Chapter 8

What characterises societies and cultures around the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is complexity. Entities like identity, gender, self, birth, death, work, nature, truth, knowledge, technology, culture, machines, bodies, health, justice, sovereignty, no longer have clear definitions or boundaries. Cultural traditions and understandings, which lasted thousands of years, have become blurred, multifaceted, interconnected and complex. Complexity, in other words, characterises our understandings of ourselves, our communities, our cultures, and our world.

Required Reading 13: McCarthy, The sociology of knowledge and culture

However, it is the concurrent technological and economic changes that are making for the greatest complexity. Advancing technology allows us to portray reality in ever finer detail, yet simultaneously it also distances us from that reality. Rapid changes in technoscience have allowed vastly expanding volumes of information to be accumulated and moved with ever greater velocity, producing huge transformations in culture and work. Yet the uncertainty and the risk of change has increased; the volume of what we don't know and cannot predict has increased exponentially.

Further Readings:

See Reference Finder: Key-word=risk-culture

All disciplines, including science, are proliferating schools of thought, divisions, specialties and subfields, forming hybrids with other disciplines, or fissioning and giving birth to new disciplines. At the same time the very notion of the division of knowledge into disciplines is both rigorously defended and under attack. In the academic world, inter-disciplinarity, trans-disciplinarity, anti-disciplinarity, and struggles for authority are the order of the day. Debates on these issues, sometimes referred to as the 'culture wars' and the 'science wars', have often been surprisingly vicious, sometimes employing invective and ad hominem argument rather than reason, sometimes resulting even in job losses and the destruction of prospering academic programs. Adding to the complexity have been the radical critiques that the foundations of knowledge and representation have undergone both from within and from without the academic arena.

Further Readings:

See Reference Finder: Keyword=culture-wars

The powerful, globalizing, techno-scientific world view, which originally sprang from and then became firmly imbedded in a Euro-American institutional base, still owes much intellectually to local and indigenous knowledge systems around the world. But once these traditions have been milked of what science feels to be of value, they are usually discredited, thrust aside and treated as nothing more than myth, religion, and even supersticion. Because these local holistic knowledge traditions (which in most cases are themselves fully capable of change and growth) incorporate not only knowledge of the natural world but also cultural values, to dismiss them altogether is to attempt the destruction of entire peoples, leaving them quite literally de-valued, de-moralized, and disempowered.

Thus, a wide variety of disparate understandings of the world (whether one means the social world, the economic world or the natural world) now vie for authority, including those of indigenous peoples and other ethnic groups, women, gays, environmentalists, religious communities, and as well as most of the so-called 'third world'. The great majority of people living today fit into one or more of these groupings and therefore feel some tension between the dualities of tradition and change, the old and the new, and tribalism and globalism.

One might add to that list of dualities: the past and the future. But that would be to give away the game. Surely, the only way forward for indigenous people, who wish to preserve their culture, is to assume that both tradition and change have a future, that both tribalism and globalism will survive.

Further Reading:

See Reference Finder: keyword=diversity-understanding

In other words, in this culturally diverse world in which we live, hugely homogenising processes are at work: the globalisation of the economy, the mass market, mobility of capital and economic rationalisation reducing everything to profits, costs and efficiency. Profits, costs, and efficiencies, one might add, as defined by the conglomerate, multi-national corporations whose values relate exclusively to the economic bottom line. These are the same institutional forces which, by paying the scientific piper, increasingly call the tune in relation to what will count as 'knowledge' in the modern world.

Getting a grip on these seemingly contradictory and transformative processes in our ways of understanding the world is perhaps the single most important task for people who wish to preserve certain core cultural values while not rejecting the enrichment of multi-cultural encounter, or the positive potential of much scientific and technological change. The approach of this study guide on knowledge has been to try and bring these intersecting processes into focus by taking a cultural studies perspective which is also critical and comparative.

A cultural studies approach involves a critical examination of cultural practices and their relationships to power through setting all forms of scientific, technological, cultural and artistic representation, beliefs, institutions and communicative practices in both local and global perspective. What 'culture' is, is highly contested and gives the area its dynamic, but we use the concept her to broadly encompass the whole way of life, material, intellectual, and spiritual. That is the "actual grounded terrain of practices, representations, languages and customs of any specific historical society as well as the contradictory forms of common sense which have taken root in and shape popular life." (Hall 1986) The point, then, according to Stuart Hall a leading cultural theorist, is to "enable people to understand what is going on and especially to find ways of thinking, strategies for survival and resources for resistance." (Hall 1990)

If knowledge is a cultural product, it is not simply 'true' in any transcendental sense, its truth is determined by its context and can only be critically evaluated by locating it in that context and by comparing it with analogous knowledge from other cultures. A comparative approach then means contrasting one set of contextually located knowledges with another in order that the hidden cultural assumptions embedded in them can become apparent.

