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Local knowledge and control
‘Hands off’ and ‘hands on’ knowledge

 

The Health and Social Consequences of the 2001 Foot and Mouth Epidemic in North Cumbria
 
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Local knowledge and control

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The State Veterinary Service is very, very centralised, and power is in London, and they wouldn"t let it go.
(Health and veterinary, interview, 2002)

This led to local expertise and knowledge of the local geography, of road networks, of local contractors and suppliers, seemingly being ignored. Here a respondent speaks of mapping ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ road networks:

They would speak to somebody connected with the job but to my knowledge it wasn’t anybody in Cumbria, we weren’t even told about it. I found out through someone else.

(Agricultural related, interview,  2002)


Also in a manner resembling the mismatch of knowledges which undermined central agency credibility in the management of the Chernobyl fallout in (Wynne 1999) local practices were not taken into account:

. . . they went around in helicopters looking for sheep because they thought that this other half million sheep was there, but this was like in May in lambing time. They were going on Figures in June from two years previous, which there would be that many more sheep, because all the ewes are on then and the lambs would still be running about, but try to tell them, they just wouldn"t have it.
(Agricultural related, interview, 2002)

The following comment acknowledges that the army did effectively utilise local knowledge:

When the army were brought in they wanted somebody with local knowledge of the farms and the farmers and the countryside to help the army with getting settled in and dealing with the problems.
(Agricultural related, interview, 2002)

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