Introduction: Local Knowledge Production and Translocal Connectedness: Sephardi/Mizrahi Entanglements of Movement and Space

Geografisk Tidsskrift Danish Journal of Geography 111(1):27–41, 2011 In the knowledge based economy, knowledge production has become increasingly important for the competitiveness of firms, cities and regions and as an explanatory factor of spatial economic dynamics. In an immense amount of literature in economic geography, sociology and economics it has been argued that knowledge production often takes place in inter-organisational collaborations, and that trust is an important prerequisite for such collaboration to succeed. The concept of trust, however, remains often blurred and vaguely defined in much of the literature: it often only appears as an asset, an instrument or an input in economic relations. The paper broaden the understanding of trust in local knowledge production by suggesting an approach to trust as an inter-persona/feeling to be analysed on three different but interrelated scales depending on the socio-spatial contexts of the actors. The approach avoids a reification of inter-organisational relations as the place for knowledge production but allows an analysis of trust to move between micro-, meso- and macro scales seeing trust as an inter-personal feeling. The conclusion is that trust in diverse socio-spatial contexts takes on different forms at different scales. This is illustrated by a case study of knowledge production in inter-organisational collaborations in the Sønderborg region. Denmark.

This article examines how local knowledge about riverine ecologies influenced the production of expert, gendered, and ethnic identities, and interrogates how these identities and knowledges are ‘co-produced’. Drawing on work in feminist political ecology and science studies, I highlight the links between the production of knowledge and identity. Research was carried out through fieldwork in two villages along the Salween River, at the border between Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), where residents participated in ‘Villager Research’. Here, residents identify as members of ethnic minority groups, mainly the Karen, and undertake a variety of livelihood activities, including fishing, swidden agriculture, rice farming, and entrepreneurial trade. Much of the impetus for residents to undertake the work of local knowledge production was to have a say in the decision-making processes of large-scale developments proposed on the river which would impact these livelihoods. What I examine is how these efforts also obscured women's participation in fishing and in research because their predominant practices associated with fishing involved income-producing activities instead of romanticized subsistence activities. I also consider some of the critiques from the Karen women’s group who identified subsistence-focused work as ‘not enough’ in that it does not generate much needed income and is ‘not secure’. These efforts accomplished a particular kind of village expert, to the exclusion of Karen women in its documentation, even in a project led by villagers and situated within an ethnic minority community which is matriarchal.

This article analyzes the production of local knowledge in peacebuilding. The local turn has criticized liberal peacebuilding’s exclusion of local knowledge. Still, aside from the binary of inclusion/exclusion of the local in knowledge production, we need more nuanced analyses of how the local is understood, accessed, and produced as local knowledge. I draw on Sending’s work on ethnographic sagacity and the anthropology of colonialism to show that the ability to deploy local knowledge confers authority and that this carries an essentialist understanding of local knowledge. Empirically, I rely on 18 interviews with German experts on Afghanistan to analyze how and what was produced as local knowledge in peacebuilding in Afghanistan. The analysis shows that due to the structural pressures created by ethnographic sagacity, an essentialist understanding of local knowledge may continue to exist even if knowledge producers do not support it. Essentialism arises from the expectations for knowledge producers to demonstrate authenticity, maintain a strategic distance, and adhere to simplified ethics. The findings highlight the significance of relational modes of thinking about local knowledge production in peacebuilding.

When Finland joined the European Union (EU) in 1995, the grey wolf Canis lupus became strictly protected. The wolf population grew gradually until 2007, at which point it exceeded 250 wolves. Since then, the population size has drastically fluctuated between 150 and 240 animals. Current wolf policy that coordinates wolf‐related human actions has not succeeded in stabilizing the population size on the favorable conservation level. We argue that the understanding of epistemic contestations and social practices in local knowledge production is a key to the improved wolf management.In this case study, we explore wolf hunters' (license applicant's) epistemic adaptations in their interplay with regional authorities as both parties' have attempted to find a common ground of wolf management by means of culling specific wolves. We collected data that cover a nine‐year history of one wolf‐territory in southwestern Finland.Our results indicate that epistemic adaptations that began after appearance of wolves to the region related to 1) how wolf knowledge production was made useful for those participating in it; and 2) how local actors adapted to changing administrative epistemic requirements and processes related to the wolf management. In our case, hunters actively built networking to collect information, and learned to play a strategic game of providing specific descriptive knowledge on the habits of ‘the problem wolf’, and compulsive prescriptive knowledge concerning solutions to the problem. The case shows how the epistemic adaptation in the context of policy and management is associated with the purposes and reasons of local agents in knowledge production. Now that large carnivores have during recent decades been returning to modern human‐dominated landscapes in Europe, an increasing challenge is, how to govern the process of adaptation and create opportunities for utilizing the potential of local knowledge capacity in collective problem solving beyond that of lethal management.

