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Who Knows? On the Importance of Identifying ?Experts? when Researching Local Ecological Knowledge

Publication Type  Journal Article
Authors  Davis, Anthony; Wagner, John R.
Journal Title  Human Ecology
Year of Publication  2003
Volume  31
Key Words  local ecological knowledge; research methods; indigenous knowledge; peer referencing
Notes   Anthony Davis and John Wagner argue that local ecological knowledgei, or LEK, is ?a socially and culturally rooted knowledge system.? However, defining what is meant by that remains problematic. For example, after a careful review of recent literature, the authors found that the process for reporting methods employed in establishing knowledge about LEK were underreported and far from rigorous. In other words, as important as it may be that researchers and ultimately decision-makers have access to the most carefully acquired data, in fact researchers are not terribly precise in their discussions of how they determined what constituted LEK or even who was a ?local expert.? Anthropologists do not have to be reminded that the inclusion of local or indigenous ldquo;voices? is important for their research. Yet knowing something is true and implementing it in quantifiable ways are two different points. The authors, in their study of Nova Scotian fishermen, note that for knowledge to count as LEK, it cannot simply reflect the idiosyncratic experiences of an individual. Rather, LEK possesses a historical and cultural ?core? within the community. Having said that, it is not evident always ?how widely statements, experiences, and descriptions [are] shared within a community? before these are considered attributes of LEK. One way to begin to address this issue is to determine which members of the community are identified as local knowledgei ?experts.? In other words, the quality, reliability and validity of the data gathered in the context of LEK research depends in large part on who is identified as ?knowledgeable? and how systematically data are gathered. To resolve this issue, Davis and Wagner propose identifying LEK experts by ?systematically gathering peer recommendations .? Fishermen were asked via a structured survey technique, who they thought was the most knowledgeable person with regards to the local fishery. The logic is that members of a given social group will always know who their best rivals are or ?livelihood peers.? Face-to-face interviewing would proceed with those individuals who received the most mentions. Identified experts were interviewed until the point of information saturation. The goal was to obtain three independent observations for each local environmental knowledge claim. The method described by the authors is easy to implement and is time-and-resource efficient for the researchers. Interesting findings in this article include the following: * Local knowledge experts in the study received ?votes? from people outside their own community but with few exceptions, most of these areas were adjacent to each other. Thus responses solicited in fact referenced LEK. * Elderly retired individuals were underrepresented among those fishermen identified as ?most? knowledgeable. Prepared by: Colleen E. Boyd [CEB], Assistant Professor and Director of Native American Studies, Department of Anthropology, Ball State University
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