[P2P-F] a new type of platform?

[jmp]

On 28/07/11 09:20, Karl Robillard wrote:
> Nicholas,
> 
> The importance of OSE is not primarily in what is being produced, but *how* it 
> is being produced.  The knowledge of production is being openly shared with 
> the expressed goal of replication and abundance.  Doing this is just as useful 
> for producing food forests as it is for tractors.  If you see that traditional 
> knowledge is disappearing then you only need to document and share it to stop 
> that from happening.

For info / some related implications, from a different perspective.

The latter part - especially "... then you only ..." - parallels a
common and widespread conception of traditional knowledge that is
problematic, in its reduction, at least insofar as the context of
indigenous people is concerned. It ignores the material and physical
reality of knowledge as doing: traditional knowledge is practices
embedded in bio-cultural systems -- not merely information that can be
documented ex-situ.

It is precisely this reduced conception of traditional knowledge - i.e.
that it can be documented to protect it - that many indigenous movements
and empathetic researchers are arguing and working against, because it
is devastating to many communities (another set of socio-economic
conflicts arises from the so-called benefit sharing that accompanies
this approach, but that is a tangent here).

It is a conception manifested in the UN, WIPO, state and corporate
"intellectual property" approaches to the "protection" of traditional
knowledge. Indeed, it forms central part of contemporary international
political economy - and market expansion - as it has the purpose of
spreading the very the idea of private, exclusive ownership of knowledge
and intellectual property generally, while seeking credibility through
"protection" of minorities and vulnerable groups, whose cultures in turn
are undermined as market relations or the cash economy advances onto
their territory. The protection myth, in this context, functions to
extract information (recipes, species info etc.) from knowledge
practices, but let's the bio-cultural systems in which they exist
wither. Some background info here: http://biocultural.iied.org/

Documenting some "knowledge" does nothing automagically for a knowledge
practice, except that in the case of traditional, medicinal knowledge
practices, it - with obvious intentions and effects - facilitates
commercialisation of the information extracted from a given knowledge
practice. Museums are full of dead knowledge.

In other words, you can document as much, say, shamanic knowledge as you
like, but if there is no access to forest, land and the required
resources - i.e. bio-cultural systems - in which those knowledge
practices traditionally unfold, then it is merely information in an
abstract form on paper (or in bits).

If you want to preserve knowledge practices about living on and with the
land - i.e. about growing stuff - then the first step is to secure
access to land in order to be able to practice. Knowing by description
how to grow something won't put food on the table unless there is land
to practice on. Knowing by acquaintance won't either, hence many
cultures facing land grabs, deforestation, climate change etc. are
losing their traditional knowledge not because it is no longer known, or
undocumented, but simply because they become uprooted and have nowhere
to grow, to end on ecologicals metaphors.

-martin