Ethnoecology, Resource Use, Conservation And Development In A ...

More fundamentally, it is unlikely that the areas of knowledge under investigation
were cognitively ordered by interviewees according to the same abstract categories
as I employed in the collection of information. Most interviewees will not have
employed a mental category corresponding to an interview topic such as 'information
on animal (x)' which could be instantly recalled and verbalised on demand.
Evidence for this exists in the way in which interview data was supplemented with
information given in other contexts. Aside from those discussed above, many
interviewees were prompted to give extra dietary information by the sight of fruits I
had collected for identification. One informant gave information on the ecology of
several tree species, in both interview and unsupervised writing. Substantial quantities
of information on animal diets was obtained in both these exercises, that had not
appeared in his interviews or written pieces about the animal species concerned. This
phenomenon of incomplete recall is a significant methodological problem, which leads
to incomplete data sets and a difficulty in analysis. I address this problem more fully
later (chapter 7.14.2), and make a number of suggestions for improved methodology
that could contribute to overcoming it.
2. Patterning of information according to variation in knowledge among interviewees.
The majority of information on ecology appeared to derive from personal observation;
information based upon hearsay or anecdote was generally qualified as such during
the course of the interview (chapter 6.2.2 above). Much of the inter-individual
variation in information given in interviews derives from variation in the personal
experience upon which it is based. Biogeography is an important factor: most
individuals concentrate the majority of their forest-based activities within fairly
restricted geographical areas - one or two farm roads or hunting lines, for example -
and there may be substantial differences in floristic composition among these sites.
These local floristic differences will effect differences in the diets of herbivorous,
particularly frugivorous, animals. Many important species of fruit tree have very
patchy distributions, and local differences in abundance of particular species will exert
strong effects on the frequency with which particular animal species may be observed
to feed upon them. To a certain extent, then, many informants were reporting
information on the diets of animals within quite specific localities. Within Maruranau,
there are people from the north of the village who have rarely, if ever, visited areas of
the forest in the south of the reservation, and vice versa. The use of aggregated data
from interviews with several people increases the area of forest and range of floristic
communities effectively studied in this fashion. A systematic test of the effects of