Paper short abstract:

After a brief overview of indigenous or local knowledge in development, this presentation questions the proposition that such work necessarily results in people treating their cultural heritage as a commodity.

Paper long abstract:

On the face of it, indigenous knowledge in development should call to the aim of the RAI's 'Anthropology in the World' conference, as an area where the discipline has been influential outside academia. Development is one of those fields where those trained in anthropology can see a clear application of their knowledge, particularly with the emergence of participatory approaches.

This presentation will give a brief overview of indigenous knowledge work, which seeks a place for local cultural heritage in development contexts, on the grounds that people's understandings and views should feature in any interventions influencing their lives. This work seeks to promote development activities to better fit with local aspirations than top-down impositions, such that they may prove acceptable and thus sustainable.

But does this interfacing with capitalist informed development (as an activity generally concerned with improving material standards of living and demanding economic growth) necessarily imply that people treat their cultural inheritance as a commodity? It is possible that other ways of being in the world allow people to resist the capitalist political-economic agenda and view their knowledge as something other than a commodity.

Indeed it is arguable that such alternative cultural perspectives may offer us a way forwards, particularly with the current 'crisis of capitalism'. This may further recommend anthropology to the public, drawing attention to one of the subject's central tenets, namely that we have something to learn from other cultural traditions; it is not all one way as economic development suggests.