scholarly journals Pioneering political ecology: perceptions of nature, Indigenous practices and power relations during Alexander von Humboldt's travels in Latin America

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Eibach ◽  
Tobias Haller
Keyword(s):  
Political Ecology ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Natural Scientist ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt ◽  
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
The One

This article is an attempt to discuss the image of Alexander von Humboldt as a pure natural scientist with a humanist ethos, and to highlight that he was in fact one of the first thinkers who anticipated positions known today as political ecology. We outline that his universal knowledge obviously has contradictory perspectives, and was interpreted in several directions. On the one hand, there is the position taken by post-colonial critics that Humboldt showed Eurocentric and imperialist thinking during his travels to the Americas, as Pratt has advocated. On the other hand, and in explicit contrast to the post-colonial critique, Humboldt has been regarded by Sachs as a founding figure of American environmentalism and as "perhaps, the first ecological thinker." Furthermore, Wulf's biography titled The Invention of Nature tries to show that Humboldt wanted to bridge the gap between the emerging natural sciences and Romanticist aesthetics. However, based on his writings, we argue that his perception of nature has been misread and that his position was shaped by a view akin to open and critical political ecology, as opposed to pure nature constructivism without including local humans. We show this by focusing on his research methods that were open to local Indigenous ecological knowledge, his appraisal of Indigenous socio-cultural systems, his perception of nature as Indigenous cultural landscapes degraded by colonial and early capitalist market forces, his openness towards Indigenous ontologies of what we call nature, and finally his focus on local institutions for the sustainable governance of resources.

scholarly journals Creation of a Field Guide to Camas Prairie Plants with Undergraduates: Project-Based Learning Combined with Epistemological Decolonization

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Frederica Bowcutt
Keyword(s):  
Service Learning ◽  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
Puget Sound ◽  
The United States ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Food Plants ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
College Level ◽  
White Oak ◽  
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge

Remnant camas prairies and associated oak woodlands are the focus of contemporary Indigenous food sovereignty efforts in the Salish Sea (aka Puget Sound) region of western Washington. They are also the focus of research and restoration to conserve at-risk species of animals and plants protected under the United States Endangered Species Act. Currently there is little collaboration between tribes and restoration scientists. These conditions create an opportunity and ethical imperative for developing undergraduate curriculum that highlights the connections between biodiversity conservation and traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge. Patchy mosaic prairie-oak woodland vegetation visibly reflects the imprint of human activity, which includes past burning to foster native food plants including common camas (Camassia quamash) and Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana). Using a floristic research project focused on these cultural landscapes as a case study, this essay illustrates how interdisciplinary inquiry and service learning can enrich college-level plant taxonomy curriculum, while creating rich opportunities for students to link their botanical studies to a historically-grounded understanding of why the conservation challenges exist in the first place. Through this collaborative, multi-year research effort, students contribute to the production of needed resources useful to regional conservation efforts. Affiliated learning communities also consider what it might mean to decolonize botanical knowledge in the context of ecological restoration.

Óscar Romero and the Politics of Sainthood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Manuel A. Vasquez ◽  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The One

In this article, we explore the debates surrounding the proposed canonization of Archbishop Oscar Romero, an outspoken defender of human rights and the poor during the civil war in El Salvador, who was assassinated in March 1980 by paramilitary death squads while saying Mass. More specifically, we examine the tension between, on the one hand, local and popular understandings of Romero’s life and legacy and, on the other hand, transnational and institutional interpretations. We argue that the reluctance of the Vatican to advance Romero’s canonization process has to do with the need to domesticate and “privatize” his image. This depoliticization of Romero’s work and teachings is a part of a larger agenda of neo-Romanization, an attempt by the Holy See to redeploy a post-colonial and transnational Catholic regime in the face of the crisis of modernity and the advent of postmodern relativism. This redeployment is based on the control of local religious expressions, particularly those that advocate for a more participatory church, which have proliferated with contemporary globalization

Subordinate-Deity Models of Ultimate Reality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley J. Wildman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Metaphysical Problem ◽  
Axial Age ◽  
Colonial Resistance ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

Subordinate-deity models of ultimate reality affirm that God is Highest Being within an ultimate reality that is neither conceptually tractable nor religiously relevant. Subordinate-deity models ceded their dominance to agential-being models of ultimate reality by refusing to supply a comprehensive answer to the metaphysical problem of the One and the Many in the wake of the Axial-Age interest in that problem, but they have revived in the twentieth century due to post-colonial resistance to putatively comprehensive explanations. Subordinate-deity ultimacy models resist the Intentionality Attribution and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Rational Practicality dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the subordinate-deity class of ultimacy models are discussed.

The 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Strecker
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscapes ◽  
World Heritage ◽  
Unesco World Heritage ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Landscape Governance ◽  
World Heritage Convention ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Conceptual Dependency ◽  
Landscape Protection

Chapter 5 analyses the evolving conception and protection of landscape in the World Heritage Convention. First, it traces the development of landscape protection from its early conceptual dependency on nature, to the incorporation of ‘cultural landscapes’ within the Convention’s scope in 1992. It then discusses the typology of cultural landscapes, issues of representativeness and the implications of the Word Heritage system for landscape protection globally, as well as locally. In this regard, a number of cases are analysed which, on the one hand, support the World Heritage Convention’s instrumental role in landscape governance, but which on the other, highlight the problems involved in ascribing World Heritage status to living landscapes from a spatial justice perspective.

