WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:00:01.900 --> 00:00:08.600 The second theme we're going to discuss this week is the politics of knowledge or rather the 00:00:08.600 --> 00:00:17.200 relationship between knowledge and politics, this is another classic in anthropology and we're going 00:00:17.200 --> 00:00:24.700 to look at two very different approaches to that similar in a sense but also quite different in what 00:00:24.700 --> 00:00:29.200 they want to do with discussing politics and knowledge. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:00:32.299 --> 00:00:44.050 They are similar in the sense that they both examine policy and the political implications of policy 00:00:44.050 --> 00:00:54.500 and contrast that to local knowledges. The two articles one written by Posey in the 1970s and 00:00:54.500 --> 00:01:02.050 Fairhead and Leach in 1990s are empirically looking at similar cases. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:01:02.050 --> 00:01:10.800 Both examine patches of forest islands that appear to be natural but are not, they are 00:01:10.800 --> 00:01:19.300 cultural in the sense of being man-made, and they use that distinction or the case study to examine a 00:01:19.300 --> 00:01:27.200 dichotomy that we looked at last week between nature and culture, is basically assumptions about the 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:32.150 divide between human interventions and nature that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:01:32.150 --> 00:01:38.900 Lies behind what they think are the misunderstandings or the misconstructions of the problem done 00:01:38.900 --> 00:01:41.050 by policymakers here. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:01:41.050 --> 00:01:49.800 They also set out to address policy makers and policies themselves from two different perspectives 00:01:49.800 --> 00:01:57.700 that also reflects where they are talking from the time period in which they wrote. Posey writing in 00:01:57.700 --> 00:02:07.600 the 1970s stressed correction, he wanted to get across that there is a valid form of knowledge that 00:02:07.600 --> 00:02:11.300 is not your typical scientific knowledge that he calls NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:18.100 indigenous knowledge, and that this should be used and be understood by policymakers in order to make 00:02:18.100 --> 00:02:26.900 better decisions, so he really wants to have an impact on policy through better knowledge. Fairhead and Leach 00:02:26.900 --> 00:02:34.600 Writes from a Foucauldian tradition where knowledge in itself is much more suspect it's seen 00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:41.250 as having in and of itself political consequences and specifically scientific knowledge. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:02:41.250 --> 00:02:47.500 So they focus on the mistakes that are made and how these are reproduced and the kind of 00:02:47.500 --> 00:02:56.400 How power effects that these mistakes happen. So let's begin with the Posey article his research was 00:02:56.400 --> 00:03:05.300 done in the 1970s in Brazilian Amazon among Kayapó indigenous people and as I said 00:03:05.300 --> 00:03:11.250 He stressed throughout the lack of studies on indigenous knowledge NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:03:11.250 --> 00:03:18.300 so you see the article is full of classifications, indigenous knowledge use of classifications to 00:03:18.300 --> 00:03:27.700 show that this is also some kind of valid knowledge that should be taken seriously by biologists and 00:03:27.700 --> 00:03:31.500 by scientists and policymakers. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:03:31.700 --> 00:03:38.900 The main point of the article is to show that what appears as natural i.e. a natural 00:03:38.900 --> 00:03:47.800 forest is the result of management and creation by the Kayapó indigenous people NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:03:49.100 --> 00:03:58.700 He centres his case around a phenomenon that has been studied by many before him the so-called apêtê 00:03:58.700 --> 00:04:08.400 the forest islands. They look like these sort of scattered old forests in an otherwise open 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:17.250 landscape so what they look at is remains of all forest and policymakers have thought that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:04:17.250 --> 00:04:24.600 these are really the only things that are left by the destructive practices of the indigenous people 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:30.300 they are left a few patches of forest in place the rest has been destroyed by slash and burn and 00:04:30.300 --> 00:04:40.400 similar practices this is turning the case completely on its head argues Posey, they are created by 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:46.600 indigenous people and would not exist without them, and it goes through a quite complex process of 00:04:46.600 --> 00:04:47.250 how these NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:04:47.250 --> 00:04:56.300 forests are