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INDS130 Overview. Module Two What do we mean by § Can we clearly differentiate “indigenous knowledge” from Indigenous knowledge ? “Western knowledge”? 1 A/Prof Evan Poata-Smth What is Indigenous Knowledge? Module Two

How have our understandings of indigenous people and the knowledge they create and consume been shaped?

1. Essentialism
2. Eco-primitivism
3. Romantic primitivism/romantic racism

Fundamental questions we will address over the session:

Is there such a category as “Indigenous knowledge” (IK)?

How would we define it?

What conceptual difficulties would we encounter?

Is it more meaningful to speak of indigenous people who both produce and consume knowledge?

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There are many terms and acronyms—with a range of accompanying but broadly overlapping definitions— used to describe what Indigenous people know.

This includes:

• Indigenous knowledge (IK), Indigenous environmental knowledge (IEK), traditional knowledge (TK), traditional ecological or traditional environmental knowledge (TEK).
• Other common terms: Folk knowledge, farmers’ knowledge, fishers’ knowledge and local knowledge.
• More recently there has been a strong emphasis, particularly by Indigenous peoples, on promoting a broader understanding of Indigenous knowledge as a product of Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS).

INDS130 Module Two

Each of these terms carries different implications, and there is considerable debate about which one is

the most appropriate.

“Traditional” Knowledge?

• The word ‘traditional’ places the emphasis on cultural continuity and the transmission of knowledge over time.
• Often ignores, however, the way indigenous societies critique and revaluate knowledge and adapt that knowledge to changing circumstances.

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There is a tendency to assume that there is a clear divide between indigenous and Western knowledges.

Commonly held assumptions

• Substantive differences –there are significant differences in subject matter and characteristics of indigenous and Western knowledges;
• Methodological and epistemological differences-–the two forms of knowledge employ different methods to investigate reality, and possess different “world views”; and,
• Contextual differences—traditional and Western knowledge differ because traditional knowledge is more deeply rooted in its context.

Substantive differences?

§ IK is usually represented as being preoccupied with those activities that

are intimately connected with the livelihoods of people rather than with abstract ideas and philosophies.

§ Western knowledge, by contrast, is usually depicted as being divorced

from the everyday lives of people and is said to involve more analytical and abstract representations of the world.

Evidence?

• There is equally impressive evidence that IK is not just about immediate technical solutions to everyday problems, but also contains “..non-technical insights, wisdom, ideas, perceptions, and capabilities which pertain to ecological, § * Separate biological, as independent geographical, and fix as stationary or physical and unchanging. phenomena (Thrupp, 1989,
  1. 139).
• The line divorcing Western knowledge from the livelihoods of western

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people may be too simplistic.

INDS130 Module Two

Methodological and epistemological differences?

§ Science is usually depicted as being open, systematic and analytical,

and advances by building rigorously on previous achievements.

§ What scientists do is supposed to be strictly separable from common

sense or non-science.

§ IK, in contrast, is usually represented as being little more than

common-sense—it depicted as being closed, non-systematic, without concepts that would conform to ideas of objectivity or rigorous analysis.

§ Philosophers of science, however, have abandoned any serious hope

for a satisfactory methodology to distinguish science from non science.

“The critical difference between indigenous and scientific knowledge is not at an epistemological level: rather it lies in their relationship to power ...”

A. Agrawal

(1996) ‘A sequel to the debate (2): a response to certain comments’ Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, http://www.nuffic. nl/ciran/ikdm/4–2/articles/agrawal.html

INDS130 Module Two

Contextuality?

§ IK, is usually represented as being in close and organic harmony

with the lives of the people who generate it.

§ Modern knowledge, is said to thrive on abstract formulation and

exists divorced from the lives of people.

Is science divorced from the lives of people?*

• In our efforts to know something we always have at our disposal something to work with (i.e. material events, actions, texts, people etc.), but what we make of the meaning of all of this is always culturally and historically contingent, reflecting certain interests, and is infused with moral and political values.

*We will look at this question in more depth module 4.

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INDS130 Module Two 11 § ‘Race’ § Gender. § Class. § Inequality. § Sexuality.

