Theoretical streams in Marginalized Peoples' Knowledge(s): Systems, asystems, and Subaltern Knowledge(s)

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Agriculture and Human Values 19: 225237, 2002.

2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.Theoretical streams in Marginalized Peoples Knowledge(s): Systems,

asystems, and Subaltern Knowledge(s)Brij KothariRavi J. Matthai Center for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IndiaAccepted in revised form December 10, 2001Abstract. Two distinct theoretical streams flowing in the investigation, documentation, and dissemination

of Marginalized Peoples Knowledge(s) (MPK) are identified and a third suggested. Systems thinking, which

originally coined the term Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS), continues to predominate the growing interdisciplinary interest in MPK. This approach has tended to view knowledge or its production based on systemic

principles. The asystems approach challenges the usefulness of MPK as a systems construct. Its central proposition

is that MPK does not always represent a coherent system of knowledge with underlying principles. Asystemists

tend to prefer the term Local Knowledge (LK) and approach the subject from very different, even opposing,

epistemological assumptions. Although both the systems and asystems research streams are often concerned with

power, an in-depth exploration of power-issues is not inevitably integral to either approach. A third Subaltern

Knowledge(s) (SK) perspective is suggested. The SK term embodies a central condition of many LKs vis--vis

the scientific/Western knowledge establishment that of being marginalized but resisting or with the potential to

resist this process. More benign terms in literature (IK, LK, Rural Peoples Knowledge (RPK), etc.) fail to make

this condition explicit. Such a conceptual recasting overtly invites a consideration of the intertwined nature of

power and knowledge in the exploration of MPK.Keywords: Indigenous, Knowledge, Local, Power, SubalternBrij Kothari is an Associate Professor at the Ravi J. Matthai Center for Educational Innovation, Indian

Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India. This article is based on his doctoral dissertation at Cornell

University, Ithaca, New York, which focused on the conservation of indigenous peoples knowledge in six

Quichua communities of Andean Ecuador with a knowledge-power perspective.IntroductionCultural anthropologists were some of the earliest

20th century scholars to value and explore local

peoples knowledge in-depth (e.g., de Schlippe, 1956;

Conklin, 1954).1 For the development community,

literature and general interest in Marginalized Peoples

Knowledge (MPK) has grown exponentially since

the publication of the first book-length collection of

essays that examined the relationship between Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and development (Brokensha

et al., 1980). Marginalized...