Indigenous Epistemologies of North America

Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Barry Allen
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Traditional Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Indigenous Cultures ◽  
Indigenous Epistemologies ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
The Difference

Abstract Indigenous cultures of North America confronted a problem of knowledge different from that of canonical European philosophy. The European problem is to identify and overcome obstacles to the perfection of knowledge as science, while the Indigenous problem is to conserve a legacy of practice fused with a territory. Complicating the difference is that one of these traditions violently colonized the other, and with colonization the Indigenous problem changes. The old problem of inter-generational stability cannot be separated from the post-colonial problem of sovereignty in the land where the knowledge makes sense. I differentiate the question of the value of knowledge (Part 1), and its content (Part 2). The qualities these epistemologies favor define what I call ceremonial knowledge, that is, knowledge that sustains a ceremonial community. The question of content considers the interdisciplinary research of Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge, as well as the issue of epistemic decolonization.

A Contextual Genealogical Approach to Study the Religious

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Edgar Zavala-Pelayo
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Analytical Procedures ◽  
The One

Abstract The paper seeks to fill the gap in the literature that on the one hand adopts productively a Foucauldian genealogical approach to analyze religious phenomena yet on the other hand offers only minimum details, or no account, of methodological criteria and analytical procedures. Drawing retrospectively on the methodological experiences and insights of the author’s previous genealogical exercises, and the findings of some of the works above, the paper develops a contextual genealogical approach to study the religious in colonial and post-colonial settings with a Christian background. Based on a critical adoption of Nietzschean and Foucauldian tenets and six strategic analytical axes, the approach is presented as an open and flexible context-oriented methodological alternative for the necessarily constant rethinking of the religious in the present.

Integrating indigenous ecological knowledge and customary sea tenure with marine and social science for conservation of bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) in the Roviana Lagoon, Solomon Islands

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHANKAR ASWANI ◽  
RICHARD J. HAMILTON
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Small Fish ◽  
Lunar Periodicity ◽  
The People ◽  
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Sea Tenure ◽  
Bolbometopon Muricatum

Indigenous ecological knowledge and customary sea tenure may be integrated with marine and social science to conserve the bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) in the Roviana Lagoon, Western Solomon Islands. Three aspects of indigenous ecological knowledge in Roviana were identified as most relevant for the management and conservation of bumphead parrotfish, and studied through a combination of marine science and anthropological methods. These were (1) local claims that fishing pressure has had a significant impact on bumphead parrotfish populations in the Roviana Lagoon; (2) the claim that only small bumphead parrotfish were ever seen or captured in the inner lagoon and that very small fish were restricted to specific shallow inner-lagoon nursery regions; and (3) assertions made by local divers that bumphead parrotfish predominantly aggregated at night around the new moon period and that catches were highest at that time. The research supported claims (1) and (2), but did not support proposition (3). Although the people of the Roviana Lagoon had similar conceptions about their entitlement rights to sea space, there were marked differences among regional villages in their opinions regarding governance and actual operational rules of management in the Lagoon. Contemporary differences in management strategies resulted from people's historical and spatial patterns of settlement across the landscape and adjoining seascapes, and the attendant impact of these patterns on property relations. This was crucial in distinguishing between those villages that held secure tenure over their contiguous sea estates from those that did not. Indigenous ecological knowledge served to (1) verify that the bumphead parrotfish was a species in urgent need of protection; (2) explain how different habitats structured the size distribution of bumphead parrotfish; (3) identify sensitive locations and habitats in need of protection; and (4) explain the effect of lunar periodicity on bumphead parrotfish behaviour and catch rates. Secure customary sea tenure identified locations best suited to bumphead parrotfish management programmes, with a greater likelihood for local participation and programme success. The information was used to establish two marine protected areas in the region for bumphead parrotfish conservation.

scholarly journals Nexus between Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Ecosystem Services: A Socio-Ecological Analysis for Sustainable Ecosystem Management

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manob Das ◽  
Arijit Das ◽  
Selim Seikh ◽  
Rajiv Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Management ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Indigenous Ecological Knowledge ◽  
Demographic Attributes ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The well-being of the human society cannot be ensured and sustainable unless the flow of Ecosystem Services (ESs) would be matching with their consistent demand. The consistent flow of ESs required sustainable management of ecological resources of the ecosystem. The management of ecosystem can be ensured with variety of approaches. Integration of indigenous ecological knowledge (IEK) in management prescription with the view that IEK based extraction of ESs ensures removal of resources from the ecosystem within the limit thereby ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem. Present study is an evaluation to understand the nexus between ESs and IEK for sustainable environmental management. The focus of the study was a tribal dominated socio-ecological patch of Barind Region of Malda district, Eastern India. The assessment of ESs and IEK was based on the data collected from the randomly selected tribal households following the pre-tested questionnaire containing questions on ESs as per millennium ecosystem assessment. The data were analyzed following social preference approach, and statistical tests (Krushkal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney). General linear model (GLM) has also been used to examine the impact of socio-demographic attributes on the perceived valuation of ESs. The results revealed that the provisioning ESs (such as water, fuel wood, medical plants) was most preferred followed by cultural and regulating ESs by tribal. Differential importance of ESs was observed among tribal and accounted by gender, education as well as age of the tribe. A gap between the actual accessibility and evaluation of ESs by the tribal communities was also apparent. The socio-demographic attributes have an immense impact on the valuation of ecosystem services and also governed based on the IEK. Various types of indigenous ecological belief systems were closely linked with conservation of ecosystem and sustainable supply of ESs. Present study can contribute to understand socio-ecological nexus with the lens of IEK in tribal dominated ecological landscapes for improved ecosystem and environmental management besides ensuring sustainability of flow of ecosystem services.

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