usefulness of phenomena that determines how elaborately people classify, the
other that it is a symbolic endeavour that relates to culturally rooted attempts to make
sense of the world (Brown 1995; Hays 1991; Lhi-Strauss 1966; Needham 1979;
Goody 1977). Those working in natural resources development incline more towards
the utility argument, but an awareness of both the empirical and symbolic perspectives
is often necessary to appreciate others’ perceptions of their environments, which they
frequently express in idioms alien to science. They confirm that local knowledge is a
difficult field to research and document, not one that you can master quickly, for
example in two week’s Rapid Rural Appraisal.
The other approach to ethnoscience concerns the potential market value of this
knowledge, being the search for new commercially exploitable natural resources. The
assumption is that people may have knowledge of the natural products of their regions
that have commercial potential: for example new cosmetic products, new drugs to
tackle diseases from Aids to influenza, and so on (Chadwick and Marsh 1994). The
world’s rainforests are considered to be particularly likely to yield such products and it
is thought that investigating local knowledge of these resources might lead to valuable
finds, it being estimated that maybe three-quarters of the plant-derived drugs in
current use were used in traditional medicines. There are also connections with the
biodiversity lobby, some suggesting that local knowledge might serve as a staring
point for conservation projects, which might build on what local people know and
practice (Colchester 1994; Shyamsundar and Lanier 1994). The problems here are less
intellectual and more ethical, and concern the thorny issues of intellectual property
rights (Gupta 1991). Some fear expropriation of others’ knowledge for commercial
gain, even its patenting by foreign companies after industrial intervention (e.g. genetic
manipulation), without due acknowledgement and a fair share of the profit going to
the original owners (Brush and Stabinsky 1996). Those who advocate market forces
sort out these issues argue for legal contracts between local communities and the
multinational private sector, formalising property rights, rules and agreements, and
regulating both the discovery of new commercially exploitable raw materials and the
conservation of biodiversity, control of bioprospecting and biopiracy (Blum 1993).
Others are sceptical and call for a strengthening of rights generally, including human
rights, intellectual and cultural property rights (Brown 1994). These are difficult to
police effectively because once local knowledge is published and enters the public
domain, the original indigenous owners - who may have no notion of private
ownership in the first place, it being communal property - are no longer able to

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 monitor and control its use. This may deprive them of the opportunity to receive
monetary or other benefits from its use, which may not even occur to them as a
possibility. Anthropologists regularly disseminate ethnoscientific information, accord-
ing to the canons of our open scholarly tradition, without explaining to local
communities its possible use by others, nor how this might affect local rights to either
control or benefit from it. These are extremely controversial issues currently under
heated debate internationally, nationally and regionally by governments and non-
government organisations, including indigenous peoples’ representatives (Posey and
Dutfield 1996; Gustafsson 1996).
Human Ecology draws on biological science systems thinking to account for
human beings’ relations with their environments, considering them to occupy niches
like other animals which they are adapted to exploit, interfacing with their various
technological assemblages (Orlove 1980). Two approaches are also identifiable within
the human ecological tradition. O n e is the production systems approach which has a
redoubtable history (e.g. Forde 1934). It comprises accounts of subsistence regimes,
ranging from shifting cultivation systems to pastoralist strategies, hunter-gatherers and
so on. Some excellent studies are on record from this tradition, undertaken by scholars
in various disciplines, notably anthropology, geography and environmental studies
(Conklin 1957; Freeman 1955; De Schlippe 1956; Dove 1985). Those working in the
natural resources field in development relate most strongly to this academic approach
as nearest to the sort of understandings they achieve of local knowledge issues,
peoples’ food production arrangements and so on. This work is largely within the
ethnographic documentation tradition, giving thorough accounts of subsistence prac-
tices, related knowledge and so on (Brosius, Lovelace and Martin 1986). It infre-
quently draws on agricultural or environmental science, focusing on socio-cultural
issues, such accounts relating largely to sociological matters like family and clan
structures, land tenure arrangements, labour supply, reciprocal work arrangements,
the sharing and consumption of produce, the symbolism of consumption and so on.
They encompass what are by and large descriptive accounts, sometimes supported by
quantitative data, describing horticultural, fishing, herding and other practices, and
including lists of species exploited (e.g. crops), background information on natural
environments, sometimes accounts of more esoteric practices like fertility magic, and
so on. But they infrequently include any substantial, scientifically framed, analysis of
environmental data, standing largely as humanistic records of production regimes.
It is to eco-systems theory, the other approach to human ecology, that scholars
who have become engaged in the analysis of data on production systems have largely
turned to structure their analyses, drawing on ecological models. A popular approach
has been ecological energetics, that is tracing the kilocalorific energy relationships
between humans and their environments (e.g. Rappaport 1968; Lee 1969; Morren
1986). Some attention has also been paid to population dynamics within ecological
context. The problem has been the quality of the data scholars have attempted to use in
advancing ecological models of human environmental relations. It has proved
extremely difficult so far to collect the rigorous scientific data necessary to substantiate
theories of human ecology because human behaviour is so diverse as to compromise
any attempts at controlled experimentation. The result is intellectual debates founded
on hypotheses that have so far proved beyond verification.
The foregoing academic approaches that incorporate local knowledge issues
generally bear little relation to development problems. This is not entirely due to