created, over how forest islands are created, they are created by taking compost heaps 00:04:56.300 --> 00:05:04.800 from existing forest which are then left to rot they are beaten and moved into new areas they are 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:13.300 sort of mixed with other substances such as soil from termite mounds and then carefully neutered 00:05:13.300 --> 00:05:17.150 and extended over the years until you have a new NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:05:17.150 --> 00:05:27.700 new forest island. They do this because they are created as a refuge in terms of 00:05:27.700 --> 00:05:35.400 trouble and in terms of war for instance, so in addition to having useful plants such as food plants 00:05:35.400 --> 00:05:42.700 they also have other useful plants such as medicines for instance so you can almost think of them as 00:05:42.700 --> 00:05:47.500 concentrated gardens created throughout the landscape NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:05:47.500 --> 00:05:53.950 With shelter for hiding food to eat and and medicine NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:05:53.950 --> 00:06:05.450 further these forest islands then are linked with corridors, as the people move through the landscape they 00:06:05.450 --> 00:06:13.600 pick and collect seeds and roots and plant them along the paths between the different forests and in 00:06:13.600 --> 00:06:20.100 that way create a landscape where they can move through it and find useful things as they move 00:06:20.100 --> 00:06:21.750 through the landscape NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:06:21.750 --> 00:06:34.900 and these corridors together with their gardens are managed through fire, which we will get back to in a bit. So 00:06:34.900 --> 00:06:41.750 rather than having indigenous people destroying the forest and only leaving patches left Posey 00:06:41.750 --> 00:06:50.200 paints a picture of an indigenous people who have a close intimate relationship with their 00:06:50.200 --> 00:06:51.350 environment NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:06:51.350 --> 00:07:05.500 who create forest, they remove useful plants into places where they have use for them and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:07:05.500 --> 00:07:14.900 through painting such a picture he asked us to reconsider what is natural, it's not a 00:07:14.900 --> 00:07:22.600 case where you had a natural all expanding forest destroyed by people, rather this is a managed 00:07:22.600 --> 00:07:30.700 landscape and part of why this is misunderstood in the first place is the nature/society divide. 00:07:30.700 --> 00:07:35.550 When you see patches of forest you naturally think NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:07:35.550 --> 00:07:41.200 if you start out with a nature/society divide that the people in that landscape must have 00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:47.650 destroyed the forest since the forest were there first, but this is not the case at all. 00:07:47.650 --> 00:07:54.100 Rather he argues that this could be a model of deforestation if you look at the management 00:07:54.100 --> 00:08:04.500 techniques of the Kayapó you could actually use that as a way to replace destroyed 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:06.200 forests. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:08:07.700 --> 00:08:17.700 he also looks at much criticised management technique that the indigenous people also engage in 00:08:17.700 --> 00:08:24.600 namely slash-and-burn cultivation this is a form of cultivation where you burn down areas huge 00:08:24.600 --> 00:08:33.500 tracts of forest and by doing so you release a nutrients in the ashes and extremely barren soil that 00:08:33.500 --> 00:08:37.049 is there which you can't really grow anything in, by and off itself, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:08:37.049 --> 00:08:44.000 Is then useful for a season or two, but then you need to move on and burn a new area and so forth and 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:50.700 this is normally done in a kind of circulation, and it looks extremely destructive to outsiders so 00:08:50.700 --> 00:08:57.400 when colonial officers and others saw these kind of practices which has been used by many people 00:08:57.400 --> 00:09:07.150 throughout the world, they try to stop it and have people use fertilisers instead, but often NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:09:07.150 --> 00:09:15.700 with dramatic negative consequences.It turns out that this is actually one of the best ways of 00:09:15.700 --> 00:09:23.500 managing agriculture in a situation like the Amazon where all the nutrition is in the plants and 00:09:23.500 --> 00:09:32.800 Not in the ground itself and again he shows this as a use for management technique NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:09:35.400 --> 00:09:43.800 he goes on to explain that the way they managed to do this and 00:09:43.800 --> 00:09:51.100 here it gets back to the importance of knowledge and indigenous knowledge, he maps out a quite 00:09:51.100 --> 00:09:59.850 complex cognitive map which represent this indigenous knowledge where most plants and landscapes are 00:09:59.850 --> 00:10:05.150 ordered as a continuum from one NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:10:05.150 --> 00:10:13.000 ideal type the forest to another one that Savanna and the Apêtê is a link between this type 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:26.300 and is created by thinking about it as a link, so it shows that this kind duality or 00:10:26.300 --> 00:10:35.150 A mixture of different sets is recreated throughout down the levels as well and used as a way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:10:35.150 --> 00:10:38.100 of managing the environment. