A View from a Point Ethnoecology as Situated Knowledge – Nazarea
The scale broadens as we go back to one of the first articles read in class. Nazarea aims to assess how times have changed and how we no longer interact and perceive the environment as we did once before. This is a problem because with the old ideology, we are missing out on countless opportunities to redefine ethnoecology. Nazarea uses the scope of culture to explore the relationship and also uses natives and their local knowledge to explain her take on Ethnoecology. Unlike the arguments made by Berkes, Nazarea uses a good deal of other anthropologists’ approaches and explains what she believes to be flawed about them. Her dissatisfaction with the current state of defining culture and our environment come from the lack of cognitive attention. By paying more attention and refocusing the dialogue about culture on decisions and the behavior changes that accompany it, we will be able to further our understanding about our environmental interactions. Japanese culture has been seen to have a deep love of nature, with the roots stemming from the Shinto religion. However, some researchers believe the love of nature to be harmful to the ecosystem as the Japanese focus their “nature” in certain plants and seasons, such as cherry blossoms. Additionally, there have been arguments made about how Japanese citizens from different backgrounds have formed a care ethic towards the environment. That is to say, each type of citizen has a different way of viewing the environment, and therefore it cannot be labeled. Although Japan emphasizes nature through cultural lenses, it is important that they also emphasize nature in order to enhance the ecosystem and the environment as a whole. (Maruyama 2000) I thought the connection towards the Japanese love of nature was really interesting because the iconic Japanese nature is indeed focused. It did not occur to me that this could be due to a specialization in ecology that would end up harming biodiversity.
From Ethnoecology: Situated Knowledge/Located Lives by Virginia D. Nazarea. © 1999 The Arizona Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.