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academics, although harder lobbying might sooner have led to the incorporation of
local knowledge considerations into development policy and practice. Only recently
has an interest started to be shown in these issues, involving a marked change in the
paradigms that inform thinking about development problems, and acknowledgement
that they might have a place, offering opportunity for the inclusion of research from
these ethnographic perspectives. The second strand in the evolution of local knowl-
edge approaches, focusing on the study of these issues as they relate to natural
resources development, that has emerged over the last one o r two decades also falls,
like the academic approaches, into two broad categories: farming systems and
participatory development.
An awareness of the role that local knowledge research can play in development
has grown in part out of the farming systems research tradition. There are many
variants but broadly speaking farming systems research features multidisciplinary
teams documenting and analysing all the complex elements - environmental, socio-
economic, agronomic etc. - that comprise farm-household livelihoods, informing their
members’ multiple objectives, accommodating their dynamic nature and capacity for
change ( F A 0 1989). It includes the conduct of experiments on-farm, designed to
address researchable problems under farmers’ management constraints. The systems
emphasis is anthropological in tone with its holistic parallels, being reminiscent of
functionalist dictums about cultural interconnectedness. But considerable problems
have merged with farming systems research and its systems perspective within
development contexts. Its largest flaw from an anthropological viewpoint is the
ludicrously 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. Another contributory factor was its inability to focus tightly on identified
researchable constraints within the system, and promote meaningful, problem-
centred, systems-focused, interdisciplinary co-operation, instead of implying that
researchers had to encompass the entire system. These methodological problems
remain: namely how can scientists focus on constraints of a researchable kind without
losing the overall systems view? There is a key role for local knowledge here, helping
to place technical research within the systems perspective, it being embedded by
definition within the wider context.
The participatory approaches have affinities with farming systems research,
comprising a growing family of techniques with associated battery of daunting
acronyms (Okali et al. 1994). They aim to enable local people to participate actively in
research and decision-making, to plan, act on and evaluate development proposals.
They promote ‘home rule’. Those in favour of participatory research argue that it
creates channels for farmers to contribute to the identification of researchable
constraints and so promotes a better fit between proposed technological interventions
and farming regimes, identifies interventions of benefit to the poorest sections of
society more effectively and better adjusts technology to prevailing environmental
conditions through its on-farm work (Chambers et al. 1989; Haverkort et al. 1991;
Scoones and Thompson 1994; Burkey 1994; Nelson and Wright 1995). It is also
increasingly building on local knowledge, focusing on farmers’ experimentation,
encouraging them to amend and design trials. The joint enterprise, o r stakeholder
participation approach, to development poses some of the most challenging and
stimulating problems in the field today. A major issue is how to facilitate meaningful

