University of Minnesota
The Globalization of Knowledge—A Geographical Perspective
Prompted by UN and World Bank initiatives, development projects since the 1980s are institutionally encouraged to be inclusive of indigenous knowledge (IK) systems. The impetus for such initiatives derives from the strategic shift from "top-down" approaches to development toward a philosophy of decentralized local empowerment as a key to economic success. This shift from "government" to "governance" has opened a space for indigenous people to exercise their own political and cultural voice both against and in tandem with a variety of projects. The discipline of geography can assist us in understanding how indigenous knowledge becomes globalized through space and circulated through varying scales ranging from the local to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to state and federal institutions, to work in development projects. In this paper I will juxtapose the challenges of deploying traditional ecological knowledge in the Arctic against the context of the larger geographical debates about Indigenous knowledge in Third World development.