The Cultural Context of Biodiversity Conservation

Seen and Unseen Dimensions of Indigenous Knowledge among Q'eqchi' Communities in Guatemala

Petra Maass

• Publisher: University of Akron Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781935603351
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

How are biological diversity, protected areas, indigenous knowledge and religious worldviews related? From an anthropological perspective, this book provides an introduction into the complex subject of conservation policies that cannot be addressed without recognising the encompassing relationship between discursive, political, economic, social and ecological facets. By facing these interdependencies across global, national and local dynamics, it draws on an ethnographic case study among Maya-Q'eqchi' communities living in the margins of protected areas in Guatemala. In documenting the cultural aspects of landscape, the study explores the coherence of diverse expressions of indigenous knowledge. It intends to remind of cultural values and beliefs closely tied to subsistence activities and ritual practices that define local perceptions of the natural environment. The basic idea is to illustrate that there are different ways of knowing and reasoning, seeing and endowing the world with meaning, which include visible material and invisible interpretative understandings. These tend to be underestimated issues in international debates and may provide an alternative approach upon which conservation initiatives responsive to the needs of the humans involved should be based on.

1 INTRODUCTION – from global to local

In the context of global political governance, environmental issues have become increasingly prominent in the past two decades. Among other major international agreements that have been reached in the 1990s, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) paid particular attention to the protection of the ›global commons‹. Based on the realisation that many areas of the world that contain high levels of biodiversity are anthropogenic landscapes inhabited by indigenous and local communities, the significant role such communities play in preserving natural resources was underlined in the convention. Article 8 asserts the crucial role of protected areas in achieving the objectives of the agreement. In particular, it calls for the acknowledgement and wider application of local knowledge systems as they may contribute to the protection of biodiversity in natural surroundings. Building on the recognition that the effective management of protected landscapes depends on the participation of local residents, current approaches have been refined, linking conservation initiatives with community-based development schemes. The emergence of such new political forms in response to conjunctions of global and local actors that cut across national boundaries became a discursive subject of growing interest and enhanced new interdisciplinary enterprises in the academic domain. The discourse on the relationship between economic, ecological and social issues in sustainable development and biodiversity conservation has gradually emphasised the re-discovery of culture. A widened, anthropological conception was introduced to encompass a whole complex of distinctive material and non-material characteristics of societies, based on systems of knowledge, values, traditions and beliefs. In this process, indigenous knowledge as a prime part of culture has come to play an important role in international debates on development planning and conservation strategies.

The initial objective of this study is to analyse the role of indigenous communities and their particular knowledge systems in the global environmental discourse. Based on the premise that any knowledge is embedded culturally, the study is concerned with the question of how to protect biodiversity in agreement with a people-oriented model of natural resource management. A primary aim is to move towards an understanding in the more encompassing sense of knowledge associated with social mechanisms, historical currents, political issues, cultural identities and interpretations by means of which people structure and comprehend their worlds. I examined these complex articulations in an ethnographic case study among Maya-Q'eqchi' communities living adjacent to protected areas in Alta Verapaz in Guatemala.

The operative paradigm that underlies the anthropological perspective indicates that a comprehensive understanding of the cultural context is essential to the success of any initiative designed to promote the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity. It is also important to anticipate that human cognitive understandings of nature are culturally embedded, bound to locality and intertwined with the broader context. This implies a multidimensional reality in which diverse economic, social, political and historical aspects intersect. Above and beyond its analytical focus on the nexus between biophysical, socio-cultural and politico-economic domains, the study intends to document that indigenous knowledge depends not only on the relationship between humans and nature, but also on the relationship between the visible material and the invisible spiritual worlds. Especially, it aims to explore the significance of the internal dynamics of values related to local landscapes and beliefs in the intimate attachment of humans to nature, which are closely tied to subsistence activities and ritual practices that define perceptions of the environment. This unseen dimension that underlies natural resource use patterns tends to be underestimated in the international environmental debate on biodiversity conservation policies and is often dismissed in the praxis of protected area management. In developing this argument I will identify the distinct spheres and experiences of indigenous peoples that constitute decisive aspects of the cultural frame in which conservation efforts take place. The choice of contextualisation reflects my intention to create coherence and uncover interrelationships on diverse levels of human agency. Context derives from the Latin verb texere, which means ›to weave‹. Correspondingly, the related verb contexere carries the meaning of ›to weave together‹. In a metaphorical sense, I intend to discover the interwoven character of the political, discursive, material and symbolic dimensions of the human-environment relation and to weave together the seen phenomena and the commonly unseen meanings inherent in indigenous knowledge systems within the expanded frame of global conservation efforts.¹

1.1 The interdisciplinary approach

Human beings don't just look and see. Things are not just there. How we see, what we see, and what we make of what we see are shaped by the elements of our mental maps. (McCarthy 1996: 6)

