Staff profile

Paul Sillitoe has a background in both anthropology and agricultural science. His research interests focus on tropical farming systems and indigenous natural resource management strategies. He specialises in development and social change, subsistence and technology, land issues, human ecology and ethno-science. His regional interests focus on the Pacific in particular.

He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, where he first championed the competitive sociability of institutionalised exchange individualism, and he is currently involved in projects in South Asia, researching local agricultural knowledge and development programmes. He seeks to further the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in development, particularly in the context of sustainable livelihood initiatives and appropriate technologies.

Publications

See a full list of Prof Sillitoe's publications below.
www.dur.ac.uk/resources/profiles/140/Publications_PaulSillitoe.docx

• Development and social change
• Economic anthropology and tribal socio-political orders
• Environmental anthropology and natural resources management
• Human ecology and ethnosciences
• Indigenous knowledge and participating development
• Livelihood and technology
• Melanesia and South Asia

• 2009: Qatar Shell Professorial Chair in Sustainable Development in the Sociology Program of the Department of Social Sciences in Qatar University:

Authored book

• Sillitoe, P. Made in Niugini: Technology in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. (2nd). Sean Kingston Publishing
• Sillitoe, P. (. (in press). Indigenous knowledge:enhancing its contribution to natural resources management. CABI Publishing
• Sillitoe, P. (2017). Built in Niugini: Constructions in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Sean Kingston Publishing
• Sillitoe, P. (2010). From land to mouth: the agricultural "economy" of the Wola of the New Guinea highlands. Yale University Press
• Sillitoe, P., & Sillitoe, J. (2009). Grass-clearing man : a factional ethnography of life in the New Guinea Highlands. Waveland Press
• Sillitoe, P. (2003). Managing animals in New Guinea: Preying the Game in the Highlands. Routledge
• Sillitoe, P., Stewart, P., & Strathern, A. (2002). Horticulture in Papua New Guinea: Case Studies from the Southern and Western Highlands. University of Pittsburgh
• Sillitoe, P. (1996). A place against time: land and environment in the Papua New Guinea highlands. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic (Gordon & Breach)

Chapter in book

• Sillitoe, P. (2021). Soil ethnoecology. In T. F. Thornton, & S. Bhagwat (Eds.), Handbook of indigenous environmental knowledge : global themes and practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315270845-8
• Sillitoe, P. (2016). The Knowing in Indigenous Knowledge: Alternative Ways to View Development, Largely from a New Guinea Highlands’ Perspective. In Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge (129-163). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21900-4_7
• Sillitoe, P. (2015). Indigenous Knowledge. In A. Strathern, & P. (. Stewart (Eds.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Anthropology (343-368). Ashgate Publishing
• Sillitoe, P., & Filer, C. (2014). What Local People Want with Forests: Ideologies and Attitudes in Papua New Guinea. In E. Gilberthorpe, & G. Hilson (Eds.), Natural Resource Extraction and Indigenous Livelihoods: Development Challenges in an Era of Globalisation (201-220). Ashgate Publishing
• Sillitoe, P., & Alam, M. (2012). ‘Why did the fish cross the road?’ Environmental uncertainty and local knowledge in Bangladesh. In A. Hornidge, & C. Antweiler (Eds.), Environmental Uncertainty and Local Knowledge: Southeast Asia as a Laboratory of Global Ecological Change (145-183). Transcript Verlag
• Sillitoe, P. (2000). Indigenous knowledge development in Bangladesh: Present and future. . London: Intermediate Technology Publications & Dhaka: University Press

Conference Paper

• Lyon, S., Sillitoe, P., & Wilson, R. (2005). Implementation of e-science tools for complex analysis of human-environmental interaction.

Edited book

• Sillitoe, P., Bicker, A., & Pottier, J. (Eds.). (2002). Participating in development: approaches to indigenous knowledge. Routledge

Journal Article

• Sillitoe, P. (in press). Known & Unknown Stone: Papuan Petrology and Reciprocity. Archaeologies, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-024-09496-7
• Sillitoe, P. (2021). Pigs in Rites: Rights in Pigs: Porcine Values in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Anthropozoologica, 56(8), 117-136. https://doi.org/10.5252/anthropozoologica2021v56a8
• Koster, J., McElreath, R., Hill, K., Yu, D., Shepard, G., van Vliet, N., …Ross, C. (2020). The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation. Science Advances, 6(26), Article eaax9070. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax9070
• Sillitoe, P. (2018). Some Challenges of collaborative research with local knowledge. Antropologia pubblica, 4(1), 31-50. https://doi.org/10.1473/anpub.v4i1.126
• Sillitoe, P. (2018). Durham anthropology: a provincial history of a provisional discipline. History and Anthropology, 29(2), 233-274. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2017.1279158
• Sillitoe, P., Alshawi, A., & Al-Amir Hassan, A. (2010). Challenges to conservation: land use change and local participation in the Al Reem Biosphere Reserve, West Qatar. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 6(1), Article 28. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-6-28
• Sillitoe, P. (2010). Trust in development: some implications of knowing in indigenous knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 16(1), 12-30. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01594.x
• Sillitoe, P. (2002). After the 'affluent society' : cost of living in the Papua New Guinea highlands according to time and energy expenditure- income. Journal of Biosocial Science, 34(4), 433-461. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0021932002004339
• Sillitoe, P. (1999). Beating the boundaries: land tenure and identity in the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Journal of Anthropological Research, 55(3), 331-360
• Sillitoe, P. (1998). The development of indigenous knowledge: a new applied anthropology. Current Anthropology, 39(2), 223-252. https://doi.org/10.1086/204722