The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

Introduction
agricultural practices and the indigenous worldview gives an account of extensive
fieldwork recently undertaken in rural communities of Alta Verapaz. Another revealing
study from anthropology, realised by Carlos Flores Arenales (1999), informs about
the post-war situation as faced by the Q'eqchi' population. In documenting a collaborative
filmmaking experience, his work is one of the first endeavours to perceptively examine
the cultural effects of social change due to the political violence that has dominated
the entire cultural setting in the past decades. He presents a commendable outline
on the actual process of identity reconstruction. The theme of identity has also
been pronounced by Almudena Hernando Gonzalo (1999), who takes a different ethnographic
view by exploring cultural perceptions of landscape among the Q'eqchi'.
With regard to issues related to protected area management, it can be said that
relatively few scholars have conducted studies in the area. In comparison to the
northern lowlands, where much of the recent work has been undertaken, the Q'eqchi'
heartland gained less attention. So far, no account focusing on the cultural context of
biodiversity conservation has been provided that would integrate questions of global
range with issues of national relevance and an analysis of local knowledge as realised
in the present work. Given this gap, the study also intends to contribute to the ongoing
discussion on conservational approaches by taking into account social and spiritual
aspects of indigenous resource use systems. Beyond their mere documentation, the
study explicitly emphasises the need to consider the impact of national policies in the
historic context. In this sense, the applied approach is motivated by an ex-centric intention
as it adopts a decentralised perspective on different knowledge dimensions.
1.4 The conceptual scheme
Unconscious values and hidden agendas will need to be brought into the light of critical review. (Metzner
1993: 168)
In general terms, it has been stated by Richard Howitt that for many indigenous people,
the landscape in which they live is a »seamless fabric of physical, spiritual and cultural
threads« (2001: 173). Anthropological engagement attempts to unravel these
multiple threads and to document how knowledge and its modes of representation
connect into some larger whole. This venture presents considerable analytical difficulties,
since the study raises questions of how people view, know and use their environment
and touches on the most far-reaching ideas about reality and meanings. The
challenging encounter with these highly complex phenomena informed the undertaking
of ›weaving together‹ the multi-layered threads to address various spatial and temporal
scales. In organising these threads, the structure of the thesis is intended to highlight
the point that the study offers a significant way of linking levels of analysis. Research
at each level feeds into, and illuminates findings of other levels. However, dealing
with material and symbolic dimensions of social phenomena means inevitably to
deal with complexity that often makes conventional narrative styles difficult to write
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