Reconstructing Powerful Knowledge in an era of climate change

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.32358/rpd.2020.v6.427

Keywords:

science, policy, locality, climate, adaptation

Abstract

Purpose: Identifies a hierarchy of information and argues that professional knowledge has marginalized ‘local knowledge’.  Methodology/Approach: In a review of recent research, the paper offers examples of how ‘wicked problems’ (from obesity to climate change) impose different burdens on different communities, which foregrounds the value of residents’ experiences. Findings: In an era of climate change, adaptive planning must incorporate ‘local knowledge’, which may return to older technologies and established practices. Research Implication: The paper argues that ‘local knowledge’ can be ‘powerful knowledge’, as discussed within   educational research, which has important implications for school and college curricula.   Originality/Value of paper: Amateur experts, citizen observatories and crowd sourced data can all play significant roles within communities facing new forms of risk and hazard.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Andrew Kirby, Arizona State University

Andrew Kirby is Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences. His research is primarily focused on urban issues and he teaches an undergraduate class on Sustainable Cities. He is Editor of Current Research on Cities, City Profiles Editor of Cities: the international journal of Urban Policy and Planning; and co-editor of the University of Arizona Press series Society, Environment and Place. He has taught in Arizona since 1988. PhD, Geography, University of Newcastle, 1976

References

Adger, W.N., Dessai, S., Goulden, M., Hulme, M., Lorenzoni, I., Nelson, D.R., Naess, L.O., Wolf, J. and Wreford, A. (2009). Are there social limits to adaptation to climate change? Climatic change, 93(3-4), 335-354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-008-9520-z

Atkinson, D. and Dodds, K. (2002). Geopolitical traditions: Critical histories of a century of geopolitical thought. Routledge.

Bernstein, B. (1999). Vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 157-173.

Biagioli M. (2002). From book censorship to academic peer review. Emergences: Journal for the Study of Media & Composite Cultures, 12(1), 11-45. https://doi.org/10.1080/1045722022000003435

Blanco AG, Bermúdez FL, Boti AV. (2007). Los aljibes en la historia de la cultura: la realización en el Campo de Cartagena. Revista Murciana de Antropología. 2007(14), 441-78. https://doi.org/10.31644/ed.esp.2016.d02

Castleden, H., Sylvestre, P., Martin, D. and McNally, M. (2015). I Don't Think that Any Peer Review Committee... Would Ever ‘Get’What I Currently Do: How Institutional Metrics for Success and Merit Risk Perpetuating the (Re) production of Colonial Relationships in Community-Based Participatory Research Involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada. International Indigenous Policy Journal, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.18584/iipj.2015.6.4.2

Chiang, Y.C. (2018). Exploring community risk perceptions of climate change-a case study of a flood-prone urban area of Taiwan. Cities, 74, 42-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2017.11.001

City of Houston. (2019). The Harvey Data Project https://www.houstontx.gov/postharvey/public/documents/3.2019-havrvey-data-project.pdf accessed October16, 2019.

Cornelsen, L., Green, R., Dangour, A., & Smith, R. (2015). Why fat taxes won't make us thin. Journal of Public Health, 37(1), 18-23. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdu032

Davis, M. (1998). Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster. Macmillan.

Fernández, I., Manuel-Navarrete, D. and Torres-Salinas, R. (2016). Breaking resilient patterns of inequality in Santiago de Chile: Challenges to navigate towards a more sustainable city. Sustainability, 8(8), 820. https://doi.org/10.3390/su8080820

Frazier, T.G., Wood, N., Yarnal, B. and Bauer, D.H. (2010). Influence of potential sea level rise on societal vulnerability to hurricane storm-surge hazards, Sarasota County, Florida. Applied Geography, 30(4), 490-505. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2010.05.005

Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. Basic books.

Godlewska, A. and Smith, N. (1994). Geography and empire, Blackwell.

Goffman, E., (1979). Gender advertisements. New York, Harper Row.

Gura, T. (2013). Citizen science: amateur experts. Nature, 496(7444), 259-261. https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7444-259a

Hasegawa, A., Ohira, T., Maeda, M., Yasumura, S., & Tanigawa, K. (2016). Emergency responses and health consequences after the Fukushima accident; evacuation and relocation. Clinical Oncology, 28(4), 237-244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clon.2016.01.002

Hernández M, Morote AF. (2019). The use of rainwater in Alicante (southeast Spain). A new urban approach to urban water management. Journal of Urban Planning, Landscape & Environmental Design. 4(1), 53-66.

Hudson, B., Henderson, S and Hudson, A. (2015). Developing mathematical thinking in the primary classroom: liberating students and teachers as learners of mathematics, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(3), 374-398. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.979233

Kirby, A. (2019b). Sustainability, Adaptation and the Local State: An Overview. Journal of Sustainability Research. 1:e190012. https://doi.org/10.20900/jsr20190012

Kirby, A., (2019a). Transdisciplinarity and sustainability science: A response to Sakao and Brambila-Macias in the context of sustainable cities research. Journal of cleaner production, 210, 238-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.003

Kreuter, M.W., De Rosa, C., Howze, E.H. and Baldwin, G.T. (2004). Understanding wicked problems: a key to advancing environmental health promotion. Health Education & Behavior, 31(4), 441-454. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198104265597

Lang, T. and Rayner, G. (2007). Overcoming policy cacophony on obesity: an ecological public health framework for policymakers. Obesity reviews, 8, 165-181. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-789x.2007.00338.x

Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (2013). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press.

