ICS Seminar Series

Indigenous knowledge is an increasingly recognized category in western knowledge production, circulation and use. Yet, it remains a vague category with a specific genealogy, at least in the developed world. Western natural scientists continue to be strongly influenced by the mythology of the modernist universal paradigm. For most of the 20th century they regarded non-western thought as traditional, primitive and under-developed. The centrality of western social knowledge is a function of its global circulation, while indigenous knowledge is often produced, diffused and used locally. Indigenous knowledge also circulates in peripheral places partially due to the scarcity of material conditions of knowledge production as understood in western science. Drawing from a decolonizing perspective, this paper argues that indigenous knowledge is not valued by western science. However, it is used opportunistically to strengthen western understandings of “nature”. In addition, the seminar will discuss the indigenous concept of Comunalidad, as it applies to indigenous communities and broader contexts.