This panel investigates the possibilities for sharing and exchanging ecological knowledge between Europe and the Pacific, and the effects and effectiveness of this endeavour in education, sustainability, community dynamics, academic, and policy contexts. We begin from the premise that ‘knowledge’ does not necessarily travel in a simple manner, and that the effects of holding, professing, preserving, or circulating knowledge differ, as do motivations and intentions around knowledge. We are critically aware of the complex ownership and political aspects of knowledge recognition and transmission, and of the necessity to reflexively examine assumptions about the purposes and registers of knowledge. Understanding seemingly practical issues about recording, preserving or utilizing ecological knowledge in fact requires an awareness of the different modes and status of ‘knowledge’ on the part of each participant, as well as of political ambitions, expectations arising from recognition, etc. We seek contributions for the panel that reflect upon the implications for collaboration, documentation, and mutual comprehension of different forms of ‘situated’ knowledge systems. How is situated knowledge reconfigured by local experts (a very broad term, not meant to be exclusive of all but ritual specialists) and put forth to broader audiences? One frame for discussion will be UNESCO initiatives bringing together Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians to represent their various environmental knowledges and experiences of climate change for policy design. Here, we are concerned with the prospects of reconfiguring practice and kinship as ‘knowledge’ in a highly bureaucratic context, and within exclusivist management practices and naturalist frames. Another focus will be collaborative documentation initiatives, asking what we need to consider when engaging in collaborative documentation and what forms the outputs should take to meet converging, and diverging, expectations from the parties involved. We hope other contributors will develop our understanding of the role and opportunities for ecological knowledge to figure in education, in climate apprehension, in cultural and social change, and in developing Pacific perspectives and presence in Europe.
Paper submissions are closed