Situating the Work: A typology of traditional knowledge literature

Abstract

There is a growing array of actors engaged in the field of traditional knowledge (TK). The result is a broad, messy, and contested body of literature. To navigate this conceptual space, this paper provides signposts in the form of a typology. It classifies TK scholarship into four orientations: ecological, critical, relational, and collaborative. Categories are not fixed, mutually exclusive positions, but operate under differing sets of assumptions and towards particular ends. They perform particular work, with important discursive and material implications. This underscores the need to situate one's approach to TK, which this typology seeks to facilitate.