Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Africa and North America Contributor(s): Gordon, David M. (Editor) |
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ISBN: 082141996X ISBN-13: 9780821419960 Publisher: Ohio University Press OUR PRICE: $79.20 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2012 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Human Geography - History | Africa - General - Social Science | Customs & Traditions |
Dewey: 304.209 |
LCCN: 2011040641 |
Series: Ecology & History |
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6.1" W x 9.1" (1.30 lbs) 368 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - African - Ethnic Orientation - Native American |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts. This collection draws from African and North American cases to argue that the forms of knowledge identified as "indigenous" resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during and after colonial encounters. At times indigenous knowledges represented a "middle ground" of intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere, indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle. The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated with European colonialism. Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment offers comparative and transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment. The result is a book that informs and complicates how indigenous knowledges can and should relate to environmental policy-making. Contributors: David Bernstein, Derick Fay, Andrew H. Fisher, Karen Flint, David M. Gordon, Paul Kelton, Shepard Krech III, Joshua Reid, Parker Shipton, Lance van Sittert, Jacob Tropp, James L. A. Webb, Jr., Marsha Weisiger |