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:10:39.100 --> 00:10:50.500 So rather than a natural forest destroyed by management techniques and scientific management 00:10:50.500 --> 00:10:59.000 techniques Posey tells us that there is a knowledge as scientific knowledge but a different kind of 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:02.700 Science and Indigenous knowledge behind this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:11:02.700 --> 00:11:09.400 the landscape that is managed he says or plant species that are found in these managed areas has come from an 00:11:09.400 --> 00:11:19.600 area as big as Europe, so it's a huge and complex system. In a later article he said that he stressed 00:11:19.600 --> 00:11:26.450 this management perhaps a bit too much because he also wanted to make a political claim because if 00:11:26.450 --> 00:11:32.900 the indigenous people have cultivated and made this landscape they obviously have NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:11:32.900 --> 00:11:39.800 a very different kind of claim to it than if they just live there or destroyed it. He's also been 00:11:39.800 --> 00:11:46.600 accused by some biologists of not getting the classifications right but the important bit for us 00:11:46.600 --> 00:11:55.000 here is the argument he makes about understanding other forms or view of what is going on, that the 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:03.200 indigenous local view is a valid view and explains what is happening in this environment NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:13.100 and further that the mistake made by biologists and policy managers stems from a separation a 00:12:13.100 --> 00:12:22.000 conceptual separation of nature and society in the first place, and as I said writing in the 1970s 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:29.500 what Posey really wanted to do here was to add a corrective to policy. He thought that if I just 00:12:29.500 --> 00:12:32.250 apply this knowledge if I just show NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:12:32.250 --> 00:12:40.400 Policy makers that the knowledge is wrong and that we need to learn from indigenous people you will find better 00:12:40.400 --> 00:12:42.200 alternatives. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:12:42.500 --> 00:12:52.200 Fairhead and Leach talks about a very similar case but in the 1990s, and for that 00:12:52.200 --> 00:13:05.900 reason their politics is different as well. We are moving now from Brazilian 00:13:05.900 --> 00:13:11.650 Amazon to West Africa, but a case that shows many of the same NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:13:11.650 --> 00:13:20.700 Problems as I said. The problem here is that nature in West Africa from colonial time has 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:33.400 Have suffered from de-forestation due to practices of indigenous people. At first one 00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:39.000 thought that the reason why you had a lot of Savannah was because it did not have a lot of rainfall 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:41.700 and at the time one believed that rainfall NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:47.800 will follow the trees and it was natives that destroyed the trees that would lead to the dry 00:13:47.800 --> 00:13:50.200 climate in the first place. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:13:51.100 --> 00:14:04.500 From the outside there was an assumption that it was indigenous peoples bad practices that was 00:14:04.500 --> 00:14:14.900 The explanation for the climatic problems. Fairhead and Leach argues that you have to try to look at 00:14:14.900 --> 00:14:20.750 the present situation and compare it to what they thought was a climax NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:14:20.750 --> 00:14:29.500 situation, again when you saw patches of forest left in an almost barren landscape you thought that 00:14:29.500 --> 00:14:38.099 well originally this must have been covered with forest and the indigenous unknowing people 00:14:38.099 --> 00:14:44.600 through the practices had destroyed everything and only left a few forest patches 00:14:44.600 --> 00:14:50.050 left, and if you just stop the destruction the bad farming NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:14:50.050 --> 00:14:54.500 practices this original forest will then return. