[TimorLesteStudies] New article: Mobilizing Local Knowledge and Asserting Culture

[Bu Wilson]

Current Anthropology Volume 51, Number 5, October 2010 
   Mobilizing Local Knowledge 
   and Asserting Culture 
   The Cultural Politics of In Situ Conservation of 
   Agricultural Biodiversity 
   by C. J. Shepherd 
   

 Despite  the fact that a good number of development organisations in East Timor  seek to draw aspects of local knowledge and Timorese culture into their  interventions, to date there has been little critical work on the  politics of local knowledge mobilisation. Knowing and deploying local,  indigenous, or traditional knowledge has become an increasingly important instrument for the design and implementation of development and conservation initiatives in  the Third World. Of relevance to the East Timorese context and with  comments provided by anthropologists David Hicks and Andrew McWilliam,  this article explores the strategic mobilization of local knowledge  through a case study of the politics of knowledge that emerges within projects aimed at the on-farm conservation of agricultural biodiversity in the Peruvian highlands. In framing traditional farmer practices and knowledge as integral to agrobiodiversity conservation, development and conservation groups take recourse to a particular construct of Andean culture. Yet tension arises between the customary delegitimization of Andean cultural traditions and the new appeals to value them, ambivalence emerges within interventionary discourse practice, and the recognition of local farmer expertise in a broader context of social hierarchy is rendered problematic. This case study of local knowledge, its mobilization and negotiation within a particular rendering of “culture,” ideological differences between institutions, agricultural heterogeneity, and the agency of recipient farmer groups have broader implications for how we study the utility and value of local knowledge and “cultural essen- tialism” in other development and conservation contexts, including those of East Timor. 
 

 If you would like a single copy of this article, email chris.shepherd at anu.edu.au
 

Dr Bu V.E. Wilson
T: Australia +61  0  407 087 086
T: Timor-Leste + 670 744 0011
E: buvewilson at gmail.com





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