Lundberg, R. and Willis, H. (2015). Assessing homeland security risks: A comparative risk assessment of 10 hazards. Homeland security affairs, 11(10).

McAlpine, S.A., Porter, J.R. (2018). Estimating Recent Local Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on Current Real-Estate Losses: A Housing Market Case Study in Miami-Dade, Florida’. Population Research Policy Review 37, 871–895. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-018-9473-5

Morote ÁF, Olcina J, Hernández M. (2019). The use of non-conventional water resources as a means of adaptation to drought and climate change in Semi-Arid Regions: South-Eastern Spain. Water. 11(1), 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/w11010093

Nash, R., (2016). Explaining inequalities in school achievement: A realist analysis. Routledge

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration. (2016). Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014: a pooled analysis of 1698 population-based measurement studies with 19·2 million participants. The Lancet, 387(10026), 1377-1396 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30054-X

Noordegraaf, M., Douglas, S., Geuijen K. and Van Der Steen, M. (2019). Weaknesses of wickedness: a critical perspective on wickedness theory. Policy and Society, 38(2), 278-297. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2019.1617970

Norman, L.M., Caldeira, F., Callegary, J., Gray, F., O’Rourke, M.K., Meranza, V. and Van Rijn, S. (2012). Socio-environmental health analysis in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Water Quality, Exposure and Health, 4(2), 79-91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12403-012-0067-x

Olazabal, M., Chiabai, A., Foudi, S. and Neumann, M.B. (2018). Emergence of new knowledge for climate change adaptation. Environmental science & policy, 83, 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2018.01.017

Ornelas, I.J., Deschenie, D., Jim, J., Bishop, S., Lombard, K. and Beresford, S.A. (2017). Yéego Gardening!: A Community Garden Intervention to Promote Health on the Navajo Nation. Progress in community health partnerships: research, education, and action, 11(4), 417. https://doi.org/10.1353/cpr.2017.0049

Parker, W.C. (2016). Towards A Powerful Human Rights Education in Schools: Problems and Possibilities’ in James A Banks, ed., “Global Migration, Structural Inclusion, and Citizenship Education Across Nations”.

Pielke Jr, R., Prins, G., Rayner, S. and Sarewitz, D. (2007). Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation. Nature, 445(7128), 597. https://doi.org/10.1038/445597a

Rossi, U. (2017). Cities and Global Capitalism Policy.

Sarewitz, D. (2016). Saving Science. The New Atlantis 5-40.

Sarmiento, H. (2018). Bogota Humana's climate resettlements: Displacement and the limits of the housing market in Colombia (Doctoral dissertation, UCLA).

Sillmann, J., Thorarinsdottir, T., Keenlyside, N., Schaller, N., Alexander, L.V., Hegerl, G., Seneviratne, S.I., Vautard, R., Zhang, X. and Zwiers, F.W. (2017). Understanding, modeling and predicting weather and climate extremes: Challenges and opportunities. Weather and climate extremes, 18, 65-74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2017.10.003

Sparks L and White S.S. (2013). Going Green: the impacts of sustainability planning in Greensburg KS. International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning, 8(3), 288-304. https://doi.org/10.2495/sdp-v8-n3-288-304

Turnbull, N. and Hoppe, R. (2019). Problematizing ‘wickedness’: a critique of the wicked problems concept, from philosophy to practice. Policy and Society, 38(2), 315-337. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2018.1488796

Vogel, C., Moser, S.C., Kasperson, R.E. and Dabelko, G.D. (2007). Linking vulnerability, adaptation and resilience science to practice: Pathways, players and partnerships. Global environmental change. 17, 349-64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2007.05.002

Wehn, U., Rusca, M., Evers, J. and Lanfranchi, V. (2015). Participation in flood risk management and the potential of citizen observatories: A governance analysis. Environmental Science & Policy, 48, 225-236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2014.12.017

Wild, C.P. (2012). The exposome: from concept to utility. International journal of epidemiology, 41(1), 24-32.

Yang, D., Yang, A., Qiu, H., Zhou, Y., Herrero, H., Fu, C.S., Yu, Q. and Tang, J. (2019). A Citizen-Contributed GIS Approach for Evaluating the Impacts of Land Use on Hurricane-Harvey-Induced Flooding in Houston Area. Land, 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/land8020025

Young, M. and Muller, J. (2013). On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of education, 1(3), 229-250. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3017

Young, M., Lambert, D., Roberts, C. and Roberts, M. (2014). Knowledge and the future school: Curriculum and social justice. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Downloads

Published

2020-01-31

How to Cite

Kirby, A. (2020). Reconstructing Powerful Knowledge in an era of climate change. Revista Produção E Desenvolvimento, 6. https://doi.org/10.32358/rpd.2020.v6.427

Issue

Vol. 6 (2020): JANUARY-DECEMBER

Section

Territorial Affairs

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Revista Produção e Desenvolvimento

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

All content on this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 Unported license. The articles are free to use, with their CC BY attributions of license.

The journal is not responsible for the opinions, ideas and concepts emitted in the texts, as they are the sole responsibility of its author (s).

The publisher has the right to reject articles that in the evaluation process have been detected signs of plagiarism. The articles that have been detected indications of plagiarism after the publication, will be excluded from the edition. And the indication of the problem will be informed in the place of the text, keeping the same amount of pages.

This journal adopts the principles of ethical conduct of international quality Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), as well as the parameters of Integrity in the Scientific Activity indicated by SCOPUS and SCIELO.