| This is a case study of the sociocultural dynamics and knowledge relations between a small laboratory team of bioscientists/biotechnologists and a "Committee of 10" indigenous healers in a South African public research organization's bioprospecting program, during its initial years (1998--2001). The study seeks to answer the question of how interaction between these two groups of practitioners shapes the innovation being jointly developed, and influences its interpretation. The study's conceptual framework draws on the literatures of technological innovation, social studies of science and technology, feminist philosophy of science, feminist epistemology, Africana philosophy, indigenous knowledge systems, organizational learning, and bioprospecting, as well as the practitioners' own conceptualizations and viewpoints. The evidentiary database comprises archival documents, extensive interviews and site observations of practitioners in the field, and participant observation. The study results first describe the broader historical, economic and policy context of botany, indigenous medico-botanical knowledge, biotechnology and bioprospecting in South Africa. Next they describe the bioprospecting program's two principle communities-of-practice, including their differing contemporary discursive resources and epistemic cultures, as well as knowledge flows and sociocultural dynamics in the emerging social configurations for knowledge creation of which they are a part, i.e. a bioprospecting learning network/research consortium and a national system of innovation with links to global science, but little access for indigenous knowledge. Finally, the results explore the changes to the epistemic cultures and knowledge practices of both sets of practitioners, and resulting tensions in trans-epistemic interaction, revealed by the case. The study results suggest that unequal power/knowledge/culture/land relations in contemporary South Africa constrain innovation and the creation of new knowledge; that building and managing an "interaction bridge" for knowledge relations may be the most critical task in learning networks; and that cognitive justice which includes not just benefit-sharing but also recognition of multiple modes of cognition, knowledge sources and ways of transforming knowledge into products is critical to innovation in pluralistic societies. The study concludes that strong interdisciplinary studies and a "braided process" are required to interpret trans-epistemic interaction. |
