Making knowledge from below

Developing a framework for using local knowledge systems to enhance capacity building in agricultural development

“…Understanding individual learners also means understanding the broader context. Common tools include historical analysis, stakeholder analysis, participatory engagement, and participatory observation (Hermans et al, 2015;Middelveld et al, 2021).…”

“…Many of these efforts are also funded by governments, NGOs, and companies from nations in the Global North who were once colonizers (Alston et al, 2000;van Wessell, 2021). Some of these regions were also characterized by one group of people (often the colonizer) oppressing other people (Memmi, 1991;Middelveld et al, 2021). Other agricultural development efforts seek to improve the conditions of marginalized people, even within the most developed countries (Coté, 2016).…”

Towards diversified industrial cropping systems?

“…Some agricultural systems scientists have used the concept of complex adaptive systems as a way to understand the design requirements of diversified agroecosystems (Duru et al 2015a). I would argue that a step further is needed, one which centers the valorization and creation of knowledge forms not usually recognized in Western science nor in monocultural thinking: indigenous knowledge (Boillat and Berkes 2013), farmers' and farm workers' embodied knowledge (Carolan 2008;Krzywoszynska 2016), more-than-human knowledge , and knowledge 'from below' (Middelveld et al 2021). Design dialogues around the technologies made to support complex systems would also need to shift, away from naming, classifying, and sensing everything and instead towards generating the kinds of relations that lead to the desired outcomes (Chapter 6).…”