The use of indigenous knowledge in development: problems and challenges

John Briggs
Additional contact information
John Briggs: Department of Geography and Geomatics, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK, jbriggs@geog.gla.ac.uk

Progress in Development Studies, 2005, vol. 5, issue 2, 99-114

Abstract: The use of indigenous knowledge has been seen by many as an alternative way of promoting development in poor rural communities in many parts of the world. By reviewing much of the recent work on indigenous knowledge, the paper suggests that a number of problems and tensions has resulted in indigenous knowledge not being as useful as hoped for or supposed. These include problems emanating from a focus on the (arte)factual; binary tensions between western science and indigenous knowledge systems; the problem of differentiation and power relations; the romanticization of indigenous knowledge; and the all too frequent decontextualization of indigenous knowledge.

Keywords: development; indigenous environmental knowledge; indigenous knowledge; power relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1191/1464993405ps105oa (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:prodev:v:5:y:2005:i:2:p:99-114

DOI: 10.1191/1464993405ps105oa

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Progress in Development Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().