Edges, Fringes, Frontiers: Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyana 9781785339899

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Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology, University of Kent at Canterbury Interest in environmental anthropology and ethnobiological knowledge has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. ‘Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology’ is an international series based at the University of Kent at Canterbury. It is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture and the environment. For a full volume listing please see back matter.

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyana

Thomas Henfrey

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2018 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2018 Thomas Henfrey All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Henfrey, Thomas, author. Title: Edges, fringes, frontiers : integral ecology, indigenous knowledge and sustainability in Guyana / Thomas Henfrey. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2018. | Series: Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology ; 23 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018008393 (print) | LCCN 2018026055 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785339899 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785339882 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Wapisiana Indians--Ethnobiology. | Subsistence economy--Guyana. | Ethnobiology--Guyana. | Human ecology--Guyana. Classification: LCC s-gy--- (ebook) | LCC F2380.1.W3 H46 2018 (print) | DDC 304.209881--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008393 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78533-988-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-78533-989-9 ebook

Dedicated to the memory of: Arthur Ben Themen Desrey Caesar Fox

Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Preface

x

Acknowledgements

xii

PART I. Edges

1

Chapter 1.  Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

3

Chapter 2.  Integral Theory and Integral Ecology

22

Chapter 3.  Integral Ecology and Ecological Anthropology

46

Chapter 4.  Steps to an Integral Ecological Anthropology

59

Chapter 5.  Babylon and the ‘Crisis of Modernity’

73

PART II. Fringes 89 Chapter 6.  Overview of Wapishana Settlement and Subsistence

96

Chapter 7.  A Plural Reality

105

Chapter 8.  Panarchy in the Deep South

126

Chapter 9.  Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Subsistence

143

Chapter 10.  An Integral Ecology of Wapishana Subsistence

159

PART III. Frontiers 173 Chapter 11.  Traditional and Babylonian Ecologies

177

Chapter 12.  Cultural Edges and Frontiers

193

viii | Contents

Conclusion

214

References

217

Index

253

Illustrations

Figures 2.1 An AQAL matrix

30

5.1 Basins of attraction in phase space

75

6.1 Core settlement in Maruranau: main houses, farms and farm camps

98

8.1  Major biogeographical zones of Wapishana settlement in Guyana

139

Tables 2.1 The four quadrants

24

3.1 Twelve ecological niches

48

Preface

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers examines differences between the ecological knowledge and associated practices of traditional resource users (peoples whose depth of historical connection with particular ecological zones spans at least several generations) and that conventionally applied in scientific approaches to resource management. Empirical evidence shows that much traditional resource use, including that of Wapishana people occupying the forest-savannah ecotone in Guyana, reconciles persistent human occupation of geographically delimited areas (and economic dependence upon the natural resources within them) with the maintenance or enhancement of biological diversity and ecological complexity and integrity. The processes involved, partially analogous to the mutual enhancement of diversity occurring where distinct ecological or cultural systems meet at edges, are here termed fringes. In contrast, scientific approaches have persistently failed to provide effective solutions to complex resource management problems – this being a symptom of the more general limitations of a purely rationalistic approach to understanding social and ecological phenomena. The resulting ecological ‘frontier’, or simplification of ecological systems through unsustainable exploitation, has an analogue in the cultural frontier: the loss of cultural diversity that often results when intercultural exchanges involve significant power inequalities. Understanding the differences between frontiers and fringes or edges requires a holistic analytical approach. Integral Ecology provides a metatheoretical framework capable, with appropriate modification, of accommodating diverse relevant theoretical approaches within Ecological Anthropology. Applying the cultural edge thus formed to an analysis of Wapishana hunting and agriculture reveals the ecological sustainability of each to depend upon a composite environmental epistemology: a constant improvisatory shift among psychologically distinct modes of perception, understanding and decision-making. Purely scientific approaches, despite their immense breadth of potential understanding and evident technical power, are limited to a single one of these epistemological modes.

Preface | xi

The inability to shift, when needed, from an epistemological mode that has become counterproductive to the specific situation at hand is inherent, as is the consequent inability to track the dynamics of a complex adaptive system, whether ecological, social or social-ecological. Cultural and ecological frontiers are directly linked phenomena, most importantly in the sense that the simplification of a cultural system at a frontier eliminates its capacity to negotiate ecological diversity as a fringe. Encounters with colonial, state and global systems in the recorded histories of Wapishana people in Guyana and several nearby indigenous populations have had both edge and frontier features. The outcome has inevitably depended on the degree of control that the indigenous group has had on the interaction. Maintaining and nurturing global biocultural diversity thus depends upon harnessing the strengths of global science in the support of local systems of knowledge and practice, a reversal of dominant development trends.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to my Wapishana friends and colleagues in Maruranau and elsewhere, and all whose generosity and support blessed me during my time in Guyana. I am grateful to the government agencies and staff therein for permission to conduct research in Guyana’s interior, notably the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and Environmental Protection Agency, and the residents and elected officers of Maruranau and other villages who welcomed my presence. Names are listed elsewhere; Adrian Gomes merits a further mention for his specific assistance following completion of this book. While this book’s creation was, by design, a largely solitary intellectual journey, I benefited from the collegiality and intellectual stimulation of colleagues in the Anthropology departments at both Kent and Durham Universities, above all Simon Platten, and also including Roy Ellen, who suggested submitting this book for inclusion in the Berghahn Environmental Anthropology Series, Laura Rival, Raj Puri, Michael Fischer, Helen Newing, Piers Locke, Rachel Kaleta, Steve Wilson, Jan de Ruiter, Steve Lyon, Elisabeth Kirtsoglou, Maria Kastrinou, Stephen Emery, Sandra Bell, Ben Campbell, Paul Sillitoe, Kate Hampshire, Salla Sariola, Iain Edgar, Jo Setchell and Bob Simpson. Work was initially supported by a Hunt Doctoral Fellowship from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

Part I

Edges

Chapter 1

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

Cultural and Ecological Complexity The unifying theme of this study is edges, ecological and cultural. Ecological edges or ecotones, including the meeting point of Amazonian forest and savannah that is the location of the case study in this book, are of particular interest in biological conservation (Spector 2002). Ecotones not only harbour disproportionately high levels of biodiversity relative to their spatial extent, they are also key sites at which evolutionary change generates new biodiversity (Smith et al. 1997; Schilthuizen 2000). Indigenous populations directly dependent for their survival on the local ecology have long been aware of the biotic richness of ecotones, tending preferentially to inhabit such areas in order to have access to a wide range of biological resources (Crumley 1994a: 11; Turner et al. 2003). Substantial ethnographic evidence indicates that such populations make active contributions to the role of ecotones in harbouring and generating biological diversity: manipulation of ecological edges by their human inhabitants in many cases simultaneously increases their physical complexity, biological richness and production of useful materials (e.g. Posey 1985; Fairhead and Leach 1996; Posey 1998). These processes of cultural enhancement of biodiversity and the spatial locations at which they take place (whether or not the latter are ecotones) I will here term ‘fringes’. At a fringe, evolutionary and ecological creativity engage in complementary, mutually enhancing dialogue with the cultural creativity of resident human populations. Both fringes and ecological edges have important parallels with cultural edges: processes of persistent social interaction involving ongoing material and informational exchange (Turner et al. 2003). Material exchange at a cultural edge provides access to resources from geographically distinct zones and is thus a cultural strategy for reproducing the

4 | Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

advantages of ecotone settlement at non-ecotone sites (Turner et al. 2003). Cultural edges are also sites of informational exchange, and so function as engines of cultural diversity. Transmission of ideas and practices among the groups involved extends the repertoire of environmental knowledge and associated skills available to each. We can conceptually link these common characteristics of ecological and cultural edges in terms of their parallel contributions to enhanced resilience – the capacity to respond creatively in the face of change (Gunderson et al. 2002: 323–25; Walker et al. 2004) – in the ecological, social, and social-ecological systems of which they are a part (Turner et al. 2003).1 As a contrast to cultural edges, I here wish to define cultural frontiers as processes of intercultural encounter in which loss of cultural information on one or more sides leads to an overall reduction in cultural diversity. Again, cultural frontiers have their counterpart in ecological frontiers, the opposite of fringes: processes of cultural manipulation of ecological systems leading to their simplification and loss of biodiversity. Edges, fringes and frontiers are not fixed, discrete categories, but idealized characterizations of extreme situations: analytical fictions employed in this work as guidelines for the examination of real examples of human ecological and intercultural relations. Any real-world example will combine, in complicated ways, features of edges, frontiers and fringes; the use of these terms cannot act as a substitute for detailed description of specific cases. The theme of the present work, to state it more fully, is an examination of the conditions promoting the formation of fringes and cultural edges, rather than ecological and cultural frontiers. I have chosen the term ‘frontier’ as I believe it to be an accurate characterization of the limits, at any point in time, of expansion of the global project that Scott (1998) has referred to as High Modern Capitalism (HMC). These boundaries are themselves neither clear nor discrete: the economic, sociocultural and ecological effects of capitalist relations of production extend far beyond their area of direct political control, in dynamic and complicated patterns (Wolf 1982). Marxian analyses such as Wolf’s tend to emphasize the material properties of such boundaries, but they also have subjective features. Scott emphasizes as much with his focus on locally situated knowledge, metis, as both the crucial missing ingredient in HMC, and its counterweight (Scott 1998: 309–41; cf. Richards 1985). In this and many other ways, HMC is a cultural project whose advance depends on its ability to capture and constrain imaginative possibilities (Guattari 2000; Kidner 2001; Pretty 2002). As these subjective dimensions are crucial to the argument in this book, I adopt a term that gives them equal emphasis: Babylon, which Gerrard Winstanley used to refer to the corrupt government against which he and the Diggers pitted themselves

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 5

in seventeenth-century England (e.g. Hill 1973: 306), and whose usage persists in modern radical discourse. In the context of the present study, I define Babylon as any sociocultural system whose development involves spatial expansion that produces both ecological and cultural frontiers. Subjectively, this involves reducing ecological systems to sources of raw materials or ecological services, and their resident populations to sources of knowledge and skills to be employed in the exploitation of these resources, both narrowly articulated within scientific-rationalist approaches to understanding (Agrawal 1995, 2002; Escobar 1995: 192–211; Miller 1998; Scott 1998). Imbalances of political and material power mean that these subjective simplifications take on objective reality. At its ecological frontiers, Babylon simplifies complex and diverse habitats, diminishing their ecological value (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). At its cultural frontiers, Babylon tends to assimilate marginal populations, imposing upon them its own norms, values and languages (Wollock 2001). Its expansion is thus a direct cause of linked losses of biological and cultural diversity (Harmon 2001, 2002; Maffi 2001a, 2005). In the present globalized era, international capitalism has taken a new postmodern form, labelled ‘Empire’ (Hardt and Negri 2000). Hardt and Negri identify all-pervasiveness as the key novel feature distinguishing Empire from the spatially expansive global capitalism of the colonial and postcolonial eras. Importantly, they hold this to be true in subjective terms, and so claim that nowadays there exists no subjective space that has not been colonized by Empire, no view from without on the basis of which to challenge it. If this were true, it would imply an absence of frontiers (and edges). However, while Empire is a theoretically coherent and analytically productive notion, and an accurate description of the transnational form of capitalism that materially links and provides a common ideology underpinning all contemporary Babylonian societies, the assertion that it has assimilated all subjectivities worldwide is factually inaccurate. Global capitalism has not become an all-pervasive, wholly self-referential organization: it retains ecological frontiers at which it continues to simplify biological systems in order to facilitate their appropriation for production, and cultural frontiers at its sites of encounter with many indigenous populations. Dissent against Empire, then, comes not just from within, from the ‘Multitude’ (Hardt and Negri 2004) seeking to marshal their own subjective creativities in pursuit of practical alternatives (e.g. McKay 1996; Lindquist 1997; Leyshon et al. 2003), but also from indigenous populations worldwide who continue to assert their right to cultural and economic self-determination (Arce and Long 2000; Shiva 2006).

6 | Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

I make this assertion the basis of a definition of indigenous that, whether or not it has any useful application elsewhere, I will employ in the present work. Indigenous populations I thus define as those that remain outside the scope of Empire or, more specifically, free of Empire’s exertion of biopower (Hardt and Negri 2000: 22–30): having retained independent control over their biological and social production and reproduction, being therefore economically, culturally and – at least at a local level – politically autonomous, and, crucially, maintaining subjective and intersubjective independence, or in other words continuing to produce characteristic and distinctive structures of meaning, regardless of whether or not these incorporate influences from Empire. While Empire’s relationship with its constituent subjects is one of immanence (Hardt and Negri 2000: 325–32), that with populations outside its productive and symbolic control is in most respects colonial rather than imperial.2 Analysis of such encounters requires a conceptual framework that retains space for viewpoints disembedded from and external to the system. Empire’s relationship to diversity is different from that of Babylon: rather than undermining it, it seeks to put its own service via its control of ‘biopolitical production’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 22–41). The consequent inclusion of some indigenous populations in Empire’s global political community is to be celebrated (Wilmer 1993), but this hard-won and important victory is nonetheless only partial, being contingent upon an implicit ideological consent to Empire that undermines the notion of indigenous employed in the present work (see also Benjamin and Tiessen 1993). Particularly in the light of climate change, concern over environmental sustainability has opened up new discursive spaces that are potentially transformative of global politics and economics (Hulme 2009; Jackson 2009) in ways favourable to previously subaltern perspectives. This book seeks to advance the case that these perspectives – including those of indigenous groups directly responsible for the ecological consequences of their own productive activities – represent alternatives to a politically dominant set of subjectivities that are the source of loss of biological and cultural diversity, and the only existing basis for reversing this. Babylon’s evident inability to produce anything but ecological frontiers appears somewhat paradoxical, especially when contrasted with fringe-producing indigenous societies lacking both Babylon’s technical means and any emic equivalent for the concern with environmental conservation that has achieved such prominence in recent decades. The term ‘conservation’ has no recorded parallel in any non-European language (Alcorn 1993) and must, at the very least, be redefined if it is to have any genuine cross-cultural validity (Berkes 2003).3 However, and documented

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 7

examples to the contrary notwithstanding, the majority of areas inhabited and used by such peoples are – or at least were prior to their encounter with Babylon – biodiverse and ecologically healthy (Vickers 1991; Sponsel 1995a, 1997; Barbosa 1996). In many cases, this ecological richness is at least partly anthropogenic (e.g. Posey 1985; Balée 1989, 1993; Fairhead and Leach 1996; Pyne 1998; Yibarbuk et al. 2001). Multiple clear ethnographic demonstrations exist of the ability of traditional resource users, lacking strong centralized organization and using only very simple material technologies, to solve complex ecological management problems so far intractable to Babylonian science (e.g. Johannes 1998a; Berkes 1999: 111–126), despite the huge quantities of financial, technological and intellectual capital the latter nowadays invests in environmental management. Evidence of capacities for ecological manipulation by indigenous populations, along with counterexamples of ecologically destructive behaviour (e.g. Janetski 1997; Penn 2003), allows us to dismiss claims that indigenous maintenance of biodiversity is incidental, resulting from a lack of technical capacity to damage the environment (Alvard 1995, 1998; Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 298), as factually incorrect (Berkes 2008). Why then, if many indigenous populations can produce fringes, can Babylon produce only ecological frontiers? Modern anthropological research on traditional ecological knowledge has provided significant insights, and the present work builds on this in its examination of the parallel factors at work in the production of fringes and cultural edges. This examination is based largely around a case study of Wapishana Amerindians in Guyana. Certain features of this case make it an exemplary illustration of the argument of this book, which I summarize as follows. Wapishana people inhabit, use and manipulate ecological edges, interacting with them as fringes thanks to a composite ecological epistemology more complex – in a very specifically defined sense – than a Babylonian ecology that can be meaningfully caricatured as scientistic, technocratic and an instantiation of programmatic rationalism. Application of a similarly complex perspective to their engagements to date with colonial, national and international society has allowed them, thus far, to negotiate these engagements predominantly as cultural edges, at which material and informational exchanges enhance cultural diversity, both among the Wapishana themselves and within the system as a whole. Babylon, in contrast, applies to both ecological and intercultural relations a less complex perspective, inadequate for the navigation of complexity in either ecological or sociocultural systems. The dominance of the Babylonian perspective produces neither edges nor fringes, only frontiers. The theoretical study advanced

8 | Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

in this book is thus an examination of the dynamic interrelationship of mind and nature (Bateson 1979; Guattari 2000), and the links between biocultural diversity (Maffi 2001b, 2005) and social-ecological resilience (Berkes and Folke 2002; Berkes et al. 2003). The following three sections provide a broad overview of the case study around which I will make this theoretical argument, in terms of cultural ecology (‘Wapichan Itaodaza Sannao’), ethnohistory (‘Cultural Edges in Wapishana History’), and the accelerating integration with national and international economic systems that Wapishana people in southern Guyana were experiencing at the time of fieldwork (‘Cultural Edges in Recent History’). Later chapters expand on all of these. To summarize, Wapishana people, resident across a major ecological edge, manipulate their habitat in a range of ways, both intentional and unintentional. The broad outcome of these manipulations – with some exceptions of detail – is consistent with the model of the fringe at which partial domestication of a habitat contributes to increased levels of ecological complexity. Historically, largely due to geographical remoteness, Wapishana interactions with Babylon have taken the form of a cultural edge, at which cultural interchange has tended to enhance rather than diminish social-ecological resilience, and with it the capacity to maintain a productive ecological fringe. From the 1990s onwards, increased intensity of interactions with the Guyanese state and with international actors mediated by it have begun to threaten the ability of the Wapishana people to maintain control over processes of cultural interchange, which risk assuming more frontier than edge characteristics.

Wapichan Itaodaza Sannao: On the Edge of the Forest Zone The ethnographic data on which this argument is based are the product of field research in the South Rupununi region of Guyana, South America, during 1998, 1999 and 2000. Of a total of eighteen months in the Rupununi, the majority was spent in the Wapishana village of Maruranau, with small amounts of time in other villages. Biogeographically, the area is part of Greater Amazonia. The Takutu River, which drains the western part of the Rupununi Savannah and forms the southwestern border between Guyana and Brazil, feeds via the Rio Negro into the Amazon itself. Rivers and creeks in most of the area settled and used by Wapishana people in Guyana run north and east, eventually reaching the Essequibo, Guyana’s largest river. Although not part of Amazonia proper – the catchment of

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 9

the Amazon River itself – they are part of Greater Amazonia, the broader block of continuous forest within which the Amazon basin lies. Greater Amazonia, despite the depredations it has suffered in recent decades, remains the world’s largest intact tropical forest block, and in the misleading terminology employed by Babylonian conservation, one of the planet’s major remaining wilderness areas (Mittermeier et al. 2003). Guyana’s Wapishana population, somewhere over seven thousand in number in 1998,4 having increased at a healthy rate throughout the second half of the twentieth century (Forte and Pierre 1994: 11–12; Henfrey 2002: 68), predominantly inhabits the forest’s boundary with the southern part of the Rupununi Savannah, an extension of the larger Rio Branco savannah of northern Brazil eastwards into Region Nine of Guyana (Hills 1968: 36, 39; 1973: 351). Wapishana settlement spans a variety of habitat types within this ecotone – edges within edges – while ecological fringes associated with Wapishana resource use in turn generate spatial and temporal edges at finer scales. Most of the main Wapishana settlements east of the Takutu lie on a broad arc marking the boundary between the savannah and several ecologically distinct types of adjacent forest (see Figure 8.1). To the north, Sand Creek, Rupunau and the mainly Makushi village of Shulinab are located in the southern foothills of the Kanuku Mountains. The Kanukus themselves incorporate a number of ecologically distinct altitudinal zones (Parker et al. 1993), all exploited to some extent by residents of these villages. The ‘East End’ villages of Shea, Maruranau and Awarewaunau are at the edge of the forests of the Kwitaro River basin, their zone of use extending east into the Rewa and Upper Essequibo basins. To the south, adjacent to the forests of the Kujuwini River, are Aishalton, Karaudanawa and Achiwuib. Several other villages lie further from the main forest block, but adjacent to forest fragments in the savannah. The transition between forest and savannah is not abrupt, but extends over a broad area, including patches of savannah in the forest, gallery forests along savannah creeks, wooded hillsides and ‘bush islands’. Bush islands are patches of forest in the savannah, ranging from tens of metres to several kilometres in breadth. Their origin is obscure, but appears to involve several interconnected factors, quite possibly including anthropic manipulation (Salisbury 1968: 12–13; Hills 1973: 353–356). Several Wapishana settlements, notably Sawariwaunau and Katoonarib (whose name derives from the Wapishana term for these formations, katoonari),5 rely on them for agriculture (Cook 1968). Wapishana settlement, then, straddles the transition zone between savannah and forest, taking advantage of the ecological properties of both habitats and of the ecotone itself (see also

10 | Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

ARU 1992: 4–5; Potter 1993: 2; cf. Butt 1977: 3 on Akawaio people in western Guyana, and Moran 1993: 118 for Amazonia in general). Roughly speaking, and emphasizing the most important feature of this pattern, people reside on the savannah and farm in the forest. Almost all families have their main residence on the savannah, which is considered both healthier to live in than the forest and to provide better views. The homestead is the site of some cultivation, usually minor, notably of fruit trees, of which every house has at least one or two, and some several dozen. Some people plant medicinal and other useful plants in small homegardens. Vegetable cultivation in these homegardens has in recent years become an increasingly common activity, a result of coastal influences and agricultural extension work by foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Some Wapishana people are actively investigating possibilities for increasing the scope of savannah agriculture. However, the need to fence gardens against domestic livestock and the low fertility of savannah soils, long since identified as the major barrier to agricultural productivity on the savannah (Rutherford 1956; Salisbury et al. 1968), continue to limit its importance. For production of cassava and other staple plant foods, Wapishana cultivators predominantly rely on long fallow swidden agriculture based in the forest. The typical daily routine consequently involves a walk of several kilometres between house and farm, across the boundary of forest and savannah. The regular crossing of this boundary and its designation as itaodaza (‘bush mouth’ in Creolese), one of a fairly small number of terms for ecological zones in the Wapishana language, symbolize and reflect the importance of the ecotone in Wapishana life. Most families keep a second house in the forest near the farm, a base for extended stays during busy periods in the agricultural calendar and school holidays. Many also have hunting and fishing camps deeper in the forest. These secondary forest dwellings, especially those at the farms, are the sites of much of daily life. Wapishana settlement thus encompasses not just the main village sites on the savannah, but is a constant traversal of the forest-savannah ecotone (cf. Ellen 1978: 26). While the house/farm distinction is fundamental, it by no means exhausts the ways in which Wapishana people take advantage of the ecological differences between forest and savannah. Some activities predominantly take place in one or the other. Domestic animals roam free in savannah areas in and around the village. Its greater range of undomesticated species makes the forest more important for gathering both plant and animal products, but the savannah harbours some key resources. Most important among these is the palm referred to in Creolese as etai, Mauritia flexuosa, scarce in the forest but abundant along savannah creeks,

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 11

the source of raw materials for roof thatch and many craft products in addition to an edible fruit. Bush islands and gallery forests provide shade for animals as well as materials such as firewood for savannah homesteads, and many other useful species occur predominantly or solely in these habitats or the open savannah (see also Salisbury 1968: 13). Wapishana people often speak figuratively of going to the forest to hunt and the savannah to fish. In truth, each habitat supports both activities, although the potential of each is different. The forest supports game animals in greater diversity and number, and is the site of most hunting, whether opportunistic in the course of other activities such as travel to and from the farm, or on extended trips to the forest undertaken mainly for that purpose. The savannah includes game species rare or absent in the forest, including the white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Others are found in both habitats, but differentially available in each. Agouti (Dasyprocta agouti), laba (Agouti paca) and naked-tailed armadillos (Cabossous unicinctus) inhabit gallery forests along savannah creeks, but are forced onto higher ground on the open savannah by rainy season floods, making them easy targets for hunters. Laba also occupy riverbanks in the forest, but in that habitat are easier to locate during the dry season, when hunters walk the beds of shallow creeks by night, using battery-operated torches to reflect their eye-shine. Hunters also exploit the movement of animals across the forest–savannah boundary, most dramatically that of white-jawed peccaries (Tayassu pecari), favoured prey of the Wapishana hunter. During the rainy season, peccary herds emerge from the forest in search of etai fruits. Herds are commonly over one hundred in number and anyone spotting the animals or their tracks on the savannah immediately rushes to spread the word, leading to the participation of the entire village. These group hunts can be spectacular events, and some have become part of local legend, still talked about years or even decades later. Riparian habitat is another major ecotone, used not only for fishing but also for hunting aquatic and semi-aquatic animals, including various species of caiman and river turtles, iguana (Iguana iguana) and capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris). Like the savannah, large rivers are open areas that can provide hunters with opportunities to spot and shoot animals on the banks or while crossing. Animal foods gathered at the riverside include crabs and the eggs of turtles and iguanas, which dig nests in sandy riverbanks. Fishing takes place in lakes, ponds, major rivers and smaller creeks in both the forest and the savannah. The location of rivers and creeks is another important factor in Wapishana settlement. Sand Creek and Rupunau are both at the confluences of major rivers. Sawariwau and Katoonarib are close to the

12 | Edges, Fringes, Frontiers

Rupununi River and Sawariwau creek. Apart from the upper reaches of the Rupununi, where Karaudanawa is located, there are fewer major rivers in the Deep South. The most important fisheries for these villages are in deep forest, on the Kwitaro and Kujuwini Rivers or their major tributaries, where many residents maintain hunting and fishing camps as secondary or tertiary residences. While there is little evidence for intentional or active Wapishana management of the forest–savannah boundary, it is manipulated during subsistence in various ways, many of which create edges on smaller spatial scales. The net effect seems to be ecologically beneficial. At least some bush islands appear to have their origins in human activities (Salisbury 1968: 12–13). A study of satellite images over several decades showed the forest not to be receding in any area settled by the Wapishana, and advancing into the savannah at one site north of Shea (Eden 1986). Residents of Maruranau showed me areas where forest cover has extended within living memory and appears – to their view – still to be doing so. On the other hand, one of the few non-Amerindian long-term residents of the South Rupununi reported localized loss of tree cover on many low savannah hills over the past few decades, attributing this to the common practice of setting fires in the savannah. Wapishana people commonly light fires in the savannah during the dry season. Previous research concluded that this was done to prevent dry season wildfires (ARU 1992: 3; cf. Pyne 1998; Sponsel 1998: 384–385; Berkes and Folke 2002: 130–133; Scheffer et al. 2002: 207). Wapishana informants in the present study reported other practical advantages, notably reducing cover for poisonous snakes and promoting growth of young shoots palatable to grazing livestock. On the other hand, some expressed concern about possible negative consequences, including lower etai recruitment resulting from fire damage to seeds and young trees, with secondary effects on the hydrology of creeks whose lining of palm groves has been depleted in this way. Fire is set in a more controlled fashion as part of the agricultural cycle, in the annual burning of swiddens. This creates spatial edges around farms, as do clearings maintained on a longer-term basis around secondary dwellings in the forest, many of which are planted with fruit trees. Succession in abandoned farms creates temporal ecotones (Posey 1998) whose composite effect is to increase the physical heterogeneity, structural complexity and biological diversity of the broader zone of transition between forest and savannah. Deeper in the forest, Wapishana hunters occasionally practise a form of trail agriculture (Chapter 6, section ‘Overview of Wapishana Agriculture’; cf. Posey 1985), burning dry fallen trees along trails or at hunting camps to create a small space for planting.

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 13

Gap and early succession microhabitats in these trail farms, swiddens and fallows attract many species of game animals, including crop predators such as peccaries, laba and agouti, and browsers on herbs and shrubs characteristic of secondary growth, such as tapir (Tapirus terrestris) and red brocket deer (Mazama americana). Wapishana resource users thus effectively manage the forest-savannah ecotone as a fringe, exploiting, manipulating and enhancing its heterogeneity in a variety of ways. The area inhabited by Wapishana people in Guyana is also an edge in the important sense of being the furthest extent of persistent human occupation. Heading east into the forest from the South Rupununi, the only permanent human presence is a very small number of isolated Wapishana hamlets. This edge provides further ecological possibilities exploited by Wapishana resource users: the rarely visited Rewa and Upper Essequibo Rivers hold large fish stocks (cf. Berkes 1999: 120–21), and their surrounding forests abundant game, much of it naïve about the dangers posed by human hunters. Preparation for special occasions such as birthdays, weddings or Christmas often involve hunting and fishing trips to these areas to obtain provisions in suitable quantities for a celebratory feast. Despite their marginal geographical location, which itself appears to be a consequence of missionary activity during the early period of Portuguese occupation in Brazil (Rivière 1963; Chernela 1998), the Wapishana have not been isolated from broader society. Contemporary influences of global political and economic systems, which provide the major context for the present study, are unprecedented in their intensity. However, the activities of politically dominant non-Amerindian populations have affected the Wapishana for the past several centuries and particularly since the onset of continuous, though sparse, European residence in the South Rupununi from the early 1900s. The importance of this in Wapishana history is the subject of the next section.

Cultural Edges in Wapishana History: The Early Colonial Period It appears that conflict was more prominent than productive interchange in early Wapishana experiences of the frontiers produced by various European colonial powers as they penetrated the interior of South America. Both historical and linguistic6 evidence suggest that the original Wapishana homeland was along the Uapes River, a tributary of the Rio Negro in what is now the northwest of the Brazilian state of Roraima (Rivière 1963: 115–16). If that is the case, it is likely that they were among the Amerindian peoples affected by the forced resettlement imposed

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by Jesuit missionaries in the area (Rivière 1963: 64–65; Hills 1968: 55; Chernela 1998). Historical records indicate substantial eastward migration of Wapishana people from the Rio Negro region during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Rivière 1966). It thus appears that the original Wapishana migration into what is now Guyana was a flight from activities connected with Portuguese colonialism. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical evidence gathered by several previous researchers contradicts the claim of archaeologists Meggers and Evans (1965: 23) that the Guianas were a previously uninhabited refuge zone for people displaced by European and intertribal aggression. Crossing the Takutu brought the first wave of Wapishana migrants into a Rupununi region already populated by various Carib peoples, notably the Makushi, whose main present-day territory in the North Rupununi borders that of the Wapishana and who are the numerically dominant group in the South Rupununi village of Shulinab. An early colonial despatch from the eighteenth century reports the Makushi and Wapishana to have been at war, but later reports indicate that they had settled peacefully in mixed villages through the North Rupununi, with intermarriage being common. South of the Kanukus, Wapishana immigrants encountered and intermarried with prior residents of several groups, notably the Atorad, Taruma and Paravilhana (Im Thurn 1883: 170–71; Harris and de Villiers 1911: 616–19; Farabee 1916: 428, 1918: 131–36; Rivière 1963: 260–61; Butt Colson and Morton 1982: 221); genetic studies confirm genetic exchange with Makushi and other groups, as well as low levels of gene flow with non-Amerindian populations (Neel et al. 1977; Salzano et al. 1980). By the middle of the twentieth century, the Atorad, Taruma and Paravilhana had either vanished or were disappearing as distinct groups (Roth 1929: IX; Peberdy 1948: 18), remnant populations in many cases being incorporated into the now-dominant Wapishana, among which tiny numbers of Atorad and Taruma speakers survive today. While both Wapishana and Atorad, which according to contemporary Wapishana speakers familiar with both languages are mutually intelligible, are languages of the Arawakan family, many of the other groups encountered by Wapishana immigrants into the Rupununi, including the Paravilhana and Makushi, are or were speakers of Carib languages (Gillin 1948: 802–10). Patterns of settlement and social organization I documented in modern Guyanese Wapishana are consistent with those reported in general surveys of the Carib peoples (Butt Colson 1984). Wapishana contact with these groups having been as much assimilative as confrontational, it is almost certain that their adaptation to their new environment was both social and ecological, strategies for life in the ecotone being learnt from these prior residents. Certainly, Wapishana cultural ecology is well

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 15

adapted to the ecotone habitat, a marked contrast to the situation of many Amazonian populations suffering postcontact displacement from their native forests into the central Brazilian savannahs (Moran 1993: 125–26). It also shows marked variation – practical and linguistic – from place to place, reflecting the variety of distinct ecological conditions encompassed by present-day Wapishana settlement in Guyana. From the fragmentary historical and ethnohistorical information available, intercultural contact resulting from Wapishana immigration into the South Rupununi appears to have had elements of frontier as well as edge. Several languages have disappeared, or are on the verge of doing so, and have been replaced by Wapishana as a single dominant language. The Wapishana language itself has changed in the process and exhibits substantial dialectical variation across its range. The Wapishana have not only exploited the political boundaries established by the colonial powers, they actively and creatively participated in their definition. Evidence of Wapishana and Atorad witnesses was crucial to the resolution of a dispute between Britain and Brazil over the location of their border in the savannahs, and to its eventually being located at the Takutu River rather than the Rupununi (Rivière 1995: 37–38, 67, 174). Movement and links across the Brazil–Guyana border, which divides the homelands of the present-day Wapishana, have thus been a persistent feature of Wapishana life throughout postcontact history. The border remains significant up to the present day. The major current trend is labour migration to Brazil, a result of dissatisfaction among many young Guyanese Wapishana with the limited options, largely based around more or less traditional subsistence lifestyles, available within their own villages and the scarcity within southern Guyana of the opportunities for wage labour most crave as an alternative. The high volume of emigration among young adults reported in previous research (ARU 1992: 52–53) had, if anything, increased by the time of this study a decade later, young adults being entirely absent in some villages. Some move seasonally or return after several years’ absence to settle down and raise families in their home villages. Others leave young children in the care of grandparents, send remittances and visit during holidays. Many older Wapishana are greatly concerned about the effects of labour emigration, whether to Brazil, Georgetown or the mining areas of western Guyana. Most emigrants find only menial work as labourers or domestic assistants; some become involved in crime and gang violence. Separation from family, loss of local knowledge, and isolation from the systems of social and material exchange underlying subsistence production are among the most serious reported consequences. Through human

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mobility and lifestyle choice, the frontier with Brazil’s cash economy extends far beyond the country’s direct territorial reach. Similarly, emigration of young adults to mining areas elsewhere in Guyana extends the social impact of the internal frontier far beyond its physical boundaries, whose presence in the South Rupununi was until fairly recent times only weakly felt. Although British colonial despatches from the mid 1700s occasionally mention the Wapishana, sustained contact began only towards the end of the nineteenth century with the first settlement in the South Rupununi of cattle ranchers of European descent (Baldwin 1946: 36–39). Cattle ranching remained the major external influence on Wapishana life throughout the twentieth century, most notably in the form of the Rupununi Development Company (RDC) (Brock 1972; Turner 1972). The RDC’s grazing lease dominates the central part of the savannahs, while the main ranch house at Dadanawa and various outstations scattered around its periphery remain key focal points for travel and the provision of limited infrastructure. The other major non-Amerindian influence on Wapishana life in the twentieth century was the church. Sustained missionary activity in the Rupununi began in the 1920s with the tireless efforts of Jesuit priest Father Cary-Elwes (Bridges 1985). Mainly as a result of his influence, most professed Christians among the present-day Wapishana self-identify as Roman Catholics. There are some exceptions: one village is dominated by Seventh-Day Adventists, and several minor Christian sects, mostly North American evangelical missions, also have small followings. All villages have churches, most of them served by a Wapishana Jesuit preacher stationed in Maruranau. The closest permanent outpost for the Catholic Church is otherwise the mission station founded by Cary-Elwes at St Ignatius, near Lethem. Priests from the main mission in Georgetown normally visit the villages once a year around Christmas time. Another key missionary activity was the founding of mission schools, which have now become state-run primary schools teaching the standard Caribbean curriculum. Although attendances are in many cases erratic, most children thus experience several years of Western-style education. As a result, English is universally spoken, usually as a second language, among all but the very old and very young. While schools were originally staffed exclusively by Lokono Arawak teachers from the Moruca River area in northwestern Guyana, the majority of teachers are nowadays native Wapishana speakers living and working in their home villages. Along with community health workers, the other state employees in the region, and those involved in the cattle trade as either employees or stockholders, teachers are among very few people with reliable access

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 17

to a monetary income and hence an important site of connection with the national economy. For much of the twentieth century, the major point of access to the cash economy for the people of the South Rupununi was the collection of balata, the dried latex of the bulletwood tree (Manilkara bidentata). Life history data shows that at its height, the balata trade employed the vast majority of Wapishana men, either directly as bleeders or in associated services such as transportation or provision of goods. Over periods of up to several months per year in the forest in these capacities, many men accumulated knowledge of forest ecology and bushcraft beyond that acquired through subsistence activities alone. Many also worked with non-Wapishana Guyanese, making the balata industry an important site of intercultural exchange of forest knowledge. For example, former balata bleeders reported that Afro-Guyanese colleagues had taught them to make tea from the bark of the locust tree (Hymenaea coubaril). I also documented this usage among Lokono Arawaks, whose proximity to Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese settlement and long history of economic integration and intercultural exchange have led much of their forest knowledge to be transferred to coastal populations (see also Forte 1995). Accounts of Wapishana bleeders suggest that at the height of the balata trade, virtually the entire Guyanese interior functioned as a de facto forest reserve dedicated to its collection. Although its ecological and social consequences have not been thoroughly documented, its cessation in the 1980s, by which time balata had been largely superseded by cheaper petrochemical alternatives, lost the Wapishana an important source of cash income, which has not been substituted and remains sorely missed. Many Wapishana people have also worked as trappers, capturing live animals for the international pet trade (Edwards 1992). This remains an important seasonal source of income in some villages, but lack of demand meant that by the late 1990s, the trade had in many places largely or entirely ceased. Although it would be inaccurate to suggest that external influences upon the South Rupununi have all been entirely beneficial – some modern Wapishana, for example, lament declines in traditional mysticism and other esoteric practices among their Christianized people – their relatively benign nature is demonstrated by the favourable experiences and current situation of Guyanese Wapishana populations compared with those of many other Amerindian groups. Populations have increased steadily throughout the twentieth century, the native language remains the mother tongue for the vast majority of people, and traditional lifestyles and culture remain well established. Until recently, there was little threat of outside encroachment onto their land, a geographically marginal location and lack of interest in natural resources relatively inaccessible to

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large-scale exploitation keeping the presence and influence of outsiders to a minimum, allowing Wapishana people to negotiate the cultural encounter largely on their own terms (Chapter 12, sections ‘Cultural Edges in Wapishana History’ and ‘Locally Determined Development as a Cultural Edge’).