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participation. This problem comprises two parts: first, determining what technological
alternatives might be culturally and environmentally appropriate, and second, inform-
ing the local population about these, and the possible social, ecological and other
consequences of any choices they make. 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 (ranging
from participatory mapping with all sorts of media, featuring diagrams and calendars
drawn on the ground using twigs, beans, and stones, to game play and theatricals, to
more conventional paper and pen participatory surveys: Barker 1980; Chambers 1992).
The approaches vary widely in the scope they afford farmers to participate (Martin and
Sherrington 1996), from consultation (outsiders retaining control), to collaboration
(co-operation as equal partners), to collegiate (insiders making research decisions). The
methods employed, however - maps, diagrams and so on - are not neutral but
culturally relative and subject to manipulation, failing to access local knowledge with
the subtlety demanded by anthropological experience. Furthermore, deciding what it
is important to represent is not only a culturally specific but also an individually
informed judgement, the drawer, game-player or whoever having control of the
representation and manipulating it according to their individual interests and inter-
pretation of reality. A number of other problems attend participatory approaches
(Chambers 1996), including lack of compatibility between farmer-led and scientific
approaches, difficulties in selecting participants (the wealthier and more powerful
members of communities dominating and directing research to their benefit), the
limited influence that farmers have in the wider policy arena where decisions are made
that affect them, and problems with the analysis of data given the design of some
experiments.

Anthropology’s opportunity: p a r a d i g m a t i c s h i f t s i n
development praxis
The emergence of the second development strand in the evolution of local knowledge
ideas and practice has depended crucially on a sea-change recently in the paradigms
that structure conceptions of development: a change that affords social anthropology
the opportunity to appear respectable in development contexts instead of maverick.
The dominant development paradigms until a decade o r 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, as captured in a witty rejoinder scrawled under
Chad’s ‘no natives’ query, to the effect ‘no, they’re all post-modernised’, a pun which
also intimates the limitations of more recent grass-roots paradigms, with current
questioning of the status of others’ knowledge and the extent knowable to outsiders.
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
give more credence to local perspectives but otherwise mirror the same political divide,
the former associated with the political right, and the latter associated with the political
left (Farrington 1996; Blaikie et al. 1996). The correspondence between this paradig-
matic shift and the end of the Cold War is improbably coincidental, overseas aid no

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longer being imposed so blatantly to advance hegemonies in different parts of the
world with the collapse of one of the super-powers, allowing for the potentially more
politically volatile expression of poor peoples’ views.
The modernisation approach to development is largely informed by models
derived from western economic history and theory. It is state-instigated and managed
by central authorities, epitomising the blueprint approach to development projects. It
assumes that economic development occurs through the application of advanced
technology, the commercialisation of subsistence agriculture, the industrialisation of
production and the urbanisation of populations, through top-down planning and the
imposition of policies on local populations. The modernisation approach is essentially
evolutionary, seeing development as a unilinear process. It expects changes in lesser
developed countries to imitate what occurred in the west with the industrial revolution
and its aftermath. It assumes the transformation of traditional societies, with appro-
priate changes in technology and social arrangements, into economically ‘advanced’
nations. It 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. After
fifty years of attempted modernisation, the approach is now widely discredited,
although many people remain wedded to it, often implicitly (as in many scientific
research projects), and explain failure as due to inadequate state bureaucracies,
conservative, uncooperative farmers and so on, and call for more of the same, namely
improved, top-down, expert-led technological change, not more farmer participation,
whose knowledge remains sidelined and ignored.
The dependency approach emerged as a major challenger to modernisation theory.
According to this perspective, economic and political inequalities exist within under-
developed countries, facilitated by arrangements of internal domination. It assumes a
marked class structure with the dominant class controlling the means of production
and financial institutions, and participating in national level institutions and politics,
with the dominated masses having limited access. These markedly divided under-
developed nations are in turn linked by dependency relationships to external industrial
powers. These metropolises expropriate a considerable proportion of the satellites’
economic surplus. The latter are unable to exert much influence over capital invest-
ment, world markets or international politics and cannot achieve autonomous devel-
opment, their economic growth depending upon more powerful nations. Again the
perspective is top-down and state-centred. Economic growth assumed by modernisa-
tion and manipulated by outside powers has led to the impoverishment of the majority
and improvement for a small elite. This indigenous bourgeoisie has a vested interest in
seeing maintained the exploitative structures based on differential control of economic
and political resources. It portrays poor farmers as helpless victims, local knowledge is
again sidelined, this time as the view of the powerless.
Theories of underdevelopment, like those of modernisation, overlook the
specific socio-historical circumstances of different cultures, and how unique internal
social factors interact to influence the direction of any change. They assume that
when capitalism intrudes into other societies it eliminates former socio-economic
arrangements. This is not so. While the previous system may undergo considerable
modification, it may come to co-exist with the new capitalist arrangements. The
anthropological study of different ‘modes of production’, and the processes whereby
they reproduce themselves, has sought to explore interconnections between traditional
and capitalist systems. Dependency theory is not correct to argue that metropolitan

