Abstract
Purpose: Identifies a hierarchy of information and argues that professional knowledge has marginalized ‘local knowledge’. 
 Methodology/Approach: In a review of recent research, the paper offers examples of how ‘wicked problems’ (from obesity to climate change) impose different burdens on different communities, which foregrounds the value of residents’ experiences.
 Findings: In an era of climate change, adaptive planning must incorporate ‘local knowledge’, which may return to older technologies and established practices.
 Research Implication: The paper argues that ‘local knowledge’ can be ‘powerful knowledge’, as discussed within educational research, which has important implications for school and college curricula. 
 Originality/Value of paper: Amateur experts, citizen observatories and crowd sourced data can all play significant roles within communities facing new forms of risk and hazard.
Highlights
This paper is motivated by the existence of what Durkheim saw as ‘powerful knowledge’, a concept under discussion in current educational circles (Young and Muller, 2013)
This paper develops the argument that such consensus may be the inevitable outcome of a globalizing economy which displays little tolerance for indigenous skills; more positively, it might arise from the steady creation of a global society based upon our willingness to comprehend each other through shared forms of expression
This paper explores the challenges posed by the twisted problem of climate change and adaptive responses
Summary
This paper is motivated by the existence of what Durkheim saw as ‘powerful knowledge’, a concept under discussion in current educational circles (Young and Muller, 2013). This paper develops the argument that such consensus may be the inevitable outcome of a globalizing economy which displays little tolerance for indigenous skills; more positively, it might arise from the steady creation of a global society based upon our willingness to comprehend each other through shared forms of expression These are, though, post-hoc rationalizations of what have been massive changes occurring throughout the 20th and 21st centuries within the market, culture and other social and political structures (Rossi, 2017). It does the following: it explores the weaknesses of conventional science in this context; the paucity of individual disciplines; and the transition to interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity This is followed by an examination of adaptive responses and in particular the role of local knowledge in creating successful policy. The paper explores what this means for our assumptions about powerful knowledge, concluding with some auto-criticism of the arguments developed here in the context of further research
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