Circular knowledge: How to meet on the same page
I was listening to an author talk about his latest book on Islamic prayers sung in Indonesia. He focused particularly on a singer who performed a traditional style of recitation that was disappearing. I was thinking that this kind of ethnography might be useful to the singer, as it would demonstrate its importance to others. But when I asked how the singer responded to his study, he looked horrified: “I would never show him my book! That would corrupt the data.” What a waste, I thought. This seems not only a lost opportunity to support the tradition, but also an unfair asymmetry between ethnographer and subject.
“Extractivism” was first applied in 1973 to the history of rubber with its accompanying brutal exploitation of local peoples. The principle is to take wealth from the land as quickly and cheaply as possible without obligation to offer anything in return. This continues beyond colonisation to contemporary developments, such as the wilful destruction of Aboriginal deep-time heritage in the blasting of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters by Rio Tinto in 2020 to mine $135m of iron ore.
While extractivism is most often associated with material exploitation, it can also apply to the production of knowledge.
In the case of a social science such as anthropology, researchers can extract data from a community in the name of academic research, without including that community in the outcome. According to conventional scientific standards, a dialogue with the community would be seen as a source of corruption in the data. The subjects might use knowledge of the researcher’s hypothesis to change their behaviour so that it confirms a theory, particularly to please a guest.
But often there is a structural asymmetry at play in its production that goes beyond specific scientific protocols. The specialist knowledge deployed by researchers would be seen as beyond the reach of subjects: even if told, they would not understand how they are depicted. This is an extension of animal research, where it is not expected that the results of experiences would be shared with laboratory rats.
There are two assumptions in this process that are worthy of consideration. First, it is assumed that the extraction of information is a passive process for the subjects. Yet, in most social settings, it requires time and energy to provide this information to strangers. More importantly, trust is necessary to open a community to the outside gaze. Given this cost, it is reasonable that something is offered in return. While it is possible to offer money, this is not always a respectful exchange.
The second assumption is that knowledge is fungible and thus easily abstracted beyond its original context. With traditional communities, their scientific study can be seen to help preserve the culture in books and articles, which protects it from loss due to the encroachment of modernity. But culture is more than abstract knowledge that can be preserved in books. Such knowledge is kept alive in cultural rituals such as initiation ceremonies and festivals. Their stories are housed in material form, as sacred objects, temples or in nature itself, such as a particular tree or mountain.
In this sense, knowledge is not something that can be preserved like oil that is sucked from the earth and stored in barrels. It is a living entity that relies on communities to keep it healthy. Those communities themselves need to be kept alive in environments that are sustaining.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos uses the phrase “abyssal thinking” to characterise the worldview that the South is a region where no reciprocity is required. To counter this, he argues for an “ecology of knowledges” that presumes an interconnected web of regional world views. As an extension of this, “circular knowledge” draws on the framework of “circular economy” to propose that all parties in knowledge production, including both scientists and subjects, are involved in the process of publication.
How can we draw the circle?
Michel Serres extends Rousseau’s Social Contract to propose a “natural contract” to connect the interests of humans and other species:
All pedagogy consists in making the little human who starts out as a parasite into a symbiotic partner of a fair exchange. Since he takes, he must give back in return. In a certain sense, this involves signing a contract of exchange with his environment, as if he started out his human and civil life by learning the non-written law. So every pedagogy presupposes a Contract.
There is parallel work done in indigenous research methodologies that presume that communities have a stake in the outcomes of their study.
The contract itself can be part of the research. For her PhD into Māori taonga, Areta Wilkinson provided a customary meal as koha, a ceremonial gift to broker the trust that would underpin the relationship. A community meeting was called before the submission of her PhD so they could approve the results. The recipe of the soul that Areta cooked for her community was published as part of the PhD thesis.
Such protocols were appropriate for Areta as she herself was a member of the community that was being researched. It is likely when knowledge is being exchanged between communities that the relationship is more transactional.
As Māori researcher Linda Tuhiwai Smith writes in Decolonizing Methodologies:
the responsibility of researchers and academics is not simply to share surface information (pamphlet knowledge) but to share the theories and analyses which inform the way knowledge and information are constructed and represented. By taking this approach seriously it is possible to introduce communities and people who may have had little formal schooling to a wider world, a world which includes people who think just like them, who share in their struggles and dreams and who voice their concerns in similar sorts of ways.
In Garland magazine, we feature important books written by anthropologists about Indigenous crafts. Where possible, we contact those makers who are profiled to notify them of the article and see how it might be useful to them. So the article by ann-elise lewallan on Ainu textiles also included a statement by the Ainu weaver Kaizawa Tamami as well as a greeting in her language.
Stories are often gathered from remote villages accompanied by idyllic photos. This can be very appealing to those living in artificial cities, but this doesn’t take into account the real-life experience of those who live there. After the publication of the article A social fabric: Tais weaving in Timor-Leste by Marian Reid and Emily Lush, a local centre printed a copy to give to a woman featured, Mana Fia. The image of her holding a copy of the article contains the promise of a circular knowledge. Given the difference of interests between urban and rural life, it is hard to imagine completing the circle, but this should not stop us from trying. We much “fail again, fail better” as Lenin said.
We hope to apply this ideal of circular knowledge to a project with the Mbya community of Yasy Porã in northern Argentina. The poet Andrea Ferrari has been working with them to oversee the translation of their sacred chant, Ayvu Rapyta. As well as seeking their permission to publish this text, we have discussed with them ways in which readers might be able to show appreciation for their story. While such a text adds to the corpus of world literature and offers a new perspective of how a particular culture might evolve with its place in nature, some consideration should be given to the circumstances of the knowledge keepers. Their hold on the land is growing precarious due to the encroachment of development and climate change. The river as their main water source is now polluted and they need to build a new well to stay on the land.
Part of a circular knowledge is the acknowledgement of place as a key element in keeping stories alive. This is one of the reasons why Rio Tinto’s destruction of the rock shelter was so shocking. It was a living link to the stories that go back 46,000 years.
How we draw the circle will be an ongoing process of negotiation. While it will never be complete, the circle is an aspiration by which we can measure the arc of our progress.
References
de Sousa Santos, Boaventura. “Beyond Abyssal Thinking.” Eurozin, 29 June 2007, https://www.eurozine.com/beyond-abyssal-thinking/.
Serres, Michel, and Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. “Revisiting The Natural Contract.” CTheory, May 2006, pp. 5/11/2006–5/11/2006.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Second Edition,Revised Edition,2nd edition, Zed Books, 2012.