Scientists, as members of

society, have themselves been shaped by the prevailing attitudes and political narratives about:

Can the categories of knowledge—“Western” and “indigenous”—be so clearly differentiated?

It disregards internal heterogeneity.

§ The knowledges that fill the conceptual boxes marked

“indigenous” or “Western” are not monolithic.

§ Different indigenous and Western knowledges possess

“…specific histories, particular burdens from the past, and distinctive patterns of change” (Agrawal 1995, p. 421).

“Any one world is always, also, a radical heterogeneity which radiates out in a tissue of differences that undoes the initial identity.” (McCabe 1998, p. xvii).

It assumes that indigenous and Western knowledges are separate and fixed in time and space.*

§ This would require the two forms of knowledge to have totally

divorced historical sequences of change—a condition the evidence doesn’t support.

§ Contact and exchange among different cultures was a fact of

life from as early as thousands of years ago.

§ Sometimes when people adhere to particular ideologies (esp. notions of racial superiority) they have attempted to suppress this history of cross-cultural interaction and the cross fertilisation of knowledge between cultural communities.

*“Separate” in the sense of being independent; “fixed” as in being unchanging.

Module Two

An example of this…

Bernal argues that classical civilization has deep roots in Afro-Asiatic cultures.

These Afro-Asiatic influences, however, have been systematically ignored, denied, or suppressed since the Eighteenth Century— chiefly because of the influence of ideas of racial inferiority.

As a result, Bernal argues, Ancient Greece is often viewed as an essentially European or “Aryan” phenomena, when in fact it was the product of successive waves of contact, variation, transformation and exchange from Africa and Asia as well.

Martin Bernal

(1987) Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press.

“For 18th-and 19th-century Romantics and racists it was simply intolerable for Greece, which was seen not merely as the epitome of Europe but also as its pure childhood, to have been the result of the mixture of native Europeans and colonizing Africans and Semites. Therefore the Ancient Model had to be overthrown and replaced by something more acceptable.”

Martin Bernal

(1987) Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press, p. 2.

INDS130 Module Two

Indigenous and Western knowledge systems have not

been totally independent of each other or unchanging.

§ The evidence shows that the view that indigenous and Western knowledge were untouched by each other is fundamentally problematic.

§ The

historical record suggests contact, variation, transformation, exchange, communication, and the cross fertilization of knowledge over the last several centuries.

§ Certainly, what we classify as “indigenous knowledge” today, has been in intimate interaction with Western knowledge since at least the fifteenth century.

It is difficult to clearly distinguish between “Western” and “Indigenous” knowledge systems on the basis of:

1. Significant differences in subject matter;
2. Methodological and epistemological differences; and/or
3. Contextual differences.

Nevertheless, we can turn our analytical attention to the

indigenous people who both produce and consume that knowledge.

Focus

• How has the knowledge and the understandings of the world produced by indigenous people been studied and represented?
• How and why do particular knowledge systems achieve legitimacy and authority at the expense of other knowledge systems?

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Module Two

The Each challenge of these terms carries different implications, • and “Indigeneity” there is is considerable often connect d debate about which one is

the with most n tions appropriate. of ‘cultur l purity’

and ‘tradition’ that lock

“Traditional” indigenous peoples Knowledge? in the past.

• • These The word ideas ‘traditional’ are like a lens places the emphasis on cultural continuity

through and the which transmission many of of us knowledge view over time. the world.

• Often ignores, however, the way indigenous societies critique and
• We revaluate look out knowledge at the world and adapt that knowledge to changing through circumstances. these ideas with little understanding about how deeply they are affecting our vision.

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Week Two

Our views of indigenous people, and what they know, are shaped by a number of ‘paradigms’ or ways of thinking.

We will focus on three of those paradigms in this module*:

*NB We will look at the influence of ‘race’ thinking, social Darwinism, eugenics and ‘Orientalism’ in the next two modules.

“Paradigms are the lens through which we look at the world and it therefore determines what we perceive. A paradigm is a set of beliefs or assumptions we make about the world, normally beneath the level of awareness and therefore mostly never questioned.”

Ralph D. Stacey

(1996) Complexity and Creativity in Organizations, San Francisco : Berrett-Koehler Publishers, p. 257.

What is “essentialism”?

