SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE

The notion of sustainable development, which is currently being proposed as the panacea to many of the most pressing environmental problems. reflects the environmental movement's ambivalent relationship to scientific knowledge: on the one hand, science is used to legitimize the 'green case'; on the other, it is seen as responsible for many of the current environmental problems. Local, or traditional, knowledge is often proposed as a superior form of knowledge as it lies outside science and is seen as representing a closer affinity with 'nature'. However, local knowledge, like scientific knowledge, can be reified, given virtues it simply does not possess. In this paper we examine the two categories of scientific and local knowledge. Using the work of sociologists of science such as Bruno Latour, we show that science is not different to local knowledge because it has a superior access to 'reality' but because it is more powerful, i.e. it is able to act over greater distances. We then draw upon anthropological work on the use of local knowledge in traditional agriculture to show that this system of knowledge is often 'scientific' but is more intimately related to local environments. However, local knowledge is not always in 'harmony' with such environments and can result in serious degradation. It should not, therefore, be counterposed as a 'greener' alternative to scientific knowledge. Rather, as with science itself, local knowledge should be investigated in 'action'. We conclude with a call for a new social science approach to the relationship between nature and culture and the local and universal which stresses 'hybridity', i.e. the extent to which these categories are inextricably mixed.