“Traditional knowledge” and local development trajectories

Abstract

This paper discusses the concept of “traditional knowledge”: its definition, economic significance and role in shaping regional development trajectories. After outlining a conceptual framework for the analysis of traditional knowledge, the paper examines the changing position of traditional knowledge in two Italian regions that have followed quite different development trajectories since the 1950s: the “Sibillini Mountains Region”, which has one of the most complex human landscapes in Europe, and the “Marche Region footwear industrial district”, one of the best performing territories in Italy during the decades 1950–2000. The analysis seems to corroborate the hypothesis that the role of traditional knowledge depends on a complex interplay between meta-preferences, relative prices and technologies co-evolving in time.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Ulrich Hilpert for his very helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper and to Francesca Mazzoni for her research assistance.

Notes

1. It is necessary to add that individuals are highly heterogeneous units with respect to the amount of knowledge they command and their learning ability (Simon, 1976, 1978). This fact obliges social scientists to examine local society in order to reconstruct the structure of the population empirically, as suggested by Veblen (1898) and practised in the institutionalist scientific paradigm (Hamilton, 1999).

2. The conception of the production process on which this analysis is based is that proposed by Georgescu-Roegen (1971).

3. A regional perspective on technologies and technological trajectories, which amounts to a scientific research programme encompassing the issue of the role of traditional knowledge, has been proposed, for example, by Hilpert (1991, 2003) and Lundvall (1992).

4. Here the term “resources” refers to the type (and quantity) of matter-energy and information transformed in the production process (see Georgescu-Roegen, 1971).

5. Often observed is what can be labelled “backward-forward technological switch”: a situation in which the old technology is rediscovered and slightly modified by inserting some new technical norms.

6. This may be of help in addressing the critical issue of the “regionalization of innovation” (Hilpert, 2003) in periods of industrial restructuring. More important than the knowledge to be found in a region may be the ability of that region to learn by building on existing knowledge—a process that seems to be common and consistent with the persisting success of the same regions or “islands of innovation” (Hilpert, 1991).

7. This section is based on field research conducted by the author in the region between 1998 and 2001, during which period he was scientific coordinator of the “economic development plan” for the “Sibillini Mountains National Park”.

8. The ratio between people aged over 65 and children aged 0 to 14 was very high, amounting to 237 (Census of Population, 2001). Consequently, for every 100 young people there were 237 old people.

9. A remarkable example is provided by the mountain town of Norcia (about 5,000 inhabitants nowadays). As a settlement of outstanding historical and architectural value, the town's economy was greatly sustained by its function as a “gateway” to local traditional production—especially for central Italy, and Rome in particular.

10. This is fostered by different classes of policies, for instance the “LEADER Projects” launched by the European Union.

11. See Calafati (2005) for a critical-historical analysis of the conceptualization of space in the Italian economic literature.

12. Moreover, shoes now demanded in Italy and in Europe can be directly imported in increasing amounts—further reducing the scale of local production.