The reduction of a range of complex phenomena to a

narrow set of elements or features which are then taken to be the defining features of an individual or group.

§ Assumes that all individuals in a group share the same

essential features and characteristics.

§ It ignores any variations between individuals. § It also excludes other characteristics of that individual or group

that don’t fit the key elements originally identified.

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What is “essentialism”?

How is this expressed?

§ The view that categories of people, such as women and men, or

heterosexuals and homosexuals, or members of ethnic groups, have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or dispositions.

Examples

• Essentialism often pops up throughout our day-to-day lives. For instance, “boys will be boys”, or the idea that women are inherently better parents because they have “maternal instincts,” are both based on the logic of essentialism.
• The same logic is behind the belief that Muslims are inherently violent or prone to terrorism.
• There is a good chance that if someone is making broad over-generalizations about a whole group of people, or arguing that there are natural biological differences between social groups, they are being essentialist.

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Essentialism and the colonial “other”

§ Colonial discourses relied heavily on such essentialisms. § In a host of scholarly and literary works, the colonized were

described as inferior, irrational, depraved and childlike.

§ In European writings, for instance, Africans were consistently

essentialized as savage, primitive, superstitious and hypersexed.

§ These became the characteristic features of all Africans, and there

was no reference to the rich folklore, music, oral literature, religion or philosophies of the African continent.

§ Any African individual would therefore be expected to possess these

properties by virtue of being an African.

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“Essentialism served a crucial purpose for colonial administrators. It fixed the colonial subject in an unalterable condition, with no variations and therefore would offer no surprises. The colonial comes to acquire comprehensive knowledge of the native through such an essentialism. Cultural categories such as ‘inferior’ or ‘pre-modern’ races were essentialisms that then enabled the colonial to prepare policies based on these ‘core’ features of the native subject.”

Pramod K. Nayar

(2015) The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary, New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 68.

What is “eco-primitivism”?

§ Indigeneity is strongly associated with notions of idealized

simplicity and ecological belonging (i.e. indigenous people being an intrinsic part of the landscape, intimately linked to the ecology of the country like trees and rivers and animals).

§ How do you think that these “primitivist” ideologies may enable

and/or constrain Indigenous agency?

§ If Indigenous peoples don’t express themselves in these easily

recognisable ways they are all too often treated as being ‘inauthentic’ or fake.

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“In an indigenous context this essentialist authenticity involves a semiotic (code) of the prehistoric. Such a signification inscribes indigeneity as a historical artifact far removed from contemporary life. Activities or identities, thus, that fall outside of this narrow backward looking classification are deemed unauthentic, impure, or phony. Indigenous knowledge in this essentialist configuration is caught in the prehistoric, stationary, and unchanging web that is ever separate from non-indigenous information.”

L. Semali & J. L. Kincheloe

(1999) What is indigenous knowledge?: Voices from the academy, New York: Falmer Press, p. 23.

§ In art and literature, the idealization of indigenous peoples were

chiefly used as a rhetorical device to criticize aspects of European society.

§ “Primitive peoples” were said to be closer to the sources of poetry

and artistic inspiration than “civilized” or “modern” men and women.

§ This underpins the utopian idea of the Noble Savage; an idealized indigene, outsider, or “other” who has not been “corrupted” by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness.

§ The glorification of the Noble Savage is a dominant theme in the

Romantic writings of the 18th and 19th centuries.

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The Noble Savage

In its first incarnation, the noble savage was a shorthand

term for the idealized European vision of the inhabitants of the New World.

• “…the land belonged to all, just like the sun and water. Mine and thine, the seeds of all evils, do not exist for those people... They live in a golden age,... in open gardens, without laws or books, without judges, and they naturally follow goodness.”

– Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, writing from the New World in 1500, cited in

Hemming, John (1978), Red gold: The conquest of the Brazilian Indians, London: MacMillan.

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The Noble Savage

It presupposes that before technology and development, men and women were living in an innocent and harmonious state with nature.

For many Europeans, indigenous communities were dwellers in an earthly “Garden of Eden”.

• “…all are equal in every respect, and so in harmony with their surroundings that they all live justly and in conformity with the laws of nature.”