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centres set the agenda for change which the national elite oversees. Local communities
have connections too, and can play a part in determining the allocation of regional, if
not national, resources.
The market-liberal approach is again informed by models derived from western
economic theory, but late twentieth century versions that promote market forces and
decry state intervention and regulation. It remains technology-focused and largely
functional (Farrington 1996), in the sense that development continues to promote
research into, and dissemination of, improved technologies to increase poor peoples’
productive capacities. It assumes that suitable technologies can be developed. The main
problem is to understand what factors prevent farmers adopting these improvements
and to devise incentives that will encourage them. Market forces and demand, as long
as they remain undistorted by government intervention, will sort things out: the
increased income that peasants can earn from adopting improved technologies will be
incentive enough. While this approach 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’ environ-
ments and households. The problems with the liberal-market approach are that state
interventions continue and are unlikely ever to cease. The asymmetrical power
relations highlighted in dependency analysis remain - indeed they become more
entrenched with the structural adjustments associated with the promotion of market
forces. The markets remain highly imperfect, distorting competitive forces so that even
if their operation could promote adoption of available technological options and
generate beneficial change as advocated, they are hamstrung from the start. Market
distortions include subsidies, taxes, interest and exchange rate manipulations, and so
on, all overseen by the wealthy and powerful. Advocates of market liberalisation think
that the problems are largely institutional. They also point the finger again at poor
producers for being uninformed and argue for improved education and extension, so
that farmers can make rationally informed choices.
The neo-populist approach focuses attention of the socio-political factors that
inevitably impinge on development, identified as distorting the nostrums of market
liberalisation. It not only rejects the technocentric, state-led approach to technology
transfer, but also advocates the empowerment of ordinary poor people, a rev-
olutionary change in the political relations identified by dependency theorists as
inhibiting development. It is here that participatory approaches to development are
prominent, epitomising the ‘process approach’ to development projects (Chambers
1996). Participation and empowerment are considered by some as ends in themselves,
over and above being vehicles promoting the advancement of material existence. 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 more
ambitious formulations see local people using their knowledge and skills to work out
solutions of their own, to problems which they identify for themselves, assisted if they
see fit by outsider experts (although this potentially raises problematical power
relations, which can upset empowerment agendas). This approach has become
increasingly prominent, predictably among non-government organisations working
outside established power structures, which they seek to modify.
The difficulties with the neo-populist paradigm have been alluded to above in the
discussion of participatory approaches to development. They range from incompatibil-
ity of farmer-inspired and scientific approaches, to the lack of control that poor farmers

