User:40fifw0/NGOs in Yunnan

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  • Yunnan Institute of Development Article
  • Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (CBIK) www.cbik.ac.cn
  • Christian Blind Mission International
  • Concordia Welfare and Education Foundation
  • Daytop Drug Abuse and Rehabilitation Center
  • Green Watershed
  • Habitat for Humanity International
  • Health Unlimited
  • The International HIV/AIDS Alliance
  • International Institute of Rural Reconstruction
  • Joy in Action
  • The Mountain Institute
  • The Nature Conservancy (TNC)
  • Pesticide Eco Alternative Center (PEAC)
  • Population Services International
  • Project Grace-- works to relieve poverty in Yunnan.
  • Yunnan Mountain Heritage Foundation
  • Yunnan EcoNetwork
  • Andreas Wilkes: Ethnic Minorities, Environment and Development in Yunnan: The institutional contexts of biocultural knowledge production in southwest China.
  • This thesis analyzes how knowledge about ethnic minorities, natural resource use and development is produced by different social actors in Yunnan province, China: anthropologists, government veterinary technicians, NGO staff and agro-pastoralist villagers. Research focused on a multi-ethnic village in northwest Yunnan inhabited by ethnic Nu, Tibetan and Lisu agro-pastoralists. The thesis explains why livelihood practices serve as markers of ethnicity, and examines the role of local knowledge in cattle management practices. It investigates the factors that influence the knowledge that government veterinary technicians and staff of a provincial NGO produce about the villagers, livelihoods, and environmental and development problems. The thesis identifies some general features of knowledge production processes. Institutional contexts provide incentives for knowledge producers to interact with ethnic minorities in certain ways. These different knowledge production practices structure the content and form of the knowledge they produce. The incentives faced by knowledge producers are driven by institutional development strategies and management procedures. The knowledge produced through different interactions is validated with respect to the actors to whom the knowledge-producer is accountable. Local knowledge and practices are produced and deployed within ‘communities of practice’ in which appropriate practices and knowledge are validated with respect to that community. Knowledge producers outside the village are accountable to their superiors within their institution, to colleagues in the same institution and to co-practitioners in the same profession. Knowledge-producers are therefore part of wider ‘epistemic communities’ which are constituted by shared criteria for the validation of knowledge. The thesis suggests that accountability relationships play important roles in determining the knowledge-generation practices engaged in and the form and content of knowledge about relationships between culture and biological resources produced by different actors. Advocacy by NGOs in Yunnan aims to change accountability relationships in society. The thesis identifies implications for new forms of citizenship in China.

Andreas is now the China Natural Resources Management Program Team Leader for The Mountain Institute, Kunming, China. Contact: andreas@public.km.yn.cn or awilkes@mountain.org