The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

Local expressions of indigenous knowledge
5.2 The context of meaning – the symbolic dimension
When we deal with culture we are dealing with symbols that communicate the soul of a host community.
(Furze et al. 1996: 162)
Building on the previous description of ›real‹ features of indigenous knowledge, the
following chapter concentrates on its less apparent ›imagined‹ expressions. It is about
the human encounter with the non-human environment, focusing on important attributes
of the indigenous worldview. In revealing a mostly unspoken dimension incorporated
into common activities, stored in symbols, dramatised in rituals and correlated
with cultural values, it seeks to explore selected aspects of what Escobar, referring
to local knowledge, has defined as »a mode of place-based consciousness, a place-specific
[...] way of endowing the world with meaning« (2001: 153). It will be shown that the crucial
factors intervening between natural conditions and social structures involve more than
knowledge in terms of techniques to manipulate the natural environment. The chapter
intends to illustrate the complementary relationship between the seen and the unseen
parts of culture and gives evidence of the spiritual, which belongs to Q'eqchi' reality as
much as the material does.
173