Cultural Edges in Recent History The last decade of the twentieth century brought the Guyanese Wapishana into a turbulent and fast-changing political context. Following the death of post-independence President Forbes Burnham in 1985, the radically insular command economy he had created collapsed (Thomas 1993: 135). Burnham’s successor, Desmond Hoyte, called for international assistance to resolve the crisis, leading to implementation of an International Monetary Fund structural adjustment package focused predominantly on attracting foreign investment based on exploitation of the natural resources of Guyana’s forested interior, notably timber and minerals. Amerindian communities who had for the most part been fairly isolated under the Burnham regime now found the areas they lived in subject to the attention of commercial interests, leading to unprecedented threats to their security of person, livelihood, society and culture (Colchester 1997). Guyana did not open its borders only to extractive industries, but a range of other groups with interests in one way or another relevant to its indigenous populations. Particularly importantly for our present purposes, the conservation of Guyana’s biotic resources became an issue for the first time. Having largely avoided the loss of forest cover that many other countries had suffered during the 1980s, Guyana’s large tracts of undisturbed forest came to the attention of the international conservation community, various elements of which have since started to work in the country. Negotiating this new encounter with global society, unprecedented in scale and nature, has since been the biggest single challenge currently facing Wapishana people in Guyana, one as full of opportunities as of dangers. As an edge, it offers intellectual and material prospects with the promise of fulfilling local aspirations to enhance quality of life, material standards of living, and the range of socially and culturally sustainable life choices available to young Wapishana people. The potential advantages of being able to share the vast material, technological, intellectual and cultural resources available within the global mainstream are obvious to many. This and previous studies of development needs among the Wapishana clearly indicate a desire to partake of these, to achieve

Edges, Fringes, Frontiers | 19

higher material standards of living generally and, in particular, to improve standards of transportation, medical care, education and economic opportunity (Tang 1995; see also Chapter 10). As a frontier, it may entail threats as severe as disappearance as a people culturally distinct in any meaningful way.

Overview and Summary of Book The case study on which this book is based is an analysis of the growing encounter between Guyana’s Wapishana population and broader (national and international) political-economic systems during the final few years of the twentieth century. The book’s main concern is to examine the prospects for this ongoing encounter to take the form of an edge rather than a frontier. By extension of the argument derived from this case study, it seeks to postulate general conditions under which environmental management and intercultural encounter can maintain and enhance, rather than diminish, ecological and cultural diversity. The starting point of the argument made in this book is Wapishana ecology, which, in common with those of many other indigenous peoples, engages with nature as a fringe: a mutually enhancing interface of cultural and biological complexity analogous to an ecological or cultural edge. Building upon previous research on the ecological knowledge of traditional resource users and extending it by incorporation into a holistic framework for ecological analysis, it identifies the specific competences, both individual and collective, that allow this interaction to take the form of a fringe rather than frontier. It then shows how Wapishana people have used the same set of basic competences to negotiate previous contact with the national and, previously, colonial societies. As a result, this contact has to date largely enriched rather than diminished cultural complexity or, in the terms used in this book, has tended to have the features of an edge rather than a frontier. This has been possible because a low intensity of interaction has allowed Wapishana populations to negotiate their encounter with Babylon largely on their own terms. Whether this continues to be the case in changing contemporary contexts will be the most important factor determining the outcome of their unfolding encounter with global society. The implications for conservation and development practice are twofold. First, it strengthens the case for basing initiatives on the existing practices and expressed needs of local populations dependent on biodiversity use for subsistence. The Wapishana have become a particularly pertinent case in point, having over the decade or so since this research was undertaken developed their own plan for the collective management

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of their lands as a forest reserve. Second, it describes a minimum set of conditions necessary for conservation and development interventions to have edge rather than frontier characteristics, or in other words actually to enhance biological and cultural diversity. This depends not on them mimicking indigenous strategies for environmental management, which have developed in narrower and in most respects less complicated contexts than the current global environmental and social crises. Instead, it requires applying existing scientific and technical capacities within contexts designed to emulate the basic structural features, as identified in the analysis undertaken here, upon which the edge characteristics of indigenous environmental and social relations depend. The chapters that follow are organized into three parts. Part I lays out the theoretical framework on which the analysis of resource use in Part II and that of intercultural contact in Part III are both based. Chapter 2 introduces Integral Theory, a wide-ranging, highly inclusive metatheory drawn from the edges of academia, which provides the starting point and basic architecture for the more focused approach employed here, and Integral Ecology, the specific application of Integral Theory to ecological phenomena. Chapter 3 critically examines the relationship between Integral Ecology and various theoretical currents within Ecological Anthropology that also provide scope for holistic analysis. Chapter 4 builds upon this constructive engagement of Integral Ecology and Ecological Anthropology in outlining a holistic analytical framework specific to the issues with which the present work is concerned. Chapter 5 begins the application of this framework, in the form of a preliminary account of general differences between Babylonian science and indigenous ecological knowledge. Its key point is that the latter is based upon what I refer to as a multilevel environmental epistemology, which articulates several distinct forms of information-processing and decision-making about the environment; this epistemological complexity is essential to the successful navigation of organizationally complex social-ecological systems. Part II describes this composite environmental epistemology in practice, making the empirical case for the book’s central argument that it is the key basis for ecological sustainability in Wapishana resource use and, by extension, in indigenous or traditional resource use in general. Chapter 6 sets out the context in the form of a general, nontheoretical overview of Wapishana settlement and subsistence, particularly agriculture. The following two chapters begin to put this in theoretical context. Chapter 7 introduces the idea of a composite epistemology as a framework for analysis of ethnographic material, describing its manifestations in Wapishana life. Chapter 8 uses the Panarchy metaphor for social-ecological systems as interacting adaptive cycles of growth, stability, release

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and reorganization at multiple spatial and temporal scales as a starting point for identifying the factors promoting resilience in Wapishana resource use. Chapter 9 integrates and develops the findings of Chapters 7 and 8, showing how Wapishana resource users apply distinct modes of information processing and decision-making in the course of their activities. Chapter 10 explores the ecological consequences, reaching the conclusion that the composite environmental epistemology is the key feature that permits the anthropic enrichment of ecological diversity characteristic of an ecological fringe. Part III moves on to consider the implications for intercultural contact. Chapter 11 examines interrelationships between indigenous and Babylon ecologies in more detail, demonstrating that encounters between the two will exhibit frontier characteristics if dominated by Babylon, production of edges being far more likely when the indigenous partner is able to engage on a self-determined basis. Finally, Chapter 12 substantiates this with reference to several contrasting cases from the histories of the Guyanese Wapishana and nearby indigenous groups whose encounters with Babylon have taken different forms.

Notes   1. This is not to be confused with what ecologists term the ‘edge effect’: the loss of species richness in highly fragmented habitats. As this is the result of ecologically unproductive interchange with surrounding areas, in the terminology employed in this book it would be better referred to as a ‘frontier effect’.  2. For example, see Hardt and Negri (2000: 169–70) on the contradiction between the treatment of native populations in North America and the constitutional notion of ‘open frontiers’.  3. Also relevant, the apparent common interests of indigenous populations and conservation biologists are at best partial, and continually contested, although emphasizing them in the face of habitat destruction has had crucial pragmatic value (Redford and Stearman 1993; Conklin and Graham 1995).  4. The 1998 population figures are those recorded in censuses carried out by the regional council of Region 9, Guyana, and kindly made available by Mr Vincent Henry. The mobility of Wapishana populations, both among villages within Guyana and, especially, across the border with Brazil, makes precise figures impossible to determine.   5. Throughout the book, Wapishana words will be underlined to distinguish them from other languages.  6. The suffix -san in Wapishana denotes belonging, so an English translation of the term Uapes-san would be ‘from the Uapes’.

Chapter 2

Integral Theory and Integral Ecology

The theoretical approach taken here is an edge between two previously unconnected areas of theory: Integral Ecology (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a; Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009), an adaptation to ecological phenomena of the Integral Theory of Ken Wilber (1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c), and holistic approaches to human–environment relationships developed in the last few decades within Ecological Anthropology and Environmental Anthropology. The integration exploits a complementarity parallel to that observed between indigenous ecological knowledge and scientific ecology (DeWalt 1994; Kalland 1997), captured in Heidegger’s (1971) distinction between perspectives based on ‘building’ and ‘dwelling’ (Ingold 2000). As a starting point for holistic analysis, Integral Ecology has the advantage of broad scope. Its originators claim to unite over two hundred distinct perspectives on human relationships with the natural world (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009), and in this respect it is more inclusive than any theory native to the discipline of Ecological Anthropology within which this study is rooted. It is also relatively free of the historical baggage characteristic of theories that have developed within particular subject areas and thus reflect specific fashions and trends that have characterized their fields at any one time, making it an ideal external – or built – perspective from which to assess such theory. This relative lack of historical grounding in prior programmes of empirical research produces a weakness in detail in both Integral Theory and, in its present form, Integral Ecology. For this reason, Esbjörn-Hargens describes Integral Ecology as a ‘metatheory’: a tool for the reconciliation of several distinct approaches, each relevant to the problem at hand, but none sufficiently broad to resolve it alone (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005b). Much of its theoretical content consists of generalizations too broad to stand up to detailed examination; in fact, Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman (2009: 5) describe it as a ‘content-free framework’. As we will see shortly, this is not strictly accurate: both Wilber’s integral framework and Integral

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Ecology do build in limiting assumptions that must be corrected in order to make them adequate to the purposes of the present study. In addition, both Integral Theory and Integral Ecology operate at such a level of abstraction that their rapprochement with any more empirically grounded – or ‘dwelt’ – theory inevitably involves a mutual critique and exposure of limitations: of scope or breadth of perspective on the one hand, and of detail on the other. I employ this theoretical dialogue as a way of reconciling the basic tension between holism and reductionism. Reductionist analyses strip out superfluous detail for the sake of analytical clarity, but run the risk of overlooking crucial factors and producing spurious results (Joseph 2002). Genuine holism is of course impossible to achieve in theory – any abstraction from a real-world situation must simplify it in most respects – and practical attempts towards holism face serious operational difficulties (Winterhalder 2002). The challenge is to identify the breadth of analysis appropriate to the problem at hand, or ‘requisite holism’ (Mulej and Ženko 2004: 8–9). As a framework for requisite holism, the integral approach involves taking the broadest possible view of a situation, and on that basis deciding upon which of its aspects to focus (Hochachka 2005b: 40; Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 43, cf. Graham (1998) on Historical Ecology).

Integral Theory Integral Theory was developed over the course of several books by popular philosopher Ken Wilber (1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c) as a broad framework for integrating and reconciling the approaches and findings of diverse fields of study. Briefly, it is an evolutionary and developmental model of emergent complexity in both subjective and objective aspects of phenomena. Although hugely complex in its full exposition and impossible to do justice to in a brief summary such as this, its main points are as summarized in the following sections. For useful introductory summaries, see Wilber (1997: 1–36) and Esbjörn-Hargens (2005a); an updated and more extensive account can be found in Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman (2009: 45–154).

Quadrants Following Koestler (1970: 62–90), Integral Theory identifies as a basic general unit of analysis the holon (Wilber 2000a: 25–29): an entity simultaneously both whole in its own right and a constituent unit within a

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Table 2.1 The four quadrants (following e.g. Wilber 2000a: frontispiece) Upper left: Individual-interior (intentional)

Upper right: Individual-exterior (behavioural)

Lower left: Collective-interior (cultural)

Lower right: Collective-exterior (social)

larger whole. A key feature of Integral Theory is its assertion that each holon has both subjective and objective (or interior and exterior) aspects, and in each of these exists both singularly and collectively (i.e. in interaction with other holons of similar complexity). This produces four major ontological and epistemological categories: individual-interior (subjective), individual-exterior (objective), collective-interior (intersubjective), and collective-exterior (interobjective). Representing these categories schematically as a two-by-two matrix, or a circle divided into four equal parts, Wilber refers to them as the ‘four quadrants’ (Wilber 2000a: 86–157; 2000c: 38–40). These four quadrants1 simultaneously represent irreducible aspects of all phenomena, and alternative lenses on all phenomena. Any epistemology that ignores one or more, or unduly privileges any over the others, is incomplete and therefore, at best, only partially true. An extreme scientific materialism, for example, would ignore or deny the analytical validity of subjective and intersubjective aspects of phenomena. Following Habermas, Wilber considers the differentiation of the three value spheres (objective science (amalgamating the two right-hand quadrants), subjective art and intersubjective morality) to be the major intellectual contribution of modernity, and the colonization by science of morals and art to be its major failing (Wilber 2000a: 151–53, 425–29). The outcome he terms ‘subtle reductionism’: a denial of the existence of the interior domains and a belief that a phenomenon can be fully understood by reference solely to its exterior (material) aspects (Wilber 2000a: 135– 39). The extreme cultural relativism that emerged in the social sciences during the postmodern era, largely as a reaction to materialist hegemony, is a different form of reductionism that would assert the reality of only intersubjective aspects of phenomena (Wilber 1997: 21–29). Neither accusation has great relevance to contemporary Anthropology,2 either in general or in its ecological branches, from which perspective we can regard the four-quadrant stipulation as one attempt at formalization of the familiar need to reconcile objective and subjective approaches (Bateson 1979; Ortner 1984; Toledo 1992).

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Levels More significantly for our present purposes, in each quadrant Wilber describes what he considers correlated evolutionary and developmental sequences of emergent complexity, characterized by a relation of holarchic inclusion: the wholes at any one level of organization are the constituent parts of holons at the next (Wilber 2000a: 28–29; cf. Rappaport 1971a: 35). For example, atoms are constituent parts of molecules, small molecules such as amino acids and nucleotides are constituent parts of macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids, while further up the organizational hierarchy organelles whose ancestors were once free-living prokaryote cells are constituent parts of eukaryote cells, which in turn form parts of multicellular organisms (e.g. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995). Each level, in other words, incorporates the wholes of the previous as constituent parts, maintaining their properties while adding new ones derived from their interactions. This relationship among levels is one of structural complexity, not of spatial inclusion. For example, one basic model of organizational hierarchy identifies as its key levels the physiosphere (nonliving matter), the biosphere (living matter) and the noosphere (matter organized as a result of human thought) (Teilhard de Chardin 1959). Each of these is smaller in size than the last: the biosphere is smaller than the physiosphere in spatial extent, in that only a small fraction of terrestrial matter is incorporated into biotic systems. However, the biosphere includes the physiosphere in the sense in that it builds upon its organizational complexity (Wilber 2000a: 69–71). Similarly, humans have not domesticated all of the world’s living matter, and the biosphere is larger than the noosphere in terms of physical size. However, culture nonetheless includes nature in the sense of being emergent upon it (cf. Ellen 1996a): human culture is emergent upon human biology. The biosphere could exist without the noosphere, but the reverse is inconceivable; similarly, the biosphere depends upon the physiosphere, but not the reverse. Wilber captures this observation in an important distinction between the span of a holon – its simple physical extent – and its depth, the number of levels of complexity it encompasses (Wilber 2000a: 64–68, 94–97). The physiosphere has greater span than – is bigger than (and spatially includes) – the biosphere, whose span in turn exceeds that of the noosphere. The noosphere has greater depth than the biosphere, upon which it is emergent; the biosphere in turn is emergent upon, and so has greater depth than, the physiosphere. Wilber’s central theoretical claim, laid out most clearly in his Integral Psychology book (Wilber 2000b), is to have identified evolutionary and

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developmental pathways common in their broad features to all phenomena, with manifestations in all four quadrants. Most importantly, humans, in their behavioural, cognitive, social and ‘cultural’ (i.e. intersubjective) aspects, follow common developmental and evolutionary pathways. The claim of unilinearity raises certain theoretical and empirical objections: these are of crucial importance and we will examine them shortly. First, I will give details of two of the specific theories incorporated into Wilber’s integral model: Jean Gebser’s historical account of the evolution/development of worldviews and their expression in various branches of European thought and endeavour (Gebser 1985; Feuerstein 1987; see also Wilber 1996a: xiii–ix), and Spiral Dynamics, an approach to organizational management that claims to be based upon research – unpublished and lost – by psychologist Clare Graves (Graves 1974, 1981; Beck and Cowan 1996; see also Wilber 2000b: 47–56). Gebser (1985) describes five ‘structures’ of consciousness: archaic, magic, mythical, mental and integral. These structures are described as being successively emergent in both individual and sociocultural development. He associates each with a defined period in what he describes as human history but is in fact the history of European social and cultural development. This Eurocentric bias is a major limitation of Gebser’s work, and also affects both Integral Theory and Integral Ecology. Correcting it is an important contribution of the present work, necessary on both analytical and ethical grounds (sections ‘Integral Psychology’ and ‘Integral Ecology’ in this chapter). Gebser is elusive about the archaic structure, whose nature he sees as lost in the depths of prehistory (Gebser 1985: 43–45). Feuerstein, his leading interpreter, emphasizes the archaic structure’s unity of self and environment: subject and object are not perceptually or cognitively differentiated in relation to either space or time (Feuerstein 1987: 49–60). I interpret this as an attempt to describe a pre- or proto-human consciousness, qualitatively continuous with that of other hominoids (see Wilber 2000a: 788–89).3 Ecologically, both Feuerstein (1987: 49–59) and Wilber (1996a) equate it with the Garden of Eden (see also Gebser 1985: 43): a situation where human ecology is predominantly the outcome of biotic rather than cultural factors, or in other words prior to the emergence of our cultural capacity either to define or to manipulate, for better or for worse, the ecological properties of our environment. For this reason, it is contextual rather than central to the argument of this book and will concern us marginally at most as this argument unfolds. Distinctively human cognition therefore emerged with the magic structure, which Feuerstein (1987: 61) considers to mark the point at which our hominoid ancestors became something other than clever animals.4

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Gebser’s (1985: 45–60) description of the magic structure, while fuller than that of the archaic, remains cryptic in some respects. However, it does allow us to draw out some general characteristics (Feuerstein 1987: 61–74): it is egoless, spaceless and timeless, not distinguishing individual identity from that of the social group and having a unitary view of the world that equates the point of immediate experience with the sum of reality. As a consequence, it does not recognize boundaries between the human and natural world, although in contrast to the archaic structure, this is a relationship of unity rather than identity (Gebser 1985: 46). People thus inhabit, and act within, an endless here and now in which perceived reality is its own explanation. It employs analogical magic as both mode of action and dominant explanatory principle. While Gebser contrasts magical causality with rationally ascribed causality, restricting the latter to the mental structure, this is inconsistent with both the notion of participation (Chapter 5, section ‘Magic, Science, Religion, and the Ecology of Rationality’) and his own description of the mental structure as essentially analytical in orientation. Magical factors are necessarily invoked to account for relations of cause and effect that are not accessible to direction perception, but direct attribution of cause and effect is also within the epistemological scope of the magic structure, which differs from the mental structure in that it does not distinguish between the two forms of causality. The magic structure’s analytical orientation is thus directly empiricist: associated behaviour is largely based on unreflective, reactive responses to the experienced world. In the mythical structure, the locus of decision-making moves from direct experience to idealized collective models of reality and cultural prescriptions as to appropriate behaviour derived from these (Gebser 1985: 61–73). Action is thus determined by rules and convention rather than impulsive response to the immediate situation. Related to this is a broader perception of time and space, which in Gebser’s description are two-dimensional: the immediate here and now of the magic structure is now contextualized within a broader setting in which both space and time have circular characters. Mythical structure stipulations make behaviour responsive to this broader context and can be considered to encode collective learning about factors beyond those immediately manifest in any particular situation. Time is perceived as cyclic and polarity is considered to be a key cosmic principle: immediate experience is interpreted in relation to events that have gone before, and these are understood largely in relation to binary distinctions about the fundamental nature of reality. Gebser places great emphasis on imagination as a feature of the mythical structure, but I consider this to be based on largely spurious reasoning. Imagination plays a role in the expression of the mythical structure,

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in that people act in accordance with cultural models of reality carried in their own minds rather than reality’s directly experienced qualities. However, where Gebser sees the mythical structure as creative – a source of imaginative possibilities rather than imagined prescriptions – he is understating its rule-bound nature and consequent conservative orientation. These rules do reflect past creativity, but while the mythical structure encodes this, in my view its origin lies in the mental structure.5 Gebser characterizes the mental structure’s dominant mode of action as abstraction (Gebser 1985: 87), or the use of directed and discursive thought as the primary method of problem solving (Gebser 1985: 73–75). The mental structure represents many things: the emergence of perspectivism, or the ability to perceive the world in relation to three spatial dimensions and represent it as such from a disengaged point of view (Gebser 1985: 11–23); individualization, or the consolidation of the ego as the primary basis of individual action; and a linear, tripartite perception of time as an inevitable and unidirectional progression from past, through present, to future (Feuerstein 1987: 97–100). Its early expressions in European history include Paulian Christianity’s notion of earthly life as preparation for future salvation of the individual soul in the afterlife, the establishment of the Greek polis, and the planning and execution of the Roman imperial project (Feuerstein 1987: 100–2). Gebser considered his time to be characterized by the domination of ‘ratio’, a deficient form of the mental structure exemplified by the extreme dualism of Descartes (Gebser 1985: 93–97). While all of Gebser’s structures can be manifest in deficient as well as efficient forms, that of the mental structure had particular contemporary relevance and remains important today. For Gebser, ratio represents a hypertrophying of the mental structure that results in the subordination of organic processes to mentation, an excessive tendency towards quantification, analytical reductionism and self-serving egoism. Its social manifestations include isolation of both individuals and nations, ideological domination, political partisanism and dictatorship, mass-production, oppression of and violence towards women, scientism, fetishization of technology, and the desire to control and subjugate nature (Feuerstein 1987: 111–25). Observations of this type have become increasingly familiar since Gebser’s time and provide the broad empirical case for the general critique of Babylon, as an expression of this deficient form of the mental structure, that pervades the present work. As an alternative trajectory to increasing domination of ratio, Gebser identifies the emergence of a new structure, which he saw in various intellectual and social trends of his time (Gebser 1985: 97–102; Feuerstein 1987: 127–50). The integral structure combines and reconciles – in other words, integrates – the features of the magic, mythical and mental, having

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access to the faculties of each while being constrained by the limitations of none.6 Gebser referred to this condition of complementary and synergistic interrelation among the structures as ‘systasis’ (Gebser 1985: 286, 291–92, 309–10), defined as ‘the conjoining or fitting together of parts into integrality’ (Gebser 1985: 310). The summary provided here cannot do justice to Gebser’s elaborate description of the properties of the integral structure and account of the implications of its emergence. It limits itself to a simplified characterization that emphasizes the key property of systasis, or the ability to express each of the magic, mythical and mental structures while being systematically constrained by none. Systasis is the key feature that, the present work argues, distinguishes indigenous from Babylonian ecologies. We will also at times draw upon a body of work in many ways similar to that of Gebser, a multistage model of the evolution and development of human perceptions of and interactions with the environment derived from the work of psychologist Clare Graves (Graves 1974, 1981). Spiral Dynamics, an extension of Graves’ work developed by two of his students (Beck and Cowan 1996; NVC 2001) attaches arbitrary (and in many respects misleading, though vivid) colour labels to each of the levels of ‘biopsychosocial’ development, or ‘values’,7 identified by Graves (1981). Like Gebser’s structures, each of these values represents a characteristic set of perceptual and problem-solving capacities, expressing a different sense of self, breadth of moral compass, worldview and dominant mode of information processing. People at any particular stage experience the world from a particular perspective, from which it appears to present a distinctive set of individual and collective life problems. Resolution of the problems of any particular stage is achieved through, and leads to, progression to the next level. At this new level, a novel set of problems emerges, requiring new capacities. This continues in a potentially indefinite hierarchical sequence (cf. Gebser 1985: 294, see also Wilber (2000a: 202–4 on the emphasis on problem solving in similar models devised by Habermas, Maslow and Loevinger). The Spiral Dynamics model identifies eight stages: autistic or instinctive (beige), animistic (purple), egocentric (red), absolutistic (blue), multiplistic (orange), relativistic (green) and systemic (yellow), along with a further holistic stage (turquoise) not identified by Graves and emergent upon yellow. Of these, beige roughly maps on to Gebser’s archaic structure, purple and red map on to the magic structure, blue (along with transition stages between blue and red and orange either side) map on to the mythical structure, orange and the transition from orange to green map onto to the mental structure, and green and beyond map on to the integral structure.

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Wilber’s Integral Theory combines the Graves and Gebser models, along with those of dozens of other theorists, into a general model of progressive development in all four quadrants. This model is referred to as the All Quadrant All Level (AQAL) model and allows a basic diagrammatic illustration of Wilber’s Integral Theory. Here (Figure 2.1) I have represented it as consisting of five levels, which more or less correspond to Gebser’s structures; this is the basic model we will use in Part II to describe the composite environmental epistemology employed by Wapishana resource users.

Integral Psychology: Waves, Lines and States Wilber’s Integral Psychology is the most complete elaboration of his Integral Theory. It draws upon a broad range of insights from Western psychological and psychoanalytical research, along with numerous mystical traditions, particularly those associated with oriental religions. Their integration provides a comprehensive model of structural and dynamic

Figure 2.1 An AQAL matrix (following, e.g. Wilber 2000a: frontpiece). Figure created by the author.

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interrelationships among levels in the subjective quadrant, along with correlates in other quadrants (Wilber 2000b). Very briefly stated, from an initial autistic stage incapable of self-differentiation from the environment (archaic structure), the self first achieves physical differentiation, then differentiation of mind and body, leading to the emergence of a self-consciousness that is at first entirely ego-centred and amoral (magic structure). This is followed by an assumption of social roles and responsibilities associated with a rule-aware and role-centred social orientation: conventional as opposed to pre-conventional, with the emphasis shifting from the individual to the social group with which it identifies (mythical structure). Subsequently, parochial beliefs and dogmatic adherence to customs associated with the conventional stance are superseded by a postconventional8 outlook, which reflects upon these critically in the context of a moral sense that extends beyond the social group to the entire human community (mental structure) (Wilber 2000b: 38–49, 197–200). This sequence reflects the evolutionary emergence of these psychological capacities as well as their ontogeny in the neurophysiologically sound individual. Each stage incorporates and builds upon the properties of that previous to it, and the sequence of their initial emergence is hence invariant (but not necessarily deterministic as development may cease, or regress, at any stage). However, the overall model is not one of predictable, stepwise development, for several reasons. First, Wilber identifies several different developmental ‘lines’ or ‘streams’, development in each of which may proceed more or less independently. An individual may express highly advanced cognitive abilities, for example, but be relatively immature socially (Wilber 2000b: 28–32). Development within a single line is not necessarily a smooth progression, but includes regressions, periods of stasis, and temporary access to more advanced levels prior to their consolidation as permanently accessible states. Many religious and spiritual experiences are of this latter form, termed ‘peak experiences’ (Wilber 2000b: 14–16, 134–35). Many psychoactive substances also work in this way, releasing the mind from the constraints of its everyday structure to permit temporary access to more advanced subjective modes (de Ropp 1969). In psychologically healthy individuals, higher stages retain their antecedents not just as constituent parts, but as alternative capacities capable of expression under appropriate circumstances (see also Beck and Cowan 1996: 52–56, 63–64). As Wilber puts it: Within limits, the self can temporarily roam all over the spectrum of consciousness – it can regress, or move down the holarchy of being and knowing; it can spiral, reconsolidate, and return. Moreover, because the self at every stage of its development has fluid access to the great natural states

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of consciousness (psychic, subtle, causal, and non-dual), it can have temporary peak experiences of any or all of those transpersonal realms, thus momentarily leaping forward into greater realities. (Wilber 2000b: 35)

The nature of interactions among levels is an important concern in the present work, which we will begin to explore in more detail in Chapter 4 (section ‘Hierarchy and Heterarchy’). While Wilber’s model emphasizes transitions among levels, it also notes the importance of ‘horizontal’ development within levels. These two major dimensions of change are termed transformation – the addition to a holon of a new level of organizational complexity – and translation, or development within a particular level. These are increases in what are respectively termed the ‘depth’ of a holon – the number of levels it encompasses – and its ‘span’, its complexity within a single level (Wilber 2000a: 64–68). Wilber asserts, on the basis of common findings evident from his synthesis of diverse currents of psychological research, that each of his levels exhibits panhuman regularities in certain broad characteristics or ‘deep features’, as opposed to ‘surface features’, which are the unlimited variety of ways in which these deep features might be expressed in any individual personality or any particular cultural context (Wilber 2000a: 67–68). I reserve judgement on the claim that the uniformities identified in Integral Psychology and its component theories are all panhuman rather than culturally contingent until I am convinced that they are based on research whose cross-cultural scope matches that of the ethnographic record. However, a common human neurological architecture certainly leads to some psychological invariants, even if their exact boundaries require further empirical investigation. These deep features are not constraints upon individual or cultural diversity, but are their foundation, just as life creates an apparently unlimited diversity of protein structures based upon sequences of only twenty amino acids, the endless range of musical expression derives from a limited number of notes and intervals, and an infinite number of possible games can arise from the restricted combination of legal moves available in chess. Within this potential variation in patterns of translation, the span of any particular level may vary considerably. Any transformational change requires that the level preceding the newly emergent one has achieved a certain amount of span – a basic competence. However, within any level there exists scope for far more translational elaboration than that strictly necessary to enable the emergence of the next (Wilber 2000b: 238–240, see also Hardt and Negri (2000: 288–89) on postwar economic development in Italy). At any time, therefore, translation may be occurring in any

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level and potentially in several levels simultaneously. Furthermore, different levels within any quadrant may vary considerably in their relative span; this will be a key point in our later comparison of indigenous with Babylonian societies. A key conclusion of Integral Psychology is that individual development is a nonlinear, shifting, idiosyncratic process, with no identifiable or predictable pattern; in the social quadrants, as the next section argues and the data presented in Part II of this book demonstrate, this is even more true.

Integral Theory and Sociocultural Development The developmental aspects of Wilber’s integral theory are best developed in his upper left (cognitive) quadrant: his Integral Psychology (Wilber 2000b) is an impressive synthesis of a broad range of psychological theory. They become more problematic when Wilber attempts to apply the same logic to sociocultural development or evolution, based on observations originally made by Habermas concerning correlations among individual communicative and problem-solving capacities, intersubjective structures of understanding and social institutions (Habermas 1979: 98–123). In Wilber’s terms, developmental levels in the four quadrants roughly correlate, such that a given level of technoeconomic development corresponds to the dominance of particular levels of average psychological development among individuals and of sophistication of worldview among the population as a whole (Wilber 2000a: 153–156; 2000c: 34). The result is a model in which sociocultural evolution passes through a number of discrete stages, each dominated by (in Gebser’s terms) a single structure: foraging and horticultural modes dominated by the magic structure, agrarian modes dominated by the mythical structure and industrial modes by the mental structure, with the integral-aperspectival worldview becoming established, along with what Wilber terms ‘post-post-conventional’ thought, in our contemporary information age society. Gebser and Graves draw similar correlations between the state of technological development of a society and what they assume will be the average level of psychocultural development of people within it. Similar ideas were widespread in the most rudimentary stages of anthropological theorizing on the part of ethnologists of the mid to late nineteenth century, who considered all societies to lie somewhere on an evolutionary trajectory whose culmination was the educated, welloff Victorian gentleman (Kuper 1988). Such views had disappeared from serious anthropological thought (Wolf 1982), at least in explicit form,

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long before even Gebser’s time. They persisted far longer elsewhere: the founding of international development, for example, was premised on a proclaimed faith in ‘progress’, leading the ‘Third World’ along the path trodden in Western Europe and North America (Escobar 1995; Gardner and Lewis 1996). They are also present in both Gebser’s work and Spiral Dynamics (see e.g. Gebser 1985: 44, 200, 233, 441 n.71; Beck and Cowan 1996: 199–200, 303–11). Gebser at least provides a wealth of supporting evidence for his proposed historical sequence, which deserves to be taken seriously as an account of the dominant epistemological modes that have characterized distinct periods of European history;9 it also has parallels with other theories of social evolution as successive increases in organizational complexity (White 1959; Boserup 1965; Friedman and Rowlands 1977a). However, it also shares their central limitation: even if well grounded in historical data, they are not explanatory. The best we can hope of such models is that they capture some of the most important statistical trends in the evolution of particular societies; if they were to be employed as a general model, this would obscure more than illuminate the particular causal factors at work in any specific case (Ellen 1982: 258–59). Contemporary indigenous populations have of course experienced very different historical trajectories. Many in lowland Amazonia are descended from people who at the time of first European contact were part of large, complex chiefdoms based upon the permanent cultivation of maize on fertile flood plain sites, with advanced material culture and extensive trade and political relationships (Roosevelt 1993; Hornborg 2005). In addition, indigenous societies worldwide reflect influences of, and adaptation to, modern conditions resulting from their incorporation into modern nation states (Roosevelt 1998). Although some refuse contact with national society and others claim political autonomy and legal sovereignty, all indigenous groups have had their territories incorporated into national boundaries and are in contact, whether direct or indirect, with nationally and internationally dominant societies. Many practise one of the major world religions and receive Westernstyle education, and all engage to some extent in market exchanges connected, however peripherally, to national economies. This is true of the Wapishana, who like all indigenous groups are significantly affected by material and cultural interchange with Babylon. If current modes of production to some extent bear comparison with those of earlier periods in more technologically advanced societies, the value of such a comparison is severely limited by the vastly different global context within which contemporary populations now exist (Hardt and Negri 2000: 281–82). Simple stage-wise schemes of sociocultural evolution or development leave no place for such people, except as anachronistic representatives of

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ways of life long since left behind by more advanced societies in the evolutionary mainstream (Schmid 1982; Richards 1985: 15–17). In response to a similar accusation (Kremer 1998), Wilber (1999) stresses that his account of cultural evolution is exclusively historical and intends no reference to contemporary indigenous populations.10 If simple cross-quadrant correlations did exist between the technoeconomic mode and dominant cognitive and intersubjective modes, the lifestyles of indigenous populations would reflect the intellectual and cultural limitations ascribed to them in earlier, more ignorant times, not the sophisticated and eminently practical set of adaptations to specific ecological conditions we now know them to incorporate (e.g. Conklin 1954a, 1954b; Dove 1983, 2001; Richards 1985). Integral Theory, in its current form, cannot accommodate indigenous populations; it thus bears, and benefits from, constructive criticism informed by anthropological theory and ethnographic evidence (Edwards 2001; Esbjörn-Hargens personal communication 2005). One proposed solution is to expand the concept of lines, of which several exist in each quadrant (Edwards 2001). Industrialized societies, for example, are more advanced than indigenous societies in the technological line, while the reverse is true for relations with nature and methods of ecological management (Edwards 2001; cf. Callicot 1982). This would free us from the rather unwieldy requirement for cross-quadrant regularities that the original treatment of lines as manifest in all four quadrants simultaneously would imply (Wilber n.d.). However, it would seem to require that ‘ecology’ – or understanding of and relationships with nature – occupies a distinct realm of cognition, a position that recent research in this area does not support (Atran and Medin 2008). A more productive starting point is a similar criticism of Habermas’ theory of social evolution and suggested remedy of abandoning its developmental logic (Schmid 1982). Different structures of individual consciousness, intersubjective understanding, and individual and social practical capacities do not just represent stages in a developmental sequence, but in mature individuals are coexisting individual and collective problem-solving capacities, activated differentially according to the demands of any particular situation. Gebser identifies this as a key feature of the integral structure, which he sees as characterized by systasis, a complementary relationship among the structures (Gebser 1985: 286, 292). Systasis is evident in the thought and actions of any individual in whom the integral structure has emerged, and the norms and institutions of any society in which it is widely established. Gebser and Wilber, focusing on their own European and Euro-American societies, both claim that the integral structure is currently emerging as a cultural leading edge. If this is indeed the case – and an examination of

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this contentious point is beyond the scope of the present work – it is not a general phenomenon, but a contingent (and in my assessment peculiar) feature of these societies and others materially and subjectively dominated by powerful, centralized institutions that predominantly express a single structure. For reasons I explain more fully in Chapter 5, the particular form of hegemony these institutions exert is one that constrains both individual and collective expression within that single structure. This structure is usually very extensively elaborated. This is the case in Western science and technocracy, in which the mental structure exhibits, in Wilber’s terms (Chapter 2, section ‘Integral Theory’), a very high degree of span; the same is true of mythical structure’s expression in the world’s great religions. This comes at the expense of a loss in effective depth, or availability of the problem-solving capacities of other structures. The expression of other structures is very limited in scope, to the extent that they are effectively absent as bases for decision-making. Indigenous societies – as I illustrate in Part II for the Wapishana, though I consider the result, in general terms, to apply to any society not constrained to a single structure in the way described – show a contrasting situation, in which all of the structures are potentially available, although the scope of each is less than that of a single dominant structure. This difference between indigenous societies – more depth, less span – and Babylon – less depth, more span – is the central theme of this book. One demonstration concerns the sequence of energetic intensification identified by Boserup (1965) as reflecting the historical stages of development of European agriculture. Outside Europe, examples such as archaeological studies of classic Maya agriculture (Santley et al. 1986) and ethnographic studies of contemporary cultivators in New Guinea (Waddell 1972) show these stages operating side by side as coexisting features of mixed agricultural systems. A fuller demonstration, focused on this point, is the description of Wapishana ecological relations in Part II of this book. In contrast to scientific ecology, strongly centralized in the mental structure, Wapishana ecology combines strategies based upon the magic, mythical and mental structures. Intercombination and interplay among these structures and their various expressions in resource use is essential to ecological sustainability and social-ecological resilience. Before embarking upon this description, I dedicate Chapters 3–5 to outlining the framework I will employ for its analysis, based upon the rapport between existing theory in Ecological Anthropology and the specific application to ecological phenomena of Integral Theory. As the analytical limitations that result from overstressing the developmental aspects of Wilber’s model are especially evident when making it the basis

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of ecological analysis, the following section first addresses these in more detail.