LOCAL K N O W L E D G E I N D E V E L O P M E N T 218
have over many external factors that impinge on their lives, notably the wider political
arena where decisions are made that affect them. It is this arena that the empowerment
lobby target, giving rise to innumerable other problems, not least the unwillingness of
the powerful to relinquish any authority. Another problem with this approach is its
local focus. Successes are often community specific and cannot be replicated on a large
scale. This again suits it to non-government organisations rather than bilateral and
multilateral aid agencies which target large regions and strive for tangible results in short
time-frames. This time perspective is another problem. Participatory approaches can
take a considerable time to show any results - albeit these may be more sustainable in
the long term - whereas national and international agencies have political imperatives to
disburse resources and show almost immediate returns.
These different development paradigms are not mutually exclusive, and are often
mixed up in policy and projects. Sometimes those who subscribe to one view of the
development process borrow ideas from others, maybe intentionally making an alli-
ance, other times unintentionally with confused o r fortuitously beneficial results.
Regarding the more recent market-technical and populist-empowerment approaches
that allow for a grass-roots perspective and advocate local knowledge research, both
technological and socio-political issues feature to an extent, inextricably entwined. It is
a matter of emphasis. And participation, facilitated by outsiders, does not accommodate
cultural diversity but rather encourages people to enter the modern capitalist world,
sharing here modernisation’s assumptions, albeit shifting responsibility locally for
decisions and ultimately project failure (Stirrat 1996). The eclectic mixing of assump-
tions is applaudable, striving to reach a consensus between two extremes, symbolised
initially by the right and left political poles. There is perhaps nothing new here in the
ying and yung of development, further represented by the association o n the one hand
of technological advances and improvements with natural scientists and hard systems,
and on the other empowerment of the poor and disadvantaged with social scientists and
soft-systems approaches. While there is nothing novel in applauding attempts to
encourage a rapprochement between these two positions, promoting creative tension
and synergistic space, facilitating allowance for, and understanding of, the issues raised
by each, this in no way diminishes the perennial difficulties and frustrations of such
work, which at root come down to differences in values and priorities.

Local knowledge In development: emergence and

consolidation
The local knowledge approach has emerged over the last decade with these paradig-
matic shifts which, paying more attention to ‘grass roots’ perspectives, not only afford
anthropology a chance to become meaningfully involved in development, but also
recommend it as the intellectual home of participatory development, affording it
disciplinary pedigree and coherence. This relates to the need to draw together the
academic and development strands that have contributed in varying extents to local
knowledge research, as outlined above, to build on their combined strengths to further
development, modifying established practices.
Local knowledge research sets out explicitly to make connections between other
peoples’ understandings and practices and those of scientific researchers and develop-
ment workers, notably in the natural resources sector (Rhoades 1984; Warren,
Slikkerveer and Brokensha 1995; Chambers 1996; Richards 1985). By furthering our

214 PAUL SlLLlTOE

understanding of agricultural, forestry and fishing regimes, it aims to contribute in the
long term to gainful development and positive change, promoting culturally appro-
priate and environmentally sustainable adaptations acceptable to people as they
increasingly exploit their natural resources commercially. Its beginnings in develop-
ment are dated to the appearance of some provocative works around the early 1980s
(Swift 1979; Bell 1979; Howes 1980; Brokensha et al. 1980; Chambers 1983), although
some pioneering applied work predates these, such as that at the Centro Inter-
natiocional de la Papa into potato post-harvest technology (Rhoades 1984).
Such research has grown rapidly since then with a proliferation of conferences,
symposia, edited volumes and technical reports, and the establishment of an inter-
national network with a quarterly newsletter (Warren et al. 1993). Much of this work
has recently appeared under the auspices of the Intermediate Technology Movement,
and bears the stamp of its robust concern for addressing practical issues in appropriate
contexts: technically, culturally and environmentally. 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
paradigm relevant to enquiries and pertinent to developmental problems in any region
(the majority have affinity to ethnographic accounts of production systems). The
result is that local knowledge research currently lacks paradigmatic or methodological
coherence. Indeed it is caught in a battle of perspectives (Long and Long 1992; Apffel-
Marglin and Marglin 1990) as practitioners tussle in arguments characterised as right
versus left, natural versus social science, hard-system versus soft, and so on.
Nonetheless, the philosophy underlying local knowledge research is unexcep-
tionable. The proposition that an understanding and appreciation of local ideas and
practices will further development work is self-evident to any anthropologist. It is
increasingly acknowledged as sound sense in development contexts that where we
think that we can offer technical assistance to other societies based on our scientific
approach, people are more likely to respond positively if the new ideas are presented
sympathetically with regard for their knowledge and understanding. But this position
has still to be comprehensively validated to be widely accepted (Warren 1991). The
challenges that currently face local knowledge centre on its effective incorporation into
the development process, which implies the formulation of appropriate methodologies
(Barker 1977). This is no straightforward endeavour involving the import of tried and
tested approaches from anthropology, like participant-observation, sample surveys,
case histories etc. (Ellen 1984). It involves the formulation of research strategies that
meet the demands of development - cost-effective, time-effective, generating appro-
priate insights, readily intelligible to non-experts etc. - while not compromising
anthropological expectations or downplaying the difficulties attending the excogita-
tion of others’ knowledge so as to render the work effectively v a l ~ e l e s sIt
. ~involves the
reconciliation of tensions evident between the natural and social sciences, it being

