The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
These thoughts lead to another aspect pertaining to what Agrawal (2002) has termed
the ›scientisation‹ of IK in his article Indigenous Knowledge and the Politics of Classification.
Touching the problem of ex situ conservation of IK, he examines its transformation
by locating it in databases. 60 The strategy of archiving IK in lists of ›best practices‹
highlights successful efforts by indigenous peoples or local communities to address
problems related to environmental conservation, health, education or agriculture. The
common purpose of such databases that document particular instances of knowledge
is, according to Agrawal, twofold. On the one hand, they are intended to safeguard IK
in the face of external pressures undermining the conditions under which indigenous
peoples and knowledge thrive; on the other hand, they aim to collect and analyse the
available information and identify specific knowledge features to be generalised and
applied more widely in the service of development and environmental conservation.
Through this process, he asserts, IK is transformed into a kind of under-utilised and
context-independent resource to be archived in international and national centres mirroring
the structure of science, parts of which can be conveniently modularised and
transferred. This documentation- and publication-related process can be seen as »a
new beginning in the abstraction and harvesting of specific elements of indigenous
knowledge [...] justified on the grounds that it is crucial for successful development results«
(2002: 288ff.). In this way, the instrumental logic of development that underlies
the creation of such databases becomes obvious.
Like previously mentioned critics, Agrawal argues that only those forms of IK gain
attention and protection that are potentially relevant to development, while other, irrelevant
forms, for which no practical use can be perceived or which cannot be stated
as direct cause and effect sentences remain unconsidered : »rituals, words, movements,
gestures, and actions that may be the concomitant of the administration of a herbal
medicine or drug in an indigenous practice can be divested and discarded as not being
part of the crux of the usefulness of the herbal medicine or drug« (2002: 291). Thus,
utility becomes a necessary condition to be proven through the application of science.
In this sense, Agrawal infers, scientisation can also be seen as being identical to what
he calls ›truthmaking‹. Whatever the value of other knowledge systems may be, their
lack of utility makes them unsuitable for inclusion in databases that hold instrumental
power in development initiatives. This process he terms as particularisation bound to
the validation of IK on the basis of scientific criteria and finally aimed at its generalisation
in terms of an application in a classificatory-taxonomic structure, limiting the examination
of the contextual factors that might be responsible for the effects being claimed
60 This strategy has proliferated especially in the past decade. Among other global institutions, the
World Bank has sought to standardise IK as a useful tool for sustainable development, collecting and
disseminating local knowledges in centralised databases. The Native American Botany Database, for instance,
provides information on specific uses of plants and trees for different purposes in agriculture,
medicines, cosmetics, etc. (Agrawal 2002: 290). For further details on this issue, see Long Martello
and Jasanoff (2004). That the documentation, reconstruction and systematisation of cultural information
pertaining to IK should be integrated into some sort of memory banking procedure is a major
theme presented by Nazarea (1998) in her account on Cultural Memory and Biodiversity.