Agree to Differ

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Image: Andrea Sánchez Enciso

Listening clubs like this one in Tillabéri, Niger, provide a legitimate opportunity for women to talk to each other and to men, constituting

a major change to cultural norms

knowledge systems, which dominate research, extension and

education systems and tend to be seen by ‘Western culture’

as the only valid ones. Many traditional practices are disap-

pearing due to the intrusion of foreign technologies with

perceived advantages such as high or quick yields.

The rate of this loss has been compared to the loss of

language, or to the loss of culture in general. While the

US-National Science Foundation funded project ELCat

provides evidence to show that 3,054 languages or 43 per

cent are endangered and 634 have become extinct,

meas-

uring cultural loss is much more difficult. A study of the

Tsimane’ Amerindians of Bolivia uses knowledge on plants

as an indicator of this loss. It revealed a net decrease in the

reported plants used, over a decade, from 9 per cent among

women to 26 per cent among people living close to towns.

The decrease was higher among men than women and in

villages closer to market towns. The study concludes that the

Tsimane’ could be abandoning their traditional knowledge,

as it is not seen as valuable within the new socio-economic

and cultural conditions they face.

If the world is going to reap the benefits of the underu-

tilized crops and wild plants, it must revalue the systems

of knowledge that make their utilization possible and must

understand their intrinsic value, which means that it must

accept that the dominant science-based system of plant and

crop knowledge is not the only one. Furthermore, it must

accept that it needs to engage in an intercultural dialogue

in which both systems can exchange knowledge, while fully

respecting each other, and value the exchange as a possibility

for mutual enrichment.

One way of going about this is the creation of a true

dialogue between cultures, in which the results of differ-

ent systems of research are shared. While based on mutual

respect, each culture must be willing to learn from the other.

It also requires the recognition that the knowledge has rights

and that those who developed it must keep the rights as well

as any ensuing economic or other benefit.

This kind of true dialogue requires a profound revision

of the way in which development work is usually done, in

which values, practices and knowledge are imposed from the

dominant culture on the other, assuming that the transfer

of knowledge is in one direction only, and assuming that

the receiving culture has no valuable knowledge processes

of its own. This is the basis of many existing agricultural

extension systems. It needs an understanding and a revision

of the rapport de force that is usually generated between

the dominant culture and the ‘receiving’ culture. The

acknowledgment – implicit or explicit – that there is only

gree

iffer