The present study is part of an interdisciplinary research project focusing explicitly on the CBD as signed at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Not until the agreement came into force was scientific attention drawn to interdisciplinary approaches to comprehend the driving undercurrents of environmental and social changes associated with global phenomena. Given the importance of biological diversity and sustainable development as central concepts in the global discourse, the academic challenge consists in moving beyond disciplinary boundaries in order to encounter the complexity of ecological, social, political and economic issues relating to the conservation of biodiversity. To capture these interconnected issues, more holistically conceived frameworks have been widely emphasised. In particular, new approaches that appreciate different research traditions and methodologies, especially in the fields relevant to the implementation of the CBD need to be developed. As an ambitious attempt to encounter this demand, a research programme was designed at the University of Göttingen, entitled Valuation and Conservation of Biodiversity. Implementation of Nature Conservation Strategies within the Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the three-year graduate programme, initiated in October 2000, involved 14 disciplines from eight faculties. Within this project, particular emphasis was given to the investigation of problems and perspectives arising from the implementation of the CBD. Thereby, the main attention centred on the establishment of protected areas as a significant tool of in situ conservation of biological diversity. Given this frame of inquiry, the scientific questions were related to different levels of analysis.²

Departing from economic and juridical perspectives, one working group questioned global dimensions and general issues of the CBD as a whole, beyond concrete considerations concerning national implementation strategies. Examining a national example, a second group focused on the implications of the establishment of the National Park Unteres Odertal in eastern Germany. The investigations included contributions from ecology, geography, political science, environmental history and rural sociology. The third working group, which my study is part of, combined equally various disciplinary fractions including agricultural economics, landscape ecology, conservation biology and environmental anthropology. Starting from these perspectives, local, regional and national perspectives on conservation strategies implemented in Guatemala were investigated. The study areas were located in the central highlands and northern lowlands of the department Alta Verapaz. The investigations took place in joint-ventures with Guatemalan research counterparts and were also supported by an institutional collaboration with various local NGOs.³

In addition to field research undertaken to deepen particular scientific understandings, the graduate programme involved a wide range of seminars, workshops, conferences and encounters with representatives from academic and public domains. On these occasions, discussions comprised multi-layered issues related to environmental protection, including theoretical, methodological and ethical implications. They involved especially the exchange of approaches and founding principles of the concerned disciplines. The transdisciplinary nature of communication and the many experiences informed by the collective endeavour to find a common language have influenced the scope of the present anthropological work and have led to insights that underlie the way the themes as presented in the following have been approached. Although not explicitly taken into systematic account, the communicative efforts have enhanced my understanding of epistemological implications inherent in cross-cultural and inter-professional ventures engaged with the production of knowledge through research. In addition to the differences in terms of varying frames of reference, the task to approach problems and perspectives arising from the implementation of the CBD from distinct disciplinary perspectives was challenged by the absence of a clearly bounded object of study. A result of insights emerging from encounters of different ›mental maps‹, the contextual design of the thesis is not only an attempt to document and interpret systems of natural resource use as observed among indigenous communities in Guatemala. The topical and theoretical concerns have also been configured by institutional affiliation. Beyond the ethnographic focus on conditions of cultural significance at the village level, the study frames a broader set of subjects and includes shifts across multiple sites of analysis from transnational movements and national institutions to scientific arguments in the academic discourse. Given this background, the thesis also addresses non-anthropologists involved in research on environment and development.

1.2 What's it all about?

[T]he unseen is as much a part of society as that what which is seen – the spiritual is as much a part of reality as the material. In fact, there is a complementary relationship between the two, with the spiritual being more powerful than the material. (Posey 2002: 28)

In the above outlined scope ranging from environmental regimes on the global level to resource use patterns of indigenous communities on the local level, this study entails a wide spectrum of themes. It is about people and landscapes, national parks and rural economy, plants and beliefs, history and imagery, science and spirituality, values and conflicts, change and continuity, identity and memory, education and communication, migration and adaptation, power and resistance, respect and reciprocity, time and space, rituals and rainforests, transects and taxonomies, land and language, war and muteness, peanuts and paradigms, soils and dreams, temples and moon light, taboos and deities, holy caves and cell structures, ethnic movements and cardinal directions, illiteracy and ensouled geography, the ›West‹ and the ›Third World‹, NGOs and ICDPs, UNCED and AIDPI. It is also about placelings and hotspots, 13 sacred mountains and ›shadows in a box‹. Among others, these configurations combine to inform the cultural context of biodiversity conservation.