4 The issues are large and beyond investigation within the limits of this paper (Mettrick 1993;
Fairhead n.d.). I take them up elsewhere, in a paper entitled ‘The development of indigenous
knowledge: a new applied anthropology’, in Current Anthropology. They include the need to
develop a coherent local knowledge intellectual framework to interface effectively with western
science; the promotion of facilitatory anthropological research methods to foster meaningful
dialogue between natural resources scientists and local people to establish what research may have
to offer; and advancement of a methodology that recognises that local knowledge is not static nor
uniform, but subject to continual negotiation berween stake-holders, part of the globalisation

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE I N DEVELOPMENT 211

assumed that western science has something to contribute to the development process,
and that indigenous knowledge needs to be conveyed to natural scientists so that they
can appreciate its relevance (DeWalt 1994). This is the way to dismantle the divide
between indigenous and scientific knowledge, not to contend that it is bogus to
distinguish between them (Agrawal 1995).
It is widely agreed in development circles that ‘folks rule, okay’: that it is
necessary to know the natives. The problem is how to achieve this and contribute
meaningfully to development. There is considerable scope, and increasing demand, for
the refining and reforming of anthropological methods to meet development require-
ments, methods which have been strangely ignored during recent post-modern debates
over what the discipline has achieved (the criticisms of which relate in no small
measure to fieldwork practice). The element of scientific collaboration in local
knowledge research may strike some anthropologists as contentious, inviting unneces-
sary distortion (Reyna 1994). But any interpretation of another culture is unavoidably
distorting, an inevitable limitation of our research methods, as current post-modern
criticism affirms, and this development-oriented indigenous knowledge work is no
different to any other ethnographic enquiry in this respect. It differs in its struggle to
accommodate hard natural science and soft social science perspectives in under-
standing and interpreting other cultures and their environments, and has the virtue of
not pretending to aspire to some insider’s interpretation.

PAULSillitoe
Department of Anthropology
University of Durham
43 Old Elvet
Durham D H 1 3 H N
England

process. This involves on-going revision of knowledge and understanding, and people interpreting
and modifying for themselves any information that reaches them in the light of their socio-cultural
tradition and experience. Research methods need to anticipate this, facilitating adoption of
interventions by promoting partnership and an awareness of local perspectives. This negotiation
will be difficult, not only because of cross-cultural communication and difficulties of under-
standing, but also because it will inevitably have a political aspect.
Local knowledge is not locally homogenous. Differences exist along gender, age, class,
occupational and other lines, and between individuals of similar social status (Scoones and
Thompson 1994), and the interpretation that people put on shared knowledge may differ,
depending on how it affects their interests (Mosse 1994). The implications of variations in
knowledge within local communities demand assessment and the advancement of appropriate
methodologies to gauge them. We have to address the issue of whose knowledge we are going to
privilege. Can we represent everyone’s knowledge, and if so, what is the intellectual status of such
all-encompassing knowledge? The local knowledge movement, engaging with peoples’ lives in
ways not heretofore anticipated by anthropology, needs to address some contentious ethical issues,
for contributing to development which aims to assist certain people over others it inevitably
interferes in their lives. Local knowledge research is not socially neutral. The time-scale involved in
ethnographic research presents problems too in development contexts, with their short-term
orientation and politically driven considerations demanding immediate returns. This will require
some compromises. The difficulties encountered in formulating generalisations applicable on a
large scale also present a considerable barrier to local knowledge research in development, and there
is a need to evolve methods and formulate principles that will allow some reliable anthropological
input into policy debates.

216 PAUL S l L L l T O E
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