| Abstract: |
He feels the role of ethnoecology comes about thru the necessity of evaluating, in ecological terms, the efficiency of rural or primary productive systems thru the perspective of a new paradigm: sustainability. He tries to delineate the profile of ethnoecology as a new discipline. Harold Conklin introduced the term ethnoecology four decades ago in his classic study of the Hanunoo in the Philippines (Conklin 1954) He feels that there are 4 main intellectual sources or roots thru which a new ethnoecological approach has been forming during the last decades. 1 - from anthropology, as part of ethnoscience, new ethnography of semantic ethnography. Examples of anthropological ethnoecological approach: Rappaport (1968) among Tsembaga of New guinea, Ellen (1978) among the Nuaulu of Indonesia, and Descola (1988) among the Achuar of Amazon. 2 - from ethnobiology (this most important). Ethnobiological studies are supposedly restricted to the knowledge classification, use and management of the living world (plants, animals, fungi), but these limits are transgressed by those who have realized a sort of hidden ethnoecology within ethnobiology. (E.g. Alcorn and Posey). Posey is a decided promoter of ethnoecology as a way for the adequate development of Amazonia. Debate between utilitarians and intellectualists. By exploring only knowledge, distance is created from the practical problems of the farmers, or with the set of natural resources (including the non-biotic components) that the producer knows, utilizes, and manages Hunn (1982): . . . a promising frontier of scientific anthropology, integrating cognitive, linguistic, ecological, and evolutionary theory to define a dynamic ethnoecology. 3 - Third source feeding ethnoecology is situated among the ecologically oriented agronomy or agroecology. In this case, the evaluation of the knowledge and practices of the farmers is considered an inescapable part of agroecological investigation. The field of study is agriculture, thus more reduced in scope than ethnobiologists, the advantage being that their studies can be shorter with more rigor and precision. 4 - Environmental geography: the study of the systems of traditional management of resources. Situated at the opposite pole from ethnobiology, it is common for the geographers to concentrate heavily on the study of ancient and contemporary techniques of management of natural resources (water, soils, slope, space, surfaces, climates, and energy) conceived of as structures of the environment, and isolated from their respective ecological, social, political, or cultural contexts. Due to the differing research concerns, it is not possible to define clearly the profile of this new discipline. Towards delineating the dominion of ethnoecology - The obsession of separating intellectual phenomena (culture) from its practical purposes (production) is the first aspect to be surpassed in true ethnoecological research. How to do? Put in the center of analysis not the linguistic terms, cognitive structures, symbols, p[erceptual images, or useful species of techniques, but the concrete process thru which the informant produce his material conditions. Thus, to explore the connections between corpus (the whole repertory of symbols, concepts, and perceptions on nature) and praxis (the set of practical operations thru which take place the material appropriation of nature) in the concrete process of production should be the starting point of any ethnoecological research. This involving 'three unseparable domains of landscape: 'nature, production, and culture'. Here the task of the ethnoecologist is double: the exploration of how the rural producer (or informant) codifies (corpus) and utilizes (praxis) his productive space formed of natural resources, and 2) the confrontation of both aspects with the observers analysis. Thus you have the comparison of two models or images of a same productive reality: one as described and understood by the informant (folk model), and the other as described and understood from the point of view of the ethnoecologist (the interpretive or analysts model) So, ethnoecologist must carry out 4 main methodological steps: 1 - a description of the ecosystems which form the productive space under study (flora, fauna, weather, etc.) 2 - the decodification of the producer's corpus by means of a patient and meticulous dialogue with the informant 3 - an analysis of the forms of producers' appropriation of natural resources (praxis) 4 - the ecological assessment of this praxis through the analysis of the impacts of the use of natural resources on the structure and dynamics of the ecosystems being utilized. The corpus and how to study it: The transmission of this knowledge is generally done thru language, (and what about visions, dreams, ritual, omens, spiritual transmissions?). Thus memory is the most important resource of any rural producer. Corpus in one persons mind comes from cross-generational/historical sources, experiences social shared by one generation, personal experience, particular to each producer. The validity of this knowledge is expressed in the praxis. I.e. the success of the practices that allow the producer as well as his/her culture, to survive thru time, without destroying or degrading the source of his/her resources: nature. **the difference between traditional knowledge and ethnoecology: In ethnoecology each producer is using a set of experiences that are both old and new, as personal and collective. It is rather a modern tradition, or a synthesis between traditional and modernity. Science and Wisdom - It is a mistake to think that the corpus is an entity necessarily consisting of objective reason. It is a mistake to seek in the corpus properties and significance's similar to those of contemporary science. The classic view of this is that all other knowledge systems are just less developed versions of ours. Villoro (1982) calls these two ideal models of knowledge: science and wisdom. Here the guarantee of the appropriateness of science is objective justification, while that of wisdom is personal experience. The wise man hasn't been instructed by scientific treatise, of formalizing general knowledge about things, but thru personal observation, frequent dealings with other men, suffering, and struggle, contact with nature, and intense experience with culture. 