Metis vs constructed knowledge

The Transnational contexts of knowledge and power seem connected to local knowledge as much as Global. Just as Clark Miller’s “Resisting Empire: Globalism, Relocalization, and the Politics of Knowledge” brings together ideas of Globalism, epistemology, and ontology. Although, I am reminded of Kyle Whyte’s presentation on Wednesday at the ASU Energy Transitions workshop. Whyte is an assistant professor at Michigan State University. He posed that there are alternative views of Native American values than what is often perceived by outsiders. I feel like this is relevant to Bruno LaTour’s “We have never been Modern”. In a sense, his teachings can be applied to transnational contexts of knowledge by connecting our readings on Feb 11^th (Knowledge, the State, and Social Imagination) with today’s topic. We see now, post-colonial nations and states that struggle with Western ideals of science and fact-based governance. While it may be noted that pure fact-based governance is as much a myth as is the Value-free Ideal (Heather Douglas, 2009) it is still a vision that western-based Democracies strive for.

Back to Whyte’s thoughts on the value-systems of Native Americans. One example he used is that non-native people might question the modern native american practice of multiple people using a pickup truck and guns to hunt game. It can be explained by the ideal of sustainably culling the herd. Many people don’t have access to their own transportation, so they get together and roam far and wide to hunt for prey. This spreads out the damage to the herds and allows them to recover more easily than would be possible if they all hunted by foot or even horseback from their local village. If outsiders were to impose hunting regimes upon native peoples, without knowledge of their local ways and a good understanding of their values, then disaster might occur. Another example is Mao Zedong’s China and his rule over Tibet in the early 20^th century. While wheat was popular with the Eastern Chinese and grew just fine in the north eastern region, Barley was the traditional grain that Tibetans cultivated high upon the plains of their western plateau. When the Chinese government demanded that the Tibetans grow wheat like the Eastern Chinese, the harvests were extremely weak and hundreds of thousands of Tibetans died of starvation.

Miller’s example of the steps taken by the Peruvian fishermen and local government toward sustainable practices can be compared with Whyte’s story of native american sustainability and contrasted with China’s experience governing Tibetan agriculture. These may seem like simple, bold examples, but they illustrate the effects of power and knowledge in trans-national contexts. Fairhead & Leach’s “Colonial Science & its Relics in West Africa” adds some variation and complexity to the example. The westerners in this story assumed that the proverbial chicken came before the egg, when the opposite was true. The forested regions were where villages sprang up, while the non-forested savanna had been like that for ages. This particularly reminded me of the previous mapping readings and how colonialist environmental policy could go horribly wrong.

I believe it’s useful to view all this in the trans-national context in order to take us out of the traditional western mind-set for a little while. By walking upon the Savanna plains or the Tibetan plateau in our minds, we glimpse different forms of governance and different epistemologies at work in non-democratic societies. When the belief systems and values of one culture are imposed upon that of another without any consideration for the latter, the grandest recipes for disaster are cultivated.