Murdoch, Jonathan and Judy Clark. 1994. "Sustainable Knowledge." Geoforum 25 (2): 115-132.

Thesis:

"To speak of 'sustainable knowledge is to begin to speak of the local and the general, the natural and the social, Western and non-Western cultures in the same breath."(p. 130).

Summary:

Utilizing Redclift's dimensions of sustainable development -- the economic, the political, and the epistemological dimensions -- Murdoch and Clark examine the epistemological dimension in a way that links it to the political dimension. Specifically, they "assess knowledge, both scientific and traditional, as power" (p.116).

Achieving sustainable development requires the capacity to distinguish between those practices which are sustainable and those that are not. The scientific disciplines have hitherto been seen as the legitimate providers of this capacity. However, the environmental movement, while drawing legitimacy from science, has had ambivalent attitudes toward scientific knowledge. There has been a tendency in the movement to embrace without question the 'alternative technologies' and renewable energy sources, to the reification of traditional knowledge. (pp.116,117).

The dichotomy between scientific and traditional knowledge finds its roots in perceptions of knowledge itself, as an entity in itself, rather than "the outcome of a set of processes" (p.118). The authors work to "'deconstruct' the notions of scientific and local knowledge and...show that the conventional distinctions between the two no longer hold" (p.118). Sociology has endeavored to show the political processes in the development of scientific knowledge, highlighting that scientific knowledge "has no special epistemological basis; this form of knowledge is not dissimilar from other forms" (p.120). Thus, the distinctions between scientific and traditional, universal and local, and nature and society are blurred. Rather, in Norgaard's 'coevolutionary' model (1992) "natural, social, cultural and economic systems have evolved in relations of mutual dependency" (p.125).

The coevolutionary model views local knowledge as meaningful in a particular location, where people have a "rich understanding of their local resources and frequently know best how these should be handled" (ibid). Sometimes, however, knowledge that has thusfar served effectively can become inappropriate in the face of rapid socioeconomic and technological change. In this case, local knowledge is not always sustainable. This is where integration with scientific knowledge can be useful.

However, science has usually been overwhelmingly privileged. Scientific knowledge, with its universal laws, "enables knowledge at a distance," lending it its power. It can reduce numerous elements to one universal law, at the top of the epistemological hierarchy. Local knowledge, at the other end of spectrum, is marked by description, making it less universal, and thus politically less 'powerful' (p.127). The authors contend that, in spite of this power, science can insert itself into various particular situations, but it "can only 'work' if the sets of relations are adapted to allow it to 'nest' in the new situation" (p.128).

The authors conclude that "'sustainable knowledge' must be a mixture -- of the social, the scientific, the local, the technical, the natural, and perhaps even the magical -- that refuses a priori to privilege science" (p.129). They join with Latour (1993) in calling for a 'hybrid' vocabulary which integrates nature and culture, local and universal knowledge.

Keywords: sustainable development, epistemology, scientific knowledge, local knowledge