Further Reading:

See Reference Finder: keyword=cultural-studies. Grossberg, et al. and Stewart Hall, 1986 and 1990.

**Journal Activity Thirteen

Bibliography for Concepts of Knowledge
See Reference Finder: keyword=knowledge.

Agrawal, Arun (1995) "Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge: some critical comments" Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor 3: 3-6.

Apffel-Marglin, Frédérique and Julio-Valladolid Rivera, (1995) "Regeneration in the Andes" in INTERculture XXVIII, No. 1.

Cajete, Gregory, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000)

Champagne, Duane Native American Cultural Issues (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1999)

Deloria, Jr., Vine, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994)

Deloria, Barbara et al., eds. Spirit & Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999)

Harry, Debra (1995) "The Human Genome Diversity Project and Its Implications for Indigenous Peoples" in Indigenous Woman II: 30-31.

Harry, Debra, Stephanie Howard and Brett Lee Shelton, Indigenous Peoples, Genes and Genetics: What Indigneous Peoples Should Knowl About Biocolonialism (The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism: www.ipcb.org, 2000)

Hester, Thurman Lee and Dennis McPherson, "The Euro-American Philosophical Tradition and its Ability to Examine Indigenous Philosophy" in Ayaangwaamizin: An International Journal of Indigenous Philosophy Vol. No.1, 1997:3-10.

Marglin, Stephen A. (1990) "Toward the Decolonization of the Mind" in Dominating Knowledge: Development, Culture and Resistance ed. by Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Stephen A. Marglin (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

Mead, Aroha (1996) "Genealogy, Sacredness and the Commodities Market" in Cultural Survival Quarterly 20: 46-51

Posey, Darrell A. and Graham Dutfield, Beyond Intellectual Property: Toward Traditional Resource Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (Ottawa, Ontario: International Development Research Centre, 1996)

Roberts, Mere and Peter Willis, "Understanding Maori Epistemology" in Tribal Epistemologies, ed. H. Wautischer (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998): 43-77.

Shiva, Vandana (1993) Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology (London, England: Zed Books)

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai, Decolonizing Methodologies: Reasearch and Indigenous Peoples (London, England: Zed Books, 1999)

Tafoya, Terry (1987) "Circles and Cedar: Native American Epistemology and Clinical Issues" (A paper presented at the Native American Studies Conference at Lake Superior State University, Sault Sainte Marie, MI: 1-15.)

Tafoya, Terry (1982) "Coyote's Eyes: Native Cognition Styles" in Journal of American Indian Education, February: 21-33.

Tauli-Corpus, Victoria (1993) "We Are Part of Biodiversity, Respect Our Rights" in Third World Resurgence 36: 25-26.

Thornton, Merle Barra, Living Maths (Melbourne, Victoria: Boulder Valley Films, 1996)

Vasquez, Grimaldo Rengifo (1995) "Pratec: In the Andes, Nurturance is at the Heart of Life" in Daybreak Magazine. Available from the Native-L archives at: http://nativenet.uthscsa.edu/archive/nl/9508/0073.html

Warrior, Robert Allen, Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995)

Washburn, Wilcomb (1987) "Distinguishing History from Moral Philosophy and Public Advocacy" in Calvin Martin ed. The American Indian and the Problem of History (New York: Oxford University Press).

Watson, Helen and Wade Chambers, Singing the Land/Signing the Land, (Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press, 1989).

Whitt, Laurie Anne, "Indigenous Peoples and the Cultural Politics of Knowledge" in Issues in American Indian Cultural Identity, ed. Michael Green, (New York: Peter Lang, 1995): 223-271.

Whitt, Laurie Anne, "Biocolonialism and the Commodification of Knowledge" in Science as Culture 7, No.1 (1998): 33-67.

Williams, Robert A. Jr. "Representing Race: Vampires Anonymous and Critical Race Practice", 95 Michigan Law Review (1997):741-765.

