Paul Sillitoe

The development of indigenous knowledge : a new applied anthropology.

The widespread adoption of bottom‐up participation as opposed to top‐down modernisation approaches has opened up challenging opportunities for anthropology in development. The new focus on indigenous knowledge augurs the next revolution in anthropological method, informants becoming collaborators and their communities participating user‐groups, and touches upon such contemporary issues as the crisis of representation, ethnographys status with regard to intellectual property rights, and interdisciplinary cooperation between natural and social scientists. Indigenous‐knowledge studies are challenging not only because of difficulties in cross‐cultural communication and understanding but also because of their inevitable political dimensions. Contributing to development which intervenes in peoples lives, these studies engage with them in novel ways.

Knowledge in action: local knowledge as a development resource and barriers to its incorporation in natural resource research and development

Local knowledge (LK) cannot be assumed to be a necessary resource in development. The case must be argued successfully in the face of other development approaches which are indifferent or hostile to it. This paper identifies three distinct development approaches (or paradigms), the classic, neo-liberal, and neo-populist, which view the role of LK in the dynamics of technical change in different ways. Each approach often incorporates elements of various paradigms into strategy statements and policy or project documents. This paper focuses on the role of LK in natural resource (NR) research and development at the ‘development interface’. Here, stakeholders bring both local and scientific knowledge to the interface and, in relation to the dominant paradigm within which external actors operate, together produce an outcome termed ‘Knowledge-in-Action’ (KIA). Six ways in which KIA is produced are characterised, and it is recommended that priority be given to those likely to produce synergy. The paper also reviews the degree to which the ODA (UK) has so far integrated LK into natural resource development projects. The paper identifies a number of structural and behavioural barriers to a greater role for LK in natural resource research and development.

Modeling use-life distributions in archaeology using New Guinea Wola ethnographic data

Assemblages are composed of proportions of artifacts by category. Use life affects the formation and therefore the size and composition of assemblages. Use life is to assemblage formation as lifespan is to demography, and demographers know that a populations mean lifespan is no more important than the distribution of values around that mean. When considered at all, use life typically is expressed as a mean value. But use-lifes distribution—variation around the mean—affects assemblage composition independently of the mean. Distribution is neglected because its effects are not appreciated and seem difficult to measure. To improve understanding of assemblage formation, we study use-life distribution in New Guinea Wola ethnographic artifacts, using cumulative survivorship and the two-parameter Weibull model. Then we propose estimates of use-life distribution in Paleoindian stone tools. Knowing use-life distribution as well as mean, we know better how assemblages formed and improve our understanding of the archaeological record.

Living Lithics: ethnoarchaeology in Highland Papua New Guinea

This paper represents the joint work of two very different specialists. The fieldwork was undertaken by Sillitoe as part of his ethnographic research in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the interpretative work was done by an archaeologist, Hardy. The work described here represents some of the last direct evidence from users of stone tools. It shows how procurement, manufacture, use, storage and the relative roles of men and women in the process was dependant on what other materials were available – material often sadly elusive in the archaeological record. Discard did not reflect use, but was often guided by the thoughtful wish to avoid cut feet.

The ecology of practice: studies of food crop production in Sub-Saharan West Africa.

Diminished rains and divided tasks - rice growing in three Jola communities of Cassamance, Senegal Indirass and the political ecology of flood recession agriculture the ecology of food security in the Northern Senegal wetlands shifting social and ecological mosaics in Mende forest farming the social life of Swiddens - juniors, elders and the ecology of Susu upland rice farms towards an African green revolution? - an anthropology of rice research in Sierra Leone.

Beating the Boundaries: Land Tenure and Identity in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

The land tenure system of New Guinea Highlanders is simple in principle but complex in practice. Land features prominently in their lives, not merely as a horticultural resource but also socially and sentimentally. Rights to land are one of the principal areas in which the Wola of the Southern Highlands Province express and act on their kinship relations, kin-defined obligations controlling access. While kin-structured transactions of wealth create current identity and contemporaneously validate social status, issues pertaining to land rights root social life in the past and give it continuity. The activation of rights to cultivable land features centrally in the constitution of local groups, which result from the coming together of persons on territories to which they can all claim cultivation rights by virtue of recognized consanguineal and affinal links to the landholding corporation. Both land use and land rights have transient aspects to them. The relativity of land rights among the Wola is an integral aspect of their social order. Wola farmers not only physically move from one garden site to another on occasion, but they also acknowledge a disconcerting impermanence to cultivation rights to any land. This relates to the issues of boundaries and identity. Communities are not only socially but also geographically in flux. This shifting of land rights is potentially perplexing. It strikes at identity because land situates humans in the world and symbolizes continuity. But the blurring of boundaries is integral to the stateless political order, though it presents problems today with the encroachment of the state, in the guise of mining companies demanding definition of land ownership.

