Lesley Green

University of Cape Town | UCT · Department of Social Anthropology

In Paulshoek, Namaqualand, three research projects focusing on medicinal plants were developed concurrently. The projects were based in the disciplines of anthropology, botany and chemistry. In this paper, we explore how these projects related to one another and describe the conversations that occurred in the process of searching for transdisciplin...

We set out to explore some of the impediments which hinder effective communication among fishers, fisheries researchers and managers using detailed ethnographic research amongst commercial handline fishers from two sites- one on the southern Cape coast and the other on the west coast of South Africa. Rather than assuming that the knowledge of fishe...

Based on ethnographic fieldwork amongst a group of commercial handline fishers in the town of Stilbaai in South Africa's southern Cape region, this paper presents a range of flexible, adaptive and evolving strategies through which fishers negotiate constantly shifting variability in weather patterns, fish stocks, fisheries policies, and economic co...

In this paper, the paradoxes and difficulties attending the notion of indigenous knowledge in South Africa are reviewed and an alternative dialogue about intellectual heritage is proposed. Beginning with a survey of debates on 'indigenous knowledge' and sciences in India, Australia and Latin America, the discussion draws attention to differences in...

Using data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Palikur lands known as Arukwa along the Rio Urucauá in the Área Indígena do Uaçá, in Amapá, Brazil, we seek to expand current understandings of Arawakan oral forms of mapping that involve the listing of place-names. This article argues that the practice demonstrates a form of cartographic im...

Attempts to resolve the duality of ‘indigenous knowledge’ and ‘Science’ raises the problem of the tenability of knowledges. Arguing that multiculturalist approaches to knowledge are inadequate because knowledge cannot be based solely on consensus within a community, the article explores ways in which indigenous knowledges might be evaluated in rela...

Responding to Kai Horsthemke's call for the valorisation of universal knowledge within the debate on indigenous knowledge, the paper argues for an understanding of knowledge that is based neither universalism nor relativism. Arguing against the dualisms of 'indigenous knowledge' and 'science', the paper proposes that the debate be focused rather on...

This article reports on an effort to apply to an oral history archive design the findings of ethnographic research regarding the visualisation of space and the organisation of knowledge among contemporary Palikur speakers in Arukwa, in northern Brazil. Central to the project rationale was the observation that standard devices for organising such an...

South Africa's Indigenous Knowledge Systems Policy was approved by Cabinet in 2004, and the National Indigenous Knowledge Systems Office (NIKSO) was opened in the Department of Science and Technology in 2006. Proposing the integration of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) in the arenas of education, commerce, agriculture, the sciences, law, languag...