Integral Ecology Building upon Wilber’s preliminary application of his Integral Theory to a number of different fields (Wilber 1997), and an initial summary account of various environmentalist perspectives (Wilber 2000c: 97–99), other theorists have since begun to elaborate Integral Ecology as an application of Integral Theory to the study of human knowledge and understandings of, attitudes towards and interactions with the environment (Hargens 2002; Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a, 2005b; Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009). Employing the AQAL model as a basic classificatory framework, Integral Ecology initially attempts to elucidate the relationships among multiple existing approaches in ecology. It does this in order to achieve mutual understanding among the different and perhaps contradictory perspectives on the environment they embody, and to devise an integrative approach drawing upon the strengths of each (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a). Its founders draw particular attention to the importance of integrating first-, second- and third-person approaches: locating the subject within the ecology as cocreator and thus undermining the claim of science or any other single epistemology to exclusive or privileged access to a purely objective reality (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009). Integral Ecology also employs the concept of levels, drawing upon some of the main values identified in Spiral Dynamics to characterize eight ecological selves (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a): Guardian (purple), Warrior (red), Manager (blue), Strategist (orange), Radical (green), Holist (yellow), Integral Ecologist (turquoise) and Sage (postulated stages beyond turquoise). This use of levels perpetuates the major weaknesses of Integral Theory already identified. First, it reproduces its problematic developmental logic; second, it does so in ways highly specific to the writers’ own Euro-American cultural background, so familiar to them that they do not appear to recognize them. The two hundred or so ecologies it attempts to integrate are all products of this background. Even those that have incorporated exotic ideas such as Eastern mysticism do so as frontiers rather than edges – acts of appropriation rather than instances of mutual intercultural learning. This need not be problematic in itself; ‘ecology’, after all, is just such a culturally bounded concept, so there is no reason to suppose that an ‘integral ecology’ would be any different. However, it becomes dangerous when it is universalized, implicitly or

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explicitly relegating non-European understandings of human–environment relations to lower, assumed to be inferior, levels in the hierarchy. The product is an ecology that, despite its claims to unite multiple perspectives, automatically privileges one particular form of environmental understanding over all others. I am not accusing Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman of deliberately attempting to use ecology to promote a politics of domination.11 Rather, they are repeating an analytical error of the type that plagued anthropology for over a century – that of confusing categories specific to one’s own culture with universal features of reality, or at least of human experience (Wagner 1974; Schneider 1984). This is true of each of the three main case studies presented in the Integral Ecology book (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009): they do represent attempts to reconcile diverse perspectives on ecology, but in each case within an overall framework of power relations that, perhaps despite the authors’ intentions, inevitably privileges one of these. To elaborate on one example, Hochachka (2005a; also in EsbjörnHargens and Zimmerman 2009: 418), over a period of nine months resident in an El Salvadorian fishing village, claims to have facilitated transformations in residents’ worldviews that in many cases represented shifts several levels up Wilber’s developmental hierarchy. It is rather more likely that this reflects a mutual shift in the capacity for dialogue. It seems that Hochachka herself experienced the early stages of a process familiar to any anthropologist the first time they initiate fieldwork in an unfamiliar setting, as one gradually comes to understand the nuances of communication and expression in the context of daily life; in other words, she was beginning to understand what people really meant when they talked to her. It is likely that her El Salvadorian colleagues were also becoming more familiar with her expectations and outlook. Her account suggests that market transactions and dependency creation (orange/blue) dominated previous local experiences of interactions with outsiders, which may have led people to pitch their responses to her questions at these levels until they adjusted to her less familiar, supposedly integral approach. Hochachka also attributes some specific concerns expressed in early interviews to lower levels, for example assigning security of family income and food supply to red, and interprets concern with these issues as diagnostic of a particular developmental stage. This is another example of the danger of overstressing the developmental logic of Wilber’s model: too strict an adherence to this is the most likely source of Hochachka’s rather unparsimonious claim that she documented and facilitated anything but the activation of existing capacities. Hochachka’s work does show the value of an integral approach to community development, engaging people on

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multiple levels simultaneously and thus allowing the interaction to take the form of a cultural edge, although she appears not to recognize that this requires the expression of integral perspectives on both sides. The effects of Integral Theory’s excessively linear view of social evolution on the Integral Ecology of Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman are more pronounced and serious. Their treatment of non-European ecologies – and in particular those I refer to in the present work as indigenous (i.e. underpinning autonomous economies capable of reproduction independently of material interchange with states or central markets) is very limited and in all respects highly problematic. Their ‘Integral Approach to Indigenous Peoples’ (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 206–8) largely consists of unfounded generalizations and is unsupported by any relevant references.12 Its sole apparent purpose is to labour – and crudely so – the point that romanticizations of indigenous peoples as paragons of environmental virtue, with or without the collusion of the people in question themselves, are ethnographically and theoretically suspect. This is a familiar observation: numerous theorists have over the past few decades drawn attention to these fallacies and the dangers of perpetuating them (e.g. Ellen 1986; Gill 1990; Kehoe 1990; Redford 1991; Milton 1996: 31–32, 109–14; Conklin and Graham 1996; Brosius 1997; Kuper 2003, 2005: 203–18; Argyrou 2005: 61–72; cf. also Wallis 2003: 49–78, 195–226). Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman neither cite such studies nor show any appreciation of the nuances of their arguments, even less so of the important insights lying beyond: that diverse cultural perspectives on human–environment relationships are not only reconcilable in practice (e.g. Fisher 1994; Ellen 1999a; Berkes 2008: 225–75), such reconciliation is also vital for the prospects of addressing global environmental problems (Posey 1999; Maffi 2001b, 2005; Pretty 2002; Biersack and Greenberg 2006). Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman’s other references to indigenous peoples, such as they are, are equally devoid of theoretical sophistication. Their apparent zeal to overstate the point that Europeans and Euro-Americans do not have a historical monopoly on environmental damage is evident in their rather peculiar implication that the main value of Environmental Anthropology and Historical Ecology is in providing an evidence base for this (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 297). Their claim that ‘indigenous people throughout history have continually damaged and impacted their natural surroundings’ (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 541) is unelaborated by any reference to specific cases or examination of the circumstances surrounding them. Nor do they mention that several of the works they cite in support of this claim also document cases where human impacts have enhanced ecological values.

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However, they do at another point condescend to make a passing, apparently favourable, reference to, as they put it, ‘indigenous cultures … that contain an earth-friendly cosmology’ (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 202). Most bizarrely of all, a section on studies of institutions makes no reference whatsoever to the vast body of literature on the links between traditional/customary institutions and resource management (e.g. Ostrom 1990, 2005; Berkes 1989; Bromley 1992; Berkes and Folke 1998a; Berkes et al. 2003), but does manage to identify the supposed field of ‘The shadow of indigenous and ancient cultures’, which apparently, ‘studies all the anthropological, cultural, and scientific research of the destructive behaviours of previous cultures and contemporaneous indigenous communities, including cannibalism and human sacrifice[!]’ (EsbjörnHargens and Zimmerman 2009: 207, my exclamation mark). I doubt that Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman actually believe indigenous peoples to be ignorant, unenlightened savages whose primitive compulsion to destroy their environment is abated only by technological limitations and their propensity (perhaps fortunate in the circumstances) to murder and eat each other, though they have certainly tried harder to give this impression than they have to familiarize themselves with relevant debates in the literature. Their presentation is certainly distorted by inflated faith in their own particular brand of baby-boomer eco-rhetoric, a form of narcissism endemic in the self-proclaimed integral ‘leading edge’ and often compounded by limited cross-cultural experience and understanding. Given that the subtitle of their book is ‘Uniting Multiple Perspectives on the Natural World’, and the token references and passing comments indicate that they are at least aware of some relevant research on indigenous knowledge and traditional resource management, their presumption to cast judgement on these – leading to an almost blanket dismissal – comes across less as ironic than downright perverse. This is unfortunate, as despite their limitations of perspective and their zest for simplistic pronouncements on subtle and complicated issues of which they know little and understand less, both Wilber’s Integral Theory and the type of theoretical synthesis attempted in Integral Ecology have the potential to make valuable contributions to our understanding of human ecology – if they recognize and overcome their current parochialisms. The main weaknesses of Integral Ecology relevant to the present study are the result of its anthropological naïvete, in substantive, theoretical and methodological terms. As a consequence, far from being genuinely integrative – at least in any inclusive or even-handed sense – it is very narrowly rooted in a quite limited perspective, a result of originating with theorists and practitioners whose intellectual, cultural and political horizons appear to be very tightly constrained. As a partial remedy,

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it urgently needs a rapport with ethnographic and theoretical accounts of diverse cultural understandings of human relationships with nature. There is a precedent in the field of Political Ecology, which, although limited in its original form by a failure to transcend the limits of a purely Cartesian view of ecology (Escobar 1999), was reinvigorated by integration with the pluralist perspective on nature that became established in Environmental Anthropology in the 1990s (Biersack and Greenberg 2006). An ongoing – and perhaps insoluble – debate in Development Anthropology reveals a similar set of tensions. On one side are those working within or in collaboration with what Escobar (1991) characterized as the development industry. Aware of the contradictions between aspirations to equality and self-determination within development processes, and the fact that vastly unequal power relations make this ideal unachievable in practice, they advocate the application of anthropological expertise within development in order to make it as culturally sensitive and as beneficial as possible to its recipients, but without overtly challenging its basic premises (Gardner and Lewis 1996; Gow 2002). A more radical position rejects development’s implicit legitimation of capitalism as inherently problematic (Escobar 1995), and as an alternative proposes ‘post-development’, the realization of multiple distinct modernities (Arce and Long 2000). The latter position has much in common, in both theory and practice, with radical social movements in the industrialized world working towards emancipation from the subjective and material constraints of capitalism (Barbosa 1996; McKay 1996; Notes from Nowhere 2003; Graeber 2004, 2007; Hardt and Negri 2004). The distinction between the two parallels that in green politics between ‘environmentalism’ (the greening of existing economic and political systems) and ‘ecologism’, an ideological commitment to radical social, political and economic change in order to achieve a transition to sustainability (Dobson 2007: 2–4). The case for regarding both postdevelopment and ecologism as integral in the more limited sense – i.e. as expressions of turquoise values – is in my view far stronger than for their less radical counterparts. The other case studies of Integral Ecology in practice (aside from that of Hochachka already mentioned) reported in Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman’s volume (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 430–53, 454–75; previously published as Tissot 2005; Riddell 2005) also provide demonstrations of the value, and limitations, of the type of multiperspectivalism that does not challenge development’s framing as an exercise in financialization. Tissot reports on a resolution to an essentially commercial conflict between people whose livelihoods depended on different uses of coral reef fauna in West Hawai’i: those involved in the nature tourism industry, whose view on habitat protection was preservationist; and those

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collecting reef fish for the aquarium trade, whose view was productivist. The solution – a scientifically devised system of protected areas to allow regeneration of fish habitat – is in broad outline similar to customary systems for regulating access to marine resources, particularly where it is the latter are incorporated into modern hybrid management systems (Adams 1998; Hviding 1998; Johannes 1998b), and similar functional roles ascribed to refugia in other habitats (Gadgil and Vartak 1976; Aumeeruddy and Bakels 1994; Price 1995: 290–92; Appell 1997; Gadgil et al. 1998: 42–44; Byers et al. 2001; see also Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’). Riddell describes how conflicts among loggers, environmentalists and First Nations peoples in the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia eventually gave way to negotiated solutions balancing industry and conservationist concerns, while also incorporating recognition of indigenous land rights and substantial cash investment into development in indigenous communities (cf. Pinkerton 1998). No single actor or interest group involved necessarily took an integral perspective, but as each made the concessions necessary to accommodate the views and interests of the others, the overall process was integral in the sense of being multiperspectival. It is important to note that I do not seek to make any claim of genuine integral multiperspectivalism on behalf of the analysis in this book, which is undeniably rooted in – and to that extent constrained by – a particular set of theoretical perspectives. It also has its own axe to grind: its explicit aim is to demonstrate that the argument that development should build upon existing local capacities has ecological as well as political grounds.13 Its focus on the situation and practices of Wapishana resource users compels a certain measure of parochiality, perhaps limiting its depth as well as its span. I would describe both Integral Ecology and my own analysis as examples of ‘holistic’ ecologies, which EsbjörnHargens (2005a) identifies with the ‘yellow’ value of Spiral Dynamics. They are thus integral according to Gebser’s characterization, but not so in terms of the Wilber/Esbjörn-Hargens treatments, which locate this more narrowly in the ‘turquoise’ value – although without in either case actually achieving this status themselves. I am not convinced that a genuinely integral ecology is, in fact, achievable in practice as a theoretical position. I believe it can only arise as an emergent outcome of equitable negotiation, transcending differences of perspective and specific interests, among diverse stakeholders. Analytically, we may have no escape from the position that Argyrou insightfully ascribes to anthropologists, striving in futility to abstract themselves from situations in order to view them from higher ground, only to discover that this loftier place is an

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illusion and they remain trapped within their own limited analytical perspective (Argyrou 2002). The chapters in Part II of this book make the case for locating Wapishana ecology on the same epistemological level as this analysis and the less culturally imperialist forms of Integral Ecology: at the holistic or yellow level as described by Esbjörn-Hargens. It makes this assertion on the basis that Wapishana resource use demonstrates the continual expression of systasis: individuals routinely apply the magic, mythical and mental structures over the course of their day-to-day activities, moving among them flexibly according to the demands of any particular situation. Wapishana institutions – patterns of social agreement based in the intersubjective (lower-left) quadrant and their manifestations in social organization that constrain individual thought and behaviour – reflect attributes of each of these structures, allowing individual and collective decision-making about resource use to shift among them. This flexible movement among the structures articulates material needs, social structure and features of the ecological system in such a way as to promote resilience in the social-ecological system and sustainability in resource use: the essential characteristics of an ecological fringe. Wapishana resource users, when free to determine how they engage with new information, practices and ideas, also do so systatically: on the basis of whatever of Gebser’s structures they represent and by incorporating them into the existing forms through which they express these structures. As a consequence, intercultural interactions enhance rather than undermine existing sociocultural capacities to manage for outcomes consistent with sustainability and resilience. In other words, these interactions have the characteristics of cultural edges.

Notes  1. This type of observation is of course not new to Wilber, who acknowledges as antecedents thinkers from Buddha and Plato through Kant to Habermas’ three value spheres of art (subjective), morals (intersubjective) and science (objective – i.e. both upper and lower right) (Wilber 2000a: 149–50, 401–5).  2. Sokal’s devastating attack on some of the more extreme relativist trends within poststructuralism (Sokal and Bricmont 1998) was an effective warning of the dangers of intersubjective analyses lacking sound empirical bases.  3. The emergent structures may perhaps be nascent in the capacities for self-recognition and introspection now documented in the great apes.  4. The magic structure’s emergence on a general scale would therefore coincide with the great flowering of novel cognitive and cultural capacities observed in the archaeological record at the transition of the Middle and Upper

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 5.

 6.

 7.

 8.

 9.

10.

11.

Paleolithic, around 40,000 years ago. A convincing suggestion as to the neurophysiological basis of this change is a cross-linking among previously isolated mental domains to produce a more complex compound mind (Mithen 1996), a clear instance of Wilber’s ‘transcend and include’ model for the successive emergence of complexity. We will consider the relationships among levels/structures in more detail in Chapter 4, but for now the essential point is that innovations arising in the mental structure later become encoded in fixed forms in the mythical structure. Gebser’s analytical error arises from his adherence to a linear developmentalist framework and consequent generalization to humanity as a whole of the institutional domination of particular structures in particular epochs characteristic of European history. This does not allow for the largescale innovations he describes around the Neolithic Revolution, for example, having originated as expressions of the mental structure and subsequently been institutionalized within the mythical structure. Wilber (2000a: 787–89) employs the term ‘integral’ in a more restricted sense, subdividing Gebser’s integral structure into a number of more advanced stages of which Gebser was apparently unaware. Gebser’s more limited treatment is adequate for the purposes of the present work. I refer to these as values in order to avoid – and distance myself from – Beck and Cowan’s silly term ‘vMEME’ and consequent associations with intellectually dubious pop discourses on culture change. This contrast among preconventional, conventional, and postconventional modes of thought and action is important in the analyses of Wapishana agriculture and hunting in Chapters 6 and 7. Beck and Cowan offer nothing in the way of credible supporting evidence. Graves apparently lost all his original psychological data, and much of their book seems to be based on anecdote and conjecture. Its other scholarly failings include the use of outdated concepts such as ‘tribe’ and others that have never had any scholarly credibility such as ‘meme’. However, it does appear to provide a useful map of different modes of human thought and action, and is widely deployed among integral theorists and practitioners. For these reasons, I thought it both useful and necessary to include it in the present work. Nonetheless, a charge of anthropological naivety made by reviewers of Wilber’s early work on sociocultural evolution (Winkleman 1990) probably still stands. As described in the relevant section in this chapter, it also applies to the Integral Ecology of Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman (2009). They would not be the first to use Integral Theory in this way. Neoliberal thinkers have not been shy about appropriating Wilber’s ideas, and Empire itself can be viewed as the outcome of applying integral thinking to a project of political control. Wilber’s crude attempts to examine the causes and geopolitical consequences of the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, posted on his website, certainly do nothing to contradict who have labelled him a ‘right-wing futurist’ (Murphy 1994: 9) or (in contrast to Negri and Hardt’s explicitly left-leaning approach) the ‘neo-con’ version of Integral Theory (Bauwens 2005: 2). My use of Wilber’s ideas in no way implies my

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endorsement of any of his political views, which at the very least are remarkably poorly informed. 12. These parts of the book are in many respects reminiscent of the simplistic pseudo-anthropological discourses used to inform – and in some cases legitimize – U.S. military strategy in the post-2001 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (see González 2009a, 2009b). 13. Although I take a political position in support of indigenous self-determination over decisions about resource use, I take on board cautions about the analytical danger of making a priori assumptions as to the ecological consequences of this (Vayda and Walters 1999).

Chapter 3

Integral Ecology and Ecological Anthropology

Mind and Nature: Interior and Exterior Dimensions of Environmental Phenomena Despite the self-aggrandizing claim that subjective and intersubjective perspectives ‘have been almost entirely excluded from academic and popular ecological discourse’ (Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman 2009: 5), Integral Ecology’s concern with uniting objective and subjective/intersubjective accounts of ecological phenomena is familiar within Environmental Anthropology, where it is in many important respects better developed. Anthropology is among those social science disciplines whose position at the interface of the natural and cultural sciences makes them a natural meeting point for approaches focused on interior and exterior aspects of phenomena (Habermas 1996). General trends within the subject since the 1960s reflect this: the emergence and refinement of approaches like Symbolic Anthropology, Cultural Ecology and Structuralism represent increasing emphasis on unified approaches cutting across the emic/etic (interior/exterior) distinction (Ortner 1984). This is particularly evident in the recent history of Environmental Anthropology and its applications, which clearly demonstrates the moral necessity and practical value of an inclusive approach to ecology that recognizes and respects diverse intersubjective perspectives. Most contemporary approaches in Ecological Anthropology draw, directly or indirectly, on Gregory Bateson’s Ecology of Mind (Bateson 1972, 1979; Bateson and Bateson 1987), which will also provide our orienting theoretical framework and point of comparison with Integral Ecology. Bateson’s major aim was to describe a common epistemology for subjective and objective aspects of phenomena (Bateson 1979: 220–29; Bateson and Bateson 1987). He perhaps falls short of this, compared to the all-quadrant approach in Integral Theory, in that while he explicitly

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challenges the Cartesian fallacy (Bateson 1979: 231; Bateson and Bateson 1987: 11–12), he to a certain extent perpetuates it by failing to recognize the ontological equality of interior and exterior phenomena. Instead, he characterizes mind as an emergent property of material systems above a certain level of organizational complexity (Bateson 1972: 433–34; 1979: 101–4).1 Furthermore, he notes that information can exist only via its representation in a material medium (Bateson and Bateson 1987: 54–55), but his definition of information as ‘news of difference’ (Bateson and Bateson 1987: 13–14) suggests that he does not consider material organization to be equally dependent upon the existence of information and thus require some subjective component. In other words, Bateson seems to think of mind as emergent upon matter: that nature can exist without mind, but mind cannot exist without nature. As a consequence, at times he seems to treat mind as subordinate to matter (e.g. Bateson 1972: 446). Wilber has described Bateson as an example of subtle reductionism – the view that subjective phenomena can be described or explained solely with reference to their objective or material correlates (Wilber 2000a: 697; Wilber 2000d: 328) – but in my view this is inaccurate, and even EsbjörnHargens and Zimmerman’s more tempered criticism (2009: 541) is overstated. Bateson does not go so far as to reduce interiors to their exterior manifestations, and his overall analysis explicitly treats both as essential (e.g. Bateson 1972: 454–71). However, his view that mind is emergent on matter leads him to present objective and subjective phenomena as interacting elements within systems. Integral Theory’s treatment of objective, interobjective, subjective and intersubjective as inherent and irreducible, ‘tetra-arising’ aspects of all phenomena represents an important advance on this position and helps overcome some of its analytical ambiguities. Notwithstanding these limitations – which are to be expected of any pioneering work – the full consolidation of Bateson’s insights remains among the most compelling current theoretical programmes in Ecological Anthropology. The framework provided by Integral Ecology can contribute to this in important ways.

Environmental Anthropology in AQAL Perspective Distinct historical currents emphasizing each of Wilber’s four quadrants are evident within Environmental Anthropology, with more recent research and theory tending to be integrative across the quadrants. Phenomena in each quadrant have been shown to exhibit emergent complexity of the type that characterizes Wilber’s levels, and various attempts have been made to develop theoretical frameworks that incorporate these.

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Theoretical frameworks incorporating both subjective and objective factors at multiple levels of descriptive or analytical abstraction exhibit features in common with both Wilber’s AQAL matrix and Integral Ecology, which provide useful frameworks for their comparison and evaluation. A useful model for this is that of the twelve ecological niches (EsbjörnHargens 2005a), based on the identification of three major levels of ontological abstraction within each of the four quadrants: gross (concrete features), subtle (ideas as to natural interrelationships and appropriate behaviour) and causal (underlying cosmological features). These levels are of course both interrelated and interdependent: subtle level concepts instantiate (express) causal level phenomena and themselves are instantiated in material events manifest at the gross level. Three levels within each quadrant (or four quadrants as irreducible features of phenomena within each of the three levels) comprise the twelve niches. By the end of this chapter the model will have become inadequate for our purposes; we will develop an alternative in the next chapter. Nonetheless, it provides a useful starting point for examining the relationship among different orientations in Environmental Anthropology from an integral perspective. Human Behavioural Ecology (HBE), an example of an upper-right quadrant approach, applies models derived from Evolutionary Ecology (ultimately originating in economic theories of choice) to the study of human resource acquisition behaviour. HBE is explicitly reductionist in orientation and while its use of (often simple) evolutionary/economic models can be problematic if the models are confused with reality (Ingold Table 3.1 Twelve ecological niches (following Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a: 21) Interior

Exterior

Individual knowledge

Shared understanding

Behaviours

Systemic properties

Causal (cosmological phenomena)

Symbolic understandings and interpretations

Worldviews, shared cosmology

Behaviour as expression of cosmology

Systems as sociocultural product

Subtle (ideas)

Classifications; theories of relatedness; ethnoecology

Knowledge as shared socialecological discourse

Socially and culturally mediated action

Ecological roles of culture; social-ecological systems

Gross (material forms)

Knowledge of nomenclature, usage, physical properties

Shared, distributed, common understandings of gross properties

Studies of individual behaviour (e.g. HBE)

Materialist ecological approaches

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1996a), it has proven itself a useful operational tool. The purpose is the same as in all modelling: abstracting a small number of features from a complex reality helps us to understand both their effects upon behavioural choices and, through careful assessment of the model’s limitations, the importance of those excluded from the model (Winterhalder and Smith 1992a; Winterhalder and Lu 1997). Reductionist and holistic methods are not competing alternatives, but are complementary and mutually dependent. A detailed understanding of the parts is absolutely necessary, though of course not sufficient, for an adequate understanding of the whole (Winterhalder 2002). Many of the earliest HBE studies were narrowly concerned with exploring the explanatory power – and limitations – of a purely ethological approach little different from that conventionally applied by biologists in studies of the evolutionary ecology of animal foraging (e.g. Hames and Vickers 1982; Hawkes et al. 1982). Spurious results have arisen when practitioners have treated its analyses as explanatory rather than merely – and partially – descriptive, as in Alvard’s study of the economic optimality of game choice by Piro hunters (Alvard 1993, 1995). Alvard’s analysis of impressively detailed and substantial datasets on game choice, hunting efforts and returns shows decisions made by Piro hunters to be consistent with the predictions of optimal foraging theory. Alvard took this as evidence that there are no behavioural restraints on choice of prey and argued that the Piro therefore lack any mechanism for regulating the ecological impact of hunting. His results, which are also open to other interpretations consistent with the existence of sociocultural mechanisms for conserving game populations (Bodmer 1995b), only show that no such mechanisms operate at the point of immediate choices made in the course of the hunt by individual actors. My less extensive documentation of the game choices of Wapishana hunters were also consistent with the idea that they were seeking to maximize hunting returns, but it would be erroneous to assume on these grounds that it is completely unregulated. Hunting takes place within contexts of linked social, cultural, ecological and technological constraints that can potentially encode mechanisms to promote the maintenance of game populations (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’ and Chapter 10, section ‘Systemic Aspects of Wapishana Hunting’). These contexts for individual action are not visible to a study that focuses on a single analytical niche. Similarly, at higher levels of abstraction, careful examination of the results of optimality analyses, and especially their deviations from the predictions of the model, can reveal subtle level factors such as the demands and opportunities of social circumstances, and the influence on resource acquisition behaviour

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of factors such as status, power and prestige (Dwyer 1985; Ruttan and Borgerhoff Mulder 1999; Alvard and Nolin 2003). Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology address both subjective and intersubjective features of human–environment relationships. Conklin’s foundational study of Hanunóo ethnobotanical knowledge was the first to apply a cognitive perspective to the issue of human use of the natural world (Conklin 1954a). By viewing subsistence practices in ethnoecological perspective – i.e. in terms of the categories and perceptions employed by resource users themselves rather than etic criteria – he highlighted the role of knowledge and shared understandings of correct practice as key causal and explanatory factors in human ecology (Conklin 1954b). Although Conklin’s original research was ethnographic, concerned not with knowledge for its own sake but with its applications in real-world settings, its most important immediate influence was upon the establishment of the new fields of Cognitive Anthropology (Conklin 1962; Frake 1962) and Ethnoscience (Sturtevant 1964), both firmly rooted in the upper-left quadrant. The consequences of this psychological orientation are exemplified by Brent Berlin’s studies of folk nomenclature and classification, largely based on abstract tests isolated from ethnographic context and concerned with identifying cross-cultural psychological regularities in classification of natural phenomena (Berlin et al. 1973, 1974; Berlin 1976, 1992). An apparent tendency for folk classifications to follow hierarchical patterns (Berlin et al. 1973; Berlin 1976; Brown 1984), although to a certain extent corroborated by more recent research (Atran and Medin 2008), is at least partly an artefact of the elicitation context. When methods encourage people to group animals, plants and perhaps other natural phenomena into categories related by hierarchical inclusion, they generally succeed in doing so, at least approximately. Socially situated studies reveal a far less neat and regular picture of folk classifications (Ellen 1979a), which are not fixed, uniform taxonomic trees, but structurally complex (Hunn and French 1984), socially distributed (Gardner 1976), terminologically variable (Sillitoe 1980) and operationally flexible, a variety of nomenclatural and classificatory mechanisms being activated according to the dictates of circumstances, including elicitation settings devised by observers (Ellen 1975; Randall 1976). Ethnographically situated studies documenting the ways in which people name and classify natural kinds in real-life settings reveal folk classifications to be the outcome of interactions among cognition, objective features of nature, and complex social and normative processes (Ellen 1993a, 1993b, 2005: 1–30; 2006a), a far more complete and accurate picture than attention to their cognitive aspects alone can provide.

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Following Conklin’s original ethnoecological approach, another strand of local knowledge research emphasizes its value as a store of information about the local ecology (Tulkin and Konner 1973; Posey 1981, 1986; DeWalt 1984; Posey et al. 1984; Townsend 1995; Ponte Johansons 1995; VasquezDavila 1995; Ferguson et al. 1998; Sillitoe 1998, 2006, 2007; Myrmin et al. 1999; Huntington et al. 1999; Huntington 2000; Nabhan 2003; Cormier 2004; Donovan and Puri 2004; Gilchrist et al. 2005; Telfer and Garde 2006). For understandable reasons, particularly in its early years, such research often emphasized the need to demonstrate the scientific validity of such knowledge, and potential applications in international development (e.g. Warren and Rajasekaran 1993; Warren et al. 1995; Steinmetz 2000). While this approach is important, it also has various shortcomings. Some critics see it as implicit in perpetuating top-down patterns of development, people’s own knowledge becoming a tool for the imposition upon them of capitalist relations of production and exchange (Escobar 1995: 192–211; Assies 1997: 75–76; Stirrat 1998). Ethnographic evidence, viewed from a multilevel and/or all-quadrant perspective, again provides substantive support for the political argument. As applied in practice, rational aspects of such knowledge (those directly commensurate with Babylonian science being only one of its features) are inevitably contextualized by nonrational knowledge at other levels (Chapter 11, section ‘Complexity and Depth in Traditional Ecological Knowledge’). Nonrational levels of analysis, and aspects of social, cultural and ecological context, are inseparable features of local knowledge, which therefore cannot be understood in isolation from these (Agrawal 1995, 2002; Hornborg 1996; Ellen and Harris 2000). The folk science used by small-scale users and managers of natural resources may differ greatly from ‘global science’ (Sillitoe 2007; see also Richards 1985), and is better understood and assessed on its own terms. Moving on from disputes over methodology and interpretation, existing ethnobiological datasets provide evidence that folk perceptions of nature incorporate all three basic levels of abstraction in the twelve niches framework. Gross level discourse includes names for concrete perceptual and functional categories, along with knowledge of their properties and uses (e.g. Metzger and Williams 1966; Posey 1986). The subtle level of analysis incorporates these concrete understandings into theories of similarity, relatedness or ecological connection, often expressed in ethnobiological classifications (e.g. Berlin et al. 1973; Townsend 1995; Atran 1998; Nabhan 2000, 2001). We find causal level discourse in the expression of cosmological theories and related ideas about nature, or the use of natural species to express ideas about human society or the universe at large (e.g. Leach 1964; Bulmer 1967; Tambiah 1969; Reichel-Dolmatoff

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1971, 1976; Rosaldo 1972; Howard 1991; Healey 1993; Descola 1996; Ellen 1999b). Although much research in the lower-left quadrant focuses on – and can thus reveal – only a single level of abstraction, multilevel studies of non-Western ecocosmologies show that they, too, operate simultaneously on multiple levels (Ingold 1992; Descola 1994; Århem 1996; Ellen 1996b; Hornborg 1996). Hunn (2006) has identified three main levels of discourse necessary for the effective communication of scientific findings on ethnobiological knowledge. As an example of how a multilevel perspective can improve analytical clarity, we can reconcile apparently contradictory perspectives on food taboos if we recognize them as reflecting different levels of abstraction, each simultaneously valid: as (gross level) practical guides to concrete behaviour, as (subtle level) metaphors to guide thought, and as reflecting the internal logic of a (causal level) symbolic system (Laderman 1981). Without clearly distinguishing the subjective and intersubjective quadrants, several anthropological studies have identified cross-cultural regularities in distinct value orientations to the environment (Merchant 1990; Pálsson 1996; Janssen 2002). This has parallels with Integral Ecology’s application of Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan 1996) to identify ‘eight ecological selves’, each expressing ecological awareness in a fashion characteristic of a particular value: Guardian (purple), Warrior (red), Manager (blue), Strategist (orange), Radical (green), Holist (yellow), Integral Ecologist (turquoise) and Sage (postulated stages beyond turquoise) (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a). For example, Carolyn Merchant identifies egocentric, homocentric and ecocentric environmental attitudes (Merchant 1990), of which egocentric can be mapped onto the red value, homocentric onto blue and orange, and ecocentric onto green, yellow and turquoise. A more complex pattern of correspondence with Pálsson’s (1996) classification of environmental values shows how such values can be differentially expressed in different quadrants. Orientalism and paternalism respectively express moral positions characteristic of the red and blue values, but both are post-Enlightenment orientations that express these values within social (including political and economic), contexts dominated by the (orange) technocratic and economic orientations characteristic of modernism. Pálsson identifies himself with what he terms communalism, whose environmental outlook is ecocentric and whose social outlook is communalistic, based on a notion of unity with nature that Integral Ecologists might attribute either to the purple value or see as emerging in green and persisting into yellow and turquoise. Some anthropological analyses treat the quadrants as contextual to each other rather than ‘tetra-arising’ as portrayed in the AQAL framework. An example is Ohnuki-Tierney’s treatment of the relationship

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between Cognitive and Symbolic Anthropology – upper-left and lower-left approaches to describing how people impose conceptual order upon the perceptual world. These can be considered as descriptions of different phases in a single process of abstraction from perceptual data, in which collective representations are contextual to individual perception and thought (Ohnuki-Tierney 1981). As explored in more detail below, many holistic frameworks in Environmental Anthropology also treat phenomena in one quadrant as contextual to those in others. Subjective and intersubjective aspects of phenomena, and their objective or systemic features, may exist in a variety of mutually contextualizing interrelationships. To limit the possible range of such relationships to hierarchical inclusion within a single quadrant is therefore excessively prescriptive. The importance of this is evident in the theoretical consolidation of postmodern accounts of diverse cultural perspectives on human–environment relationships taken on their own terms, rather than in comparison with scientific models (e.g. Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 1976; Croll and Parkin 1992a; Cantrill and Overac 1996; Descola and Pálsson 1996; Ellen and Fukui 1996; Viveiros de Castro 1996; Posey 1999; Ingold 2000). Building on Reichel-Dolmatoff’s groundbreaking analysis of the ecological consequences of behavioural effects of Tukano ecocosmologies, there is substantial evidence that indigenous worldviews often dramatically different from science play a crucial role in traditional resource management systems (Posey et al. 1984; Anderson 1996; Berkes and Folke 1998; Berkes 1999, 2008; Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes and Folke 2002; Sillitoe et al. 2002; Pálsson 2006; Sillitoe 2007). The resilience of many such systems and their success in promoting outcomes consistent with sustainability contrast dramatically with the outcomes of globally dominant forms of environmental understanding rooted in Babylonian science (Sponsel 1995a; Dove 2001; Wollock 2001; critical environmental scholars in other social science disciplines have made similar observations: e.g. Murphy 1994; Kidner 2001). Dove (2001) has put forward the important proposal that the contrast effectively amounts to an indigenous critique of the dominant model; the analysis in this book extends and supports this position. Continuting to focus on theory for now, such insights have extended the scope, and overcome the limitations, of various systems approaches rooted in Wilber’s lower-right quadrant. Earliest among these was Julian Steward’s Cultural Ecology (Steward 1955, 1977; see Ellen (1982) for an early critical review). Steward’s was an evolutionist and largely materialist orientation, focused on the extent to which invariant features of culture can be explained in terms of adaptation to ecological factors. Treating culture as a feature of adaptation to the environment rather than tautologically as its own explanatory principle led to a multilinear view

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of sociocultural evolution, a considerable advance on the problematic unilinear models dominant since the time of Spencer (Ellen 1982: 52–55; see also Chapter 2, section ‘Integral Psychology’). Weaknesses of detail – in particular, reliance on post hoc analyses of inadequate ethnographic data, and simplification of the variability and dynamism of both culture and environment – limited the explanatory value of Steward’s approach (Ellen 1982: 61–65). However, it became the forerunner of more sophisticated approaches that, by appropriating explanatory tools from Ecology, grew into modern-day Ecological Anthropology. Ecological approaches in Anthropology at first retained the largely materialist focus of Cultural Ecology, tending to objectify particular elements of culture as case-specific explanatory factors (Ellen 1982: 75–78). The Cultural Materialism of Marvin Harris (1966) treated ecology as a causal factor explaining features of culture in an approach strongly influenced by Marx and rooted in the lower-right quadrant. This led to a charge, not unfounded, of ‘vulgar materialism’ (Friedman 1974). Perhaps surprisingly given his later central involvement in anthropological hermeneutics (e.g. Geertz 1975), Geertz’s (1963) study of Indonesian agriculture, an important transitional study between Cultural Ecology and later ecosystem approaches, refers to culture in the sense of belief only occasionally and in passing (Geertz 1963: 10, 101–2). It otherwise focuses on the objective manifestations of culture, notably material culture and social organization. An important advance on Steward’s approach was attention to social factors as an emergent layer of organizational complexity. In this respect, the work of both Geertz and Harris marked an important step towards genuinely multilevel analyses, social-ecological rather than purely ecological, an advance consolidated over the subsequent couple of decades (Burnham and Ellen 1979; Moran 1990). A key trend was developments in anthropological use of the ecosystem concept, leading to more sophisticated understandings of how human societies could be modelled as organized flows of matter, energy and information. Roy Rappaport’s work on the role of ritual in ecological regulation (Rappaport 1968, 1979, 1990) heightened recognition of the roles of nonmaterial factors such as knowledge, perceptions and interpretations in mediating human–environment relations (Ellen 1982: 204–35). Although subjective, intersubjective and behavioural factors thus became established features of analysis in Human Ecology, they became increasingly difficult to reconcile with the bounded, static or equilibrium view of systems that mainstream ecology had yet to overcome (Scoones 1999). Ecological approaches, in other words, became too preoccupied with the perceived properties of the system. This was in part the reification

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of an analytical concept – confusion of the boundaries and ascribed properties of the system with concrete features of reality, or a confusion of levels. It also reflected the analytical dominance of lower-right factors over those in other quadrants. A series of critiques during the 1980s and 1990s highlighted these problems, precipitating a decline of interest in human ecosystems approaches (Abel and Stepp 2003: 1). Two important theoretical developments led to subsequent redefinition and reinvigoration of systems approaches. One was the emergence of the ‘new ecology’: a shift in ecology towards more dynamic models of ecosystems, with increasing emphasis on uncertainty, unpredictability and adaptive change (Scoones 1999). The other was the influence of postmodern insights into intersubjective dimensions of nature (Little 1999) (as summarized above). The realization that the properties of human environments are not objectively fixed but can be understood only in relation to some cultural context undermined the notion of an ecosystem as concrete reality rather than cultural construct. Moreover, it was becoming increasingly clear that indigenous models of nature had much in common with emerging understandings in ecology, both conceptually and in terms of their practical applications (Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes 2008: 181– 202). Developing these insights, several new approaches in Ecological Anthropology emerged in the early years of the twenty-first century, representing the cutting edge in holistic analysis of human–environment relations. These differ in some important respects from Integral Theory and Integral Ecology. As the next section shows, examination of these differences obliges a broader, more flexible view of the interrelationships of quadrants and levels, and reconsideration of the AQAL model.

