Document: LAU-3-508-191

Ecology in its culture: An anthropological inquiry into knowledge, boundaries, and privilege.

NADER, L.*

University of California, Berkeley CA 97420 USA ¹

Abstract:
Anthropologists often observe that amongst indigenous peoples, humans and the natural world are not conceptually opposed, but part of the same reality. If, as the Maori, one believes that humans, bird, and trees are descended from a common source, all are part of a common order of things, and humans and animals are peers capable of agency. At the same time it is repeatedly noted that in the West, humans are conceptualized as separate from nature, an observation that needs to be qualified. For while it is true that the prevailing mode of thought tends to regard nature as a physical entity apart from humans, there is another thread that emphasizes humans integrated with the natural world. Darwin and Francis of Assisi are cases in point. In the "developed" world, however, where humans are dedicated to exploiting natural resources, humans are not seen as integrated in the natural world. Charting new directions requires we recognize the silencing effect of the dominant Western science tradition, a science that derives its power because it is not confined to particularities. Ecological science is the science of totalities. Principles in an ecological, rather than a physics, model may not be true for all times and places. Charting new directions requires science to recognize particularities, a science not divorced from consideration of people with the rest of the natural world share agency as integral parts of the natural world.

Keywords: particularities, ecological models

This abstract is being presented at: 1:15 PM in session:
Symposium # 24: Re-thinking the "and" in Humans and Nature: Ecology at the Boundary of Human Systems.