The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
political features in which the process of knowledge generation and transmission is
embedded. Given this framework, which embraces a diachronic perspective to focus
on current and past experiences, it has to be recalled that the cultural frame cannot be
captured in its totality but only in fragmentary aspects. As the described processes are
far more complex than any ethnographic description can acknowledge, the chapter
deals with selected facets of larger systems that are interlinked by ubiquitous elements
such as particular knowledge expressions and symbols, which make up crucial patterns
of the constantly evolving cultural context.
As has been outlined in a prior chapter, environmental anthropology is distinguished
by a diversity of subject matters and methods. One of the latest trends of investigation
has been framed in terms of research in ethnoecology, upon which the findings
in the following chapters are based. As commented by Faulstich (2005: 622f.), the
study of »cultural explications of nature« entails focused research on indigenous
knowledge, including those aspects of culture that relate to environmental concerns
directly in terms of natural resource use patterns and indirectly through social configurations,
cosmological notions and religious beliefs. Emphasising local understandings
of nature, ethnoecological research focuses on the importance of cognition in shaping
human behaviour. Thus, it entails the investigation of systems of perception, cognition,
belief, symbols and uses of the natural environment. It shows that indigenous
practices of land use and resource management are not only adapted to local ecosystems
but have shaped those ecosystems in ways that have made them more diverse
and stable. Local cognitive understandings of the environment and specific knowledge
systems of indigenous communities are closely intertwined with broader social, economic
and political contexts. Thus, analytical attention centres explicitly on the nexus
between biophysical, socio-cultural and politico-economic domains.
Many of the factors that influence local land use practices lie outside the control
or knowledge of peasants who are increasingly becoming part of an intensified global
system. An understanding of these connections requires the analysis of the political,
economic and social context of ecological change. The human environmental relationship
is essentially dynamic in a variety of ways and social entities develop through continual
interaction between human beings, the material world and the symbolic realm.
Meanings encoded in and represented by the landscape are in a continually evolving
relationship. It is thus a creative process of constant evaluation, integration and adaptation
to inputs coming through a variety of channels that are also external to the local
system. Uncertainty and unpredictability are characteristics of all ecosystems, included
managed ones. Social learning appears to be the way in which societies respond to uncertainty.
Often this involves learning not at the level of the individual but at the level
of society or institutions; adaptive management is thus designed to improve on trialand-error-learning.
Such environmental knowledge and accompanying practices are
closely related to commonly held values about how people understand the world and
their place in it. Nevertheless, these values may change with the appearance of new
forms of knowledge and technologies.