Holistic Analysis in Ecological Anthropology Many holistic frameworks within Environmental Anthropology treat certain quadrants (or phenomena within them) as contextual to others rather than co-arising with them. One example is Vayda’s actor-oriented approach, which attaches epistemological priority to behaviours and their concrete effects, and attempts to situate these in relation to their systemic and subjective correlates (Vayda 1996). Following the method of ‘progressive contextualization’ (Vayda 1983), these correlates are treated as context whose relevance must be determined empirically, by working outwards to identify causal factor rather than attempting either to specify system boundaries in advance or to assume which subjective or intersubjective factors will be analytically relevant. This contrasts with the way in

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which the AQAL framework specifies the scope and shape of enquiry in advance, in ways I expect Vayda would regard as inappropriate. Several other actor-centred approaches take what can be considered to be a middle ground between Integral Theory and Vayda’s approach, treating the psychological, cultural and systemic correlates of individual behaviour as nonreducible layers of context (cf. Friedman and Rowlands 1977a: 203; Ellen 1982: 256). Numerous examples within contemporary theory reflect the need to develop systems approaches that fully incorporate culture as an organizational and explanatory force. They include Ethnoecology (Toledo 1992, 2004), Sacred Ecology (Berkes 1999, 2008), described in more detail in Chapter 4, and the Information Ecology approach to Human Ecosystems developed at the University of Georgia (Abel 1998; Casagrande 1999; Stepp 1999; Pavao-Zuckerman 2000; Abel and Stepp 2003; Stepp et al. 2003; Wyndham 2004). According to a guarded definition by John Stepp, who cautions that the approach is so broad in scope that any brief summary is likely to mislead, Information Ecology is ‘the study of the relationship of environmental information (at least physical, biological, social, and cultural environments) to all that comprises collective and individual processes of knowing and decision making (ideology, values, expectations, beliefs, symbolism)’ (Stepp 1999: 41). Information ecology applies advances in complex adaptive systems theory to the study of human ecosystems, largely addressing the objections to earlier approaches in Human Ecology raised by many critics during the 1970s and 1980s (Abel and Stepp 2003). As the name suggests, its major preoccupation is with the informational properties of human ecosystems and, in particular, the effects upon this of the unique individual and collective properties of humans as information processors (Stepp et al. 2003). Via this perspective, it has gone further than any other approach to date in integrating cultural factors into systems analysis. The way in which it currently achieves this has both parallels with and significant differences from that of Integral Theory, most notably in treating culture simultaneously as a phenomenon in itself and an element of systems also possessing material components, rather than a co-arising facet of all phenomena. ‘Symbolic culture … can be viewed as a whole, possessing its own self-organization, yet simultaneously constrained and structured by its position in energy hierarchies’ (Abel and Stepp 2003: 7). Another important example of an emerging holistic orientation is that of the social-ecological system (Berkes and Folke 1998a, 2003). This augments material descriptions of systems with selected elements from the other three quadrants: technology, local ecological knowledge and common property institutions (Berkes and Folke 1998b). Current

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articulations of the social-ecological system incorporate the Panarchy metaphor for cyclic adaptive change (Gunderson and Holling 2002; see also Chapter 4, section ‘Processes of Change’) based upon key insights into the structure and dynamics of ecological systems (Holling 1973, 1992). The tentative application of such insights to social and economic systems has so far proven effective (Holling and Gunderson 2002); a key current goal is expanding the scope of such analyses to attend to subjective factors (Westley et al. 2002). A number of other approaches to holistic analysis are evident within contemporary Environmental Anthropology. Examples include Roy Ellen’s socially and ecologically located analysis of folk classifications (Ellen 1993a); the approach in the multi-author volumes Redefining Nature (Ellen and Fukui 1996) and Nature and Society (Descola and Pálsson 1996), both of which advocate multiperspectival views on nature and stress the interdependence of objective and subjective dimensions; and Political Ecology, a multiscale integration of political economy’s focus on normative power structures with social science treatments of systems ecology (Greenberg and Park 1994), whose incorporation of findings from postmodern anthropology has seen it take significant steps towards multiperspectivalism (Biersack and Greenberg 2006). Another example is Historical Ecology, which combines insights from scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of nature within a unified, if far from uniform (Balée 1998a), holistic theoretical orientation. Historical Ecology has been described as ‘a multiscalar temporal and spatial frame, with an explicit focus on the role of human cognition in the human-environment dialectic’ (Crumley 1994b: 4) and defined as ‘the study of past ecosystems by charting the change in landscapes over time’, landscapes in turn being ‘the material manifestation of the relation between humans and their environment’ (Crumley 1994b: 6). It was an important precursor to the field of Biocultural Diversity (Maffi 2001a, 2005). Esbjörn-Hargens (2005a) locates several of these fields, along with Bateson’s Ecology of Mind, into a multilevel typology in which he labels them ‘holistic’ ecologies (corresponding to the yellow value in Spiral Dynamics): possessing incipient features of an integral ecology, but lacking the latter’s breadth of coverage. We have already noted that the same is true of Integral Ecology itself: although laying out a framework based on Integral Theory, in practice it occupies this only partially, and in addition suffers from limitations of perspective. The existence within Environmental Anthropology of a number of different ways of fitting together equivalents of Integral Theory’s levels and quadrants suggests that a programmatic adherence to the AQAL framework may also be limiting. We have already considered the problems that arise from overstating the

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developmental logic. Building on this, Chapter 4 compares its conception of heterarchy, or relationships among levels, with those in other theoretical approaches, and moves towards a more flexible framework better suited to the purposes of this book.

Note  1. The view that consciousness is emergent upon matter at certain levels of organizational complexity makes many experimental results in quantum physics paradoxical, notably the observer effect, the most philosophically satisfying explanation for which is that mind is either prior to or co-arises with matter (e.g. Jeans 1930; Goswami 1993). In fact, if we attribute consciousness to any material systems, which we must do in the case of ourselves, it is logically dubious to then fail to extend it to the rest of material existence; even the simplest material forms must also have subjective and intersubjective aspects (Teilhard de Chardin 1959: 54–58; Wilber 2000a: 115–20, 126–31). The point that mind can only be a property of systems exhibiting some degree of internal structure able to represent information materially (Bateson 1979: 102–4) apparently excludes the possibility of some subjective aspect to fundamental particles. The field of loop quantum gravity postulates a physical description of internal structure for fermions, bosons and protons (Castelvecchi 2006), the most fundamental class of entities known to exist as free-living particles, which if upheld by further research may remove this objection.

Chapter 4

Steps to an Integral Ecological Anthropology

Hierarchy and Heterarchy Our starting point for exploring treatments of hierarchy in Environmental Anthropology is again Bateson, who uses the concept of ‘logical types’1 to describe hierarchically nested layers of descriptive/analytical context characteristic of all subjective and intersubjective phenomena, including mental representation, communication and learning (Bateson 1972: 177–93, 279–308; 1979: 127–43). We can consider these layers (or levels) as both epistemologies (alternative analytical perspectives) and ontologies (models that attempt to capture real features of phenomena), a more adaptable approach than Integral Theory’s focus on developmental holarchies. Anthropological researchers influenced by Bateson have tended to identify and apply hierarchies of logical types in various ways, differences in details among these reflecting the particular aims of their study and/or outcomes of their methodology, without reference to any general framework. What they gain in analytical flexibility is thus at the expense of theoretical coherence. The consequences are mixed: some reveal limitations of the AQAL framework, while in other cases (and in some of the same cases) the frame of reference provided by the AQAL framework exposes logical inconsistencies in their employment of hierarchy. Logical types are directly equivalent to Wilber’s levels in that both represent hierarchically nested organizational structures. These structures are physical in the case of the right-hand quadrants, ideational or cognitive in the left hand, and influence flows of matter, energy and information such that certain patterns are more likely to occur than others. In all quadrants, structures at lower levels of organization are component parts of those at higher levels. The features of lower levels consequently limit to some extent the forms that higher levels of complexity emergent upon them can take (see also Kauffman 1993). Higher-level structures

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act as layers of context that restrain the potential range of expression of structures embedded in them. For example, no metabolic process within an organism can violate the laws of physics, but atoms are constrained by biological factors only when, and for as long as, they are bound up in biological entities. According to the AQAL model, these relationships of hierarchical inclusion are manifest within quadrants rather than across them. I consider this position partially accurate. One of the two main binary divisions creating Wilber’s quadrants is between individual and social holons, the latter being units that, although analytically coherent, lack any recognizable locus of self-identity (Wilber 2000a: 72–73; cf. Salthe 2003). These social holons relate to individual holons not through hierarchical inclusion, but as their social expressions. Hierarchical sequences that mix individual and social holons – for instance, when Rappaport (1990) describes individuals as embedded in populations within ecosystems, in turn parts of regional and extraregional systems – Wilber would thus argue to be conceptually amiss (Wilber 2000a: 87–93), as they conflate two different types of emergence: that between individual and social holons, and that between successive levels of organizational complexity. The accusation of erroneously confusing levels with quadrants, explicitly ascribed by Esbjörn-Hargens (2005a) to the ‘Three Ecologies’ of Felix Guattari (2000), might also be directed at various other attempts at holistic analysis in Human Ecology. However, many such approaches are analytically productive in ways that Integral Ecology might not permit (see also Chapter 5, section ‘Epistemological Colonization’). For example, Sacred Ecology locates traditional ecological knowledge successively within the context of resource management systems, social institutions and worldview, collectively forming the knowledge-belief-practice complex (Berkes 1999: 13–14). Similarly, in Ethnoecology’s kosmos-corpus-practice (k-c-p) complex, actors interpret the ‘production scenario’ or landscape in relation to their worldview (kosmos) and knowledge (corpus) in order to determine a course of action, or practice (Toledo 2004). Both are consistent with earlier efforts at analysing the behaviour of individual actors (Friedman and Rowlands 1977a: 203; Ellen 1982: 256; Vayda 1983) relative to social, cultural and/or ecological contexts, and more recent advances on this in Information Ecology (Stepp 1999; Casagrande 1999; Pavao-Zuckerman 2000; Wyndham 2004). Setting of layers of analysis across the subjective and objective quadrants in this way is not a repeated conceptual error, but the outcome of independent efforts to understand how these factors interact in traditional resource use. While their specificity of focus may limit their potential for general application, their empirical grounding makes them superior,

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in these specific applications, to the supposedly ‘content-free’ Integral Ecology. This highlights an important limitation of the AQAL model: that its focus on developmental holarchies can exclude consideration of other analytically useful models of heterarchy. In particular, while all phenomena are manifest in all four quadrants, correlations among these are not always simple, and in many cases it is useful to identify causal relations across quadrants. This compels us to adopt a more flexible notion of heterarchy, for which we can find a basis in existing approaches in Ecological Anthropology. The use of models based on spatial hierarchies is familiar within ecology (Holling 1992) and has been extended to social and cultural phenomena not just in the direct application of this research in Resilience Theory (Gunderson and Holling 2002), but also in fields such as Political Ecology (Greenberg and Park 1994). Historical Ecology incorporates a broader concept, that of heterarchy: multiple possible hierarchical and nonhierarchical relationships among the elements of complex systems (Crumley 1994b: 12). Wilber defines heterarchy more narrowly, retaining evolutionary or developmental emergence of complexity as the basic organizational principle, but allowing control relationships to operate up and down the hierarchy, as well as horizontally (Wilber 2000a: 28). Bateson’s logical types correspond more closely to Crumley’s definition, imposing no a priori conditions on how hierarchical relationships might be organized. In both cases, this may be determined by case-specific empirical findings or by analytical needs. The concept of hierarchy is key in Information Ecology, a multilevel theory of organization of objective and subjective aspects of human ecosystems (Abel 1998; Abel and Stepp 2003). Hierarchy, as Wilber’s ‘transcend and include’ characterization highlights, implies emergence: ‘Phenomena at one hierarchical level cannot be predicted from phenomena at another level, and exhibit properties that are more than the sum of their components’ (Stepp 1999: 52). Information itself exhibits a hierarchy of successive epistemological levels or contextual layers of abstraction (Casagrande 1999) – a direct application to the subjective realm of Bateson’s concept of logical types. In parallel with the distinction between vertical depth and horizontal span of a holon (changing via transformation and translation respectively) (Wilber 2000a: 66–68; see also Chapter 2, section ‘Integral Theory and Sociocultural Development’), Information Ecology defines complexity as the number of levels of abstraction necessary to describe a system, and complicatedness as the elaboration of existing levels with no corresponding increase in vertical differentiation (Stepp et al. 2003: 6).

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Processes of Change Social systems have the potential for both historical change based on their internal reproduction and cultural representations, and evolutionary change based on their interactions with the environment. In practice, differences between the two are not always readily distinguishable (Ellen 1982: 260–61). This conceptual tension is reflected in differences of opinion among practitioners of Historical Ecology (Balée 1998a): some treat the time dimension as historical, i.e. reflecting endogenous patterns of change (e.g. Gragson 1998; Graham 1998; Whitehead 1998), while others consider change processes as evolutionary, the outcome of dialectical interactions between system and environment (e.g. Bettinger 1998; Ferguson 1998). Similar ambiguity is evident in Wilber’s model, whose evolutionary and developmental aspects are not clearly distinguished. In particular, much of his early work assumed a teleological basis for human evolution/development adopted from the metaphysics of Plotinus and Aurobindo (Wilber 1980), which persists in Integral Theory’s use of the concept of Eros (Wilber 2000a: 341–49). In subsequent work he explicitly abandoned this position (Wilber 2003), but without fully working out the implications. Bateson (1972: 127–43, 279–308) considers the transition from one level to another to have its roots in paradox, when problems arise that the lower level is inadequate to resolve (cf. Douglas 1966; Rappaport 1971a: 35; Hofstadter 1979), a position paralleled in Integral Theory and some of its most important antecedents (Gebser 1985: 294; Graves 1974, 1981; Beck and Cowan 1996: 50–56; Wilber 2000a: 202–4). The emergence of complexity is thus teleomatic: end-resulting rather than end-directed (Abel 1998: 13). This is an inevitable consequence of the capacity of holons for successive organization into composite structures exhibiting emergent complexity, which at any one level provides the potential (and sometimes promotes the conditions) for further transformation and the emergence of yet further levels of complexity. The extent to which the respective potentials for translational and transformational change are realized is both historical/developmental and evolutionary; in other words, it depends upon factors both internal and external to the system. Detailed descriptions of the internal dynamics of both objective and subjective aspects of complex systems reach parallel conclusions, confirming Bateson’s suggestion that common processes underlie the emergence of any new level of complexity or the transfer of problem-solving capacity to a different level of abstraction. Resilience Theory provides the most detailed account of this process in its Panarchy metaphor for nested four-stage processes of cyclic adaptive change. Two familiar

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features of succession in ecological systems – the exploitation phase (r), characterized by rapid growth following a disturbance, and a conservation phase (K), in which matter and energy are tightly controlled and accumulate only slowly – form the ‘frontloop’ of the adaptive cycle. The cycle is closed by a ‘backloop’: a rapid Ω phase in which crisis disrupts the high interconnectivity and tight organization of the conservation phase, leading to the release of resources and a reorganization or α phase in which high uncertainty maximizes the potential for creativity and key events can critically influence conditions for the following r phase (Holling and Gunderson 2002). The term ‘Panarchy’ itself refers to the set of nested adaptive cycles of which a complex system is composed. Although many types of crosslevel influences are possible, they are particularly important during the Ω phase, at which collapse at one level can cascade up the cycle and precipitate a shift from the K to the Ω phase at a higher scale (Holling et al. 2002a). The field of Infodynamics – the incorporation into information theory of thermodynamics – suggests that a pattern similar to the adaptive cycle is universal, at least for material systems based upon dissipative structures, whose development must necessarily pass from immaturity (rapid growth and high energy throughput), through a possibly transient mature stage of stable size maintained by high energetic throughput, to senescent (information-rich but declining energetic throughput) (Salthe 2003). The outcomes of cautious application of the Panarchy model to a variety of settings beyond its original use in ecology, notably economic and social formations, suggest that it has broader validity (Holling and Gunderson 2002; Westley et al. 2002).2 Spiral Dynamics also incorporates a four-stage cycle of changing relationships between dominant values and prevailing life conditions (alpha, beta, gamma and delta) compellingly similar to Panarchy’s adaptive cycle (Beck and Cowan 1996: 85–92). The alpha stage is one of stability, in which values and life conditions fit comfortably, equivalent to the K phase. The beta and gamma stages represent the breakdown of this harmony, as new conditions emerge with which existing values are illequipped to cope, equivalent to the crisis represented by the Ω and α phases of the adaptive cycle’s backloop. Finally, delta is a stage of rapid creative change, in which the problems associated with beta and gamma are resolved in transition to a new alpha state, which may be based upon the same, a lower or a higher value (or logical type). Bateson describes the behavioural correlates of these subjective phases in a trained porpoise forced to shift learned patterns of behaviour to a higher logical type: initial distress at her trainer’s digression from the previously established pattern, forcing her into creative exploration of new

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possibilities, and finally excitement upon determining the new context for action (Bateson 1972: 276–78). An example of a regressive outcome of such a crisis is the reversion to superstition or religious fundamentalism common in Westerners troubled by their first realization of the logical limits of the purely rational mode of thought to which Babylon confines them (Bateson 1979: 140; Feuerstein 1987: 106; Atran 2002: 165–69), but lacking ready access to belief systems incorporating transrational levels and thus unable to shift to a higher logical type. Babylon’s ideological denial of the existence of transrational modes of being excludes them for all but the least conformist. The rest have recourse only to forms of the magic and mythical structures that have lost all practical value – another consequence of colonization by the mental structure – and persist only in deficient forms, not related in any systematic or meaningful way to sociocultural and/or ecological reality. The social manifestations of these deficient forms can be particularly severe in their effects on those both directly and indirectly affected (see e.g. Bateson 1972: 479–80; Anderson 1996: 176). Holling, Berkes and Folke point out the parallels between adaptive cycles operating in ecological systems and the key role of crisis as a learning mechanism in human institutions for environmental management (Holling et al. 1998; cf. also the more general account of institutional crisis and learning in Scharmer (2009)). Crisis arises when the system enters a state beyond the experience of existing management mechanisms, forcing the entry of the latter into Ω and α phases and their reorganization into forms able to cope with these new circumstances. Resilience Theory, Spiral Dynamics and Ecology of Mind thus provide complementary insights, revealing parallel cyclic processes in subjective and objective features of systems. Key features are the basis in crisis for increases in vertical complexity via the emergence of higher logical types, and the importance of interactions across levels when crisis at one level is buffered and/or mitigated by the effects of those above and below. Bateson points out an important feature of these interactions: logical types at successive levels alternate between emphasis on form and process, a distinction he also characterizes as calibration and feedback, or rigour and imagination (Bateson 1979: 204–19), manifest in evolutionary settings as selection and mutation (Bateson 1979: 191–97). This is homologous with an alternate emphasis on integrative and self-assertive tendencies in the successive developmental levels identified in Integral Theory and Spiral Dynamics (Koestler 1970: 88–89; Graves 1981; Beck and Cowan 1996: 56–59). Mapping this alternation onto the adaptive cycle suggests that it incorporates both communion-focused and agency-focused phases. The agency-focused level comprises α and r phases, while

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the communion-focused level is stable at the K phase and breaks down at the Ω phase, the site of possible transition to a new agency-oriented level. This contradicts Beck and Cowan’s suggestion that their account of the change cycle outlined above is characteristic of shifts between values at all levels. However, the absence of any published empirical evidence means we can at best regard their assertion as tentative, and it appears possible that agency-focused and communion-focused levels may exhibit distinct patterns of change.

Patterns of Change One of the seminal studies in Ecological Anthropology distinguished the two major patterns highlighted in the foregoing section – translation versus transformation, or addition of complicatedness versus movement to a different level of complexity – in processes of change in the Inner and Outer regions of Indonesia in the immediate post-independence period (Geertz 1963). Involution, characteristic of the densely populated rice-growing central regions, involves the elaboration and intensification of existing methods to make them more productive. Essentially, the topographic space inhabited by the system remains unchanged qualitatively and in broad outline, but within this details of system structure and dynamics may change substantially. To use concepts later developed in Resilience Theory, the system remains within a zone of stability, which in this case is possible because, unlike swiddening, terrace cultivation of wet rice is very resilient to increases in population pressure and productivity per unit land area due to the prospect of increasing yields substantially via increased labour input. Revolutionary change, as occurred in some areas of Outer Indonesia in which traditional subsistence systems based on long fallow-swidden agriculture were abandoned and replaced by commercial cultivation, involves a change of level, to dependence for survival upon integration into national and global cash economies, former subsistence producers becoming dependent on the purchase of imported rice for domestic consumption. A more recent Indonesian example, the commercial production of vegetables for regional markets in Minahasa, West Sulawesi, shows a different pattern in which an increase in complicatedness at one level takes place without any apparent loss of span or autonomy at the immediately subordinate level. Agriculturalists combine specialized commercial cultivation of a small number of crops with a more diverse and generalized subsistence production, the latter providing a safety net against loss of cash income from market or production failures. However, the local

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subsistence economy is retained only as a material support to commercial agriculture: villages invest in the latter not only their financial interests, but also the symbolic reproduction of village identity with respect to regional markets (Platten 2005; Henfrey and Platten 2006; Platten and Henfrey 2009). Similarly, historical and contemporary Wapishana engagement with broader cash economies has entailed few significant changes either in the basic form of subsistence production or in its importance in the domestic economy. In contrast to the wet rice agriculture of Inner Indonesia, long fallow swidden agriculture has very low resilience to changes in population density, increases in which inevitably precipitate a shift to a new agroecological system (short fallow or permanent agriculture) or redeployment of effort to alternative production regimes. Social-ecological systems based upon swidden agriculture are also highly vulnerable to loss of the local base of relevant skills and knowledge, and to changes in the timing of key tasks such as clearing, burning and planting fields. Beyond these constraints, most are highly flexible: this is the main reason why long fallow swidden cultivation is a basic agroecological theme that, with local variation, occurs throughout the tropical forest region worldwide. In the Wapishana case, certain agricultural tasks demand the application of all available labour at specific times: clearing in January following the Christmas rains and burning and planting before the onset of the long rainy season in April. Work such as weeding and harvesting is ongoing throughout the year but does not impose any fixed routine, allowing people to conduct their other tasks around it. Within this area of flexibility, Wapishana men were able to combine work in the commercial trade in balata (the dried latex of the forest tree Manilkara bidentata) with attention to subsistence tasks. The main balata bleeding season is during the long rains, and so from May onwards, with farms already burnt and planted, men left the village to spend several months working balata bleeding areas deep in the forest. In the meantime, women remained at home to look after the children, houses and farms. The seasonal absence of men obliged many women to take up traditionally male pursuits, including hunting and fishing, to provide animal protein. This is an example both of how rational criticism based upon practical necessity overcomes customary norms and of the flexibility of the subsistence system in the face of changes in its broader economic context. Aside from this, balata bleeding does not appear to have substantially changed ideas and outlooks, and generally operated so as to supplement and support subsistence practices, not challenge and undermine them, for instance, by providing cash to buy manufactured tools.

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The main opportunity for cash cropping available to present-day Wapishana people in Guyana is the cultivation of peanuts for sale to traders based in Lethem and Georgetown. As in the days of the balata trade, peanut farmers in Maruranau prioritize subsistence tasks, beginning work on a small swidden dedicated exclusively to peanuts only after clearing, burning and planting subsistence plots of cassava and other staples. Unusually early onset of the rainy season in 2000 caught out many who had not yet burnt their peanut fields and so could not produce a commercial crop that year, but everyone had already completed the necessary work on their staple plots. Subsistence production is more significant materially, psychologically and culturally than commercial activities, but provides room for the latter due to its flexibility in terms of time allocation and combination of techniques. Similarly, keeping domestic livestock provides alternative sources of protein to the traditional fish and game, as well as a possible means to raise a cash income, exceedingly modest for all but a few stockholders with substantial herds of cattle. For some people, it has largely replaced hunting as a subsistence pursuit, although in Maruranau most people do both.3 In some villages the change has been more extreme: in the populous South-Central village of Sand Creek, hunting is very much a minority pursuit (Forte 2000: 64). The situation in Sand Creek is an outcome of both social and ecological factors: a longer history of involvement in the livestock trade, strong connections with neighbouring non-Amerindian ranching settlements, relative proximity to markets at Lethem, a scarcity of forested land for hunting in the immediate vicinity and a location near the confluence of two major rivers that provides abundant opportunity for fishing. The shift of emphasis from hunting to livestock rearing does not involve structural change in the subsistence system. Farming complements hunting, but does not necessitate it. The journey to the farm provides daily hunting opportunities, especially when farms are located in deep forest, and the ecological changes associated with long fallow swidden agriculture attract game animals to the farming area. Farm camps also provide good bases for hunting expeditions into deeper forest, which in turn provide meat during extended stays at the farm. However, farming can just as readily be combined with livestock rearing: some people nowadays cut their farms closer to the bush mouth in order to reduce journey times to and from the farm, and reside in the village on a permanent basis in order to attend to livestock rather than spending time at a farm house in the agricultural zone. A number of Wapishana people have become economically dependent on commercial livestock production, either as full-time wage labourers or producers, and thus have become fully integrated into the regional

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cash economy, a higher level of social and economic organization. The situation is similar for local schoolteachers, most of whom are nowadays Wapishana people, salaried employees of the national government. The majority of Wapishana people in full-time wage labour within the Rupununi retain connections to the subsistence economy, either directly by combining the two or indirectly by providing cash to family members, buying and exchanging agricultural produce, or paying others to hunt, fish or farm on their behalf. These connections also provide the possibility of returning to subsistence production, resuming hereditary rights of access to agricultural land, and obtaining cassava sticks and other planting materials from relatives. These latter examples represent a third major pattern of change in multilevel complex systems, consistent with Paul Richards’ account of Indigenous Agricultural Revolution. Richards (1985) documents how smallscale agricultural producers in West Africa exercise great discernment in deciding whether to adopt or reject the technological inputs and technical advice of agricultural extension agents in the service of governmental and development agencies whose general adherence to technocratic and market-centred criteria is characteristically Babylonian. This is the predominant pattern in situations where marginal producers either exert, or through favourable circumstances happen to retain, control over both the nature and outcome of their interactions with Babylon. This allows them to be selective, taking advantage of the opportunities that Babylon offers to increase complicatedness in the mental structure to the extent that these make sense in the context of the latter’s pre-existing local elaboration, and those of the magic, mythical and integral structures, while retaining intact pre-existing knowledge, institutions and practices located in all these structures (e.g. Clark and Murdoch 1997; Iskandar and Ellen 2000; Siebers 2003). A broader pattern is revealed by historical examination of how Kayapó people in the Xingu river basin managed their changing forms of interaction with the Brazilian state (Fisher 1994). Fisher identifies three distinct phases in this, each marked by a different form of state presence in the region and, correspondingly, by a different Kayapó strategy for asserting their sovereignty. In the extractive phase, when state contact was limited to collectors and traders of commercially important forest products, Kayapó groups used threats of aggression to ensure their compliance and that of the Brazilian government. In the subsequent bureaucratic phase, the Brazilian government sought to interact with indigenous groups directly via state agencies such as Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI). Kayapó representatives established a presence in the state capital, Belém, from which to exercise systematic pressure at the

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highest levels of state bureaucracy accessible to them, eventually co-opting the regional branch of FUNAI when their own representatives were elected to its cabinet. From the 1980s onward, the bureaucratic phase gave way to the multinational phase, in which the Brazilian government increasingly drew on the resources of multinational agencies to support large-scale development projects, including a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Xingu. By this time, the Kayapó were in contact with a range of international actors, including anthropologists, conservation groups and even celebrities like the pop singer Sting, and mobilized them into an alliance that opposed and eventually defeated the proposal. The common feature of all these phases is that the Kayapó asserted their interests by maximizing their potential to cause political disruption at the highest level and on the widest scale available to them at the time. Most pertinently for the present analysis, as this shifted to higher organizational levels and geographical scales, the psychological locus of their actions also shifted: from threats of force (magic structure) to manipulation of bureaucratic apparatus (mythical) and finally mobilization of an international alliance whose common interest was underlaid by diverse motivations (mental and integral structure). These strategic loci also corresponded to the dominant mode of state action, which expressed the magic structure (utilitarianism) in the extractive phase, mythical structure in the bureaucratic phase, and mental structure (technocracy) in the multinational phase. In a similar fashion, when Nuaulu people in Indonesia sought to ally with international conservationists in response to threats to their tropical forest habitat, they expressed a model of human–environment relationships very different from the one they apply in the course of day-to-day subsistence activities (Ellen 1999a). In other words, they shifted to a different epistemological level appropriate to the demands of the new situation. We can see another dimension of this flexibility in the attitudes of participants in Hochachka’s work in El Salvador, who shifted from integral-level engagement in the development process she was facilitating to blue or mythical structure responses to threats of outsider encroachment on their fishing grounds (Hochachka 2005a, 2005b). In each case, the local response was at a level corresponding to that of the external intervention. A multilevel perspective can help to clarify concerns about the possible consequences of alliances between indigenous Amazonian groups and conservationists, whose common interest in the fate of ecologically rich landscapes stems from very different premises (Conklin and Graham 1996; Brosius 1997). While Western conservationists may not share the motivations of their indigenous collaborators, they have common concerns in terms of outcome rather than process (Berkes 2008: 232–239). A

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multiperspectival outlook not only accepts differences in outlook and lifestyle, it values them as essential to resolving any complex problem; they are, in fact, exactly what make such alliances possible. An indigenous group’s concern with protecting the ecological resources upon which it depends for subsistence may be based largely on utilitarian and normative motives, respectively located in the magic and mythical structures (the specific forms of which are, of course, at least as varied as the ecological settings themselves). Within systatic, multilevel thought, any such local perspectives can coexist with mental structure ethics of cultural self-determination for all peoples (not just one’s own) and maintenance of ecological integrity. These are novelties within indigenous discourse because they have only become necessary at Babylon’s cultural and ecological frontiers, just as in Guyana the terms ‘Amerindian’ (and, later, ‘indigenous’) are both political constructs that were adopted only in relation to exposure of the groups so labelled to common threats in the face of colonial, national and now international forces. An ‘Indigenous Revolution’, to adapt Richards’ term, is therefore a systatic form of intercultural exchange: a selective elaboration of one or more structures in response to new conditions that does not undermine or replace the expression of other structures. This is how we have already defined a cultural edge. Where power imbalances exist, and particularly when the dominant system is not itself systatic, interactions tend to be more like cultural frontiers: excessive involution in one structure suppressing expression of the others. Certain circumstances mitigate the effects of power imbalance. For example, in postrevolutionary Mexico, recognition in national legislation of customary systems of land tenure allowed traditional institutions to persist and to integrate into national political and economic systems on their own terms. These legal mechanisms have been described as ‘institutional shells’ (Alcorn and Toledo 1998) – an effective buffer between systatic indigenous institutions and national frameworks that express deficient forms of the mythical structure. The existence of these institutional shells is a crucial contributing factor to a pattern of economic development in southern Mexico in particular, in which regional and national economic and social-ecological resilience are emergent upon numerous local, self-determined strategies that build upon and advance biocultural diversity (Toledo 2001). The creation of such cultural edges is inevitably a creative act on the part of the people involved, in some cases involving reinvention of customary institutions, and even collective identity, in order to fit the overarching legislative framework (Sheridan 1988). The creative engagement of many indigenous people with global conservation (Fisher 1994; Conklin and Graham 1996; Ellen 1999a) can be

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viewed in a similar light: as a self-determined strategy to create cultural edges and so promote cultural survival. At the other extreme, the absence of such institutional shells makes indigenous and other subsistence-oriented societies vulnerable to invasion by Babylon’s deficient form of the mental structure. The consequences have been well documented in studies in Political Ecology – for example, the links between national economic development strategies, and international influences upon these, and ecologically destructive patterns of resource use among Honduran peasants (Stonich 1993), echoing earlier work on the broader political causes of environmental damage in much of the developing world (Blaikie 1985). Research on the effects on local knowledge of integration into broader economic systems gives diverse results. Inverse correlations between levels of local knowledge and indicators of integration into national society have been found for Piaroa and Barí people in Venezuela (Lizarralde 2001; Zent 2001), Alune people in Indonesia (Florey 2001) and Lacandon Maya in Mexico (Ross 2002). On the other hand, among Tzeltal Maya elsewhere in Mexico, retention of native languages and continued practice of traditional subsistence pursuits meant that the current generation of children knew as much as botanical nomenclature as those of the same age thirty years before (Zarger and Stepp 2004). Loss of knowledge of plant uses resulting from economic and cultural integration among Tsiname’ people in Bolivia was less pronounced the further people lived from their nearest major town (Reyes-Garcia et al. 2005). In Honduras, market integration among Tawahka people correlated with loss of knowledge of forest plants and animals among wage labourers and cash croppers, but collectors and sellers of forest products retained a great deal more (Godoy et al. 1998). Real-world examples of intercultural encounter are more complicated than the idealized models presented here. They include elements of both edge and frontier, and of all three basic patterns of interaction among levels. Well-documented examples include the history of the effects of the Mollucan spice trade upon local subsistence economies dominated by sago production (Ellen 1979b, 2003a), and Mbuti interactions with national society and the cash economy in Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo (Ichikawa 1996). Systasis on both sides is not a precondition for formation of a cultural edge. However, when power imbalances exist, in particular in encounters between Babylon and indigenous societies, if these are not mitigated either by distance or a mechanism such as institutional shells, the interaction will be a frontier. Understanding this requires a more detailed examination of the relationships among levels characteristic of Babylon, which the next chapter provides.

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Notes  1. A concept he derives from Bertrand Russell.  2. According to Anderson (1996: 145–46), Ibn Khaldun many centuries before noted what appears to be a similar pattern in the rise and fall of civilizations. Entering into the decline (omega) phase has adverse social and environmental effects: competitive and, at worst, aggressive and hateful attitudes and behaviours increase at the expense of the cooperation necessary for effective social coordination around resource use.  3. In surveys conducted in 1998, 85 per cent of responding households reported participation in fishing and 73 per cent in hunting. Both figures were lower than the reported frequency of participation in livestock rearing at 91 per cent (Henfrey 2002: 81–84).

Chapter 5

Babylon and the ‘Crisis of Modernity’

Epistemological Colonization Following Habermas, Wilber characterizes the ‘crisis of modernity’ as the dissociation of the three value spheres of science, art and morality (Wilber 2000a: 425–29). The result of this dissociation is the colonization by science – representing the two objective quadrants – of the interior quadrants of art (subjective) and morality (intersubjective), and the consequent exclusion from analysis of all subjective factors. The effect is clear in the way in which conventional approaches in ecology tend to undervalue both subjective and intersubjective aspects of traditional ecological knowledge (Holling et al. 1998: 349), and in approaches that reduce it to a source of local detail for the broad universal frameworks provided by science (e.g. DeWalt 1994; Clark and Murdoch 1997). The limitations of this are now well recognized (Hornborg 1996; Ellen and Harris 2000; Agrawal 2002), and emerging theoretical approaches, following Bateson, seek to accommodate subjective as well as objective factors. Both the knowledge-practice belief complex in Sacred Ecology (Berkes 1999: 13–14) and Ethnoecology’s belief-knowledge-practice complex (Toledo 2004) explicitly acknowledge the irreducible contribution of all three value spheres to any event in human ecology. Both attempt the type of analytical reintegration whose possibility Wilber considers the major intellectual legacy of postmodernism (Wilber 2000a: 401–5). Sacred Ecology, for example, treats direct, explicit knowledge of the local biota as one level of analysis in traditional resource management, successively nested within management practices, social institutions and worldview, each of which encodes different types of collective knowledge of the links between social and ecological realities (Berkes 1999: 13–14). It thus treats subjective, objective and intersubjective aspects of reality as successive levels of emergent context rather than according to the AQAL framework, in which each level simultaneously incorporates subjective, intersubjective and objective aspects of phenomena.