'If science deals with personal knowledge only as confirmation, wisdom deals with knowledge only as a guide to personal experience. Therefore wisdom doesn't need universal justification. This criteria allows us to go beyond objective scientific criteria, to expand domain of ethnoecology Information from integrative (of knowledge systems) approach: beliefs, which have their most systemized form in myths - note the role played by these myths in the management of natural resources. Of relevance here is the research done on the function played by the cosmology of several groups in: 1) New Guinea - Rappaport, and 2) Amazonia - Descola, Reichel-Dolmatoff, Ross, Posey, as a mechanism to regulate the management of nature. Myths as containing conceptions of nature and therefore guidelines with how to deal with it. Myths are the equivalent of scientific treatises as a source of knowledge and direction from traditional cultures. Myths are the library. Myths are ways nature communicates with humans, often thru the medium of nature spirits which become characterize in stories, in the West these are often reduced to children's stories, trivialized and made irrelevant. Myths are therefore linked into nature intelligences, which provides guidelines for humans to act appropriately with nature and among themselves. Myths in this sense provide a linkage with nature assumed to be communicative with humans. Science is largely a dialogue among humans, ostensibly exclusive of any imput from non-human intelligences. Because the natural world is objectivl
y defined, science is exclusive of any input from its subject. This is analogous to the situation whereby traditional knowledge systems as expressed thru ethnoecological symbols and practices, was not engaged dialogically by outside researches. This practice is changing, as the validity of TK gains acceptance. The next step is to gain acceptance of where this TK often originated in the first place. That is the common traditional perception of nature as part of a coextensive community that includes humans and can be dialogically interacted with. This works in a more direct sense with the shaman as mediator between the non human or suprahuman communities, which finds its way into cultural practices of ritual and norms of respect for nature that comes of recognizing it as responsive to good or ill treatment. These studies reveal a conception of nature as a sacred space in some sort of equilibrium, which must be maintained during the production process. Mazatecs feel: human survival requires a relationship of exchange with nature. The present, the sacrifice, the gift, are fundamental to establish a relationship of symbolic exchange. This belief seems to be a general myth, common to many cultures. In trad. rural cultures, this subjectivity has ecological significance that directs productive behavior not as scientific evidence, but as reference to ideal values, to respect rather than on rationalist explanation based on the analyses of matter and energy fluxes in the ecosystem. Rappaport (1979): the most appropriate cognized models are not those that simply represent ecosystemic relations in objectively correct, material terms, but those that invest them with significance and value beyond themselves. Simply, you treat something better that you feel relational towards. So, corpus is thus a mixture of knowledge, belief systems, and their particular perceptions. The Cognitive System: This has received the most attention in recent decades. Researchers have studied: 1 - fractions (plants, animals, soils, etc.) 2 - dimensions (folk systematics, utilitarian elements), such as Berlin. Ethnoecology and sustainability: practical aims: He feels ethnoecology is a discipline to evaluate, from an ecological perspective, the efficiency of rural productive systems, then comparative analysis will be a required goal. Final goal of ethnoecology is to determine the ecological validity of all these productive systems. Hence the significance of ethnoecological research should be the evaluation of all those productive models that are useful for the implementation of sustainable (rural) development. Sustainability refers to the ability of a rural culture to maintain primary production thru time. Ethnoecology challenges paradigms of contemporary science in 3 ways: 1 - first by comparing forms of ecological knowledge other than those derived from scientific inquiry among rural cultures * ethnoecologies got subsumed under postcolonialist development specialists and the science they represent. The direct result of this has been to create social asymmetry where by the heirs of modern science transmit unidirectionally and vertically, knowledge, techniques, and experiences to a sector considered backwards, irrational, primitive, underdeveloped, and therefore ignorant. Rests on a) false assumptions of inferiority of rural cultures to technicians from urban centers, and b) idea that science is the only valid form of knowledge for the management of nature. Ethnoecology is thus designed to break epistemic monopoly of MWS by having as an essential aim the study of alternative and marginal forms of knowledge and corresponding practices. Thus ethnoecology offers a sort of relativism to which it is possible to recognize other modes of appropriation (note this word, 'appropriation' ) of nature not based on contemporary science. 2 - by disclosing an apparent ecological advantage of traditional (subsistence) producers over modern (capitalist) producers. This related to a growing assumption that productive systems belonging to traditional cultures seem to be more ecologically appropriate than modern, market oriented models of rural production. This impression has gained concensus 3 - by making unorthodox confluence between fact and value. In this case the supreme value guiding ethnoecological research is an environmental ethic concerned with the correct use of natural resources. Practical result of all the above is to propose ecologically appropriate models for the use and management of natural resources, generated by a close interaction and dialogue between researchers and the human groups being studied.
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