GLOSSARY

anthropocentrism = This simply means human-centered, exclusively human-centered. An anthropocentric position places humans at the focal point of all things: human beings, human experiences and human interests must take precedence over all other considerations.

anthropomorphism = This is the concept that attributes human feelings and human characteristics to animals or things.

assimilation = To assimilate means to make similar, or the same as. It is very different from adaptation. The idea, for example, that America is (or should be) a "melting pot" is a very assimilative notion. America has historically attempted to address its "Indian problem" by subjecting native people to vigorous and verying campaigns of assimilation. As Vine Deloria notes: "Indians were subjected to the most intense pressure to become white. Laws passed by Congress had but one goal - the Anglo-Saxonization of the Indian."

autonomy = This word is usually understood within western philosophy to mean "self-governing", although "independence" comes close. A community is autonomous if it is self-governing. Persons are regarded as autonomous when they are able to support their own views with their own reasons.

commodification = To commodify something is to turn it into a commodity, to introduce it into the marketplace. A commodity is an article of trade or commerce. So, for example, to set a price on a ceremonial object such as a sacred pipe and advertise it for sale is to commodify it, to turn it into something that is bought and sold.

cultural imperialism = a form of injustice, or oppression, a coercive exercise of social and political power. It is exerted by a dominant culture upon another culture or cultures. Sometimes it is conscious, deliberate and intentional, but in many cases it is not. It has the result of assimilating, or of securing the subordinated status of, the other culture(s), and is usually characterized by economic profitability.

biocolonialism = If colonialism encompasses the interlocking array of policies and practices (economic, social, political and legal) that a dominant culture draws on to maintain and extend its control over other peoples and lands, biocolonialism emphasizes the role of science policy and of scientific practice within that array. The introduction of monocultures and the attendant undermining of plant-genetic diversity is one form of biocolonialism. Another is extractive biocolonialism - where valued genetic resources and information are sought, 'discovered', and removed. This is the type that is at work in Exhibits Two and Four.

Since extractive biocolonialism is especially widespread today, and poses a serious threat to indigenous communities, it might help to have a more detailed characterization of it. With regard to indigenous peoples, extractive biocolonialism may be seen to be any activity which (a) through the use of force or coercion (economic or otherwise), involves or facilitates the removal, processing, conversion into private property and commodification of indigenous genetic resources by agents of the dominant culture(s), and (b) typically results in some or all of the following:

1. substantial damage to the environment, such that a peoples' way of life is destroyed, undermined or threatened
2. erosion of indigenous health and well-being - whether physical or spiritual
3. destabilization of indigenous social, economic and legal structures
4. the creation of new, or the exacerbation of exisiting, internal or external political struggles
5. the disruption or discrediting of indigenous knowledge and value systems
6. the imposition of concepts, practices, and values which further the economic and political interests of the dominant culture
7. loss of political and economic autonomy and increased dependency upon the dominant culture(s)
8. assimilation and loss of biological and cultural diversity.

This account may help us demonstrate how both cases (of the Guajajara and the Human Genome Diversity Project) may, for all their differences, appropriately be judged biocolonialist. It is also flexible enough to allow for a continuum along which biocolonialist projects can be arranged by severity of impact.

epistemology = Literally, this means the study of knowledge. An epistemological theory offers an account of what knowledge is, of what things it is possible to know, and of how they are known.

in situ = A Latin term which means "in its original place", and is contrasted with ex situ, or "out of its original place". International databanks, for example, are a form of ex situ preservation of indigenous knowledge. The knowledge is "removed", as it were, and stored elsewhere. With in situ preservation, knowledge remains with the people and the land from which it arose. And these people determine how to preserve it, how it will be used, and who will use it.

normative = This means having to do with norms, or values. In western philosophy, a normative claim (such as "You shouldn't kick your dog") is usually contrasted with a descriptive claim (such as "You kicked your dog"). The second claims says what you in fact did, while the first claim says that it was wrong of you to do it.

pluralism = An epistemological pluralist is someone who believes that there is more than just one valuable way of knowing the world. There are several, or many (hence 'plural'), alternative ways of knowing the world that are cognitively valuable.

positivism = This term covers a lot of ground. Positivism is a western intellectual tradition that first appeared in the 1830s with the work of Auguste Comte. Like most traditions, it is very diverse, with many differing formulations and manifestations over the past century and a half. Because of this, we won't attempt to describe it in detail. The positivist commitment to the value-neutrality of science, discussed above, is the main element of the tradition we are interested in here.

scientism = forthcoming