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Following Habermas and various other theorists, Wilber claims that the differentiation of the value spheres was an innovation of modernity (Wilber 2000a: 384), one that is necessary for their subsequent postmodern reintegration. This is true only within Babylon and in other societies whose historical development has been shaped by highly centralized institutions. If it was universally the case, indigenous societies that never experienced any phase in their own history equivalent to modernity could never have achieved the sophisticated integration of social and ecological systems observed in many studies. Although ethnographers took some time to appreciate the differences between their informants’ ideological narratives and factual accounts (Leach 1966) and even longer to recognize the influence of their own counterfactual ideological narratives (Delaney 1986), wherever anthropological analyses have allowed for the possibility of conceptual separation of belief, knowledge and objective or external reality among non-Babylonian peoples they have found it to be routine. Another feature of Babylon particularly important for our current purposes is dissociation of levels or structures: the dominance of a single structure in social institutions and associated patterns of thought and behaviour rather than the balanced and integrated relationship that constitutes systasis. Gebser’s leading interpreter gives a compelling account of the dominance of the mental structure or, more specifically, of ratio, its deficient form (Feuerstein 1987: 111–26). The earliest documentary evidence of its detrimental social and psychological effects appears to be in texts recorded in the original, historical Babylon 4,000 or more years ago (Feuerstein 1987: 95–97). Becoming more deeply rooted in ancient Greece via the unfavourable contrast of myth with logos, this reached its full extent only following the Enlightenment, with the ‘demythologization’ of literature (Coupe 1997: 9–13) and the rise of a scientific establishment ideologically wedded to programmatic rationality. A useful tool to illustrate this point, and the central contrast this book is making between indigenous and Babylonian ecologies, is the diagrammatic representation of complex systems as surfaces in three-dimensional space whose topographical features represent patterns of stability. The surface itself represents phase space – the range of possible states of the system – while a ball on its surface represents the state of the system (its position within phase space) at any point in time. Depressions in the topography represent attractors: zones of stability upon which system states converge from a broad range of starting points, and from which the system will shift only when strongly perturbed. Attractors may vary in depth, and in the size and shape of their basins of attraction.

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The resilience of ecological systems can be represented in this way (Holling 1973; Holling et al. 2002b; Walker et al. 2004). Within a single organizational level, the system’s ability to remain in the same state when subject to external perturbations depends on three factors: latitude (the breadth of the basin of attraction), resistance (the depth of the basin of attraction or, more precisely, the depth at which the system finds itself within it) and precarity (how close the system is to the boundary between one basin of attraction and another) (Walker et al. 2004). We can represent the forms taken by Gebser’s structures in any particular setting, including the intersubjective aspects of any society (a sociocultural system) in much the same way. Persistent psychological or cultural habits are attractors (Lucas 2005; cf. Kauffman 1993: 191) of varying shape in the upper-left and lower-left quadrants respectively. Strongly hegemonic factors in politically centralized societies, embodied in powerful institutions, such as religious prescription or ideological assertion of rationality as the sole legitimate form of understanding, would be represented by broad and deep basins of attraction. When located in a single structure, they strongly constrain factors in all quadrants – patterns of individual behaviour and thought, intersubjective agreement and social organization – within this structure, though the range of expressions within it may be broad. The depth and breadth of these basins of attraction is a formidable barrier both to transformation (the shift from one structure to another as the dominant epistemological locus, whether progressive or regressive) and to systasis (flexible movement among structures according to the demands of a particular situation).

Figure 5.1 Basins of attraction in phase space (following Walker et al. 2004, Figure 1a). Figure created by the author.

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In contrast, among people not subject to the dominating influence of strongly centralized institutions, psychological, cultural and behavioural basins of attraction within any particular structure are shallow and less difficult to escape. This facilitates the emergence of new structures during individual development, the elaboration within any particular structure of institutions, norms, values and customary practices, and the instantiation of each structure in specific acts of behaviour. Flexible movement among structures and the different problem-solving capacities each provides is consequently far easier and more common. This interplay among organizational levels in subjective and intersubjective aspects of phenomena is the equivalent in these quadrants of Panarchy, interactions across organizational levels observed in material systems that buffer perturbations within a single level (Holling et al. 2002; Walker et al. 2004). According to Wilber, in order for transformation to any particular stage (or structure) to take place, it is necessary to achieve a basic competence in that immediately preceding it. However, there is scope for far more translational elaboration within any level than the minimum necessary to prepare for the next (Wilber 2000b: 238–40; Hardt and Negri 2000: 288–89). The fundamental difference between Babylonian and indigenous societies is that the former develop mostly via translation, producing highly involuted expressions of a single structure represented by deep and broad basins of attraction, while the latter exhibit a more balanced complexity based upon less extensive elaboration of several structures simultaneously – an emphasis on depth as opposed to Bablyon’s emphasis on span. Assuming for the sake of argument that the structures represent universal human capacities, each is potentially available to any neurophysiologically healthy adult, regardless of sociocultural background, as a mode of thought and action. The distinctive feature of Babylon is that problem-solving capacities derived from only a single structure are systematically encoded as shared beliefs, norms and values or in the form of social institutions. The predominance of this single structure delimits the range of situations individuals encounter and the problems they have to solve: in the normal course of events, problem-solving capacities located within other structures are rarely used. Furthermore, in the absence of any meaningful and persistent social or cultural expressions, these latter capacities are far less available in situations where they might be of use. Institutions in a single dominant structure may actively oppress expression of the others (Gebser 1985: 91), as in the burning of heretics by the church or the ridicule by some in the scientific establishment of even healthy forms of prerational mythology and transrational insight alike. Such imbalance among the structures is problematic, partly because the structures are emergent – each incorporates its antecedents and its

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healthy form must necessarily allow for their expression – but also because each encodes a different type of epistemology or information-processing capacity. Bateson has identified two types of epistemological pathology that can arise when a dominant structure inhibits the expression of others. First, confusions of logical types, in which problems best addressed at one level of abstraction are in fact addressed at another, at which they are insoluble (Bateson 1972: 486–95). Second, and related, addiction: the failure to move from a single dominant logical type to another when necessary (Bateson and Bateson 1987: 125–34; see also Wilber 2000b: 145–47). When circumstances are incompatible with the problem-solving capacities available at a particular level, the result is a ‘double-bind’ (Bateson 1972: 201–12): a conflict whose only possible remedy is a shift to a different logical type. Where no capacity to do this exists – in other words, in the absence of systasis – solutions to problems are instead sought in their very causes. Babylon provides an exemplary illustration of the pathological social consequences of addiction. Its dominance by the mental structure creates the paradoxical situation where the sum of rational individual decisions, unmitigated by guiding institutions in other structures, is collective irrationality (Hardin 1968; cf. Marcuse 1964). The ecological and social crises gripping the planet, and Babylon’s abject failure to provide effective solutions despite the scale of its scientific and technological achievements, demonstrate the inadequacy of a strictly rationalist outlook, by itself, as the basis for decisions about linked ecological and social systems (Bateson 1972: 432–45; Rappaport 1979; Bateson and Bateson 1987: 135– 66; Ludwig 1993; Hornborg 1996; Holling et al. 1998; Dove 2001; see also Jackson 2006). Externalization of environmental damage is as much cause as symptom, continual expansion at its frontiers having spared Babylon the necessity of living within its ecological means until the past few decades, when those frontiers began to reach the very limits of the biosphere (Holling et al. 1998). The consequent alienation from objective nature is mirrored in the alienation from internal nature inherent in extreme rationalization, and in technical, economic and political sciences that for centuries attempted to deny any limits to nature’s productive capacity in the face of the ingenuity of ‘rational man’ (Murphy 1994). The inevitable consequences of attempts to make this problem its own solution are exemplified in the disastrously misconceived notion of ‘sustainable development’, which has become the standard oxymoron for attempts to resolve the environmental chaos modernity has, due to its inherent nature, produced, but which by reinforcing the ideological causes of this chaos can only result in its long-term exacerbation (de la Court 1990; Hornborg 1996: 56–57). As a concrete example, the Global Environment

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Facility, the multibillion-dollar fund set up by the World Bank to finance the implementation of international environmental agreements, may well mitigate the ecological effects of expansion of global capitalism to some degree, but it also perpetuates the commoditization of nature and managerialization of human relationships with the environment (Young 2002). It may represent the best possible concession to conservation that does not fundamentally challenge the hegemony of free-market capitalism, but the long-term consequences of exacerbating addiction and undermining existing diversity in cultural perspectives on nature are likely to be disastrous. In contrast to Babylon, daily life in societies where more or less autonomous resource users exercise a substantial degree of economic self-reliance presents individuals with problems of a more complex nature, requiring recourse to more than one structure or logical type. In the absence of extreme specialization of economic roles among individuals and of the possibility to externalize environmental damage, the overwhelming dominance of a single structure would have immediate pathological effects and could not persist. On the other hand, the range of different situations encountered – and hence the span of each structure’s expression – is more limited, as people generally operate within fairly restricted social, ecological and cultural settings. Small-scale societies are often bastions of conformity, restricting the scope of translational development within a structure to a limited range of culturally specified forms. To a certain extent, the contrast represents a trade-off between depth and span. However, it is important to note that this trade-off is contingent rather than absolute: as the final chapter of this book elaborates, the potential complementarity between indigenous and Babylonian ecologies arises from the possibility of combining the depth of the former with the span of the latter. Numerous studies of the ecological knowledge of indigenous and other marginal peoples have shown them to engage with nature via composite epistemologies of just this type, combining rational with nonrational cognitive modes (Tulkin and Konner 1973; Akimichi 1996; Århem 1996; Dove 1996; Dwyer 1996; Ellen 1996b; Hviding 1996), formally described by both Berkes (1998, 1999, 2008) and Toledo (1992, 2004). In other words, indigenous ecological knowledge differs from Babylonian or scientific ecology in two ways: first, it incorporates less complicatedness, but more complexity; and, second, the relationship between the structures is complementary and synergistic, conforming to Gebser’s notion of systasis (Gebser 1985: 286, 292). This composite environmental epistemology is, I contend, the essential feature that distinguishes indigenous1 and scientific ecological knowledge. I further assert

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it to be the root of the otherwise surprising observation with which we began (Chapter 1, section ‘Cultural and Ecological Complexity’): that many societies lacking formal scientific traditions have achieved startling successes in reconciling ongoing occupation and/or usage of sensitive ecological systems with maintaining or even enhancing their biotic diversity and ecological complexity. A multilevel perspective, allowing disengagement from problems experienced at any one level of abstraction and their resolution at a different level, is essential to the resolution of complex systemic problems (cf. Hornborg 1996). The complexity of indigenous ecological knowledge, and the consequent capacity to apply a variety of problem-solving capacities to ecological and cultural interchanges, is the fundamental basis for their ongoing creation of ecological fringes, as well as their ability to interact with other societies as cultural edges. Recognizing this, recent innovation in scientific approaches to natural resource management has seen them broaden their perspective beyond the limits of a strict rationalism, explicitly mimicking this feature of traditional systems (Johannes 1998b; Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes and Folke 2002). The literature on traditional resource management has for the most part described and accounted for its composite epistemology only on a case-by-case basis. The more general theoretical treatments that exist do not incorporate psychological models that could provide its systematic description. Integral Ecology is the first framework for ecological analysis of which I am aware that does this. It thus allows us to take some first steps towards identifying broad general differences between indigenous and scientific ecologies. Before doing so, in the next section I examine some of the precedents in anthropological treatments of rationality and nonrationality.

Magic, Science, Religion, and the Ecology of Rationality Gebser suggests that contemporary ‘primitives … live … in a more or less deficient magic structure’ (Gebser 1985: 44) and makes a related contention that the mental structure, and the integral emergent upon it, are developments confined to Europe (Gebser 1985: 200 and see also 233, 441 n.71). He thus repeated an outdated and inaccurate distinction, exemplified by the early work of Lévy-Bruhl (1985), between the ‘prelogical’ thought of ‘primitive’ peoples and ‘logical’ thought of more ‘advanced’ peoples.2 In a less ethnocentric – indeed, positively xenocentric – fashion, similar attitudes underlie certain naïvely anti-rational, anti-intellectual and/or anti-scientific trends in environmentalism, whose limitations

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have been amply exposed in various essays published over the years by Brian Morris (1996). Many such ‘green primitivisms’ (Ellen 1986) incorporate accounts of indigenous populations and their ecological relations that, although sympathetic, are commonly flawed, both empirically and theoretically (see also Gill 1990; Kehoe 1990; Redford 1991; Milton 1996: 31–32, 109–114; Brosius 1997; Kuper 2003, 2005). Argyrou (2005: 61–72) considers such perceptions to have a crucial legitimating role in environmentalist discourse: indigenous peoples, viewed as embodying ecological worldviews and lifestyles, become the other in relation to which it constructs its critique of modernity. This remains true as long as such discourse continues to perpetuate these fallacies and fails to move on from the purely symbolic engagement with indigenous populations to which Argyrou considers it limited. Without stating and enacting a practical programme, this can be nothing more than Indigenism in a similar sense to Said’s (1978) Orientalism: a Western discourse whose ostensible concern with indigenous peoples masks its actual status as a reflexive narrative via which the West constructs its own identity, although with the difference that this discourse is largely critical of Western hegemony. This is exactly what much of Social Anthropology has done with its subject peoples from its inception (Kuper 1988, 1998); only in the face of radical internal critiques has the discipline as a whole begun to transcend this. However, contrary to Argyrou’s assertion, practical programmes have emerged in fields such as Biocultural Diversity (Maffi 2001b), Resilience Theory’s combination of indigenous knowledge and ecological theory (Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes and Folke 2002), and the diverse influences of ethnobiological enquiry on fields including Ecology, Conservation Biology, Development Studies and Political Anthropology (Ellen 2006b: 3–4; see also Sillitoe 2007). Fulfilling the potential of such practical programmes demands, among much else, that we fully address the central question of the present work: what distinguishes indigenous and scientific environmental epistemologies, and in what way does this account for observed successes among the former, in contrast to the perennial failures of the latter, to provide practical bases for ecologically sustainable resource use? Despite their flaws, the romanticizations of indigenous peoples described above also incorporate the germs of more sophisticated approaches. Such sophistication is a feature of much relevant anthropological theory and can help point us towards more accurate understanding. The earliest coherent exposition of this was Malinowski’s account of how non-European thought exhibits multiple, parallel perspectives on the world (Malinowski 1925). Lévy-Bruhl hinted at a similar view even in his early work (Lévy-Bruhl 1985: 386) and made it explicit in his later,

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revised position (Littleton 1985). More recently, Tambiah has provided a more detailed and theoretically sophisticated exposition of Malinowski’s basic thesis of ‘at least two modes of ordering the world that are simultaneously available to human beings as complementary cognitive and affective interests’ (Tambiah 1990: 108). Tambiah (1990: 93–95) correctly identifies Lévy-Bruhl’s notion of participation as equivalent to the directly representational modes of thought and communication treated by both Freud and Bateson as expressions of ‘unconscious’ modes of thinking. Participation is also a feature of Gebser’s magic structure (Gebser 1985: 54 n.34, 194; Feuerstein 1987: 65),3 and represents a form of direct, nonanalytical engagement with the environment whose decline in Western thought has been identified as a key cause of its environmental and social pathologies (Abram 1996; Jensen 2000; Kidner 2001; Wollock 2001). This point is consistent with the basic argument of the present work – that only an integration of magic, mythical and mental structures is epistemologically adequate for the creation of ecological fringes. The fact that many indigenous societies achieve ecologically sustainable resource use via mechanisms of this type is the nugget of truth upon which the green primitivist and ecologically noble savage misconceptions are based (see Berkes 2008), but whose full exploration reveals a rather more elaborate picture. Tambiah somewhat undermines his important insights by seeking to reduce these ‘multiple orderings of reality’ to a binary opposition between participation and causality (Tambiah 1990: 105–10). Notably, this conflates representational thought (equivalent, as already noted, to Gebser’s magic structure and the various modes of consciousness identified by Wilber (2000b) as congruent with this) with ‘a holistic and configurational grasping of totalities’ (Tambiah 1990: 106). The latter describes Gebser’s integral structure or Wilber’s ‘vision-logic’: these of course incorporate the information-processing capacities of the magic structure, but a great deal more besides. Their equation with representation is an example of what Wilber (1996: 198–243) has labelled the ‘pre-trans fallacy’: the lumping together of features of modes of consciousness differing in distinct ways from rational thought, in order to fit them to an oversimplistic binary contrast. As a consequence, Tambiah’s notion of participation degenerates into a somewhat motley catch-all category lacking internal consistency (Tambiah 1990: 107–9). 4 I am not trying to single Tambiah out for criticism in this respect; he is not the only outstanding scholar whose treatment of religion and other aspects of nonrational analysis has fallen foul of this analytical confusion (other important examples include Morris (1996), Atran (2002) and Milton (2002)). The basic problem is that the binary distinctions employed in

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all of these analyses – that essentially boil down to scientific versus nonscientific, or rational versus irrational – are too crude to accommodate even the three epistemological categories of magic, science and religion with which Tambiah is concerned, let alone the broader range identified in other analyses (Wilber 2000b). Any model of consciousness, if it is to provide a useful and accurate treatment of the full range of distinct epistemological modes available to human actors, and the interrelationships among these modes, must distinguish these more precisely than such oversimplistic binary divisions allow.5 Malinowski (1925: 31–32) writes with admiration of the detailed, eminently practical, empirically well-founded, rationally conceived and – were it subject to scientific scrutiny – scientifically sound knowledge that goes into the construction and navigation of the seafaring Trobriander’s canoe. He regards accompanying magical discourses and practices as attempts to control aspects of nature beyond the scope of available practical interventions, and so treats as curious their retention among seamen as well equipped as modern science can allow. However, more recent and sophisticated analyses show such nonrational aspects of knowledge to be crucial to the success of Icelandic fishing vessels, notwithstanding their access to modern scientific equipment and knowledge and the highly technological industrial setting within which they operate (Pálsson 1994). Viewing traditional navigation practices of Caroline Islanders in the same light reveals the complementary relationship between a sidereal compass based on detailed and precise observation of celestial bodies, and reference to a richly populated mythical landscape from which sailors infer the significance of sightings of sea animals, both of which are essential for navigation on the open seas (Akimichi 1996). The practical benefits of partial recourse to nonrational modes of decision-making have been shown outside the nautical realm, in both hunting (Moore 1957) and agriculture (Dove 1996). A variety of studies have shown effects relevant to conservation or resource management in other expressions of the magic and mythical structures, including ritual (Rappaport 1967, 1968, 1971b, 1979; Balée 1985), food taboos (Berkes et al. 1995; Colding and Folke 1997; see also, more questionably, Ross 1978), customary land tenure (Berkes 1989; Alcorn and Toledo 1998) and customary restrictions on use of particular spaces (Gadgil and Vartak 1976; Aumeeruddy and Bakels 1994; Price 1995; Appell 1997; Gadgil et al. 1998; Byers et al. 2001). Although I here present it as a characteristic feature of indigenous ecologies, the capacity to reconcile multiple, apparently contradictory points of view is neither universal among nor restricted to people conforming to conventional definitions of (or self-identifying as) indigenous,

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many of whom have become alienated from ancestral lands or have lost traditional ecological practices. Many groups conventionally defined as nonindigenous, such as Amazonian Caboclo peoples, Portuguesespeaking and with diverse ethnic origins, share with many indigenous populations a cultural distinctiveness and economic independence relative to national societies, along with extensive knowledge of their biotic environments (Parker 1985, 1989; Begossi 1998), as do workers in many specialized ecological roles in modern industrialized societies (Pálsson 1994). The coexistence of magical, religious and scientific belief has been thoroughly documented for sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the time between the Reformation and the Enlightenment (Thomas 1973). Expertise in many specialized professional fields in industrialized societies involves the development of parallel faculties for intuitive, analytical and impulsive understanding (Gladwell 2006). While science does attempt to separate ‘symbolic’ from ‘mundane’ knowledge (Ellen 2004: 430–32), its commitment to programmatic rationality is ideological (see e.g. Habermas 1971), quite possibly logically implausible, and in any case demonstrably false in practice: like all other human activities, it is reliant on structures other than the mental. Although not linked to any particular geographical space (Ellen 2004: 441–42), science arises and persists within its own social and cultural context (McCarthy 1978: 68–74; Bateson 1979: 32), in which the mythical structure plays important normative roles. Key among these are an ideological recourse to supposed scientific objectivity (Tambiah 1990: 10) and the normative role of paradigms (Kuhn 1962; Tambiah 1990: 46). The latter parallels the supposed closure of many traditional systems of thought (Horton 1970: 153–55). The continued faith of many practitioners in scientific resource management in the face of such abundant and compelling evidence to the contrary can be considered a form of superstition (Ludwig 1993), akin to deficient forms of the magic structure. Science also relies extensively on creative capacities that transcend the limits of purely rational thought (Bohm 1983: 51–53; Bohm and Peat 2000). Galileo commonly employed visual imagery to communicate his ideas (Spranzi 2004), and the history of science will forever recall the dream that inspired Kekulé to deduce the ring structure of the benzene molecule, as well as Einstein’s famous comment on the importance of imagination to the scientific process.6 Einstein was only one of many of the great physicists of the early twentieth century to take up an interest in mysticism, not, as commonly argued by new age devotees, because their scientific findings in any way prove or even support mystical beliefs, but because they showed the epistemological limits of a purely scientific approach (Wilber and Niehaus 2001). Researchers in Quantum

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Physics generally find themselves obliged to operate according to entirely different worldviews in the laboratory and their everyday lives (Davis 1988: 15).7 The many professional scientists who also follow doctrinal religions are, from this point of view, no anomaly (Ellen 2004: 432; Poling and Evans 2004);8 they are simply among the people who, within Babylon, have in some way managed to escape the tyranny of either mythical or mental structure and achieved the reconciliation that the integral structure provides. Among people free from Babylon’s subjective grasp, such plurality of perspective is commonplace. It would clearly be absurd to criticize science itself rather than scientism, positivism or technocracy (e.g. Morris 1996: 53–58), or argue for an anti-scientific environmentalism. Many Western environmentalists show emotive attachments to their causes that clearly derive from scientifically informed understandings (Milton 2002). Szerszynski (2005) has argued that the apparent secularization of nature in modernity is actually a new form of sacralization, and Argyrou (2005) points out the mutual dependence of modernist and environmentalist discourses. Both these arguments emphasize the point that environmentalism is a postmodern9 innovation that builds upon scientific insights. One corollary of this is that the mental structure is, of course, as essential as the other structures to the ecological sustainability of indigenous knowledge. The crisis of modernity, then, is the fault neither of the mental structure or rationality per se nor of science. Nor is it the result of the complete absence of the other structures. As we have noted, not only are they present in Babylon in at least some form, they are essential to the proper operation of science as well as many other areas of practice. Furthermore, in its postmodern manifestation as Empire, a decentralized and internally contradictory network of power based upon the control of the subjectivities and economic capacities of its subjects (Hardt and Negri 2000), Babylon exhibits all the characteristics of an integral formation. The difference, in the context of the argument in this book, is that in indigenous cultures, the magic and mythical structures encode accumulated ecosocial knowledge with practical applications in resource use and its ecological regulation. In contrast to Babylon’s addiction to the mental structure as a basis for ecological understanding and decision-making, indigenous actors can also draw upon the mythical and magic structures. This composite environmental epistemology allows decision-making about resource use to shift among the structures according to the demands of different situations. Part II provides a detailed empirical account of this among Wapishana resource users, showing how it enables the creation of ecological fringes and the promotion of ecological resilience.

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Conclusion: Edges, Fringes, Frontiers Close attention to the details of interactions among levels helps us to clarify the differences between edges and fringes, and to explain why I have chosen to distinguish them rather than employ a simpler binary distinction between edges and frontiers. Edges are sites of mutual enhancement between interacting systems, a synergy dependent on systasis on either or both sides to allow appropriate interchanges of energy, matter and information between corresponding levels in each. One example from Wapishana history is the syncretic belief system arising from the selective uptake of Christianity, which at its best retains culturally and practically important elements of traditional belief and practice while locating them within a broader cosmological framework perhaps more appropriate to their present-day situation as active citizens of an ethnically and culturally diverse nation state who are also engaged in issues of international importance (Chapter 7, section ‘Wapishana Expressions of the Mythical Structure’). Another is the adoption from European settlers of domestic livestock and associated husbandry techniques, whose integration into existing production systems increased their scope and range of flexibility because they supplemented, rather than replaced, existing practices. Such outcomes are common when subsistence-oriented indigenous groups integrate with broader market societies on their own terms, building on and expanding existing knowledge and capacities (Godoy et al. 1998; Toledo 2001; Reyes-Garcia et al. 2005). A fringe is both an instance and outcome of panarchy: mutually enhancing interactions across levels. Environmental Anthropology and Historical Ecology nowadays provide us with numerous documented cases in which indigenous management has enhanced the ecological and productive values of highly biodiverse and ecologically sensitive habitats (Crumley 1994b; Balée 1998; Balée and Erickson 2006). The classic example has become the historical ecology of Amazonia, which presents substantial broad-scale and site-specific evidence that past (in some cases ongoing) habitat modifications by indigenous inhabitants have increased biodiversity, ecological complexity and the range and quantity of resources available to human consumers (Posey and Balée 1989; Balée 1989, 1993, 1994, 2006).10 Emergent upon such findings is the insight that biological and cultural diversity are not only interdependent but mutually constitutive (Maffi 2001b, 2005; Smith 2001; Westley et al. 2002, see also Ellen 1996a). As Integral Theory would postulate, this is equally true in subjective and intersubjective as well as objective domains (Maturana and Varela 1980, 1992; Bateson 1979; Guattari 2000).

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Frontiers arise when interactions between levels do not permit the autopoiesis or potential for self-realization (Maturana and Varela 1980, 1992) of at least one. This may be within a system: for example, when a society degrades its own resource base to produce ecological frontiers, when religious or any other kind of dogma inhibits the full expression of rational analysis within the mental structure or scientific dogmatism does the reverse (Masterson 1971; Wilber 1996b), producing cultural frontiers. Frontiers between systems include when invasive alien species, particularly new predators, disrupt interactions among trophic levels in an ecological system, as has happened whenever humans have entered a new habitat in which there is no historical relationship between ecological and sociocultural levels of organization.11 Intercultural examples, many of them shocking, are familiar from colonial history (Wright 1992; Cocker 1998), but more subtle cases are perhaps more instructive. These include the ways in which indigenous knowledge is diminished when reduced to its mental structure aspects: those commensurate with modern science (Agrawal 1995, 2002; Hornborg 1996; Ellen and Harris 2000) or with the demands of abrupt transition from subsistence to cash economies rather than their integration. In cases of this type, the production of ecological and cultural frontiers is often linked, as dominant forces simultaneously undermine both ecological richness and the sociocultural capacities necessary to maintain it (Winthrop 2001). The interdependence of levels means that frontiers necessarily undermine the autopoietic potential of the dominant as well as subaltern levels.

Notes  1. Or traditional, or local.  2. Though perhaps not untypical of his era, this view is explicable only in terms of ignorance of the anthropological theory of the time. Even less excusable are a facile attribution of dominance by beige consciousness among San people (Beck and Cowan 1996: 90) and reference to ‘indigenous peoples in the purple to blue range’ (NVC 2001: 2) in far more recent literature in Spiral Dynamics. Wilber (1999) has clearly stated that his own theories of sociocultural evolution are purely historical and tell us nothing about contemporary indigenous peoples.  3. Elsewhere in his accounts of the archaic, magic and mythical structures, Feuerstein unfortunately perpetuates some of Gebser’s and LévyBruhl’s misconceptions concerning consciousness among contemporary non-Babylonians.  4. Concluding in a rather muddled attempt to relate the distinction to observer effects in quantum physics (Tambiah 1990: 110).

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 5. While Gebser identifies five major structures of consciousness, Wilber notes that his integral structure bears subdivision into several different modes. Additionally, Gebser’s is only one of many useful such models that emphasize different discontinuities, in some cases dozens in number. Tambiah (1990: 97) also errs in treating his two modes of consciousness as poles on a continuum, an error that is slightly curious given his reference to Nelson Goodman’s emphasis upon the discontinuity and irreducibility of the multiple orderings of subjective and intersubjective reality (Tambiah 1990: 103–5).  6. According to Kathleen Taylor, in an essay published in the Times Higher Education Supplement of 8 November 2002 (retrieved 27 February 2018 from http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/~ket/THESWEBII.pdf), the original quote is from an interview in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of 26 October 1929.  7. We may regard these scientists as fulfilling a mediating role between these two realities similar to that ascribed by Abram (1996: 3–16) to shamanic practitioners in societies where they are traditionally mediators between nature and society.  8. Atran also makes several observations concerning cognitive plurality among followers of doctrinal religions (Atran 2002: 4–7, 67–71, 83–88, 140–44, 276), the classic involutions of the mythical structure.  9. In the sense that it is necessarily emergent upon, and hence chronologically later than, modernity, not necessarily postmodern in the technical sense of the term. 10. One summary of the debate (Dove and Carpenter 2008a: 4) suggests that environmental anthropologists have to some extent accepted Eugene Anderson’s charge that Darrell Posey at least exaggerated and/or misrepresented data on Kayapó management of forest-savannah ecotones in the Brazilian campo cerrado (Posey 1985, 1992, 1998: 112–15; Parker 1992, 1993). However, in my opinion, Posey’s suggestion that Parker does not appreciate the unique qualities of data and insights – not always explicit – that long-term ethnographic research can produce is a scientifically credible rebuttal of these claims. 11. Esbjörn-Hargens and Zimmerman (2009: 541) cite numerous popular accounts of such interactions in support of their spurious claim that indigenous environmental relationships are far more likely to be ecologically destructive than enhancing, but appear not to recognize that they differ in fundamental ways from the integrated biocultural systems characteristic of human populations historically dependent upon ecological productivity within geographically limited areas.

Part II

Fringes

Part I created a cultural edge between the metatheoretical framework provided by Integral Ecology and more empirically grounded theory native to Ecological Anthropology. This provides us with conceptual tools adequate to the goal of Part II: examining the mechanisms through which Wapishana resource use achieves its fringe character. The next five chapters are based on the findings of fieldwork in Wapishana settlements in the South Rupununi conducted over a total of around eighteen months in the region, mostly in the ‘East End’ village of Maruranau, during 1998, 1999 and 2000. Research was rooted in the classic anthropological tradition of participant observation and combined involvement in whatever activities were taking place (or to which I was invited) at times when I had no scheduled research activity with a range of more structured methods. Detailed household surveys, designed in collaboration with teachers at the local primary school and administered in Wapishana by a local assistant, covered a range of demographic and economic issues. GPS was used to map houses and other key locations in and around the village and the most important sites of appropriation of forest resources: in particular, farms, farm houses, hunting camps, important fishing sites and ‘roads’ – footpaths through the forest via which all the preceding are reached. Mapping activities, accompanied by local collaborators, provided opportunities for unstructured collection of data on a range of phenomena. Some mapping took place on longer trips to the forest, between three and ten days in duration, accompanying groups of men on hunting and fishing trips and allowing observation of a range of resource appropriation techniques. I also conducted over two hundred formal interviews, supplemented by more ad hoc data collection, specifically in order to record a particular subset of ethnoecological data, more details of which can be found in Chapter 7, section ‘Mapping the Mental Structure’. A complete account of the methods employed and data gathered is available elsewhere (Henfrey 2002; Henfrey 2017), to which the reader wishing for detailed ethnographic accounts of Wapishana cultural

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ecology and ethnoecology is referred. Such an undertaking is not the purpose of the present work, in which ethnographic detail is limited to that necessary to illustrate the central argument about the links between ethnoecology as the epistemological basis of resource use, and the consequences for resilience and sustainability. The focus on subsistence use of biological resources reflects both the nature of the ethnographic setting and my interests as a researcher. For the majority of Wapishana people resident in remote villages such as Maruranau, subsistence is the main and ongoing preoccupation in dayto-day life. The only permanent residents with livelihoods based mainly on cash incomes are a small number of state employees: the government health worker and teachers in the village primary school. Although everyone uses money to some degree, however limited, and so has some measure of connection to the national economy of Guyana and/or Brazil, for the majority of people these are subordinate to local subsistence economies. An appropriate perspective in which to frame an account of their life is thus an ethnoecological one that emphasizes the mutual dependence of social and ecological relationships (Henfrey 2002; cf. Balée 1994 and Descola 1996). Such an ethnoecological perspective is also the most suitable for our current analytical concerns, which in this part of the book consist of operationalizing the distinction between fringes and ecological frontiers by identifying the social and cultural mechanisms that allow Wapishana resource use to reconcile short-term material needs with the long-term need to ensure the ongoing productivity of a resource base whose dynamics are complex and incorporate an inherent measure of unpredictability and uncertainty (cf. Berkes 2008). The empirical demonstration of this argument is complex (operating on multiple levels simultaneously) in its structure, complicated (drawing on a broad range of data) in its content and nonlinear in its explication. However, it can be distilled into a number of relatively simple points, stated here in order to orient the reader through the coming chapters: •• The actions of individual Wapishana resource users routinely employ what I term here a ‘composite environmental epistemology’ – i.e. people draw upon a range of information-processing and decisionmaking faculties with identifiably distinct characteristics. Analytically, these faculties can, provisionally, be mapped onto Gebser’s structures of consciousness and Wilber’s broader Integral Theory, if these models are treated as descriptions of coexisting psychological and cultural faculties rather than developmental or evolutionary sequences. In other words, Wapishana ethnoecology in its subjective aspects has a multilevelled structure consistent with the general description of

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••

••

••

••

epistemological complexity provided by Bateson’s Ecology of Mind, and with the features of the integral structure as first described by Gebser and later elaborated by Wilber. Individual resource users move among epistemological structures (i.e. express systasis) on the basis of a number of mechanisms, including beliefs, norms, values, cultural scripts and social institutions. These are localized expressions of the magic, mythical and mental structures, culturally distinctive within any group of people experiencing common ecological (and other) conditions. Each such mechanism may encapsulate information about properties of the environment: historically acquired, collectively retained and transmitted. They operate so as to constrain or direct individual decisions about resource use in particular ways. These socioculturally encoded articulations among different epistemological faculties available to individual resource users are an essential (but not sufficient) precondition for the successful navigation of complex and dynamic social, ecological, and socioecological systems, and hence for resilience and sustainability in resource use. They are the basis upon which self-organized groups of resource users engage with ecological systems as fringes (sites of mutual enhancement of ecological and cultural complexity) rather than ecological frontiers (sites of culturally driven reduction of ecological complexity). Extending the argument beyond the specific empirical case study presented here, I propose that the conditions described in the preceding two points are necessary for sustainable resource use, and hence likely to characterize any society that is indigenous under the definition employed in this book – economically autonomous human organizations with high levels of economic dependence on ecological resources within a geographically delimited area, whose use of these resources depends on societal self-organization in the absence of any centralized authority structure. Anticipating the argument of Part III, the role of systasis in decisions over resource use is the crucial difference between indigenous and Babylonian ecologies. While all individuals have access to the full range of epistemological faculties, in societies with highly centralized social institutions reflecting a single epistemological structure, these do not articulate in any meaningful fashion with the physical properties of the ecological resource base. Such societies can exist only under rather unusual, necessarily transient, conditions under which their persistence does not depend on either ecological sustainability or social-ecological resilience.

