This paper looks at the languages of empowerment and control as they are expressed by authors writing about “indigenous knowledge.” We performed a content analysis on CIKARD News, a newsletter dealing with the concept of indigenous knowledge. This concept has become increasingly prominent in the discourse of alternative development, addressing issues of ecological sustainability and the empowerment of the rural poor. However, mediated by institutions that perpetuate global and local power asymmetries, the empowering potential of indigenous knowledge may be bypassed. (...) Instead, officials, researchers, and practitioners may utilize this knowledge for their own perceived ends, however good their intentions. In addition, there is already evidence that an indigenous knowledge approach is seen by major agencies as beneficial for integrating poorer populations into the global economy. Our analysis suggests that tensions persist among and within the writings of these authors between the desire to empower and the tendency for development to control rural populations. (shrink)

Two distinct theoreticalstreams flowing in the investigation,documentation, and dissemination ofMarginalized Peoples' Knowledge(s) (MPK)are identified and a third suggested.Systems thinking, which originally coined theterm Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS),continues to predominate the growinginterdisciplinary interest in MPK. Thisapproach has tended to view knowledge or itsproduction based on systemic principles.The asystems approach challenges theusefulness of MPK as a systemsconstruct. Its central proposition is that MPKdoes not always represent a coherent system ofknowledge with underlying principles.Asystemists tend to prefer the term LocalKnowledge (LK) and approach the (...) subject fromvery different, even opposing, epistemologicalassumptions. Although both the systemsand asystems research streams are oftenconcerned with power, an in-depth explorationof power-issues is not inevitably integral toeither approach. A third Subaltern Knowledge(s)(SK) perspective is suggested. The SK termembodies a central condition of many LKsvis-à-vis the scientific/Western knowledgeestablishment – that of being marginalizedbut resisting or with the potential to resistthis process. More benign terms in literature(IK, LK, Rural Peoples' Knowledge (RPK), etc.)fail to make this condition explicit. Such aconceptual recasting overtly invites aconsideration of the intertwined nature ofpower and knowledge in the exploration ofMPK. (shrink)