Environmental Problems and the Governance of Knowledge: Undermining of Experience and the Recovery of Tacit Knowledge

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  • 環境問題と知のガバナンス――経験の無力化と暗黙知の回復――
  • カンキョウ モンダイ ト チ ノ ガバナンス ケイケン ノ ムリョクカ ト アンモク チ ノ カイフク

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Abstract

<p>The process of environmental governance involves the governance of society and the way in which people participate in society. However, since the physical elements of the environment such as forests and water are often the center of discussion, the ways in which environmental governance implicitly orders society, seldom become the subject of investigation. The history of governance demonstrates that the process of state simplification has brought with it certain forms of knowledge that have, in turn, brought the phenomenon at the center of the field of vision into far sharper focus and hence, far more susceptible to careful measurement, calculation, and manipulation. Modern science and centralized political control mutually strengthen each other while resulting in the undermining of the experiential and tacit knowledge specific to diverse localities. This tendency applies very much to the field of natural resources and the environment of the past and present.</p><p>What has been omitted from the process is what Aristotle called “phronesis (practical wisdom)”, an important element of tacit knowledge that is distinguishable from the other two dominant classes of knowledge, i.e., science and art (craft). Tacit knowledge operates, not in the realm of science, but in the realm of judgment. Despite the apparent recession of top down simplification and more emphasis on decentralization and participation, the doctrines of “efficiency” and “technological imperative” are still dominant in environmental projects and equally forceful in undermining knowledge based on human experience and distributional struggle.</p><p>Environmental problems often require locally specific and timely interventions that demand knowledge of the particular. This is in stark contrast to the tradition of science that places emphasis on the universal. The important task of environmental sociology is to recover the realm of tacit knowledge, not only by acknowledging its existence and explaining its functions, but also by paying attention to the kind of dogma that is uncritically adopted and consequently undermines the realm of judgment.</p>

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