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Key to the analysis is Wilber’s use of the Integral Theory of Jean Gebser (1985) (see Chapter 2, section ‘Integral Theory’). To recap, Gebser identified five broad phases in the evolution of human (specifically European) consciousness: the archaic – which we can regard as qualitatively continuous with the intelligence of other primates; the magic – impulsive, timeless and empirical, focused upon action and effect in the here and now; the mythical – rule-based, cyclical and concerned with the maintenance of dynamic stability through appropriate action; the mental – inquiring and rational-analytical; and the integral – aperspectival, pluralistic and reconciling via their integration, or systasis, the capacities of the previous four. Wilber goes beyond Gebser’s predominant focus on worldviews to identify parallel patterns of emergent complexity in individual psychology, behaviour and social organization, based on numerous identified correlations between Gebser’s structures and phases identified in other studies of psychological and/or sociocultural development. Prominent among these are those of Clare Graves (1974, 1981), which form the basis of the values in Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan 1996), and the epochs of sociocultural evolution identified by Habermas (1979). Among the main phases identified by Habermas, that of preconventional law roughly corresponds with the predominant expression of the magic structure, that of conventional law with the dominance of the mythical structure, and that of postconventional law with that of the mental structure (Wilber 2000: 214–15). Habermas’ terms, often employed by Wilber to provide broad characterizations of developmental stages (e.g. Wilber 1997: 342–43 n.19; 2000c: 20–21), are in many cases more evocative of the phenomena we describe than Gebser’s terms, and are employed here on occasions when they provide greater clarity. In relation to Graves’ main stages, the magic/preconventional structure covers the purple value through to early red, the mythical/conventional structure corresponds to late red through blue to early orange, and the mental/postconventional structure corresponds with late orange and green values (Wilber 2000b: 204, 205, 215; 2000c: 20–21). The analytical model I apply to Wapishana subsistence in these chapters is a simplified three- to four-level adaptation of Wilber’s ‘all-level’ framework, based on his use of preconventional, conventional and postconventional modes and approximate identification of these with, respectively, Gebser’s magic, mythical and mental structures (Wilber 1997, 2000b: 197–98, 215). The integral structure transcends and unites all of these in Wilber’s ‘post-postconventional’ mode. Simply put, the magic structure, which also corresponds to the purple and red values in Spiral Dynamics, employs a preconventional attitude, based upon largely unreflective attention to actions and their immediate outcomes. The mythical

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structure, roughly overlapping with Spiral Dynamics’ blue value, is conventional in orientation, basing action largely upon prescribed rules and norms for behaviour. The postconventional mental structure, mapping onto orange and green, creatively challenges these rules on the basis of rational reflection and deductive reasoning. These models also map onto Bateson’s description of logical types as different modes of learning (Bateson 1972: 279–308). Bateson defines ‘Zero Learning’ as fixed and specific responses, ‘Learning 1’ as selection among a set of given responses, ‘Learning 2’ as a correction in the given set of alternatives and ‘Learning 3’ as a change in the range of sets of alternatives (Bateson 1972: 293). Zero Learning corresponds to the archaic structure, the largely unalterable constraints of properties of the environment, human physiology and human psychology. Learning 1 corresponds to expression of the magic structure, or the experienced empirical properties of the environment. Choices about these are normally limited by norms of understanding and appropriate behaviour encoded in the mythical structure. Learning 2 corresponds to changes in detail in these that do not challenge their fundamental premises. Learning 3 takes place within the mental structure as a result of rational deduction, unconstrained by the stipulations of the mythical structure. Changes in the structures can be related as follows. Learning 1 is what Bateson refers to as ‘proto-learning’ (Bateson 1972: 167), encoding information about the archaic structure within the magic structure. Learning 2 is ‘deutero-learning’ (Bateson 1972: 293), or learning how to learn: mythical structure contextualization of information encoded in the magic structure that promotes economy in the application of this information. Learning 3 in turn contextualizes embedded learning in the mental structure. It may concern factors that are not specified within the existing form of the mythical structure, in which case it does not necessarily directly challenge this form, but may simply add to its potential scope. Alternatively, it may be new learning that contradicts the existing form of the mythical structure, thus provoking its change. Learning may thus take place within a level or logical type, simply refining the information within it. It may also take place across levels, when new learning in one contradicts established patterns within another. Thus, new information acquired at one epistemological level may shift to another, as when the traditional system of tenure over agricultural land (mythical structure) became incompatible with social conditions and perceived needs (magic structure) in one Wapishana village, leading to critical evaluation and redesign of the land tenure system by the village council (mental structure) (see Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Agriculture’). In Maruranau, it is possible that mental

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structure awareness of the ecological consequences of the felling of trees for fruit, a magic structure behaviour, will lead to the establishment in the mythical structure of new norms that discourage this (see opening section in Chapter 9). Both cases are comparable to a situation described by Berkes (2008: 127–29) when elders drew on historical narrative to caution people about the consequences of excessive hunting of caribou when they returned to the hunting areas of the Chisasibi Cree after several decades, leading hunters to devise and successfully implement their own mechanisms to restrict harvests to sustainable limits. For reasons already noted, in its treatment of interrelationships among epistemological structures, the present work plays down the developmental emphasis with which Wilber, Gebser and Habermas are largely preoccupied in favour of a focus more like that of Bateson on how synchronic interactions among the structures affect the ecology of Wapishana subsistence. This is not to deny that the psychological modes associated with the structures may follow a predictable and cross-culturally recurrent ontogenetic sequence: indeed, much of the following account rests on the implicit – and untested – assumption that these basic categories provide a valid overview of mature Wapishana psychology; if the properties of some indicate them to be emergent upon others, this also suggests that they arise in a fixed developmental sequence. Rather, it contests the conclusion that the historical sequences of domination of a particular structure in the worldview and technical-economic organization of society observed by these authors represent a universal pattern in social evolution rather than one contingent to a particular set of circumstances. Alternative patterns of sociocultural evolution and/or development are entirely possible, and indigenous groups such as the Wapishana provide extant examples. This view has much in common with the broader notion of heterarchy employed by Crumley (1994b: 12), of multiple intersecting patterns of hierarchical inclusion. The chapters in this part of the book describe Wapishana cultural ecology in such terms: as holarchies of geographical scale and geopolitical inclusion intersecting with holarchies of psychological and cultural complexity. Their core argument is that Wapishana use of the natural environment, in common with that of traditional resource users worldwide, is affected by a set of ontological claims located in the magic structure, along with a range of norms, rules, conventions and cultural scripts associated with the mythical structure, and is at the same time strongly dependent on the continual application of rational-deductive faculties within the mental structure. The three structures are institutionalized in such a way that their interaction is one of mutual contextualization, in which each appropriately constrains the range

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of expression of the others. A consequence of this mutual constraint is that when subsistence practices disturb ecological processes, they most commonly do so precisely at their points of maximum resilience and flexibility in the face of disturbance: the r phase of rapid growth and realization of potential. The encoding of ecological information in sociocultural mechanisms relating to all three structures, the lack of automatic subordination of any of these structures to the others, and the consequent capacity to move flexibly among the structures in decision-making about resource use, form the basis for the ecological sustainability of the latter. The pattern of these interrelationships among levels in the subjective and intersubjective quadrants exactly parallels the mutually enhancing relationship between ecological and sociocultural levels in the interobjective quadrant: both are interdependent features of an ecological fringe.

Chapter 6

Overview of Wapishana Settlement and Subsistence

Overview of Settlement Maruranau village, the site where most of the data reported here were produced, is on the eastern edge of the South Rupununi savannah, about 95 miles from the regional administrative centre at Lethem via the most direct trail accessible during the dry season, 105 miles by the rainy season route and around 40 miles from the sub-district capital at Aishalton. In his diaries, Jesuit missionary Father Cary-Elwes reported that the village was founded in 1922 when residents of Sawaramanirnao, facing a shortage of water in the immediate vicinity, relocated to a previously uninhabited site on the banks of Marora Wa’o (Giant Armadillo Creek) and began building a church there. By the time of his visit in 1923, Cary-Elwes could report that the village had completed this project and relocated to the new site (Bridges 1985: 146, 158, 162). The initial settlement was presumably smaller and less populous than the present-day village, which comprises hamlets scattered over an area from a couple of miles north of the church and school on the hill overlooking Marora Wa’o to the vicinity of Sawaramanirnao several miles to the south. When fieldwork began in 1998, it was home to six hundred or so people living in around a hundred separate households.1 This places it close to the median population size among Wapishana villages officially recognized by the regional authorities, which range from less than a hundred in some of the smaller villages to a thousand or more in the cases of Aishalton and Sand Creek (Henfrey 2002: 68–70). Like the other main Wapishana villages, Maruranau is made up of a number of identifiable subsettlements or hamlets whose social structure usually conforms to one developmental stage or other of the trigenerational extended family units that Rivière has suggested to be the general basis of Amerindian settlement in the Guiana Shield (Rivière 1984: 15–41). Some people report an expectation that postmarital residence should be

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virilocal, but in practice it may be either cognatic or neolocal, the choice being influenced by a combination of social and ecological factors. A hamlet may thus comprise any combination of members of an extended family, ranging from single households occupied by a recently married couple, or at the other end of the scale by a solitary widow or widower, to clusters of several closely related households representing three (and in some cases four) generations of an extended family. Individual hamlets are referred to either by name – usually that of the hill or a nearby creek – or by reference to the recognized authority figure, the senior male or, less commonly, female resident. They form the primary points of geographical and social reference within the village and are the major conceptual units of social organization. Each hamlet is usually located on a single hill, and their distribution is largely determined by the availability of suitable sites. That in Maruranau is typical of Wapishana villages in Guyana: subsettlements are scattered within an area of about four square kilometres around the village centre, and between one and three kilometres – an hour or two’s walk – from the forest edge or bush mouth. Older people among the present-day residents recall when subsettlements were mainly located along the forest-savannah boundary; archaeobotanical evidence for this is still visible in the form of fruit trees planted at these sites. The trend in settlement pattern evident in Maruranau since at least the time of Cary-Elwes is consistent with that experienced by the majority of Wapishana people: a degree of nucleation around centralized infrastructure in villages recognized by the state as political and administrative units. Not all have participated in this and some have actively resisted it: Wapishana settlements persist in highly remote in areas such as Mapari Creek in the Kanuku Mountains (Anselmo and Mackay 1999: 20) and along the Kwitaro River. At least one group of former residents of Aishalton has resettled in the deep forest away from established villages in order to isolate itself from external influences.2 Maruranau itself, in common with most of the state-recognized villages in the region, is equipped with a basic state-provided infrastructure located within a compound that forms the administrative centre of the village, consisting of a primary school, a nursery school, a home economics centre associated with the primary school, a health centre, a rest house, a library, a council office, the village bond (a storage depot for council property such as agricultural tools), an open area serving as the village market and a playing field. Adjacent to these is the Roman Catholic church, attached to which are a house to provide accommodation for visiting priests and a sewing centre that was under construction at the time of my fieldwork. One extended family in the south of the village follows

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the Christian Brethren faith and has constructed a separate church within its own hamlet. Residents themselves built most of the central infrastructure. Largescale projects such as the school benefited from financial support from the state or donor agencies to pay for materials and labour. Most of the rest used locally produced materials and villagers’ voluntary labour. The council organizes weekly communal work days for the upkeep of this infrastructure and development of new projects, which are well attended. A windmill-powered water system in the compound formerly supplied the schools and health centre with water, with an adjacent hand pump for general use, but at the time of fieldwork, both of these were broken down: water could still be drawn by hand from a well, and a new well was being dug at the time of my departure from the village. Provision of water to households is variable: some hamlets have well-maintained wells, while those who have not provided themselves with such facilities must collect water by hand from creeks and pools.

Figure 6.1 Core settlement in Maruranau: main houses, farms and farm camps. Figure created by the author.

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In addition to infrastructure, the village acts as a corporate group with respect to politics. Village councils and senior positions thereon are appointed via public elections in which all adult members of the village are eligible to stand, to nominate others for office and to vote. The council has responsibilities in terms of administration, representation of villagers at regional and national levels, and, when called upon, resolution of conflicts and enforcement of social norms. The council contributes to provision and upkeep of shared infrastructure via its organization of village work, a voluntary system in which individuals dedicate one day of free labour per week to the maintenance of the village compound and other communal facilities. The other important way in which the village operates as a corporate entity is in terms of land tenure. Reservation land is held under a communal title vested in the council, granted in accordance with the terms of Guyana’s independence from colonial rule (Chapter 7). In some cases where customary land tenure has proven inadequate for presentday needs – for example, in regulating novel activities such as commercial logging, or as a response to changing demographic conditions or patterns of resource use – councils have introduced mechanisms for direct regulation of access to land. All aspects of village-level settlement and administration for the Wapishana are a product of the encounter with colonial society. As Chapter 12, section ‘Cultural Edges in Wapishana History’ describes, the large measure of control they have exerted over the nature and consequences of this are the main reason why they have so far negotiated this encounter largely as a cultural edge. In various respects, the existence and legal authority of the village council provides an institutional shell (Alcorn and Toledo 1998) allowing the articulation of locally determined, customary institutions with those of national law. These customary institutions remain the primary social basis for subsistence, whose most important organizational units are the household and the hamlet.

Overview of Wapishana Agriculture Maruranau’s officially designated land holding, or reservation, encompasses around 200 square kilometres, about half forest and half savannah. Maruranua Reservation forms a roughly rectangular strip bounded to the north and south by land held by the neighbouring Wapishana villages of Shea and Awarewaunau, to the west by the largely decrepit ‘Wapishana fence’ that marks the eastern boundary of the grazing lease of the Rupununi Development Company, and to the east by the Kwitaro

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River. The majority of subsistence activity takes place within these lands: areas to the east of Kwitaro and in the Rewa River basin are occasionally used for hunting, fishing and gathering Brazil nuts, and may play important roles in the landscape-level mechanisms for ecological regulation described in Chapters 9 and 10, and residents of Maruranau and the neighbouring villages make seasonal fishing trips to large rivers and lakes in the vicinity of Rupunau and Sand Creek to the northwest. During the course of this study, the Rupunau village council approached Maruranau to request permission to send a group to visit and collect mokoro, a forest vine (Ischnosiphon arouma) used to make a variety of household utensils that is scarce in the vicinity of their own village. For most Wapishana people, particularly in the more remote settlements, very limited access to wage-earning opportunities makes subsistence the major day-to-day preoccupation. Diverse strategies allow Wapishana resource users to obtain food and the other necessities of life from forest, savannah, riparian and lacustrine habitats. Although most people rely overwhelmingly on household-scale subsistence production, shop-bought goods are consumed when available and some – especially salt and, to a lesser extent, sugar – are deemed to be close to essential. The same is true for a number of manufactured nonfood products, including tools for agriculture, building and woodworking, nylon fishing lines and metal hooks, matches and kerosene. Locally produced substitutes for all of these are available, and the skills for their production and use are still widely retained, but the labour-saving qualities of the manufactured goods are such that no one would voluntarily choose to do without them. Long fallow swidden agriculture is the general basis for Wapishana subsistence, but as on a global scale (e.g. Brookfield and Padoch 1994), this label masks a diversity of agroecological strategies at settlement and household levels. Some of this diversity reflects biogeographical differences and the patchy availability of particular resources. Sand Creek village, for example, is located close to the confluence of two major rivers, has a long history of involvement in the livestock trade and is fairly close to a number of important ranches, and forested areas within its reservation boundaries are relatively small. In contrast, large areas of forest are readily accessible from Maruranau, but it is situated some distance from the nearest sizeable watercourses. In addition, the distance from Lethem, Brazil and the major ranches in the South Rupununi makes commercial livestock production more difficult, and people generally focus to a greater extent on forest-based activities. One consequence is that far fewer people hunt in Sand Creek than Maruranau: whereas 73 per cent of Maruranau households interviewed in the present study included hunting among their reported subsistence activities, in a socioeconomic

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survey conducted in Sand Creek at around the same time, this was true of only six of 118 households (Forte 2000: 64). For the majority of people in Maruranau, agriculture – and, in particular, the cultivation and processing of bitter cassava (Manihot escuelenta) – is central to subsistence. This is true in terms of dietary importance, time allocation and the degree of intervention in ecological processes. Allocation of time to other activities varies among hamlets and among households: different people or groups concentrate to varying degrees on different subsistence activities depending on their skills, inclination and other commitments, and also to some extent according to the distribution of resources within the areas known to them. Partly as a consequence of this intravillage variation in subsistence strategy, there is a good deal of exchange, barter and, less commonly, sale of goods and services among households and/or hamlets. This broadens the range of local resources and techniques of appropriation effectively available to any individual or household. At most times, agricultural work dominates daily life: adults spend most of their days at the farm doing routine tasks like weeding, replanting and harvesting. Children are expected to assist as soon as they are able, and in doing so supplement school with education in traditional skills. This may prevent the cultural degradation that formal education has provoked elsewhere in Guyana (Forte 1993: 8–9). Saturday is thus a peak day of agricultural labour during school terms, and over the holidays many families spend extended periods at the farm. Extended stays in the forest are such a basic feature of Wapishana life that a realistic concept of Wapishana settlement must encompass the farming area as well as savannah dwellings (cf. Ellen 1978: 26). As reported in previous studies of Wapishana settlement, many families in Maruranau have a second dwelling within or near the farming area (Rivière 1984: 24; Foster 1990: 130; Tang 1995: 29). These farm houses often have fruit trees planted in their vicinity, most commonly mango (Mangifera indica), cashew (Anacardium occidentale) and citrus trees (Citrus spp.), and also guava (Psidium guajava), soursop (Annona sp.), jamoon (Syzygium cuminii) and calabash (Crescentia cujete). Some are shared by several families, and a group of secondary dwellings along a farm road often operates as an agricultural subsettlement. The composition of this may or may not coincide with that of a hamlet on the savannah. Both types of residential group commonly form the basis of collective farm work, without which many of the most arduous tasks in the annual agricultural would be far more difficult. Of the two main institutions for collective work, the more common is manorin, a nonreciprocal form in which a household invites neighbours,

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relatives and friends to come and assist with a job. This usually addresses one of the more arduous agricultural tasks like felling large trees in order to clear a field; examples in other areas of life include hauling logs from the forest to build a house or collecting etai leaves for roof thatch. The host is obliged to provide guests with a cooked meal and a large quantity of alcoholic drink, ideally parakari (cassava beer). An invitation to a manora is one of the strongest social obligations possible in Wapishana society, and only in extreme circumstances can it be turned down. The second form of collective labour is called kamiinkaiwakau, which bilingual Wapishana informants expressed in English as ‘self-help’. I only saw or heard of it in relation to agricultural work, though I heard of no reason why it could not also be employed in other contexts. In those cases I documented, people from around four or more families work collectively on the farm of each group member in turn. The gender division of labour in agriculture is not rigid (Chapter 8, section ‘Individual and Household Level Subsistence’). Men are responsible for site selection and heavy work such as clearing undergrowth and felling trees, while most of the other tasks are done jointly. Women are conventionally considered responsible for cassava processing, a lengthy job that occupies a large proportion of their time (see also Mentore 1983– 84; Rivière 1987). Women in the same farming or residential community often do this work together, providing important opportunities for socialization, exchange of gossip and vertical transmission of folklore, local history and the skills involved in cassava processing and other subsistence tasks. The profile of crops grown is fairly uniform at the species level, though most major crop species occur in a number of varieties and there may be more variability at this level. Cassava, yams (Dioscorea spp.), sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas), eddoes and dasheen (Colocasia esculenta, also known outside the Caribbean as taro), plantain and banana (Musa spp.) are all grown by the vast majority of farmers; most also grow hot peppers (Capiscum spp.), watermelon (Citrullus lanatus), pineapple (Ananas comosus), sugar cane (Saccharum sp.), corn (Zea mays) and pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima). I also documented use of a smaller number of minor crops. All of the crops at forest farms identified in this study were previously reported in a survey of Rupununi food plants conducted in the late 1960s that covered both Amerindian and non-Amerindian farms in the vicinity of Lethem (Dagon 1967a). The only food crop regularly grown in Maruranau for commercial sale is peanuts (Arachis hypogea).3 Cash cropping clearly takes a lower priority: relatively smaller numbers of families are involved, and commercial farms are prepared only when those for household consumption have

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been finished. During 2000, early onset of the rains meant that many people were unable to burn fields they had begun preparing for peanuts, but all of these had finished preparing their fields of cassava and other subsistence crops. Around five years is regarded as the minimum fallow period, with at least nine considered ideal; however, in practice many farms are left fallow for far longer. Individuals or families retain rights of ownership over their fallows, in that anyone wanting to cut a farm on a site previously farmed by another must obtain the permission of the prior user. These rights are inherited cognatically, and are important because fallows and other areas of secondary growth are easier to clear and so are preferred to primary forest as sites for new fields. Recognition of usage rights is also a crucial cultural mechanism for regulating the social and ecological effects of farming (Chapter 8, section ‘The Extended Family, Farm Road and Hunting Line’).4 In a lineage that is expanding in numbers, men in their youth or prime will cut their farms in primary forest in order to establish an area of old farms within which they will be able to cut fields when they are older and less physically able. Agriculture is also practised on a small scale at permanent hunting and fishing camps deep in the forest. A small area around the camp is usually cleared in order to minimize the possibility of trees falling and causing injury. Once the trees that have been felled have dried out, they may be burned and seeds or tubers planted in the ashes. In some cases only a few pepper plants are grown. Crops recorded at more frequently used camps include pumpkins, yams, sweet potatoes, sweet cassava, watermelons and bananas, and it is not uncommon to find one or two cultivated fruit trees. Trail agriculture is also occasionally practised in deep forest beyond the farming area. The technique is very simple and apparently opportunistic: fallen trees adjacent to hunting roads are set alight and crops are later planted in the ashes. All deep forest crops are highly susceptible to predation by wild animals, and some, especially perennial crops such as banana, papaya and fruit trees, may attract potential game to the vicinity of camps and trails. As already mentioned (Chapter 1, section ‘Cultural and Ecological Complexity’), the practice of savannah agriculture is limited by a combination of low soil fertility and the need to fence fields against domestic animals (Rutherford 1956; Salisbury et al. 1968). One almost universal practice is the cultivation of fruit trees close to the homestead: each house seems to have at least one fruit tree and some have fairly extensive stands. A total of twenty-three different species were documented at savannah houses in Maruranau, the most common being coconut (Cocos nucifera), mango (Mangifera indica), guava (Psidium guajava), cashew (Anacardium

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occidentale), jamoon (Syzygium cuminii), orange (Citrus sinensis) and whitee (Inga sp.). A significant proportion of households in Maruranau now grow small quantities of vegetables, fruit and herbs, combining familiar species with novel exotics introduced in the 1990s by a Canadian non-governmental organization (NGO). Success has been variable and, in addition to the need to maintain fences against domestic livestock, drainage, water scarcity and preservation of seeds have all at times caused problems. A few people have incorporated the novel crops into their diet. The original intention was for this to be an income-generating project, but distance from markets, perishability of produce and low quantities of cash in circulation locally mean that this has barely materialized.

Wapishana Subsistence in a Systemic Perspective Wapishana agriculture is best understood not as an isolated activity, but as intimately linked with other subsistence pursuits within an integrated social-ecological system (see Henfrey 2002, 2017). The following chapters further describe and analyse this system from a variety of perspectives. From this emerges an understanding of the social and cultural mechanisms by which Wapishana resource use operates as a fringe: a site of linked, interdependent and mutually enhancing cultural and ecological processes.

Notes  1. Frequent migration, especially among young adults, means that precise figures cannot be specified.  2. This is presumably the same group referred to as an uncontacted Wapishana settlement in a survey of tropical forest peoples conducted within the APFT Research Programme (Avenir des Peuples des Forêts Tropicales) (Bahuchet 1995: 111).  3. Some people also grow cotton, to be woven into hammocks: either the cotton itself or the hammocks are sometimes sold.  4. These findings seem to contradict those of previous studies, both among the Wapishana (Salisbury 1968: 10; Hills 1968: 62–63; ARU 1992) and the neighbouring Waiwai (Dagon 1967b). This is most likely due to the shortterm nature of the previous Wapishana studies; in casual questioning, people initially gave me the impression that there was open access to agricultural land, which is true of forest that has not previously been farmed. The tenure system only became evident to me after several months of fieldwork and detailed documentation of agricultural practices.

Chapter 7

A Plural Reality

Among the conditions of Guyana’s independence from Britain on 26 May 1966 was legal recognition of the land rights of Amerindian groups throughout the country. The Amerindian Lands Commission (ALC), set up early in the office of Guyana’s first post-independence government, was charged with undertaking a nationwide assessment of Amerindian land needs and making recommendations to the government as to the appropriate extent of titled holdings. Its report, issued in 1969, raised a variety of reactions, both during the surveys on which it was based and in controversies over land rights that have persisted ever since. The authors of the ALC report noted, with evident bemusement, that many people in villages they surveyed questioned how the government could give them their own land (Amerindian Lands Commission 1969: 4). The logic of this point within its own preconventional frame of reference is impeccable. However, it reflected a lack of awareness of the shift in logical type taking place: customary and informal systems of land tenure, largely based on usufruct, becoming subsumed within a national system for the legal allocation of land rights. In this case, the higher – more inclusive – logical type can clearly make no rational claim to moral superiority over the lower. Its basis is the British Empire’s original claim to legal ownership of Amerindian lands and consequent presumed right to transfer them to the Guyanese state at independence and for the state, therefore, to make unilateral decisions as to what does and does not constitute Amerindian land. In other words, it constitutes a preconventional/magic structure ‘might makes right’ attitude institutionalized in the mythical structure as national law. Many Amerindian villages responded to this legislative transformation in a similar fashion, with conventional behaviour: simply providing the ALC with the necessary information and accepting their findings and the government’s consequent actions. Some Amerindians engaged with the ALC on a postconventional basis, creatively appropriating the process by asserting their own claims

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for land. These included Orealla on the Correntyne River in Eastern Guyana, the Akawaio of the Upper Mazaruni in the west, and most of the Wapishana. Land Commission representatives visiting Wapishana settlements in the Deep South seem to have been somewhat taken aback when presented, in each of the six major villages of the subregion, with an identical request for communal control over a very precisely specified area of land, signed on behalf of their constituents by the toushaus1 of all six villages (Amerindian Lands Commission 1969: 213). Several villages of the South-Central region also submitted a less clearly specified collective claim to an area stretching from the savannahs to the Rewa River. The Deep South land claim extends from the Brazilian border at the Takutu River across the entire southern and eastern areas of the South Rupununi to the Kassikaityu in the south and Upper Essequibo in the east. The ALC’s position was that the claim was excessive and beyond current management capacity (Amerindian Lands Commission 1969: 71– 93). It instead recommended awarding a far smaller area comprising the present-day reservations of each village, plus a stretch of land between Awarewaunau and Aishalton that was not included in the lands eventually allocated by the government. The politically dominant conventional attitudes of the ALC and post-independence government, and the paternalistic attitude towards Amerindian populations these attitudes incorporated, thus prevailed. Since the late 1990s, following the lead of the Upper Mazaruni communities (Anselmo and Mackay 1999), Wapishana leaders have persisted with their postconventional approach and recruited the assistance of national and international organizations in taking active steps towards the legal assertion of their original land claim (see also Henfrey 1999). Some have publicly spoken of the absurdity of the ALC’s reasoning, given the history of occupation, use and management of the area in question by both the present-day Wapishana and their antecedents. This process has culminated in the development of a conservation and management plan for the entire area of Wapishana settlement, the result of several years of mapping and community consultation (South Central and South Rupununi Districts Toshaos Councils 2012). Disputes over the size and status of the land holdings of Wapishana and other Amerindian groups in Guyana, and the national and global political arenas within which they take place, are important aspects of the broader modern context of their ecological relations. However, I refer to them here mostly as an illustrative example of the co-occurrence in documented Wapishana attitudes and practice of preconventional, conventional and postconventional modes of thought and action; that is, of perspectives based in the magic, mythical and mental structures. As

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evidence, it is anecdotal, with all the limitations this entails; for example, the different attitudes towards land rights noted above may reflect differences among individuals or different communities within Guyana’s large and diverse Amerindian population. However, it usefully anticipates the detailed general examination of some basic features of Wapishana life, and in particular of resource use, in this and the following chapters. This reveals an epistemological plurality in individual as well as collective action towards the environment, which expresses several different structures of belief and thought, sometimes successively, sometimes simultaneously.

Wapishana Expressions of the Magic Structure The preconventional mode is roughly equivalent to Gebser’s magic structure and, to whatever extent it is relevant, the archaic. In Spiral Dynamics terms, it encompasses the beige and, especially, purple structures, and partially overlaps with the red. Concerning the archaic, it is sufficient to make the point that satisfying physical needs - for food, water, shelter, biological reproduction, avoidance of disease, and so on – while retaining patterns of usage within ecological limits is a basic problem faced by all human societies restricted to the resources available within any geographically delimited space. I assume that when the ancestors of modern humans were limited to the archaic structure, they were subject to the same ecological constraints as other animals; only with the emergence, along with the magic structure, of a distinctively human psychology – the loss of ecological innocence at the fall from the Garden of Eden – did human– environment interactions begin to exhibit levels of psychological and cultural complexity qualitatively distinct from those of other mammals.2 Both the magic structure and the purple value incorporate biological maintenance and reproduction into the emergent, distinctively human, context of domestic reproduction. Descola makes the domestic economy, and the ideal of an autarchic, materially self-sufficient household based around an extended family group, the basis of his analysis of Achuar cultural ecology (Descola 1994: 105–7). It is important to bear in mind his caveat that this is a methodological fiction (albeit in his case one consistent with emic discourse): one I also adopt here as an analytical prop. The Achuar, living in isolated households widely dispersed within a sparsely settled territory, conform to this fiction to a degree that is very uncommon in the modern world. Some Wapishana families choose similar degrees of social isolation, living in hamlets deep in the forest and having only occasional contact with other Wapishana people and none whatsoever

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with outsiders. Such cases were probably more common in the precontact situation: the typical modern-day pattern of fairly nucleated villages is in large measure a product of the intervention of missionaries and the subsequent establishment of centralized infrastructure. However, even the most extreme isolationists nonetheless operate within broader social contexts. The basic unit of Wapishana settlement conforms to the model of trigenerational extended family units that Rivière (1984) identifies as typical of indigenous societies throughout the Guiana Shield region. Wapishana people traditionally practised cross-cousin marriage. Butt Colson (1984) considers this a symbolical reproduction of the union between the couple’s common grandparents, emphasizing an ideal of reproductive independence of the extended family unit. Local oral history recalls this practice, which although nowadays uncommon remains enshrined in Wapishana kinship terms that conflate etic categories such as ‘maternal uncle’ and ‘father-in-law’, ‘sister’ and ‘female parallel cousin’, and (for males) ‘female cross-cousin’ and ‘wife’. This linguistic encoding is a powerful normative measure, illustrative of two important features of the magic structure: its impulsive, unreflective mode of action and the immense power attributed to words and other auditory forms (Gebser 1985: 60; Feuerstein 1987: 64–65; cf. Malinowski 1925: 69 and Tambiah 1990: 74–80). When cross-cousin marriage was still prevalent, one’s choice of possible marital partners was dictated, in a literal sense, from birth. Marriage took place between a couple who had always addressed each other as husband and wife: the appellative simply became genuine rather than classificatory. Cross-cousin marriage among the Wapishana is nowadays rare: a survey of households in Maruranau indicated only two married couples in over one hundred to be literal cross cousins. Father Cary-Elwes, a Jesuit priest who established a mission in the Rupununi in the early twentieth century, recorded in his diaries how he grudgingly legitimized existing cross-cousin marriages among his Wapishana converts, but at the same time forcefully communicated the church’s disapproval of the practice (Bridges 1985: 80–81). As a result, a novel norm at the broader level of abstraction represented by the mythical structure superseded that linguistically encoded in the magic structure. Modern Wapishana commenting from a still higher logical type – that of the mental structure – on both the native tradition and the imported religious injunction that replaced it remark on their embarrassment, as children, at having had to refer to classificatory spouses using words equivalent in meaning to the English terms ‘husband’ or ‘wife’. While the extended family is no longer the basic unit of Wapishana social reproduction, it remains the basic unit of economic reproduction

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(Chapter 8, section ‘Individual and Household Level Subsistence’). This reflects the pattern of interchange characteristic of cultural edges (Chapter 4, section ‘Patterns of Change’), in which marginal societies elaborate institutions and social forms associated with the different structures as selective, adaptive responses to the novel problems arising from their encounter with Babylon, resulting in increased span or complicatedness in the structures concerned without any change in depth. Existing structures have increased in span, features of more basic structures with continued adaptive value have been retained, and nonessential features incompatible with these innovations have changed or been lost. Thus, while the extended family unit remains an effective basis for the social organization of the Wapishana subsistence economy, its symbolic reproduction through cross-cousin marriage is not, under current circumstances, necessary for its material reproduction. This tradition was readily abandoned, with no apparent ill effects, when it became either incompatible with or superfluous to a novel context: the presumed benefits of conversion to Christianity. The widespread retention of a huge body of animistic beliefs and practices with perceived practical functions provides an instructive contrast. Cary-Elwes’ own diaries show him to have been even more aggressive in his condemnation of traditional ritual practices than of marital institutions (Bridges 1985: 58–61; 154–56). Despite this, the former have largely been retained, many in forms similar to have those described for Amerindian groups elsewhere in Guyana. Examples include the couvade, a short period of rest and abstention imposed upon fathers of newborn babies, and a more elaborate set of lengthy postpartum food taboos applied to the entire family (see Rivière 1974: 424, 427–29). Belief in semi-human, malevolent beings known as kanaima (see also Roth 1950; Anthon 1957; Whitehead 2002) remains universal. The agency of kanaima in human affairs is commonplace and only one aspect of a complex corpus of beliefs in nonmaterial entities with diverse and important effects upon daily human life, many of which may have important functions in ecological regulation (Chapter 10). Engagement with these supernatural beings is possible through a range of behavioural expressions of these beliefs. A complex and varied set of ritual practices – including prayer, spell-casting, taboos and magical charms – permeates daily life and plays an important mediating role in human relationships with both mystical and mundane aspects of the natural environment. Many of these conform closely with earlier descriptions of traditional beliefs among other Amerindian groups in Guyana. Examples include ‘blowing’, a form of magical incantation (cf. Butt 1956) and use of a range of magical charms collectively referred to in Creolese as bina (cf. Im Thurn 1883: 228–32) and conforming to Balée’s use of the

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term ‘fetish’ (Balée 1994: 102–5). Both blowing and bina are routinely applied in daily activities such as hunting, as well as in response to more unusual events. While some aspects of blowing and bina are quite widely known and practised, more advanced techniques are restricted to specialized mystical practitioners: individuals, both men and women, conforming to ethnographically informed cross-cultural definitions of shamans (Vitebsky 2001), referred to as marunao in Wapishana, piaimen and piaiwomen in Creolese. The general public consult marunao about a variety of matters, including dietary restrictions associated with childbirth and many types of illnesses, kanaima attacks, and other forms of encounter with the spirit world. Belief in these phenomena, and in the efficacy of associated practices, is constantly reinforced by direct and indirect experience. Almost everybody was able to relate some direct experience of supernatural phenomena, and accounts circulate widely of incidents where violations of the couvade or other customary stipulations led to negative consequences of the type tradition would predict. The magic structure also manifests subjectively in immediate acts of appropriation, particularly to the extent that these are constitutive of personal identity. A Wapishana person not only farms, hunts, fishes, processes cassava and so on, but is a farmer, hunter, fisher and cook; being unable to engage in these tasks is a severe stress to the ego perhaps comparable to that of the unemployed wage labourer in industrialized societies. The same is true intersubjectively, in terms of the importance of traditional activities and dietary choice in defining group identity and membership, along with other factors such as language and location or pattern of residence. Many Wapishana traditionalists, particularly in more remote villages, regard those who have no farm, do not drink traditional cassava beers such as parakari, prefer rice and beef to farine3 and peccary or speak English at home as somehow less authentic. Although these magic structure contributions to identity are in many ways conservative, they are by no means fixed, and we can observe historical transitions in their subjective and intersubjective aspects. Notable in the light of the previous paragraph is the adoption by many Wapishana men of the identity and lifestyle of the vaqueiro, or cowboy: as wage labourers in the local ranching business (see Brock 1972 for a perceptive and entertaining account), as independent commercial livestock producers, or simply for subsistence production. For many, livestock is an addition to the portfolio of subsistence activities and source of economic security, but for others it has completely replaced hunting and fishing (cf. Jorgensen 2000: 262): such men often self-identify as savannah men (bara san), in contrast to the more traditional figure of the ‘bush man’ (kanoko

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san), whose exemplary activity is hunting in deep forest. For many in coastal communities such as Orealla, heavily involved in the timber trade and dependent for basic subsistence upon the cash income it produces, self-identification as loggers and collectively as a lumbering community is the outcome of a parallel transition in economic identity. Further examples of changes in the magic structure resulting from adaptive Wapishana responses to intercultural encounter include the assimilation of Atorad language and identity (ARU 1992: 2), and numerous changes brought about by European influence, particularly that of missionaries. A modern self-perception as civilized people settled in nucleated villages on the savannah contrasts with the idea of the historical ‘wild Indian’, itinerant and autarchic residents of the deep forest whose image occasionally arises in story and art. Widespread conversion and baptism saw European names, usually of biblical origin, replace Wapishana names, which are no longer used. The way in which European names are inherited has shifted over time from the magic to the mythical structure. Until the middle of the twentieth century, Wapishana people in Maruranau adopted their father’s first name as their surname; the superficial intergenerational continuity that resulted reflects the magic structure’s characteristic lack of time depth. Largely under pressure exerted within schools and consistent with the greater time depth of the mythical structure, surnames are now inherited across successive generations. Despite now inheriting names in a way more typical of unilineal than cognatic societies, the present-day Wapishana still predominantly self-identify, and socially locate others, on the basis of cognatic affiliation: to savannah settlement, farm road and/or hunting line. In other words, they have adopted a mythical structure system of personal names consistent with their adopted Christianity and its roots in European patrilineal kin systems, while retaining indigenous magic structure mechanisms for the practical business of allocating rights to resources. Among the Wapishana, concepts and ideas based in the magic structure are thus not anachronisms that have stubbornly adhered despite contemporary irrelevance, but continue to change and find new expressions and applications in novel modern circumstances. This conforms to the long-established finding that animistic beliefs among Manus people of the Admiralty Islands, now in Papua New Guinea, are a distinctively adult mode of thought (Mead 1932). Manus children failed to adhere to many of the beliefs of the older generation, and in fact criticized them from a rational or postconventional, mental structure perspective. Socialization into the prevailing animistic worldview only seems to be complete by the time of adulthood. Furthermore, as the remaining sections in this chapter describe in detail for the Wapishana, beliefs and

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practices based in the magic structure coexist and interact in complex ways with those of the mythical and mental structures.