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:14:55.200 --> 00:15:04.200 The desertification one saw then and the spread of the Savannah as one explain soil 00:15:04.200 --> 00:15:16.400 erosion due to bad farming practices, and the interesting thing they show is that this was 'known' even 00:15:16.400 --> 00:15:23.800 before 'known' in inverted commas even before one actually looked at the empirical evidence, it was NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:15:23.800 --> 00:15:32.200 just assumed that by the European conquerors that this must have been the case. 00:15:32.200 --> 00:15:39.400 It is interesting that they say that the same kind of colonial discourse happens 00:15:39.400 --> 00:15:48.600 today as well with people who wants to help, so this narrative 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:53.050 rather than discourse forms a narrative of crisis. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:15:53.050 --> 00:15:59.950 Blame is placed on shifting cultivators and pastoralist who do not know what the best practices are 00:15:59.950 --> 00:16:08.600 this is not investigated empirically, it has formed the basis for policy from the colonial time to 00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:17.600 the present and the only solution then is to create forest reserves and have people viewed out 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:22.950 of the landscape i.e. impose a nature/society distinction. The point NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:16:22.950 --> 00:16:30.500 Of that even if this narrative has formed the basis both for Colonial authorities and development 00:16:30.500 --> 00:16:43.950 work the justification given has been different, whereas colonial authorities tended to stress ignorance, 00:16:43.950 --> 00:16:52.300 the development workers tended to stress external factors and breakdown of traditional societies and 00:16:52.300 --> 00:16:53.000 more benign NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:16:53.000 --> 00:17:01.500 explanations like that for instance. They then go through two examples of this empirically. One is the 00:17:01.500 --> 00:17:09.599 forest region of Guinea were from colonial policy to the present has argued that the remains the 00:17:09.599 --> 00:17:16.550 islands of forest that you now see surrounding the villages are the remains of a large forest climax 00:17:16.550 --> 00:17:22.900 that used to be surrounding the whole landscape and it's now NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:17:22.900 --> 00:17:29.300 disappearing rapidly because of human destruction, and the reason for this is farming practices such 00:17:29.300 --> 00:17:38.400 as slash and burn farming as I just explained as well as population increase interestingly here 00:17:38.400 --> 00:17:50.600 that is used as an explanation as well, as well as social breakdown because of modern 00:17:50.600 --> 00:17:52.950 developments that break down what was NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:17:52.950 --> 00:17:59.600 perhaps older forms of control and management of a common resource, so this is just assumed through 00:17:59.600 --> 00:18:07.200 all the reports from colonial times to the present they argue. It contrasts widely with what happens 00:18:07.200 --> 00:18:13.700 if you as an anthropologist speak to people, because people living in the area will tell you that 00:18:13.700 --> 00:18:21.300 rather than a massive forest disappearing the forest is increasing and what used to be a 00:18:21.300 --> 00:18:22.900 savannah NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:18:22.900 --> 00:18:34.450 is now emerging as forest islands and further this is collaborated by photographs. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:18:34.450 --> 00:18:37.000 So what is going on here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:46.600 what they argue is going on is that this forest has been planted by people what they see as forest 00:18:46.600 --> 00:18:56.300 islands by people and not then are the last remains of human settlements or what used to be 00:18:56.300 --> 00:19:02.900 there before human settlements, second example is really similar it's from what is now a UNESCO 00:19:02.900 --> 00:19:07.199 biosphere reserve and a world Bank conservation NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:19:07.199 --> 00:19:08.500 project NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:19:08.500 --> 00:19:14.300 again patches of forest are seen as remains of what used to be the upper Guinean forest 00:19:14.300 --> 00:19:23.500 Block and again it is people's destructive practices that are used as an explanation for why there 00:19:23.500 --> 00:19:30.700 is hardly any forest left again, the local understanding of what is going on is that what used to 00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:38.600 be Savannah then was depopulated by forced removals of people and then NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:19:38.600 --> 00:19:46.800 forest emerged