| Institution: | 1. Recent doctoral graduate at the Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium;2. Professor at the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Mountains of the Moon University, Uganda;3. Lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Mountains of the Moon University, Uganda
Doctoral student at the Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria;4. Lecturer at the School of Education, Kampala International University, Uganda;5. Doctoral student at the Department of Philosophy, Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology, Germany;6. Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, Gulu University, Uganda;7. Professor at the Department of Geography, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium |
| Abstract: | The role of indigenous knowledge in increasing context specificity and exposing blind spots in scientific understanding is widely evidenced in disaster studies. This paper aims to structure the processes that shape indigenous knowledge production and its optimisation using the case of floods. An inductive analytical approach is applied among riparian indigenous communities (focus on the Bayira) of the Rwenzori region of Uganda where plenty of indigenous flood practices have been recorded. Indigenous knowledge of floods is found to be based on intimate comprehension of local hydrometeorological regularities. Insofar as these regularities follow natural dynamics, indigenous socio-epistemic processes are noted to be consistent with the laws of nature. Coupled with regular open sociocultural deliberations, the conceptualisation of hydrometeorological regularities induces an indigenous ontology and empiricist epistemology. This, together with the techniques used, is the driver of crucial epistemic virtues which enable indigenous knowledge to provide disaster solutions that are adapted, pragmatic, and holistic. |