– Gandavo, Pero De Magalhães. The Histories of Brazil. 1922. p. 92.

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From Noble Savages to eco-primitivism

This older idea that Indigenous people lived in conformity

with nature, has inspired this century's reincarnation of the ‘noble savage’.

• The writings of a number of scientists and indigenous rights advocates have revived the assumption that indigenous people lived in "balance" with their environment.
• Prominent conservationists have also emphasised the way indigenous people “lived in close harmony with the environment.

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§ Often expressed as a form of cultural and artistic “primitivism”. § It originates in an older tradition of primitivizing and romanticizing

the experiences of indigenous people or ethnic minorities and raiding their culture and contemporary experience as a remedy for their dissatisfaction with dominant societal values and beliefs.

§ These “dissidents” often don’t recognise their own complicity in

perpetuating racist ideologies.

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Jack Kerouac, leading figure in the literary movement known as the Beat Generation in the 1950s.

§ A generation of writers who became known for experimenting with

literary form and depicting explicit subject matter such as sex, drugs, and hedonism, which made them highly controversial in their day.

§ They liberally appropriated forms of cultural expression from Native

Americans and African-Americans that they believed were more alive, vital, and honest.

Best known examples of Beat literature:

• Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1956)
• William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)
• Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

“Romantic Primitivism” § Many felt limited by, or alienated from,

mainstream society, and sought influences from other cultures as a form of rebellion.

§ They contrasted this with what they

perceived as the fake, impotent, and artificial forms of literature emanating from the establishment.

§ Forerunners of the counterculture

movement of the 1960s.

INDS130 Module Two

• Norman Mailer (US Novelist).
  • Jazz enthusiast.
  • Created his concept of what it meant to be “hip”, or a member of the white urban counterculture, largely on his perception of the culture
    • f urban African-Americans (with whom the jazz expression “hip”, meaning “in the know”, originated).
  • Articulated his vision in an essay entitled, “The White Negro”.

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• Mailer, considered himself an opponent
  • f Victorian sexual repression and regimentation.
• Idealized what he saw as the sexual and other freedoms of minority and
  • ther counter-cultural groups.
• Hyper-sexualization of the ‘other’
• The perception of indigenous people as hyper-sexualized and uncivilized is deeply entrenched in colonial narratives.

• Anne McClintock (1995), Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, Routledge: New York.

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INDS130 Module Two

The dangers of “Romantic Primitivism”?

§ When people buy into such romanticization, they often attempt to censor “alien” presences and restore the indigene to a “pure” pre colonial cosmos.

§ This ignores the facts that all cultures (especially colonized ones)

are perpetually in a state of change.

§ The premise that indigenous peoples were isolated from the rest of

the world until European conquest and colonization is a myth that must be challenged along with other essentialist ideas about indigenous cultural purity.

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Example?

Salvage anthropology –promotes a fossilised vision of indigeneity which is regurgitated over and over again.

§ Primarily interested in describing and analysing peoples

with minimal European contact.

§ Obsession with what were seen as “primitive” cultures and

especially on the “pristine” and “pure” indigenous “other”.

§ It viewed Aboriginal people in the south-east as

inauthentic, as people who had lost their “Aboriginal” culture and had only a fragmented memory of their (past) culture.

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INDS207 Week One

James Luna (Luiseño Indian) is a performance and installation artist 40

(http://www.jamesluna.com/mainmenu/)

Summary

The lens we choose, can transform the way we look at things.

§ ‘Primitivist’ ideas freeze indigenous peoples in the past .

§ Indigenous cultures therefore tend to be depicted as static

and unchanging.

§ Because of this, Indigenous knowledge systems are too

often viewed as sacred relics, fixed in the past and of little relevance to the contemporary world.

http://www.1491s.com/ INDS130 Module Two 41

Summary

§ It tends to reproduce essentialist notions of indigeneity based on

idealized and romantic ideas of indigenous people being natural and free—uncorrupted by civilization.

§ Europeans, however, tend to be associated with reason and

modernity.

§ If indigenous people are frozen in the past, the knowledge they

produce and consume is also caught in this prehistoric, static, and unchanging web.

§ This partially explains why indigenous knowledge systems are too often viewed as of little relevance to the contemporary world.

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