Complementarity between humans and nature: Adaptive local knowledge in a protected area of northern Thailand

ABSTRACTThis paper examines factors motivating Chinese communication scholars to publish in international journals and how these factors shape their knowledge production. We also investigate these scholars’ treatment of particularity, which is central to debates on Asian approaches to communication scholarship. Based on in-depth interviews with 22 Chinese communication scholars, this study finds that Chinese scholars choose to publish overseas both as a result of institutional incentives and an attempt to relieve themselves from institutional and sociopolitical constraints in China. While promoting international publications, these institutional and sociopolitical factors also markedly influence the knowledge production process, leading to the segregation of international and local knowledge production; scholars’ active self-censorship; and their efforts to subject to perceived international biases. The study also demonstrates that while adopting an eclectic and pragmatic attitude toward particularity, Chinese communication scholars are generally cautious of advocating particularity. The attitudinal and behavioral eclecticism and institutional and sociopolitical constraints jointly result in a fragmented particularity in the international publication of Chinese communication scholars. The findings’ implications for Asian approaches to communication studies are discussed.

In this paper we quantitatively review the empirical literature on spatial knowl¬edge spillovers in Europe by means of meta-analysis to determine the extent to which such spillovers have been empirically documented as well as the spatial reach of these spillovers. In addition, we will apply meta-regression analysis to analyze the determinants of observed heterogeneity across and between publications. To our knowledge this is the first study of its kind. Our results show that if total local R&D expenditure in a European region increases by 1%, then the number of patents in that region, on average, increases by about 0.5%. Spatial knowledge spillovers induce a positive effect on local knowledge production, however, this effect proves to be small around 0.07%. Spatial weighting regime seems to matter. If R&D expenditures in other regions are weighted by distance in kilometers or minutes (instead of a binary contiguity matrix) then the spillover effect on average will be larger. Also, public R&D expenditure is found to have a lower impact on local patent production compared to the private R&D expenditure.

This article addresses the persistent Eurocentrism in the national IR academies within the Global South, notwithstanding continued appeals for pluralization of the global field of IR. Focusing on the discipline of IR in Pakistan, the study explores the implications of Western intellectual dominance through in-depth interviews with local IR academics. The findings demonstrate a marked dependence on realist ideas (the classical strand in particular), which emphasize state-centric and security-focused views of world politics. This restricted approach corresponds with realpolitik because of its pragmatic focus on state security and interests, while ignoring broader theoretical assumptions. These realist ideas are sustained through academic norms, establishing a pattern which perpetuates Eurocentric perspectives in the Pakistani IR community. The article recognizes Western intellectual gatekeeping practices, and the national higher education system of Pakistan, as notable hindrances to the advancement of the discipline in Pakistan. Additionally, lax academic standards in local knowledge production, tied to professional progression, confine Pakistani IR academics to domestic publishing platforms. This discursive environment incentivizes state and security-oriented research, leading to IR scholarship in Pakistan that lacks originality and quality, remains predominantly Eurocentric, and primarily supports state security policies. The study underscores the necessity for a more diverse and contextually relevant approach to IR in Pakistan, which would better capture the country’s unique realities and contribute to a richer global discourse.

To come to a critical understanding of personal experiences and existing knowledge, and to actively engage in knowledge production, an education based on problem posing and problem solving activities can open up the space to focus on people’s real life concerns and come to local solutions for personal problems. The present study is an account of how centralizing themes and concerns from learners’ real life in an educational enterprise and empowering the learners to be problem posers/solvers can create pedagogy of engagement and local knowledge production. In this study a group of 24 third-semester Iranian students of medicine decided to work on a course of English for specific purposes in an alternative way as an instance of challenging the existing taken-for-granted ways of dealing with course requirements. They considered some of their real-life medical concerns and developed a process of problem posing/solving in using various available resources to conduct a search and a research and produce knowledge. They also took part in a public medical show at the end of the semester to exchange their problem posing/solving experiences and the produced knowledge with other students in the university as another step to represent their one-semester attempt to approach a number of medical concerns and look at what they have done from de-emphasized unspoken hidden perspectives. Key words: Language education, Medical English, problem posing, pedagogy of engagement, English in Iran.

