I’m going to start posting problem statements that occur to me under the tag protocol-hilbert. Here’s the first one.
A theme that’s come up in many of the conversations and research threads in SoP, especially where natural resource and social protocols are concerned, is the relevance and integration of “indigenous knowledge” in some way. By which is meant both pre-modern frames that don’t look like modern globalized institutionalized science, and specifically non-European ones.
A problem that comes up here is two kinds of politically motivated distortions:
Right-wing groups typically try to paint all such knowledge as bullshit and superstition, with exception made for the local hegemonic culture’s traditional knowledge
Left-wing groups typically try to delegitimize modern science as not special in any way, and present all epistemologies as “equal but different” and fail to critically distinguish bullshit from genuine knowledge in indigenous knowledge systems.
How do you systematically draw on indigenous knowledge and integrate it into modern knowledge under the operating assumption that there is in fact one coherent epistemology to be gradually improved and that both of the main sources – modern science, and indigenous knowledge – require their own quality control and can’t be taken at face value? How do you move from politicized contest of solipsisms to a single-reality understanding?
I think of this as a kind of hardened commons epistemology that’s not vulnerable to either type of political capture or distortion, and has a natural rigor that’s not the same as a particular institutional notion of rigor.
My two cents (from a random user who joined the forum recently):
I thought a bit about this a couple of months ago, inspired by Ran Prieur posts about immanentist cultures. Links to March and April archives in where he mentions some books for those interested.
In order to address the question, what I miss the most is information about how non-western positions explain the western position to themselves. I always* see the debate stated as “how WE (the West) understand the non-western cultures”.
* Probably because I’m a westerner, so that’s what I have access to.
But I cannot find any example of the other side of the coin. Take an hypothetical immanent culture with an “spirits-first ontology”. How do they explain themselves the fact that the western culture functions without paying attention to those spirits? A couple of obvious answers:
identify the main problems in western culture and say that they are caused because we don’t pay enough attention to the spritis.
you could also look at the (material) success and give an explanation along the line: they are (materally) successful because they are “forcing” the spirits in unhealthy ways.
… but that’s just elucubration and the most interesting takes will not be the obvious ones.
Any given culture is more homogeneous than the set formed by the rest of cultures. I would love to have information about all the diverse forms of knowledge I don’t know about. Without that information and understaindg I feel like “I don’t know what I’m talking about”, I cannot look at all sides equally.
I’m glad to see this discussion. It is at the heart of my interest in protocols, and more particularly my current Ethereum Foundation project, Governance Archaeology. You can see our paper for some exploration of the topic. I think it is really tricky, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Two thinkers I’ve drawn from on this point are Anibal Quijano (on “totality”) and Boaventura de Sousa Santos (on “ecologies of knowledges,” though he has lately been discredited for abusive behavior). I would love to hear about the approaches of others. There are also lots of materials on Indigenous data sovereignty, which are quite relevant.
My general sense is that doing these kinds of integrative work must involve:
Careful attention to the historical and current forms of exploitation of Indigenous cultures and traditions
Reciprocity with living inheritors of those traditions
Context: Ju/’hoansi decision-making is always consensus-based.
Bolds mine:
Biesele (…) [a]s founder and director of the nonprofit Kalahari Peoples Fund, she has devoted her career to documenting and aiding the Ju/’hoansi’s transition to modernity. She recorded and translated meetings of the Ju/’hoan people’s organisation that would go on to become the first internationally recognised Conservancy in the new nations of Botswana and Namibia. Biesele has written eloquently about how the Ju/’hoansi have been resistant to give up their old ways of making decisions through consensus. Challenges arose when individuals or small groups were designated as representatives to act as a connection to the government. ‘This was a very foreign idea,’ Biesele said, ‘but the people could see the need for interacting in this way with the new administrations, so they debated how they could possibly do it successfully.’ This task was undertaken with considerable hesitation. One Ju/’hoan said: ‘We never wanted to represent our communities: that was a white people’s idea in the first place.’ As Biesele documents, the Ju/’hoansi have favoured cooperative institutions that tap into their deep history as decision-makers.