in what used to be the natural landscape there namely a savannah, so the forest that 00:19:46.800 --> 00:19:54.500 You see bits of now is actually increasing it's not what used to be there and it's also a 00:19:54.500 --> 00:20:02.700 system or a symbol of dispossession. This is very similar to what I found in my case study I did in 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:08.600 South Africa at the UNESCO world heritage site where NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:15.600 conservation is try to look after or protect what they see as a last remains of a coastal Forest 00:20:15.600 --> 00:20:24.200 again looking at photographs you see that this forest emerged in the apartheid years when people were 00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:30.700 forcefully removed from the grazing grounds, so what was center had been grazing grounds had 00:20:30.700 --> 00:20:38.000 forest encroached on them as people were forcibly removed by apartheid. So again the same 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:38.600 mistake NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:20:38.600 --> 00:20:45.700 goes on in all these cases is that when you see bits of forest and man used landscapes you assume 00:20:45.700 --> 00:20:54.600 that there must have been a total coverage of forest and that the man use management of landscape is 00:20:54.600 --> 00:21:01.400 destroying what used to be a pristine forest, and again that builds on a distinction between nature 00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:08.550 and society. So for the whole region then argues Fairhead and Leach we see NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:21:08.550 --> 00:21:14.700 Increasing evidence that forest is growing into eating into encroaching on the Savannah not the other 00:21:14.700 --> 00:21:23.000 way around and that actually farming assist this because in the first case what you saw as Forest 00:21:23.000 --> 00:21:31.400 is managed forest around homesteads, for the nature conservation area you also see that forest is 00:21:31.400 --> 00:21:36.050 increasing and not decreasing as people have moved out NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:21:36.050 --> 00:21:43.600 but because the narrative they say this doesn't really register at all, then all reports written all 00:21:43.600 --> 00:21:49.950 policy made assumed that this must have been a forest that is now being destroyed by people and therefore 00:21:49.950 --> 00:21:57.050 we need to stop people from using this environment to save the forest, and again this 00:21:57.050 --> 00:22:04.150 comes from drawing a sharp distinction between nature and society in the first place. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:22:04.150 --> 00:22:13.300 So to the overall theme then, both would agree that knowledge is not neutral here. Posey argues 00:22:13.300 --> 00:22:22.400 that knowledge has negative consequences because it is wrong and he wants to correct it, so he 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:29.100 wants to make sure that the right kind of knowledge reach policy makers so that you can help and 00:22:29.100 --> 00:22:34.699 promote and create better alternatives and he even as you saw think that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:22:34.699 --> 00:22:42.700 he has found a way that modern management techniques can use traditional knowledge to make sure that 00:22:42.700 --> 00:22:49.200 you have a deforestation, Fairhead and Leach writes another the tradition a very 1990s tradition where 00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:58.400 knowledge is seen as power and anthropology is used to be skeptical of scientific knowledge the kind 00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:04.600 of science that they described here which is also science NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:23:04.600 --> 00:23:11.800 but also policy interventions in form of development projects is so much based on an 00:23:11.800 --> 00:23:18.000 assumption about the distinction between nature and society that all local practices are seen as 00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:23.900 destructive in the first place and it is because of the way that scientific knowledge is structured 00:23:23.900 --> 00:23:29.900 in this way that is really hard to get past it so what we can do is stand at the outside and 00:23:29.900 --> 00:23:31.500 criticize it. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:23:31.500 --> 00:23:39.950 Now think about that in relationship with what Anna Tsing is writing a decade or so later, she 00:23:39.950 --> 00:23:46.800 writes sort of with this kind of tradition as a background and therefore all wants to open an 00:23:46.800 --> 00:23:53.800 Invitation again for just not criticizing science but also finding ways of knowing and working together 00:23:53.800 --> 00:24:00.600 with it just to make a link back to what we talked about last week NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:24:00.600 --> 00:24:10.300 okay that was all for now see you all on Thursday.