Here, context is not to be seen as a self-evident thing in itself. It is rather a set of expandable relations and as such, it is my interpretation. Correspondingly, the study is also about me, the person ›weaving‹ the text, through which she reflects upon professional assumptions and perspectives interwoven with personal experiences and convictions. ›Context‹ is one of the central concepts of anthropology and is relied upon as an indispensable part of methodological and theoretical concerns. It implies »a generalised set of connections thought in some way or other to be construed as relevant to the object or event under discussion« (Dilley 1999: 4). One of my primary purposes in invoking a number of these contexts has been to counter universalist context-free approaches of conventional natural science research concerned with biodiversity conservation. In many forms of economic and political analyses, the historical and spatial boundaries of human agency are also left unquestioned. In these analyses, reality is understood in terms of material conditions external to human beings and considered to be universal across time and space. In this anthropological work, I intend to question the division between material and ideal in favour of a concept in which humans construct their view of the world and understandings of phenomena in accordance with cultural practices, social interaction and symbolic means.

In its widest sense, the study is about the realms of culture and nature. The relationship between these two domains of reality has been a longstanding topic of philosophical debate. Since who we are depends in part on where we are, the question of how much influence natural environments have in shaping humans' lives and vice versa has been an issue raised repeatedly by cultural anthropologists. Due to the growing relevance of global environmental issues, such themes have earned increased attention and led to the formation of new disciplinary currents. Research in the field of environmental anthropology rests on the tenet that human-nature interaction takes place via culture. Committed to the paradigm of cultural relativism, anthropologists view culture as an all-encompassing realm, the elements of which are intrinsically interrelated. Though a multi-layered concept, anthropologists generally agree in defining culture as »a socially transmitted system of information, where ›information‹ includes knowledge, beliefs and values, and which constitutes a blueprint for behaviour« (Oviedo et al. 2000: 9).

In pleading for an interpretative approach, Geertz considers culture not as »something to which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed« (1975: 14). For him, it is, rather, a context, something within which these events and processes can be intelligibly described. In his view, the study of cultures is directed toward the study of symbolic and signifying systems by means of which humans communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life by means of which a social order is communicated and reproduced. By applying his concept of culture, which is essentially a semiotic one, I focus in the following on the ways in which social actors construct a pattern of meanings to their natural and social surroundings, their own identity and the practices in which these meanings are historically transmitted. If culture is ›a web of significance‹ humans have spun and through which they interpret their experience and which guides their action, its analysis is not an experimental science in search of general law but an interpretative one in search for meaning. Given this primacy of anthropology as an interpretative discipline, there are no ultimate laws that determine the ways people behave, for this is the result of complex interactions on the basis of cultural values. Thus, the question of how the values of indigenous peoples toward nature are expressed culturally needs to be addressed. Such values, which are highly variable and difficult to quantify, often contrast with values illuminated through conventional scientific paradigms, which are the foundation for most conservation initiatives.

Values are subtle and elusive things: they run like a fine thread through the fabric of culture, weaving through every form and action, but emerging only in the patterns. Yet, however intangible, they knit these forms and actions into a cultural whole, shaping the human environmental relationship and pulling people inescapably into particular kinds of interaction with their material world. While beliefs, values and cultural schemata may be group-specific, they are built upon the universal process of cognition through which all human beings ›learn the world‹. […] Beliefs and values received, inculcated and passed on through a process of socialisation that creates a culturally specific relationship with the environment. This process consists of several elements: the creation of categories, the learning of language, and the acquisition and dissemination of cultural knowledge. Each involves an interaction with the physical, social and cultural environment and contributes to the formation of individual and collective identity. All are vital to the inculcation of values; but, equally, they are intangibles of culture – elusive and invisible streams that carry culture forward. (Strang 1997: 173, 178)

As the main topic in the following deals with the relevance of cultural knowledge, I draw further on scholars like McCarthy (1996) and Barth (2002), who have argued for a perspective that recognises knowledge as a major modality of culture. Using knowledge as synonym for culture, it may be defined as what humans employ to interpret and act on the world. This caption involves all the ways of understanding we use to make up our experienced reality, including feelings, thoughts, attitudes and embodied skills. Accordingly, knowledge may be defined as »any and every set of ideas and acts accepted by one or another social group or society of people – ideas and acts pertaining to what they accept as real for them and for others« (McCarthy 1996: 23). The search for knowledge is inevitably a part of all human life. All societies have generalisation procedures that turn individual knowledge into culturally constructed knowledge. I assume that this has to be encountered as a social, historical and transitory product integral to the respective cultural system it has been generated in. It is thus understood within the broader category of culture, as an entire range of phenomena that include the manifold types of knowledges, symbols, and images used in the various domains of human life. Just as knowledge cannot be approached unrelated to other aspects of social...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction - from global to local
• 2 The Global Context - international policies and local environments
• 3 The Discursive Context - conceptual approaches from anthropology
• 4 The Local Context - national policies and indigenous communities
• 5 Local Expressions Of Indigenous Knowledge
• 6 Concluding Remarks - from local to global
• Epilogue
• References
• Appendix