Week 10 - Knowledge Systems

Fazey et al. (2020) states that knowledge systems are the practices and structures that determine how knowledge is produced, shared, and used. Knowledge systems can help with the shaping of society and in the management of resources but they can also be restrictive if adhered to too closely which might limit creative responses to problems (Fazey et al,. 2020).

Accepted and dominant knowledge systems may reinforce current “existing social, economic and political forms of power” (Fazey et al,. 2020, p. 9). This may preserve the existing western-based knowledge system and cause intolerance towards other diverse systems (Durie, 2005). 


Durie (2005) explains that “science has become a dominant global knowledge system” (p. 305). Other knowledge systems that do not adhere to prescribed scientific principles can be “afforded lesser status” (p. 305) or can be judged or justified through scientific principles rather than as a distinct body of knowledge. 


Indigenous knowledge systems can be utilised when there is an acceptance that they are different from other knowledge systems but that there is value in using aspects from differing knowledge systems to generate and benefit new learning. Durie (2005) describes “an increasing number of indigenous researchers” who innovatively use science and indigenous knowledge rather than “seeking to prove the superiority of one system over another” (p. 306). 

Mātauranga Māori has a past, a present and a future (Mead, 2020). It embodies the understanding that everything is connected and everything will whakapapa back to ancestors and ultimately to Ranginui and Papatuanuku (Hikuroa, 2017). Mātauranga Māori includes Māori knowledge, Māori world view, Māori perspective, Māori tikanga, culture, and language.


References:


Fazey, I., Schäpke, N., Caniglia, G., Hodgson, A., Kendrick, I., Lyon, C., Page, G., Patterson, J., Riedy, C., Strasser, T., Verveen, S., Adams, D., Goldstein, B., Klaes, M., Leicester, G., Linyard, A., McCurdy, A., Ryan, P., Sharpe, B., . . . Young, H. R. (2020). Transforming knowledge systems for life on Earth: Visions of future systems and how to get there. Energy Research & Social Science, 70, 101724. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101724 


Durie, M. (2005). Indigenous Knowledge Within a Global Knowledge System. High Educ Policy 18, 301–312. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300092 


Hikuroa, D. (2017). Mātauranga Māori—the ūkaipō of knowledge in New Zealand, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 47:1, 5-10, DOI: 10.1080/03036758.2016.1252407 


Mead, H. (June 19, 2022). Understanding Mātauranga Māori. E-Tangata.

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