Global Histories, Vernacular Science, and African Genealogies

摘要

Scholars in imperial and science studies have recently begun to examine more systemat-ically the different ways knowledge systems around the world have intersected. This essayconcentrates on one aspect of this process, the codification of research into "primitive" or"indigenous" knowledge, especially knowledge that was transmitted orally, and arguesthat such investigations were a by-product of four interrelated phenomena: the globaliza-tion of the sciences themselves, particularly those fields that took the earth and itsinhabitants as their object of analysis; the professionalization of anthropology and itsgrowing emphasis on studying other cultures' medical, technical, and natural knowledge;the European push, in the late nineteenth century, toward "global colonialism" and theethnographic research that accompanied colonial state building; and, finally, colonizedand marginalized peoples' challenges to scientific epistemologies and their paradoxicalcall that scientists study their knowledge systems more carefully. These phenomena cametogether on a global scale in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century toproduce a subgenre of research within the sciences, here labeled "vernacular science,"focused explicitly on "native" knowledge.