Wapishana Expressions of the Mythical Structure If practical efficacy is the basis of preconventional action, that of conventional action is normative constraint: doing things not because they work, but because they are culturally prescribed. Intersubjective expressions of the mythical structure thus encode conventions for culturally appropriate action in forms such as norms, traditions and cultural scripts, customary systems of governance and land tenure, and much myth and ritual. Among the Wapishana, many of these have undergone extensive modification as a result of intercultural contact, and particularly of the large-scale adoption of a key European set of mythical structure beliefs and institutions, those of the Christian churches to which most are now affiliated. Guyana has a well-studied form of syncretic Christianity in the practice of Alleluia among Kapong (Akawaio and Patamona) peoples (Butt 1959, 1960; Butt Colson 1998). According to extant oral tradition, Alleluia originated as the result of a peak experience of advanced spiritual realms on the part of Pichwöng, an early Makushi convert to Christianity, and its subsequent interpretation by Abel, founder of the church among the Akawaio (Butt Colson 1998: 25). The body of belief and practice that Abel and his followers built upon these events seems to have provided a particularly compelling incorporation of traditional beliefs into a Christian framework. Far more appealing to Akawaio converts than standard Jesuit doctrine could ever hope to become, Alleluia, as Cary-Elwes reported with horror, quickly gained a substantial and dedicated local support (Bridges 1985: 71–77). Among the Wapishana, lack of a persistent missionary presence seems to have allowed them to adopt Christianity on terms that, although less spectacularly distinctive than those of Alleluia, are nonetheless very much their own. Some people reported to me that they find Christianity more intellectually satisfying than traditional beliefs because it provides an overall philosophical framework that is more coherent, meaningful and complete (cf. Horton 1971). This provides a plausible general explanation as to why people readily adopted this mythical framework, populating it with elements of traditional, magic structure beliefs to create a distinctively Wapishana form of syncretic Christianity. The new religion provided a cosmological framework better suited, philosophically, to the new conditions of even marginal incorporation into a colonial administration and ongoing interaction with non-Amerindians, albeit intermittent,

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infrequent and of low intensity. The new religion’s failure to provide any information of practical relevance was not particularly problematic, as this remained available through relevant traditional mechanisms: the former is mainly located in the mythical structure and the latter in the magic. The two seemed incompatible from the point of view of the missionary Cary-Elwes, who as a representative of an elaborate institutional elaboration within the mythical structure sought to initiate transformational change of a type that would reproduce this structure’s domination of his own worldview. However, from the systatic perspective of Wapishana converts, the two are readily compatible.4 Conversion to doctrinal religions centralized in the mythical structure has produced a set of novel modern identities as affiliates of particular religious denominations. This is only one of several ways in which expression of the mythical structure among Wapishana people in Guyana has increased in span or complicatedness as a direct or indirect result of colonial, state and now global influences. Nationality – inclusion within individual and collective identity of affiliation with the Guyanese state – cross-cuts both the traditional (but still pertinent), largely linguistic affiliation with the Wapishana and contemporary self-identification with concepts such as ‘Amerindian; and ‘indigenous’. Both of the latter derive from what were originally external (European) designations, incorporated into local subjectivities as an essentially political tactic borne out of the need to affiliate and organize on social scales larger than linguistic groupings in the face of challenges arising within national and international systems. In none of these cases does it make sense to regard the mythical structure itself as an external introduction, or as emerging endogenously in response to engagement with the vast European elaborations of the mythical structure embodied in church, empire and state. All of these provoked, and in some cases were the major proactive agent in, elaborations of the mythical structure novel to the Wapishana. However, in all cases these were increases in the complicatedness/span of a pre-existing mythical structure. Like those of the magic structure, endogenous mythical structure institutions pre-date European contact and remain dynamic up to the present day.

Institutionalization of the Mental Structure in Village Politics The most obvious institutionalization of the mental structure is in village politics, which local oral history represents as a response to the nucleation of previously dispersed settlements into villages, their incorporation

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into national administrative frameworks, and the consequent need for suprafamiliar structures of political representation suitable for engagement with colonial authorities. Village administration is nowadays the responsibility of elected councils, at which level Guyanese Wapishana appoint their own representatives and operate a local politics that institutionalizes postconventional values within a participatory democracy based on free, open debate and consensus-based decision-making. In present-day Maruranau, elected officers and constituents alike consider the village council to be an instrument for genuine participatory democracy, enacting the will of the people for the common good, an expectation it largely fulfils. Appointed by open election every two years, council members are typically a mix of regulars, respected for their competence in executive matters and usually re-elected, and a slight majority of temporary members. Perennial council members tend to accept their role in a self-sacrificial spirit of public service. Temporary councillors do the same, but often go out of their way to avoid subsequent reappointments. The frequency and length of meetings, combined with the other demands upon councillors, make political office a considerable burden on people’s time that may be difficult to reconcile with domestic work and other more pressing obligations. Some people publicly announce their unavailability for office; others resort to more subtle expedients such as scheduling hunting trips to coincide with elections. The combination of specialist serial politicians and temporary councillors drawn from a wide spectrum of the community seems to strike a good balance between administrative competence and genuine grassroots representation and participation, which is reflected in the way that the council discharges its duties. Decision-making, dispute arbitration and appointment of representatives are based around open discussion aimed at reaching a consensus for action. Respect for the right of any person in the village to raise a matter for public discussion, and for any present to offer their opinion on these, means that the public meetings at which decisions are reached are often protracted affairs. Individuals recognize themselves as members of a peer group whose personal opinions and interests are valid and important, so levels of attendance and participation are generally high. Decisions are respected, those not fully in agreement with the consensus often deferring to majority opinion and following its stipulations, to the extent that their failure to do so would impact upon others. These are all features of postconventional governance, characteristic of the green value in Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan 1996: 132–34, 264–66; cf. also Gebser’s identification of aperspectival trends within legal practice summarized by Feuerstein (1987: 139–40)).

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This is a rather exemplary case, whose genuine openness and broad inclusiveness made it the most genuinely democratic example of local government I have observed. The small size of the constituency relative to the council – fourteen representatives for some six hundred or so people – no doubt helps to make this possible. However, such a correlation is by no means inevitable, and I have also witnessed instances where village-level democracy has fallen victim to political ambition or corruption: Guyana does have examples of oligarchic and even despotic Amerindian village councils. State legal authority having no other form of local representation, it is also incumbent upon the village council to interpret and enforce national law. Among the South Rupununi villages, only Aishalton, the administrative centre of the Deep South subdistrict, has a police station. Elsewhere, the toushau’s nominal status as rural constable comes into effect. Village councils typically execute the duties connected with this legal authority in postconventional fashion, Guyanese law being seen as a guide for possible action rather than a normatively binding set of rules, and the national legal system as a possible, not obligatory, recourse in rare instances of criminal action. As an example, a man who had returned from Brazil to his home village in the Rupununi suffering grave psychological disturbance committed an act of serious violence against a family member. The village council discussed his case extensively, eventually deciding against punitive action within the national legal system in favour of remedial action based on traditional methods for psychological treatment. Councils are at times obliged to arbitrate in disputes over the execution of customary norms, in cases when the protagonists fail to reach an agreement. As with the reform of customary mechanisms for allocating land mentioned in the introduction to Part II, this sometimes results in these norms being overturned. Councils also exercise certain normative roles novel to the modern context, such as setting standard prices for the sale within the village of locally produced goods, agreed annually at public meetings. The major postcontact innovation in Wapishana subsistence, keeping domestic livestock, is nowadays as widespread as any other basic category of activity. Of more than fifty Wapishana households surveyed in the present study, all had at the very least a chicken or two, and some had substantial holdings of cattle, pigs or, in one case, sheep. Victorian explorer Im Thurn, generalizing across Amerindians as a whole, reported a strong revulsion, backed by taboos, to the meat of domesticated animals (Im Thurn 1883: 47, 362). If this was ever the case among the Wapishana, the situation changed dramatically in the space of a few decades, as livestock rearing was widespread by the 1940s (Peberdy 1948: 18, 31–32).

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Among the Makushi in the North Rupununi, Myers (1946: 25) directly documented a dramatic about-turn on this point. It is likely that for both groups its uptake was a postconventional action that overcame norms previously located in the mythical and magic structures. Livestock keeping has since become subjectively incorporated both into the magic structure, as an aspect of at least some people’s identity (Chapter 7, section ‘Wapishana Expressions of the Magic Structure’), and into the mythical structure in the form of norms as to appropriate practice. Present-day attitudes to domestic livestock also show elements of rational accounting characteristic of the mental structure. Some bush meats, especially laba (Agouti paca), are famed for their great taste, while others such as peccary (Tayassu spp.) have great cultural significance. However, Wapishana people generally prefer to consume game and other communally owned forms of wild protein than individually owned domestic animals for reasons that are mainly economic. Livestock holdings are for most people the only effective means to store or accumulate liquidizable capital: a readily available reserve of meat for household consumption when other, less reliable sources are not available, and relatively easy to sell when the need for cash arises. Over the course of this study, I documented various acts of innovation in subsistence that showed application of the mental structure. These included creating habitat space for exploited animals (specifically, clearing a sandbank to make it a more attractive nesting site for a female iguana that a hunter observed one year laying her eggs across the river from his forest camp), tying plastic bottles to sticks in the farm to create an auditory deterrent for agoutis and other crop predators, and experimenting with growing exotic grasses as cattle fodder. In the most spectacular case, hunters working with me on collecting ecological data spontaneously began to manage local populations of the yellow-footed tortoise (Geochelone denticulata). This popular food animal (my data showed it to be harvested in greater numbers than any other species) is normally collected indiscriminately when encountered, either through active search beneath its food trees or by chance when walking in the forest. However, the work we were undertaking necessitated stays in the forest of greater duration and frequency than the annual round of hunting and fishing expeditions generally involves. After some time, and without any comment or intervention on my part, my Wapishana colleagues became concerned as to the effects of consequent elevated harvest rates on local tortoise populations. As our study site was also their main hunting area, excessive depletion would have significant consequences. As a response, they began to limit their harvest and visited a distant, rarely used area to collect tortoises for

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release within their main hunting zone, marking their shells for future identification.

Mapping the Mental Structure: Wapishana Ethnoecology as Local Science I dedicated a significant proportion of research effort to an in-depth exploration of part of the mental structure: the documentation of Wapishana hunters’ knowledge of the synecology of several mammal species familiar to them and systematic comparison with the published outputs of biological field research on the same species. The aim was not to obtain broad coverage or delineate patterns of variation in ethnoecological knowledge, but to examine its strengths and limitations. In selecting collaborators, I therefore sought out individuals who were particularly knowledgeable about the topic of interest, the ecology of forest mammals: mature men, regular hunters with a reputation for skill in bushcraft identified by peer recommendation (cf. Davis and Wagner 2003). The majority had been in some capacity involved in the balata trade, and many claimed to have acquired much of their ecological knowledge during extended stays in the forest connected with this work. A total of eighteen such individuals participated in interviews on from one to twelve of the twelve mammal species on which I decided to focus the analysis. Six were terrestrial ungulates and rodents commonly reported to be important in previous studies of Amazonian hunting economies (e.g. Redford and Robinson 1987; Hill et al. 1997; Souza-Mazurek et al. 2000): lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris), white-jawed peccary (Tayassu pecari), collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu), red brocket deer (Mazama americana), laba (Agouti paca) and red-rumped agouti (Dasyprocta agouti). Five of these are also important prey for Wapishana hunters (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’); the exception, tapir, appears to be a special case due to the way in which its hunting is symbolically regulated (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’). The other six focal species were the largest six primate species found locally: black spider monkey (Ateles paniscus), red howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus), common capuchin (Cebus apella), wedge-capped capuchin (Cebus olivaceous), brown bearded saki (Chiropotes satanas) and Guianan saki (Pithecia pithecia). These were chosen because primates as a group are relatively well studied: for Ateles paniscus, Alouatta seniculus and Cebus apella at least, there were reasonably good sets of ecological field data for comparison.

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Following Townsend (1995) and largely consistent with Huntington (1998), ethnoecological data were collected mainly in semi-structured interviews. I collected substantial amounts of ethnoecological data by other methods, including ad hoc recording of comments made by companions on trips to the forest, observations of people’s behaviour while hunting and their interpretations of animal signs, and their explanations of particular courses of action undertaken in tracking and hunting animals. However, for consistency’s sake, the following analysis is based only on data collected in formal interview settings. Interviews were conducted in English, as the strongest common language and the more effective in which to frame the categories of information in which I was interested. All animal and plant segregates mentioned in the course of interviews were named in Wapishana; when Creolese names were known, they were also commonly employed. Each interview took as its subject one species of mammal, named in Wapishana in the opening sentence of the interview, usually by the interviewer in a statement along the lines of: ‘What do you know about [segregate x]?’ The interviewee was permitted to talk freely for as long as he wished, after which the interviewer began to ask specific questions. These firstly sought to clarify any ambiguous or otherwise unclear points made by the interviewee, or expand on points of particular interest. Second, directed questions on the predetermined subject categories systematically addressed any of these not fully covered by the interviewee. Finally, a series of leading questions invited the interviewee to add further information on any of the points raised. Interviews were structured so as to elicit information fitting into predetermined categories derived from scientific ecology. The choice reflects what I consider would be the basic goals of any preliminary synecological study of the species concerned. The categories used were diet (‘What does it eat?’, ‘Does it experience food shortage at any time and, if so, what does it eat then?’ or ‘What is its most important food?’), dispersal behaviour of frugivores (‘Does it plant or spread any seeds?’ or ‘What happens to the seeds it eats?’), social behaviour (‘How many move together?’), predation and competition (‘Does anything eat it?’ and ‘Does it have any enemies?’), reproduction (‘When does it give birth?’, ‘How often can it give birth?’ and ‘How many young does it give birth to at once?’), classification (‘Does it have any partners?’ and, given a positive response to the previous question, ‘Why do you say these are partners?’) and human use (‘Do people use this and for what?’, ‘How many times have you killed it?’ and ‘Are there any times when you should not kill or use it?’). I conducted a total of 130 such interviews on the twelve focal animal species: Tayassu tajacu (eleven interviews), T. pecari (fifteen), Tapirus terrestris (thirteen), Mazama

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americana (thirteen), Agouti paca (fourteen), Dasyprocta agouti (twelve), Ateles paniscus (twelve), Alouatta seniculus (nine), Cebus apella (seven), C. olivaceus (five), Pithecia pithecia (seven), Chiropotes satanas (five) and Saimiri sciureus (seven). I subsequently pooled the results using a basic form of consensus analysis to obtain collective ethnoecological profiles for each. For dietary data (lists of food items), I considered all items mentioned by two or more interviewees to have been corroborated and included them. All mentioned only once were treated as suspect and eliminated. This is not entirely satisfactory, in that it does not distinguish between inaccurate information and that which is accurate but not widely known; nor do two independent statements necessarily make any particular piece of information true. For data in other areas, I reviewed the qualitative statements of each interviewee and determined which were and were not consistent. Again, information arising independently in two or more interviews was treated as reliable, and that arising only once was discarded. If the consensus of two or more interviewees was contradicted by the statement of a single other interviewee, the latter was deemed unreliable and overlooked, and the former included. If several mutually incompatible statements were made, the category was treated as problematic and all information obtained was treated as unreliable. This method shares the limitations already mentioned in connection with the treatment of dietary data. From it, I compiled a list of corroborated statements on the ecology of the animal species in question. I systematically compared the ethnoecological profiles thus compiled with data published in ecological studies of each animal species in turn. I assigned scientific glosses to as many as possible of the Wapishana botanical categories included in dietary lists, and sought corroboration for each in the ecological literature. I did this at two levels of taxonomic breadth: the genus and the family. Given that my scientific identifications are preliminary and in some cases unreliable, I considered the genus rather than the species as an appropriate level for the more accurate comparison. I also sought corroboration at the family level to accommodate the fact that the only ecological data available for some species came from sites at significant distances from that of the present study and with limited overlap in floristic composition. Most plant families have a wide geographical distribution, and fruiting characteristics are an important basis by which plants are classified into families. There is therefore a good chance that a frugivorous animal with a wide geographical range would eat the fruits of plants from the same families even in locations as disparate as Guyana and Peru, the closest and most biogeographically similar source of field data for some of the species involved.

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I compared observations other than food lists on the basis of compatibility. For each observation included in the ethnoecological dataset, I sought information on the same subject in the ecological literature. When the latter was available, I noted whether or not the corresponding information in the two datasets was consistent. Detailed results of these comparisons have been published elsewhere (Henfrey 2002, 2017, 2018). Overall, the ethnoecological and ecological datasets show a strong substantive overlap. The majority of food species identified via ethnoecological methods were corroborated in ecological studies. At the family level, the percentage corroboration ranged from 73 to 95 per cent, with an average of 88 per cent. At the level of the genus, correspondence was low for both species of peccary (Tayassu) at 28 and 32 per cent. This is perhaps to be expected as the nearest field studies for these species were from Peru, and methodological constraints mean they identify many food items only at the family level (Bodmer 1989). Correspondence for other species ranged from 36 to 81 per cent, an average of 49 per cent if peccaries are included and 56 per cent if they are not. These figures are impressive considering that the ecology of few of these species has been comprehensively studied (field research on neotropical mammals is notoriously difficult). Ecological datasets are far from complete and for many species, comparison relied on data from locations that were geographically distant and ecologically very different from the setting of this study. It may be worth noting that the highest correspondence at both the genus and family level came from the species with the best-quality dataset, a multiyear field study of the ecology of Ateles paniscus in Surinam (Roosmalen 1985). As far as the quality of the existing ecological dataset allows us to determine, then, it seems that food lists derived from ethnoecological research are largely reliable. Food items occurring only in ethnoecological datasets will in most cases correspond to those eaten locally but not recorded in conventional ecological field studies from sites elsewhere. Correspondence in qualitative observations was also very strong. For 148 distinct ethnoecological observations, the ecological literature includes information on the same theme. In 144 of these cases, the observations are at least consistent; in most of these, the two datasets provide identical information. Further, many observations in the ethnoecological dataset were neither contradicted nor reproduced in the ecological literature, and so indicate areas in which ethnoecological data extend the range of existing ecological datasets (cf. Ferguson et al. 1998; Huntington et al. 1999; Myrmin et al. 1999) or at least point towards new lines of investigation (cf. Posey 1986).

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The results demonstrated spectacular levels of detail and accuracy in Wapishana ecological knowledge, which corroborated and extended scientific datasets on many topics. This confirms the findings of similar studies on indigenous knowledge of a variety of biological taxa (Tulkin and Konner 1973; Posey 1981, 1986; Balée 1994: 59; Townsend 1995; Ponte Johansons 1995; Vasquez-Davila 1995; Ferguson et al. 1998; Myrmin et al. 1999; Huntington et al. 1999; Huntington 2000; Nabhan 2003; Cormier 2004; Donovan and Puri 2004; Gilchrist et al. 2005; Telfer and Garde 2006). Also in line with previous studies, the comparison identified some clear gaps and limitations in the ethnoecological dataset; the nature of these merits further exploration. For some categories of behaviour not amenable to direct observation, most interviewees responded in what seemed a curious fashion. Rather than admitting ignorance as in other cases, they made claims that were often consistent across different respondents, but at odds with biological reality as scientifically documented and understood. The most striking example was in group dynamics and sexual behaviour, in which respondents considered males to remain within their natal group and breed with sisters or mothers. Whatever it was that people were expressing in such statements, it was not rational knowledge acquired through observation or hypothetico-deductive reasoning, It appears that in some subject areas inaccessible to direct observation, a lack of empirically observable information creates space for the expression of mythical beliefs about nature in which the presumed behaviour of animals provides a counterpoint to acceptable human behaviour. In sharp contrast, interviewees were generally very precise and careful when divulging empirical knowledge, and expressing lack of knowledge, of areas amenable to direct observation, often substantiating information by explaining how they had come to know it. Methods thus revealed included direct observation of behaviour, inference from tracks and other signs, and observations of droppings and the stomach contents of butchered animals. In interviews on animal ecology, hunters generally reported what they knew to be true from direct personal observation. Although some such information is socially transmitted, most is later corroborated by direct observation (cf. Hviding 1996). In interviews, knowledge not based on direct experience was clearly distinguished by comments such as ‘my father told me so but I never saw it’; informants were also careful to distinguish knowledge from speculative reasoning. When faced with a question whose answer they did not know, respondents said as much, except in the situations referred to in the previous paragraph. Wapishana hunters thus employ an epistemology directly comparable to the methods of data collection and analysis

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employed by scientific researchers, a finding also reported for Kalahari foraging peoples (Tulkin and Konner 1973) and Marovo nature experts in Melanesia (Hviding 1996), and the basis of the claim that such knowledge represents ‘Local Science’ (Sillitoe 2007). Some Wapishana ecologists also speculated, making it clear by qualifying comments when they were doing so, using inductive inference based upon perceived similarities between readily observed domestic animals and more cryptic game species (cf. Atran 1998). For example, some people used the reproductive behaviour of cattle as the basis for speculating or confirming observations about that of tapirs (Tapirus terrestris, whose Creolese signifier is ‘bush cow’); both usually have a single young. Similar inferences – not always biologically accurate in detail – were made from domestic swine to peccaries (Tayassu spp., or ‘bush hog’), sheep to brocket deer (Mazama spp.) and domestic dogs to bush dogs (Speothos venaticus), and less commonly between similar categories of nondomesticated animal such as the two species of peccary or brocket deer. Aspects of Wapishana ethnoecology, then, overlap to a substantial degree with corresponding areas of the work of field biologists trained in scientific methods. The two share common features in terms of substance, methods of data acquisition and modes of analysis. This area of overlap corresponds to the application of the shared epistemological faculties of the mental structure to subjects of common interest. The two datasets differ to some extent in content – Wapishana hunters have observed aspects of the local ecology that biologists have never recorded and vice versa. These are differences in the ‘horizontal’ extension or span of the mental structure. Some important aspects of Wapishana ethnoecology are based on epistemological premises of the magic and mythical structures, which differ from those of scientific ecology. This difference is key to the practical success of Wapishana ethnoecology as the basis for adaptability, resilience and sustainability in resource use, and reflects its expression of systasis, a synergistic interaction among magic, mythical and mental structures.

Wapishana Expressions of Systasis In everyday life, the beliefs and behaviour of Wapishana people routinely express each of the magic, mythical and mental structures. Each of these may be contextual to any of the others. The mythical structure often limits the range of expression of purely impulsive action originating in the magic structure. Beliefs and practices located in the magic structure or conventional norms of conduct based in the mythical structure may at

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any point be subject to rational criticism from the vantage point of the mental structure and on this basis revised or abandoned. Conversely, there are many cases where conventional norms or preconventional beliefs limit the range of rational, postconventional behaviour. As an illustrative example, we can return to the earlier point (Chapter 7, section ‘Wapishana Expressions of the Mythical Structure’) that symbolic restrictions on activity are constantly reinforced by experience in the face of rationalist challenge. I was told of several occasions on which men with sceptical attitudes towards traditional beliefs, or in a spirit of experimentation, violated the stipulations of the couvade or other symbolic proscriptions on the behaviour of expectant or new fathers, only for their infant child to suffer the predicted consequences. Respect for informant confidentiality obliges me not to reveal details of these events, but I can illustrate the point with a related experience of my own. Immediately after my return to the village from an extended stay in the forest, I was for several days affected by an undiagnosed illness. Most people in the village attributed this to my having passed a sacred site and taken a photograph without attending to the necessary ritual precautions. Another instructive event was when one man revealed to me that he had been forced to kill a young anaconda (Eunectes murinus) entangled in his fishing net. He had as a consequence suffered severe physical symptoms, which he attributed to attributed to psychic attack by the animal’s spirit, alleviated only by blowing by an accomplished marunao. Wapishana people also assimilate many exotic concepts to native ones based in the magic structure, illustrating its dynamism. Cancer, for example, is widely considered to be a consequence of kanaima activity. Many people are also aware of biomedical theories of the causes and nature of cancer. Complementing rather than necessarily disputing these, they offer a cognitively and culturally distinct alternative. As another example, black-eyed bean (Vigna sp.), an exotic crop enthusiastically eaten by red brocket deer, is considered a bina for this animal on the basis of its ability to attract it to the farm. Their ability to accommodate novelty and their ongoing reinforcement through experience ensures that magic structure beliefs have a clear phenomenological reality. In describing them, many people freely volunteered the observation that they defy rational explanation and that they would find them difficult to believe had they not experienced them directly. This is clearly no clinging on to prelogical superstition on the part of a people in transition to rational, logical thought, as ethnographers of less open-minded times might have concluded. Nor is it the obscuring of rationality in a cloak of exotic idioms, as described in later work that challenged such ideas (Evans-Pritchard 1937; Horton 1970). It is something

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entirely different: the coexistence and reconciliation of diverse cognitive capacities, both rational and nonrational. This conclusion is not based solely on etic analysis: the statements of many participants in ethnoecological interviews and other Wapishana informants show them to be self-consciously aware that they hold multiple and partially contradictory worldviews. Conversations on nonrational aspects of traditional belief often included explicit acknowledgement that some aspects of traditional belief are inconsistent with a strictly rationalist perspective. People retain such beliefs not because they are unable or unwilling to subject them to rational criticism – they regularly do just that – but because they are practically, intellectually and structurally important in a composite epistemology that transcends the limitations of purely rational thought. Although it might appear paradoxical from a perspective limited to the mental structure alone, I had no sensation that this cognitive plurality is in any way problematic to Wapishana thinkers, either conceptually or existentially. My impression is of a comfortable reconciliation of the apparent contradictions among the perspectives offered by the different structures, consistent with Gebser’s definitions of systasis and integral aperspectivalism: uniting and reconciling the archaic, magic, mythical and mental. Wapishana subjectivities, both individual and collective, are multilevelled and systatic. As the next chapter describes, organizational levels in material aspects of the Wapishana social-ecological system are also linked in mutually enhancing ways, represented by the panarchy model of links among nested cycles of renewal and adaptive change.

Notes  1. ‘Toushau’, the literal meaning of which is ‘one who greets’, is a Wapishana word for leader. In its original sense – in which it is still commonly employed – it usually refers to the senior man (or woman) in an extended family settlement. On aggregation into villages and due to the need for their formal political representation, the term was adopted to refer to the appointed leader of a village. Elsewhere in Guyana, and in official government terminology, the elected head of a village council is referred to as its ‘captain’. In regional and national gatherings of Amerindian leaders, this term has increasingly been superseded by toushau, which is preferred because of its indigenous origin.  2. This implies an assumption that environmental modification on the part of nonhuman animals, although in some cases undoubtedly self-conscious and deliberate, is not reflexive and progressive – in other words, that we cannot consider it as the product of a cumulative culture. Though perhaps questionable, it is one I retain here – without necessary agreeing with it – for the sake

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of simplicity, as it is not directly relevant to the present work and its thorough examination would be a digression.  3. A coarse meal that is the main form in which most Wapishana people consume cassava, the staple carbohydrate. Presumably, given the term’s clear derivation from the Portuguese word for flour, the practice is Brazilian in origin.  4. Unscrupulous missionaries have on occasion exploited the flipside of this essentially practical outlook, the common loss of efficacy of traditional practice in the face of social and ecological change at Babylon’s frontiers. The accounts of missionaries working among the Waiwai, the southern neighbours of the Wapishana in Guyana, from the late 1940s, indicate that they achieved credibility largely by their successful use of ‘Jesus medicine’ to treat mostly exotic diseases for which traditional medicine was ineffective. Waiwai survivors of a measles epidemic shortly following the conversion of most of their village to Christianity are reported to have commented that ‘the Taruma had turned away God’s messenger shortly before they died’ (Dowdy 1964: 211). They may well have been referring to a flu epidemic in the Taruma village of Wanawanatûk, which Cary-Elwes visited in 1919 and 1922, reporting on the occasion of his second visit that the population was in a generally poor state of health (Butt Colson and Morton 1982: 211, 240). Walter Roth, visiting in 1925, found that the population had by that time fallen to eight adult men, all of whom had married Wapishana women (Roth 1929: IX).

Chapter 8

Panarchy in the Deep South

This chapter gives an overview of Wapishana cultural ecology in relation to the panarchy model of dynamic cycles of growth, conservation, release and reorganization in social-ecological systems, nested at multiple spatial and temporal scales (Gunderson and Holling 2002). It examines three analytical levels: 1. Individual swidden plots cultivated over an annual cycle by a single family, along with other sites used on an instantaneous or temporary basis. 2. The farm road, hunting line and set of other spaces over which an individual potentially exercises usufruct rights, comprising the major resource use area of one extended family. 3. The landscape scale: major broad zones of settlement, each used by large numbers of extended families and encompassing one or several villages. Although we could also conduct meaningful analyses at other spatial scales, in this chapter we will restrict ourselves to these three. Many actions at smaller scales have important effects on the properties of what the present analysis treats as system elements, but we will take these as given rather than examining them in detail. Larger scales are becoming crucially important in modern times and, indeed, provide the dominant context for our study, but the scarcity or absence of identifiable relevant panarchy cycles means that the model is, as it stands, less relevant to understanding their effects. Part III of this book, which considers the incorporation of Guyanese Wapishana into national and global systems and their engagement with national and international development, examines these emergent levels of spatial scale. It would also be possible to conduct meaningful analyses at scales intermediate to those chosen here. The analysis in this chapter takes at its starting point Berkes and Folke’s (2002) examination of how local knowledge systems negotiate the panarchy. This builds on Berkes’ earlier observation that local knowledge

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is epistemologically complex, incorporating multiple nested levels of analysis: the information explicitly known to individuals is embedded in management practices, these practices are in turn embedded in social institutions, and individual knowledge, management practices and social institutions are all embedded in the yet broader context provided by worldview (Berkes 1998; Berkes 1999: 13–14). These successively broader levels of analysis map onto the nested organizational levels of social-ecological systems, with specific local knowledge of ecological properties the crucial articulating factor between the two (Berkes and Folke 2002: 124). Building on the description of Wapishana ethnoecological knowledge – that explicit knowledge characteristic of the mental structure – in the previous chapter, we now move on to examine how this interacts with knowledge based in the magic and mythical structures in the context of human activity within a nested social-ecological system, whose multiple intersecting organizational layers conform to Crumley’s concept of a material heterarchy (Crumley 1994b: 12). In the following chapters, we extend this notion of heterarchy further to incorporate interactions of nested epistemological levels, which in turn intersect the organizational heterarchy in multiple, cross-cutting ways.

Individual and Household Level Subsistence The first analytical level we explore here, that of the individual resource user or household, encompasses spatial scales ranging from a few metres up to around a kilometre on a routine or daily basis, but includes specific sites that may be separated by several kilometres. Temporal scales range from daily decisions about resource use activities through to the annual round of activities determined by meteorological, ecological and social cycles. These are the most prominent scales for all of a household’s basic resource use activities: farming, hunting, fishing (by most methods), gathering of food and nonfood items, rearing of livestock, infrastructural maintenance at the savannah homestead and secondary forest dwellings, and setting fires in the savannah. Each of these has its appropriate place or places in the calendar, in most cases determined by seasonality of rainfall and the ecological consequences of this. In postcontact times, the annual cycle is increasingly also marked by social occasions, including religious festivals at Christmas, Easter and San Juan, school terms and the annual intervillage games during August. Long fallow swidden agriculture is the basis of Wapishana subsistence. The farm is the focus of domestic labour and the annual cycle of agricultural labour is the main determinant of seasonal allocation of time

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and effort among different activities. Families make year-to-year decisions about where to cut their new farm or farms, about which plots from recent years to continue harvesting, which crops to plant, and whether or not to plant a field of peanuts for sale in addition to the field of cassava and other traditional staples that is the basis of the household diet. The annual labour cycle is largely determined by a highly seasonal pattern of rainfall. The vast majority of precipitation falls during the long rainy season between April and September, peaking in June and July, when large areas of both forest and savannah are continuously flooded. Aside from a shorter season of less intense ‘Christmas rains’ during December and January, for the rest of the year the climate is rather arid. Farms are cut immediately following the Christmas rains and the cleared vegetation is left to dry until April, when it is burnt. Planting can thus coincide with the onset of the long rains in April. Occasionally people cut a farm at the end of the rains in early September, burning it in late November before the onset of the Christmas rains. Other aspects of subsistence – and nonsubsistence activities such as festivities, visits to relatives in other villages, religious and administrative duties, and seasonal or occasional wage labour – must fit around this agricultural cycle. Most also have marked seasonal patterns of their own. The main nutritional importance of agriculture is as a source of complex carbohydrate, predominantly in the form of bitter cassava. Cassava production dominates subsistence quantitatively: in terms of cultivated area, quantity produced, dietary contribution and time dedicated to processing. In addition, cassava processing and the use of its products significantly affect other aspects of everyday life, including patterns of female socialization, male hunting and fishing activity, and the organization of collective labour, to such an extent that we have elsewhere described this complex of activities as forming a ‘cultural keystone’, the dominant structural feature at a particular level of sociocultural integration, in this case that of subsistence production (Platten and Henfrey 2009). This importance is also manifest psychologically in terms of people’s dietary expectations: like the neighbouring Waiwai (Mentore 1995), Wapishana people will complain of hunger if bitter cassava is scarce or absent in their diet, even if they are amply (in purely nutritional terms) provided with complex carbohydrate from other sources. The other cultivated plants producing starchy tubers – sweet cassava, yams, sweet potatoes and eddoes – are therefore of secondary dietary importance, although all are routinely found in Wapishana diets. Their importance as a source of redundancy in subsistence production was evident in the El Niño year of 1998, when cassava harvests were particularly badly affected. While cassava shortages were widespread and a source of

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genuine hardship, most families were able to access nutritionally equivalent foods. This aspect of agrodiversity provides an important buffer against the risk of reduced yields in cassava or any other single crop. Like the seasonal labour cycle, most technical aspects of Wapishana swidden agriculture are fairly uniform across households. At the species level, the range of crops grown shows little variation across households. Cassava and other major crops show a great deal of variation at the varietal level, and many varieties appear to have more restricted distribution across households. This may strengthen the scope for exchange among households and so may provide another mechanism to buffer fluctuations in yields. Strategies of individual households otherwise vary only in terms of details such as the range of secondary crops grown, the extent of use of farm dwellings, the location of new farms relative to existing plots and the social organization of agricultural production. Household surveys showed far more variation in the use of homegardens (whether or not one is cultivated, and the range of crops grown) and the cultivation of fruit trees at the homestead (Chapter 6, section ‘Overview of Wapishana Agriculture’). Sources of animal foods, the main sources of proteins and fats, are more varied, and include hunting, fishing, gathering and rearing domestic livestock. Hunting and fishing are practised both in forest and savannah, although conceptually hunting is strongly associated with the forest and fishing with the savannah. Hunting may be done opportunistically at any time of year, but for several reasons is more common in the rainy season. A glut of fruit during the rainy season means that frugivorous animals are fatter and their meat of higher quality. Wet weather also makes animal tracks more conspicuous and easy to follow in the forest. On the savannah, flooding forces prey animals such as agouti, laba and armadillo to leave the shelter and relative security of gallery forests along creeks for higher ground on the open savannah, where they are more easily seen and captured by hunters. On the other hand, scarcity of fruit during the dry season means that frugivores disperse more widely and are more difficult to locate; many are typically in such a poor state of nutrition at this time that they are considered to be barely worth hunting. The main season for fishing is towards the end of the rainy season and immediately after it has finished. At this time, waters are receding and fish are migrating downriver; earlier in the season, high and fast waters, flooding and wide dispersal of fish through flooded areas all conspire against success. This is the optimum time for setting seines, poisoning and setting fish traps; individuals may use any or all of these methods depending on their knowledge, the availability of materials, other commitments and their predilection. Fishing is generally considered male work;

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female fishing is uncommon, but by no means considered improper, and some women are locally renowned as excellent and reliable line fishers. Fish traps may be simple baskets, woven within an hour or two from the fibres and fronds of palms such as kokerite (Attalea regia) and left in small creeks overnight. On a good night, one of these might provide a pound or two of small fish by the time the maker comes to inspect the catch in the morning. At the other end of the scale, some men dedicate the entire rainy season to the construction and operation of enormous stockades, one of which entirely blocks a medium-sized creek (i.e. one with a channel several metres wide). Such a structure may take four men two weeks to build at the start of the rainy season, just after the newly burnt fields have been planted. If suitably located and well built, it will provide substantial daily harvests while the waters are descending, over a period of several weeks or even months. Although flooding of large areas of forest and savannah makes line fishing impracticable or impossible during most of the rainy season, in the dry season it is a regular – often daily – activity for many people. Much of this routine activity is very localized and seasonal, depending on the presence of particular species in small rivers and creeks in both forest and savannah, or isolated pools left on the savannah as the floods recede and savannah rivers later cease to flow. Individual fishing spots may be known to or used exclusively by members of a single family. Under the usufruct system that determines most rights of access to natural resources, these are generally considered the property of the man known to have first used the place or his heirs, from whom there is a formal requirement to request permission. While hunting and fishing are the most important sources of animal foods, many gathered products are also nutritionally significant. Yellow and red-footed tortoises (Geochelone spp.) are a universally important food: data on recalled harvest rates and perceived frequency of use confirmed the impression from direct observation that they are harvested in greater numbers than any other animal species. Seasonal collection of the eggs of iguanas (Iguana iguana) and various riverine turtle species is important for some individuals, and crabs are collected, mostly by women, throughout the dry season. Livestock rearing has become increasingly important since its introduction to the Rupununi at the end of the nineteenth century, to the extent that all families have at least a few chickens or pigs. Some people have abandoned hunting almost entirely in order to become self-identified savannah specialists, for whom raising livestock is the main nonagricultural activity and source of dietary protein. More commonly, a household acquires animal protein from both domesticated and nondomesticated sources. In contrast to agriculture, individual

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households vary widely in terms of how they combine different sources of animal protein, and methods for securing these, within their overall subsistence strategy. The use of other resources such as domesticated fruit trees and gathered wild fruits and other plant products also varies widely among households, and in some cases for a single household over time. This variation is influenced by a range of factors, which fall into all of Wilber’s quadrants: for example, ownership of or access to particular tools such as fishing nets or appropriately trained hunting dogs, knowledge of the properties and location of the resources and techniques for their procurement and use, distribution and local availability of resources, social prospects for organizing collective labour, market opportunities and access to sources of wage labour, and intersubjective factors such as norms as to correct behaviour and how customary systems of land tenure affect access to particular sites and the resources they bear. The resource appropriation activities of individuals and families are embedded in ecological and social systems. Individual activities influence the properties of social and ecological systems, and instantaneous conditions within them, and are themselves subject to systemic influences. Patterns of individual behaviour adapt to ecological conditions over short timescales via individual learning and feedback when indicators of effectiveness such as hunting returns influence subsequent strategies, which may also have significant ecological effects. Some aspects of social life can be interpreted as, in part, ecologically adaptive. Social factors, in turn, significantly affect the collective ecological consequences of human activities, including all major subsistence pursuits, both directly and via their influence on individual actions. In terms of material cycles, the essential systemic feature of swidden agriculture is the diversion of accumulated ecological capital, in the form of nutrients stored in forest biomass, to human use. Cutting the farm and drying woody biomass makes it susceptible to burning, which releases nutrients, temporarily enhancing soil fertility sufficiently to support the growth of crops. Crop growth is an indicator of success, of both this procedure and the longer-term cycle in which it is embedded through which fallowing supports accumulation of nutrients (described in the following section), that depends on a diversion of ecological capital possible only during the reorganization phase of this longer cycle. Weeding maximizes the diversion of nutrients to crops rather than noncrop species. When, usually after the second year of production, weeding becomes excessively laborious, it is taken as an indicator that it is time to abandon the plot, which on many forest soils also coincides with reduced crop yields resulting from declining soil fertility: diminishing yield relative to labour

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input is, as is typical for swidden agriculture, the key indicator of conditions in any particular field. The short-term cycle of active manipulation of a single field for crop production thus persists over a one-to-two year stretch of the longer-term cycle of abandonment, fallowing and reuse described below. Seasonal patterns of hunting depend on the annual reproductive cycles of game species and seasonal changes in animals’ condition and behaviour. Highly seasonal rainfall means that the majority of forest trees fruit during the rainy season. As well as directly affecting the seasonal availability of these fruits for direct human consumption, this means that many hunted species of forest animal experience a rainy season food glut. Frugivores especially are far fatter and more palatable at this time of year, and aggregation around fruiting trees makes species such as laba and tortoise easier to locate. On the savannah, flooding of gallery forests forces resident mammals such as white-tailed deer, laba, agouti and armadillo out into open country where hunters can more easily spot them. This is also the time of year when white-jawed peccaries come out onto the savannah in search of etai fruits, a landscape-level effect with important, instantaneous consequences for the activities of individual resource users, as whenever a herd is spotted, a shout goes up and everyone within earshot quickly grabs a weapon and rushes to join a communal hunt. In the dry season, tortoises disperse widely in search of food and are far more difficult to find, while many species of monkeys and other frugivores are considered too scrawny to be worth hunting. Terrestrial animals leave far fewer tracks during the dry season, making the location and pursuit of peccaries, brocket deer and tapir in particular very difficult. All fishing methods also depend on annual cycles ultimately determined by rainfall: rising and falling river levels and the related migratory and breeding cycles of fish, which move upstream in the Kwitaro and Rupununi river systems to breed at the start of the rainy season and return downstream with the descent of the waters at the end of the rainy season. Wapishana fishers set seines, poisons and traps as the waters recede. Later in the season, shallower dry season watercourses become accessible for bankside fishing with hook and line. In addition, fish trapped in pools in low-lying parts of the savannah and beds of rivers and creeks are easily caught at this point. As a fortuitous consequence of the effects of these practical constraints on the seasonality of fishing, fish are mostly caught on their departure from their breeding areas, and so have had the opportunity to breed before their removal from the population. Fishing returns – quantity, size and species of fish caught – provide feedback that people might use to decide where and how to fish in subsequent years, and how to distribute effort among sites. For example, long fishing

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expeditions may be mounted to the Rupununi or remote, lightly fished rivers such as Rewa when a large catch is wanted for special occasions, including both regular events such as Christmas festivities and birthdays and one-offs such as weddings. Ecologically, the effects may be similar to those of Cree ‘pulsed fishing’ (Berkes 2008: 149–50), where intermittent harvesting at fisheries distant from human settlement means they retain higher numbers of fish in large size classes than more heavily used sites. Another human activity that affects ecological systems is setting fires in the savannah. The ecological consequences of this have not been formally studied and are subject to different local interpretations. Wapishana people commonly set light to the savannah at locations distant from houses during the dry season. The reasons I was given for this are that it reduces cover of tall grasses that could hide poisonous snakes and promotes growth of young grasses more palatable for livestock. In some other habitats, fire setting at low intensities and dispersed in both space and time can be the type of intermediate disturbance that has been shown to promote habitat heterogeneity, release accumulated natural capital and thus promote resilience (see e.g. Berkes et al. 2000). On the other hand, some observers commented to me that fire had in recent decades had visible adverse ecological effects, including retreat of woodland in or bordering the savannah, and death of seedlings and consequent lowered recruitment in groves of the economically important etai palm (Mauritia flexuosa) bordering creeks. These observations suggest that the scale of anthropic fires has exceeded the limits of system resilience and has caused local ecological degradation; whether it is damaging, beneficial or benign on a broader scale is as yet untested. Almost all individual and household-level actions are affected by a range of intersubjective factors. Cultural scripts stipulate, or at least guide, many technical aspects of farming, hunting, fishing, gathering and even livestock rearing. Customary institutions, in particular the mechanisms for regulating land tenure introduced in the next section, also exert important influences and constraints, as do food prohibitions and various other restrictions on action arising from beliefs in the nature and influence of the spirit world. The ecological consequences of both of these are explored in Chapter 10. Shared preferences or expectations are an important factor in the privileged status of cassava as a staple carbohydrate. Cultural expectations also underlie the gendered division of labour, but in a pragmatic fashion: many women became hunters to compensate for the seasonal absence of men at the height of the balata trade (Chapter 4, section ‘Patterns of Change’ and Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’), and even under more routine circumstances some women are acknowledged as expert fishers, while

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I saw men participating in cassava work among women at the house when injury or some other circumstance prevented them from walking to the forest or undertaking heavier work. Many of these scripts, norms, institutions and expectations are transmitted and/or negotiated at the extended family/farm road level detailed in the next section, and so form an important site of cross-scale interaction in the panarchy: broadly held aspects of belief constrain individual perceptions and hence the range of activities undertaken at the household level.