The Mortality of Things: Correlates of Use Life in Wola Material Culture Using Age-at-Census Data

How long ancient artifacts lasted affects the composition of archaeological assemblages. Some research suggests that longevity or use life relates to size and other artifact properties, but we know less than we should about what determines use life. An ethnographic census of Wola objects from highland Papua New Guinea recorded artifact age. From these data we use Hildebrand and Hagstrums method to estimate mean use life. It does not covary generally with object size as in previous studies but does with commodity value. Among arrows alone, use life covaries with object size. Results complicate in some respects and clarify in others our growing understanding of what determines artifact use life.

The Search for Relevance: A Brief History of Applied Anthropology 1

There are increasing calls for reviewing the relevance of anthropology in the current political‐economic climate with market‐led changes occurring in higher education in the United Kingdom. In some regards, these changes represent a move back to previous funding arrangements, when anthropology was obliged to go through recurrent rounds of arguing its relevance to secure resources. Why, after several generations, does practicality remain a troublesome issue and anthropology not have a flourishing applied tradition? The disciplines history reveals that a concern for demonstrating its applicability has troubled it since its inception. This article asks what one may have to learn from how the disciplines ancestors went about demonstrating its usefulness on the grounds that a review of previous attempts to define a practical anthropology may help pinpoint some of the key issues that need to be addressed in order to establish a long‐overdue thriving applied anthropology.

Always been farmer-foragers? Hunting and gathering in the Papua New Guinea Highlands

First impressions can be misleading, particularly the seemingly self-evident. The extensive tropical forests covering the island of New Guinea give the impression of a rich resource. Rainforest, in all its topically fabled biodiversity, is the most productive of the world’s ecosystems, with the largest biomass and diversity of species (Richards 1964; Whitmore 1984; Longman & Jenõ Â k 1987). It seems reasonable to assume that its exploitation will occupy local populations, hunting animals and collecting wild plants. When I ® rst saw the forests of the Highlands, they excited my imagination in this vein. The extent of my error was unexpected and an object lesson in the danger of ® rst impressions, the moral of which may extend back into the past. I knew from background reading that no hunter± gatherers lived there, early anthropologists having noted the relative unimportance of hunting and gathering to New Guinea people (Bulmer 1972:543) . Nonetheless, I expected the forest to feature signi® cantly in people’s everyday lives. I had not anticipated the small part it plays, particularly for people such as the Wola of the Southern Highlands, who have access to extensive forested regions yet exploit them irregularly. Others have reported the same elsewhere (Dwyer 1974:278; Pospisil 1963:231; Rappaport 1968:78; Strathern & Strathern 1968:179). Why are expectations so different from reality? Why are the rich, biodiverse forest resources of the Highlands apparently so under-utilised? In seeking to answer this question, we are led to query the status of the category of hunter± gatherer not only in contemporary New Guinea contexts but also perhaps in prehistoric ones. Those ® rst interested in the region’s prehistory thought that the archaeological evidence ìndicates an early population in the Highlands . . . which, for a number of reasons, may be regarded as possessing a hunting and gathering economy’ (Bulmer & Bulmer 1964:39; see also Bulmer 1975; Watson & Cole 1977). This view continues to hold sway with some archaeologists. For example, according to Haberle et al., who also cite several other authors:

Challenges to conservation: land use change and local participation in the Al Reem Biosphere Reserve, West Qatar.

One response to humanitys unsustainable use of natural resources and consequent degradation, even destruction of the environment, is to establish conservation areas to protect Nature and preserve biodiversity at least in selected regions. In Qatar, the government has shown strong support for this approach, confronted by the environmental consequences of oil and gas extraction and rapid urban development, by designating about one-tenth of the country a conservation area. Located in the west of the peninsula, it comprises the Al Reem Reserve, subsequently declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Several approaches have figured in conservation, currently popular is co-management featuring participation of the local population, which recognises that peoples activities often contribute to todays environment, with the promotion of bio-cultural diversity. However, these assumptions may not hold where rapid social and cultural change occurs, as in Qatar. We explore the implications of such change, notably in land use. We detail changes resulting with the move from nomadic to sedentary lifestyles: in land access, which now features tribal-state control, and herding strategies, which now feature migrant labour and depend on imported fodder and water, underwritten by the countrys large gas and oil revenues. Current stocking arrangements - animals herded in much smaller areas than previously - are thought responsible for the degradation of natural resources. The place of animals, notably camels, in Qatari life, has also changed greatly, possibly further promoting overstocking. Many local people disagree. What are the implications of such changes for the participatory co-management of conservation areas? Do they imply turning the clock back to centrally managed approaches that seek to control access and local activities?