ABSTRACTThe early history of inoculation against lungsickness of cattle in South Africa provides a case study of the intercontinental transfer and local adaptation of an innovative veterinary treatment during a period when the state did not yet command the resources to regulate medicinal exchanges and experimental knowledge production. After the accidental importation of lungsickness into the Cape in 1853, information about the Belgian method of tail inoculation was disseminated swiftly, but was initially so brief and imprecise that local cattle-owners’ experiments modified the technique considerably. Their experiences were debated in colonial newspapers, but were commonly so unfavourable that many farmers remained hesitant, whereas the colonial medical profession almost unanimously opposed inoculation on theoretical grounds. Yet its advocates continuously publicised updated instructions, and with improving results, tail inoculation was increasingly widely used in the colony and later adopted by Africans. A different technique of oral immunisation that became generally utilised for calves was almost certainly a local invention, apparently by Khoekhoe cattle-owners, within three years of the disease’s arrival, and was subsequently adopted by settler farmers. Lungsickness inoculation thus demonstrates the potential benefits of pharmaceutical experimentation in a diversity of therapeutic systems unrestricted by hegemonic scientific doctrine and state regulation.

Changing climate, social institutions, and natural resource management policies are reshaping the dynamics of social- ecological systems globally, with subsistence-based communities likely to be among the most vulnerable to the impacts of global change. These communities' local ecological knowledge is increasingly recognized as a source of adaptive capacity for them as well as a crucial source of information to be incorporated into scientific understanding and policy making. We interviewed Tibetan pastoralists about their observations of environmental changes, their interpretations of the causes of these changes, and the ways in which they acquire and transmit this knowledge. We found that community members tended to agree that changing climate is driving undesirable trends in grassland and livestock health, and some also viewed changing management practices as compounding the impacts of climate change. However, those nominated by their peers as experts on traditional, pastoral knowledge observed fewer changes than did a more heterogeneous group of people who reported more ways in which the environment is changing. Herders mostly discussed these changes among themselves and particularly with village leaders, yet people who discussed environmental changes together did not necessarily hold the same knowledge of them. These results indicate that members of the community are transferring knowledge of environmental change primarily as a means for seeking adaptive solutions to it, rather than for learning from others, and that local leaders can serve as critical brokers of knowledge transfer within and beyond their communities. This highlights not only the interconnectedness of knowledge, practice, and power, but also points toward the important role that local governance can have in helping communities cope with the impacts of global change.

Cities position themselves to compete in the global economy using large-scale entrepreneurial interventions, which have the potential to significantly alter urban landscapes (Harvey 1989). Within this broad urban entrepreneurial approach, it is useful to reflect on localised knowledge production processes and the actors and power embedded in them, which result in particular urban development outcomes in cities. This paper analyses a spatial planning exercise, the Back of Port (BoP) Project, initiated in Durban in 2007 by its administrative entity eThekwini Municipality, and produced by local consultants, which reflects a particular form of urban entrepreneurialism. The BoP Project aimed to increase the competitiveness of the Durban port through improving city infrastructure, addressing congestion at the port-city interface and ensuring economic growth in the city, in a highly contested and political space. The resultant knowledge production process and the spatial framework that was produced, were shaped by global urban policy and the politics and practices of local government, civil society organisations and the knowledge fields of specialist consultants. The BoP spatial planning exercise reveals how urban policy is unfolding in a city in the South, in response to global processes of urban economic development, national imperatives and local challenges. The research reveals that knowledges associated with an economic and functional discourse-coalition became hegemonic, whilst counter-hegemonic knowledges around social and environmental justice struggled to frame the spatial plan.

This paper constructs a theoretical model to evaluate the effects of borderless education on education resource allocation by a public university in a developing country. It is sometimes argued that, with sole emphasis and competence in global knowledge, borderless education will lead to the demise of local knowledge in the developing country. We provide several scenarios to demonstrate this concern is genuine. For example, if graduates from a satellite university established by a transnational organization have opportunities to work abroad and earn higher incomes, then an increase in the wage in the foreign country will lead to a reduction in local knowledge production.

Notes on Contributors

Recent work in the history of science has questioned the Eurocentric nature of the field and sought to include a more global approach that would serve to displace center-periphery models in favor of approaches that take seriously local knowledge production. Historians of Iberian colonial science have taken up this approach, which involves reliance on indigenous knowledge traditions of the Americas. These traditions present a number of challenges to modern researchers, including availability and reliability of source material, issues of translation and identification, and lack of systematization. This essay explores the challenges that emerged in the author's attempt to compile a pre-contact Nahua pharmacopeia, the reasons for these challenges, and the ways they may - or may not - be overcome.