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

this could be conducted by examining patterns of similarity in ethnoecological
knowledge within and between groups of people who use the same areas.
The majority of interviewees were former balata bleeders, whose collective
experience covers a vast area of forest. Balata bleeders typically seem to have spent
most of their time working along particular lines within restricted geographical
locations, although some did range more widely. These locations, however, seem to
have been dispersed over much of the south-eastern corner of Guyana and indeed
beyond - one interviewee was a member of the legendary group of bleeders arrested
in Suriname on suspicion of spying (ARU 1992: 43). How much of this manifest in
interviews is not clear: some individuals seem to have reported solely on the basis of
their experience locally, while others clearly incorporated information from further
afield; only in a minority of cases were particular observations geographically
delimited by the interviewee. The uneven distribution of ecological information among
the population is a matter worthy of further investigation, and the complementary
use of group and individual interviews would be a useful technique in this.
3. Patterning of knowledge according to frequency of occurrence and ease of
observation.
It is obvious that the more rarely an event occurs, the less likely it is to be observed
and retained to be subsequently mentioned in an interview. Rare events witnessed
some time in the past are also presumably less likely to be recalled in the interview
situation. The low frequency with which some food items were mentioned may reflect
relatively low importance in the diet of the animal in question. A similar effect may
result from factors which reduce the likelihood of observation, such as inaccessibility
for human observers or distribution that is clumped within areas rarely visited by
people or otherwise geographically restricted.
Resolving the problems arising from inter-informant variability in responses is a
significant methodological challenge, which must be overcome if ethnoecology is to
fulfil the potential that is the main subject of this thesis. Some of the methodological
improvements I suggest towards the end of the next chapter could contribute to this;
how successful they are in this respect is a question which can be answered only
when they are taken into the field. Analytical advancements which would provide
more effective and accurate methods for evaluating contradictory data and
determining whether answers given with low frequency reflect specialised knowledge
or informant error, would clearly be of great use. Consensus analysis has the potential
to be useful in this. I did make attempts to employ it in the present analysis, but
existing methods appeared not to be designed to cope with data of this sort and