The Extended Family, Farm Road and Hunting Line While individual households have a large degree of economic autonomy – most are one-pot units with their own farm and livestock holdings – for most of its developmental cycle, each is in most cases part of a hamlet or subsettlement that forms a close-knit community of cognatically related households. Each such hamlet has collective interests in resource tenure and normally exhibits some degree of interhousehold cooperation in subsistence activities. Here I consider it as a second major level of organization, operating over a spatial scale of tens of kilometres, corresponding to the resource use zone of an extended family group and with a cyclic period of some twenty to thirty years, the generational timescale over which this residential and resource use unit is reproduced. The area of land occupied and predominantly used by a single or small number of extended families we can consider a basic unit of Wapishana natural resource use and management. It represents the traditional (premissionary) scale of social and political organization, and remains the basic scale of decision-making over land use in the present day. The importance of the extended family in great measure derives from its role in the customary mechanism of allocating tenure over land for both settlement and subsistence. Rights to occupy and use house sites on the savannah, farm roads, hunting lines and sites of hunting and fishing camps are initially allocated according to first usage. De facto ownership over a particular area accrues to the first man to build a house or cut a farm road or hunting line (all of which are men’s jobs) and is passed on to his wife or eldest son on his death. All subsequent descendants of the customary owner acquire rights to use the area, formally subject to permission, and anyone else wanting to live, farm or hunt anywhere subject to previous use within living memory must approach the customary owner to request access.1 Cognatic inheritance of usufruct rights means that a married couple resident in the home village of both partners can generally has several

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options for postmarital residence, location of farming area and hunting zone. Choices among these options shape the social and spatial organization of subsistence in important ways, and are not necessarily linked. Some families have their savannah homestead at the site of one extended family unit, farm on the road of another and hunt along the road of yet another, and so may be members of several communities of co-users simultaneously. There are also cases of the other extreme, where members of a single extended family co-resident in a single hamlet also all use the same farm road, hunting line and fishing sites. Depending on historical patterns of inheritance and uptake of usufruct rights, their access may be exclusive or it may be shared among members of a small number of related extended families. In either case, the co-users of a farm road and/ or hunting line effectively function as a corporate group exercising management responsibility over it, though the form of this varies according to the degree of social cohesion and collaboration in subsistence pursuits. These groups may also form residential subunits based around the secondary dwellings many people keep at the farm site. Not all families have these – some have only a single house on the savannah and walk to and from the farm on a daily basis – but some regularly reside there for extended periods of time, especially during school holidays when there is less ongoing need to be near the village centre. Farm houses along a single road are usually clustered around the best-appointed sites at clearings or close to watercourses, often enhanced by cultivated fruit trees. The social composition of these farm-based hamlets may or may not overlap with that of subsettlements on the savannah, and they provide a broader and/or alternative basis for collective action and other aspects of social life at the extended family level. Association with particular residential sites on the savannah and in the farming area, and to a lesser degree with farm roads and hunting areas, is an important part of individual identity. This is particularly true with respect to residents of different hamlets in the same village: individuals self-identify, and are identified by others, primarily with the extended and nuclear families and extended family settlement. Association with the village is secondary to this. Extended families are also the major locus of transmission of shared knowledge and belief through language acquisition, storytelling, active pedagogy, engagement in collective labour and children helping older relatives with subsistence tasks. This phenomenon crosses scales, in that on the one hand, collective knowledge and belief are shared across social groupings larger than the extended family, while on the other hand, transmission is generally strongest within a household, where the degree of social contact is highest. In any case, the extended family encompasses

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the community of adults with whom any growing child has regular and ongoing meaningful social contact, and so is the level at which vertical transmission is most pronounced. This is also true for ecological knowledge, which extends over the areas of land that are regularly used, in which users are intimately familiar with the spatial and temporal distributions of resources. Such knowledge is accumulated through experience from an early age, as young children accompany their family to the forest and are expected to assist with subsistence tasks as soon as they are able to do so. Linked with the cycle of domestic reproduction and fundamental among the social-ecological processes that structure this level in the panarchy is the cycle of use, abandonment, fallowing, clearing and reuse of swiddens. Most plots are actively managed for one or two years, after which point weeding becomes excessively laborious and, on most forest soils, diminished fertility reduces the returns from newly planted crops to the extent that production no longer adequately recompenses labour input. A few crops such as bananas, yams and sweet potatoes persist in the abandoned swidden and may be harvested for several years afterwards, depending on need and ease of access in the thick secondary growth characteristic of fallows. They may provide a buffer against food shortage in the event of reduced production in active farms: in the El Niño year of 1998, farmers whose main crops suffered the effects of drought increasingly turned to these as back-up supplies. Many useful plants grow in fallows, notably ‘kari mother’ – bishawud – a shrub whose leaves are vital to the fermentation of cassava tubers in the manufacture of parakari. Economically useful trees are sometimes either left standing in farms or cut in such a way as to allow their regrowth, ensuring they persist in fallows. Those I most regularly saw treated in this way are palms, especially kokerite. Some other trees are anthropically dispersed into farms, either exozoochorously when their fruits are collected and brought to the farm site for consumption or endozoochorously. Such dispersal is, as far as I can tell, inadvertent, and I saw no evidence of its conscious use to manipulate the composition of fallows. Individuals retain use rights to fallows: partly for extraction of any ongoing production, but more importantly for the right to reuse the site for subsequent cultivation. These usage rights are usually attributed to men, who are responsible for selecting sites for new farms and for most of the work involved in their clearance, particularly underbushing and felling trees. Any plot formerly cultivated within living memory is referred to as the property of the farmer, and associated ownership rights are transmitted to both male and female offspring. Anyone who wishes to farm

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such a site can only do so with the express permission of the individual customarily recognized as the owner. The work involved in clearing a farm in secondary forest is far less than in primary forest, mainly because there are no large trees; felling these is the most laborious, time-consuming and dangerous job in the agricultural cycle. A family’s fallows consequently represent an accumulation of capital – potential field sites at which the hardest work has already been done – and Wapishana farmers explicitly recognize them as such. In places where the area under cultivation is expanding, there is a shortage of available secondary forest. Younger men who must clear their fields in primary forest cut new fields every year over a period of usually between twenty and twenty-five years. Only then do they return to farm at the site of their original field, even though – according to ethnoecological reports – most soils recover fertility adequate for growing crops after five to nine years. This ensures that in their later years, when they lack the physical capacity to endure the labour associated with clearing primary forest, they have access to sufficient fallows in which to cut farms. Ecological capital also accumulates on the farm in the form of cassava seeds. Although the usual form of cassava propagation is vegetative, by planting sticks cut from the stems, the plant is also capable of producing seeds. The soil in fallows contains large numbers of cassava seeds produced by previous crops, which may spontaneously sprout when the land is cleared. Normally the resultant plants are not used, mainly because seeds might be hybrids of existing varieties, so their properties are unpredictable. Seed cassava is of little importance when sticks are available for planting and may even be regarded as a weed. However, during the El Niño-induced drought of 1998, many people who had been unable to save sticks to plant were able to use this seed cassava as an alternative. Its presence is thus an important buffer against food insecurity. In the longer term, it is a potential source of new agrodiversity, though I did not find any direct evidence for new landraces from seed cassava permanently entering into production or exchange of varieties. Another form of ecological capital is collectively acquired, as an emergent effect of ongoing clearance, abandonment and extended fallowing of the swiddens of several families along a single farm road and its branches. These activities transform the forest into a mosaic of open fields, fallows at every stage of secondary succession up to twenty years or more, perhaps some fallows that for one reason or another have been permanently abandoned and are in still later stages of succession, occasional planted fruit trees, and patches of primary forest on sites considered unsuitable for cultivation such as steep slopes or areas liable to flooding.

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Ethnoecological data indicate that active farms and fallows are important food sources for a range of animal species, many of which are important in human diets. Commonly hunted species known as crop raiders include agouti, laba, red brocket deer, peccaries and capuchin monkeys. Root crops that persist in fallows, such as yams and sweet potatoes, are eaten by collared peccaries, and bananas can attract a range of monkeys and other game. Other animals feed at fruit trees planted by humans, notably laba, which aggregate at mango trees in the forest at night during the fruiting season. Many such trees are equipped with platforms, where hunters wait in the hope of an easy catch. In addition, the gap habitat and secondary regrowth in farms is in itself important habitat for browsing animals such as red brocket deer and tapir. Some monkey species (squirrel monkeys, Guianan sakis and marmosets) also favour secondary growth and are common in the farm area. Of these, only sakis are hunted for food, and these only rarely so. However, ethnoecological reports suggested that all three species play important roles dispersing tree seeds into fallows. Game animals are thus attracted to and promoted in the farming zone in a variety of ways (cf. Linares 1976). Benefits accrue both to them (on a population level at least, in terms of elevated carrying capacity) to both their benefit and that of their human hunters. We can regard the presence and exploitation of useful animals and plants in anthropically modified forest as a form of incipient domestication. Data that could tell us whether it has had any genetic effects are not available, but human settlement in any case affects the composition of the local flora and, in turn, the behaviour, autoecology and synecology of various animal species. Further examples include the endozoochorous dispersal of cultivated plants by animal vectors: ethnoecological reports indicate that tapirs disperse mango and cashew seeds, and the crested oropendola (Psarocolius decumanus) pawpaw seeds. Importantly, an unidentified species of forest pigeon (referred to in Wapishana as irodada) common in the farm area is known to be the most important disperser of cassava seeds. Jaguar and puma occasionally prey upon domestic pigs and cattle; although this brings no benefit to humans, it is another way in which the local ecology adapts to anthropic changes. Beyond the farm area itself, trails lead on from most of the farm roads in Maruranau into the deep forest towards Kwitaro. These serve a dual purpose as the routes to hunting and fishing camps on the Kwitaro River and its major tributaries (and the more rarely visited areas in the eastern side of its basin) and the main hunting lines. Men often take day trips to hunt from the farm house while the family is staying there, and much hunting also takes place on the way to and from Kwitaro to fish. Some

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men typically hunt alone, while others do so as groups of kin, affines and/ or friends; the latter may or may not correspond with male members of hamlets or co-users of farming roads. In either case, hunters are obliged by elaborate rules to share large catches of game or fish with members of their extended family. This effect makes the hunting line, and its group of co-users, the most appropriate level of analysis at which to examine the social and ecological dimensions of hunting undertaken in the section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’ in Chapter 9.

The Landscape Scale Wapishana settlement in Guyana encompasses four broad biogeographical zones that I here use as analytical units at a third level in the Wapishana panarchy: that of the landscape. In the north, Sand Creek and its outliers, along with Rupunau and the mainly Makushi village of Shulinab, are in the southern foothills of the Kanuku Mountains. In the centre, Sawariwau, Katoonarib and Shiriri are located in the vicinity of large forest islands in the savannah. In the south, Aishalton, Karaudanawau and Achiwuib occupy the north side of the Kuyuwini

Figure 8.1 Major biogeographical zones of Wapishana settlement in Guyana. Figure created by the author.

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River basin and the adjacent savannahs. In the east, where this study was mainly based, Shea, Maruranau and Awarewaunau are located in the Kwitaro River basin. Data on the effects of human activity at this level are sketchy, but do include some preliminary evidence for long-term ecological modifications of the type noted by Balée (1993) and suggestive of cultural influences on the landscape. Most notably, substantial groves of Brazil nut (Bertholettia excelsa), a species Balée considers an indicator of human activity, grow in parts of the Kwitaro River headwaters and between the Kwitaro and Rewa rivers. There is only one known specimen of this species within the boundaries of Maruranau Reservation, but informants in Marunanau told me that they are more common within the lands allocated to Shea and Awarewaunau. Ethnohistorical reports indicate that both farming and prolonged settlement extended far deeper into the forest in the past than they do today, and several direct observations corroborated this. Collaborators pointed out to me the sites of old farms, botanically distinct from the surrounding forest, in areas close to the Kwitaro. I also saw localized patches of terra preta soils, usually formed from the accumulated nutrient-rich residue of human settlement, in the forests of the Kwitaro River basin, rich in pottery shards. Some of those closest to the village, at the furthest reaches of the current farming zone, were the sites of present-day farms. Wapishana collaborators also showed me a number of other sites of archaeological interest, including petroglyphs and markings in rocks, often with legends attached or other local explanations of their occurrence. Names and stories attached to particular sites are another way in which the landscape is socialized. Most importantly for our present purposes, a number of specific sites within the Kwitaro and Rewa basins, in forest, savannah and river, are considered to be inhabited by supernatural beings whose presence is a source of mortal danger to human intruders. These include particularly large specimens of water camoudi or anaconda (Eunectes murinus) that inhabit deep pools in rivers, and (presumably mythical) aquatic white anteaters resident in many forest and savannah creeks and implicated in maintaining their hydrological health. Watercourses inhabited by either of these are tempestuous and impossible to enter safely either swimming or by canoe, as the creatures are prone to drag people underwater and drown them. Several fantastic kinds of outsize felid, such as the kodoi din (tapir master) and namachi din (worakobra2 master), along with other creatures similar to dragons and giants, reside in certain mountains in the deep forest and savannah. These entities respond violently to human intrusion, typically stirring up a violent thunderstorm and following

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behind it with the intention of driving off, and if that fails killing, the human intruders. Most Wapishana hunters I spoke to provided direct, first-hand accounts of encounters with one or more of these. Reinforced by the sharing of such experiences, a genuine fear of mortal danger leads people to avoid these areas or, on occasions when they have to pass through them, to do so quickly without stopping to make camp. As a result, certain areas remain effectively closed off to human use, on either a temporary or permanent basis. People familiar with the relevant esoteric practices can attain a certain measure of protection: blowing can provoke a temporary retreat of the entity and buy sufficient time to leave the area. Marunao (Chapter 7, section ‘Wapishana Expressions of the Mythical Structure’), specialist spiritual practitioners, are reported to be able to enter altered states in which they can communicate with these spirits and influence their behaviour. Some powerful marunao are able to restrain them or, as one person put it, ‘chain them up’, opening affected areas up to human activities. I was given accounts of occasions on which this had happened in certain places in the vicinity of Maruranau and Shea within living memory. On the other hand, kanaima – the antisocial counterpart of the marunao – are said to be able to release these chains. They may do this for what people regard as purely malicious reasons, making the site involved dangerous once again. Although the evidence I collected is fragmentary, it allows speculative reconstruction of a mechanism for landscape-scale regulation of resource use, mystical practitioners manipulating traditional belief in nature spirits to successively open up and close off certain areas for human use. This would form a flexible system incorporating more or less permanent, or at least long-term, spatial reserves where ecological processes can proceed without human intervention. Chapter 10 provides a more detailed examination of the possible ecological implications.

Conclusion Subjective and intersubjective factors interact in complicated ways with the behaviour of individual resource users and the material features of the Wapishana social-ecological system. This is true at all scales and across scales: panarchy and its effects on social-ecological resilience are strongly culturally influenced. The following chapter continues to develop the picture of heterarchy by examining how psychological and cultural factors at different epistemological levels interact with behavioural and systemic factors in Wapishana subsistence.

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Notes  1. Previous research among the Wapishana had concluded that access to agricultural land is entirely unregulated (Hills 1968: 62–63; Salisbury 1968: 10; ARU 1992). In the case of the ARU study, I believe this is an artefact of its short timescale – a brief ethnographic survey without the resources to undertake detailed long-term research on subsistence. As the McGill study was focused on agriculture, the difference is harder to explain; it may reflect a cultural difference between their study location (largely bush island farmers on the central savannah) and that of my research. I am more inclined to believe it to be the result of brevity, as the land tenure system in Maruranau did not become evident to me until my research was quite far advanced. An anonymous reviewer of the present work suggested that the system I describe here, being unlike any previously reported from the Guianas, may be a postcontact innovation, perhaps resulting from the nucleation of settlement. I have no data that could either prove or disprove this conjecture.  2. Grey-winged trumpeter (Psophia crepitans).

Chapter 9

Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Subsistence

As in life in general, Wapishana people in their ecological relations routinely apply a combination of perspectives, including rational and nonrational modes of thought and action, for which Gebser’s structures of consciousness provide an adequate preliminary description. As this and the following chapter demonstrate, this composite environmental epistemology is essential to the practical efficacy and ecological sustainability of resource use, and is the basis for the mutual enhancement of ecological and cultural diversity characteristic of ecological fringes. For the Wapishana, forest and savannah are, from the preconventional perspective of the magic structure, sources of raw materials available for the fulfilment of basic needs such as food, shelter and medicine. They are also potentially dangerous, populated not only by animals such as poisonous snakes, predatory felids and disease-carrying insects, but also by malevolent mystical entities of various kinds. Many subsistence acts reflect the purely utilitarian view in being wholly exploitative, incorporating no other criteria than the immediate satisfaction of material needs. One example is the felling of trees bearing edible fruit, which detrimentally affects human use both directly by denying people access to any potential future production and indirectly, in that the tree would also have provided food for animals, possible prey for hunters or providers of other ecological services useful to people. There are no customary sanctions on felling fruit trees, perhaps because under the conditions of relatively high mobility that were prevalent until the twentieth century, the ecological effects were less important, at least as directly experienced by people.1 However, many people throughout the South Rupununi nowadays voice objections to what has widely come to be considered a wasteful and destructive practice.2 As a consequence, it is declining: the result of a postconventional critique of a preconventional practice whose negative ecological consequences have

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become clear in modern times. Wapishana resource use manifests many such patterns of interaction among structures. Each provides a different range of problem-solving capacities, which are instantiated in a variety of ways. The immediate motivation for action may be preconventional and lie in unreflective criteria of direct practical efficacy (the magic structure), be conventional and express cultural scripts or other norms of culturally appropriate conduct (the mythical structure), or be postconventional and derive from reflective analysis upon immediate or deferred utilitarian value (the mental structure). The range of expression of each structure may, in turn, be constrained or regulated preconventionally, conventionally or postconventionally: by magic structure perceptions of experienced empirical reality, by mythical structure beliefs derived from specific narratives as to the underlying nature of reality and identity and related codes as to appropriate conduct, or by mental structure reflective analysis of these perceptions, beliefs and associated practices. Systasis – the integration of the structures – is therefore manifest practically in providing a range of distinct capacities for problem solving or decision-making. These capacities, which we can roughly characterize as empirical, normative and analytical, mutually contextualize each other. By restricting each other’s range of action, they can regulate each other’s effects. In this way addiction – the restriction of problem-solving capacity to a single structure (Bateson and Bateson 1987: 125–34; Chapter 5, section ‘Epistemological Colonization’) – is avoided. Whenever the application of one structure becomes ineffective, counterproductive or otherwise inappropriate to the problem at hand, a shift to another level of abstraction – in other words, to another motivating or contextualizing structure – is always possible. This chapter describes the interactions of the structures in two major fields of Wapishana subsistence: swidden agriculture and hunting. In each of these, systasis is the basis for reconciling the immediate or shortterm practical needs of individual resource users with longer-term and collective needs, including the maintenance or enhancement of ecological integrity and biotic diversity.

Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Agriculture Swidden agriculture is the economic, social, cultural and social-ecological basis of Wapishana subsistence. It clearly demonstrates how the material outcomes of resource use reflect interactions among the different structures and, in particular, how the behavioural outcomes of norms

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located in the mythical structure limit the extent of expression of the magic structure. Taken out of context, the actions of the individual farmer could be seen as preconventional, or based on immediate effect, expressing the impulsive and unreflective empiricism of Gebser’s magic structure and the red value of Spiral Dynamics. In a forcible expression of superiority over nature, the farmer employs the brute power of axe and fire to clear a patch of forest, making a space to plant crops. The units of social organization involved are the most basic – the family and extended family units – while technologically it involves only simple tools such as machete, axe, hoe and fire. Clearing forest patches for agriculture looks immensely destructive to the untrained European eye, sensitive to static conditions rather than process (Alcorn 1989). The consequent misunderstanding is perhaps exemplified in the use of the derogatory epithet ‘slash-and-burn’ (Dove 1983). This perception would perhaps be accurate were there nothing more to swidden agriculture, as is the case under certain circumstances in which agricultural expansion leads to permanent agricultural conversion or degradation of the forest. An example is the use of transient swidden agriculture by Iban groups expanding their range into enormous tracts of vacant or sparsely settled primary forest (Freeman 1955: 21–26, 115–16). Geertz (1963: 27) attributes this partly to ‘an historically rooted conviction that there are always other forests to conquer, a warrior’s view of natural resources as plunder to be exploited’, an attitude conforming to EsbjörnHargens’ (2005a) description of the red eco-self. A similar pattern characterized swidden agriculture at the frontier of European agricultural expansion during the Neolithic, where swidden plots were not permitted to go fallow, but were permanently converted to other purposes (Harris 1972). It is unlikely that either of these cases reflects unrestrained expression of the magic structure in the absence of any other epistemological capacity. Both were conscious strategies for expansion at agricultural frontiers where the normative context provided by the mythical structure had no particular function in relation to ecological sustainability and instead encoded an expansionist ideology that promoted rather than restrained behavioural expression of the magic structure. More commonly, including in the Wapishana case, clearance of forest for cultivation takes place in the context of agroecosystems with far more complex social and ecological dynamics (Dove 1983; Brookfield and Padoch 1994). The modern characterization of the social-ecological system describes these as the outcome of interactions among ecology, technology, ecological knowledge and, importantly, a matrix of culturally prescribed customs and norms specifying details of appropriate and proscribed action, crucial to the ecological sustainability of the system

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(Berkes and Folke 1998b). Such norms form a set of conventional injunctions whose effects upon intent and behaviour restrain the scope of preconventional action within limits that ensure their consistency with requirements for ecological, social and cultural reproduction. In most described cases, customary mechanisms for allocation of land or resource use rights are crucial to the stability of the social-ecological system (Berkes 1989; Alcorn and Toledo 1998). This is certainly true of Wapishana swidden agriculture. As noted earlier (Chapter 6, section ‘Overview of Wapishana Agriculture’), a household has hereditary rights of access to agricultural land along one or more farm roads, subject to the consent of the individual customarily recognized as its owner. Choices among these options, along with site selection on the part of migrants without any hereditary usufruct rights in their area of residence, decisions on the part of owners concerning granting of consent, attempts by farmers in sparsely used areas to attract others to their farm road, and the occasional cutting of a new road, combine to distribute agricultural activity across the landscape. We can regard each farm road as a basic unit of social and spatial organization of agriculture. Each such more or less delimited agroecological zone includes the active farms and fallows of several households, normally related through male and/or female lines. A household cuts a new plot every year and individual plots are in most cases actively managed for about two years, after which declining yields and increased weed growth make returns on labour unacceptably low. Many nondomesticated plants characteristic of fallows are useful either directly or as food for browsing game such as red brocket deer (Mazama americana) and tapir (Tapirus terrestris). I saw no evidence for active management of fallow vegetation to enhance this use value. However, human consumers disperse seeds of many forest trees into the farming zone incidentally by collecting and consuming their edible fruits; most of these are also favoured by nonhuman frugivores. The retention by their original users of ownership over fallows has important consequences for the agroecological system. The secondary forest in fallows is free of large trees, whose felling is the most arduous and dangerous of all agricultural tasks, and is for this reason considered easier to clear than primary forest. In areas of agricultural expansion – which, given continuing population increases in most Wapishana villages, is a fairly common situation – men in their prime preferentially cut new farms in primary forest, thus accumulating a bank of fallows to which they can return at a more advanced age. This rationally considered response to the consequences of customary land tenure mechanisms leads to longer fallow periods than purely agronomic considerations would

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dictate. Cultivated land may also be left fallow for longer periods, or indefinitely, through the death or emigration of its owner in cases when use rights are neither claimed by heirs nor requested by others, or changes in the spatial pattern of agriculture. Farm roads are occasionally abandoned and new lines cut when blockage by large trunks of dead trees becomes excessive. Changes in settlement patterns or lifestyles may make regular attention to farms in remote areas distant from the village impracticable. One such change is a trend – common but by no means universal – towards increasingly savannah-based activity, which increases people’s preference for farm sites close to the bush mouth. Many people also nowadays consider crop predation, particularly by white-jawed peccaries (Tayassu pecari), to be excessively problematic in deep forest. For both of these reasons, the previously common practices of cutting farms in deep forest, close to hunting areas and raising the probability of casual encounters with game while travelling to or from the village, or of keeping one farm near the bush mouth and a second deep in the forest, are declining in frequency. Further mythical structure institutions crucial to swidden agriculture’s social functionality find their expression in two customary systems for collective labour. In self-help, a group of individuals or families come together to work on a reciprocal basis, putting equal time into the farm of each in turn. This is most commonly practised during farm clearance, an exceedingly heavy job far more easily accomplished in a group than alone. Manorin is a nonreciprocal system, common not just in farm clearance, but also in a number of other particularly arduous tasks, both agricultural and nonagricultural, such as hauling logs or palm leaves for house construction, harvesting peanuts, building walls and digging wells. The host of a manora invites family, neighbours and friends in numbers appropriate to the scale of the task and their means to provide the expected quantity of alcoholic beverage – ideally the esteemed cassava beer parakari – and in most cases food, which they must offer their guests as an incentive for participation. Taking up invitations to manora is among the strongest possible cultural obligations for the Wapishana, and these two forms of collective labour ensure that it is always possible to mobilize work groups when necessary. This is particularly important for the practice of swidden agriculture, in which the crucial need to clear, dry and burn fields within a tight timeframe between the Christmas rains and the onset of the rainy season proper in April creates a significant labour bottleneck. Prescribing details of agricultural practice via relatively conservative conventions located in the mythical structure is adaptive in the face of

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the low resilience of swidden agriculture to certain technical changes (Geertz 1963: 25–28). Increased spatial density of cultivation, shortened fallow periods, interruption of succession in fallows and use of incorrect techniques all commonly lead to reduced yields and, if sustained, a very localized shift to a different, less biodiverse and structurally complex system state. For example, changes in the agricultural practices of Jinou residents of Chinese montane forests have led to degradation of the habitat and reduced bird diversity compared with forests in which Hani farmers retain traditional techniques (Wang and Young 2003). Often, a loss of agricultural potential also results. Lack of land pressure and continued adherence to norms for correct practice makes such effects exceedingly rare in Maruranau, where I saw only two sites where agriculture had caused obvious ecological degradation. Both were farms belonging to very old men no longer sufficiently able-bodied, I was told, to maintain fallow periods sufficiently long enough to allow full regeneration. Within the flexible space around conventional stipulations as to agricultural practice, there is constant application of postconventional thought in innovation and experimentation (cf. Richards 1993). People in several villages are experimenting with savannah agriculture, not traditionally practised because of the extremely low fertility of most savannah soils and the need to fence off gardens from free-ranging domestic cattle, chickens and pigs. The major motivation for most is one already noted as having contributed to the decline of deep forest agriculture: the perceived inconvenience of daily travelling long distances between home and farm, particularly among people tied to the village by responsibilities such as council membership, formal employment or substantial livestock holdings. If application of cattle manure or other locally innovative techniques for soil improvement can overcome the fertility barrier, widespread uptake of savannah farming and reduction of the pattern of constant travel between the savannah homestead and forest farm could provoke a major revolution in Wapishana lifestyles, potentially with significant ecological consequences. Many people also plant homegardens, a longer-standing practice recorded in previous research among the Wapishana from several decades ago (Salisbury et al. 1968), but originally acquired from coastal peoples of both Amerindian and non-Amerindian origin. Crops grown include salad vegetables originally introduced by these Guyanese immigrants to the Rupununi and a range of green vegetables provided more recently by foreign agricultural extension workers. Some exotic crops have been used for longer and are now seamlessly established in traditional agriculture (cf. Descola (1994) on the importance of exotic crops for the Achuar). These include bananas and plantains

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(Musa spp.), mangos (Mangifera indica) and numerous other exotic fruit trees, commonly planted near homesteads and at permanent or longterm sites of secondary dwellings in the forest. Local growers of peanuts (Arachis hypogea), currently the only cash crop grown in significant quantities and providing more than a tiny, piecemeal income, reported that this crop was introduced by Guyanese agricultural extension workers during the 1960s. An example from the literature shows how postconventional attitudes towards norms and selective uptake of external technical innovations can aid adaptation to more pronounced changes in circumstances than Guyanese Wapishana have yet experienced. The Baduy of highland West Java generally maintain an extremely traditionalist – and conventional – attitude to swidden agriculture, and regard isolating agricultural practices from outside pressure to change as crucial to maintaining their cultural identity. However, when population growth and forest depletion threatened the sustainability of agriculture, they began to cultivate a new cash crop, albizia (Paraserianthes falcataria). Intercropping this leguminous tree with rice helps maintain soil fertility; selling its timber provides a cash income essential to local livelihoods affected by limited availability of forested land. In this way, a relatively minor concession to the market economy has alleviated the greater long-term threat of resource depletion (Iskandar and Ellen 2000). In another Wapishana village, population growth and increasing reluctance to locate farms in deep forest far from the village meant that readily accessible agricultural land became increasingly scarce. At formal meetings presided over by the village council, the village made a decision to abandon the customary system of land tenure and instead to empower the council to allocate contiguous blocks of agricultural land, encompassing sufficient area for fields, fallows and possible future expansion, to each family. A combination of objective and subjective factors meant that the traditional system had ceased to function in present-day circumstances. This led to its critical evaluation and consequent replacement by an alternative arrangement enforced by political rather than customary authority. In this example, interrelations among levels of context are clear. Customary norms concerning use rights to agricultural land (mythical structure) provide a layer of context limiting individual actions (magic structure) in such a way that they conform to group needs, based on criteria for long-term social and ecological sustainability. The context of domestic reproduction is the sustainability of the social-ecological system, and the constraints on individual behaviour encoded in the mythical structure ensure that the two do not conflict. Demographic and behavioural

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changes threatened the resilience of the social-ecological system when the availability of accessible agricultural land no longer corresponded with needs. Resolution of this situation required recourse to a higher level of context – that provided by the mental structure – to allow the reconfiguration of norms encoded in the mythical structure. Reassessment of traditional practices via rational debate within village-level decision-making mechanisms led to the establishment of new norms. This illustrates that even when subsistence techniques are encoded in normative structures such as cultural scripts, people are able to reflect upon and evaluate them pragmatically when circumstances demand. The articulation of magic, mythical and mental structures enables criticism of customary practice from a postconventional perspective when changing conditions mean that it no longer articulates social and ecological conditions in ways that reliably sustain the necessary system outputs.

Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting As in agriculture, Wapishana hunting combines a mental structure, postconventional perspective with preconventional and conventional expressions of the magic and mythical structures, in a flexible fashion allowing adjustment to a wide variety of specific circumstances. The immediate actions are, again, largely located within the magic structure, which retains a rich complex of beliefs and practices connected with hunting, some of them already mentioned (Chapter 7, section ‘Wapishana Expressions of the Magic Structure’). These include food prohibitions and other interactions with nature spirits, blowing and incantation, observance of numerous prohibitions and rituals prior to and during hunting, and the use of bina to influence game and for the training of both human hunters and their canine assistants. Similar complexes of magic structure belief and practice are also relevant to other areas of subsistence, such as fishing and the construction of fish traps. Hunting is among the conventionally determined domestic obligations of a married man, from whom custom expects a reliable supply of animal protein procured through hunting and fishing. Changing circumstances have proven this expectation flexible, notably in the face of the seasonal absences of men experienced at the height of the balata trade. The two or three months that comprise the peak season for balata collection coincide with the optimum time for hunting: the early rainy season when abundance of fruit means animals are in good physical condition, flooding restricts the movements of terrestrial game and the soft ground makes them easier to track. At the height of the balata trade, men were

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almost entirely absent from the village at that time of year. This obliged women to take over hunting duties; many, by all accounts, became highly accomplished. Daily obligations to farm, house and children meant this took a very different pattern from the deep forest hunting practiced by men, most women concentrating on smaller game common in the farming area and bush mouth3. The results of interviews, household surveys and direct observation showed patterns of prey choice among Wapishana men to be largely comparable with those recorded for other Amazonian hunters (e.g. Redford and Robinson 1987; Hill et al. 1997; Souza-Mazurek et al. 2000). The most popular game animals are terrestrial ungulates and rodents of both forest and savannah such as collared and white-jawed peccaries (Tayassu tajacu and T. pecari), red brocket deer (Mazama americana), savannah or white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), laba (Agouti paca) and agouti (Dasyprocta agouti), along with several kinds of armadillos (Dasypus spp. and Cabossous unicinctus), and ground-dwelling birds such as maam (Tinamus major), powis (Crax spp.) and worakobra (Psophia crepitans). Technical limitations mean that primates, although considered edible, are harvested at low frequencies, as they are difficult to kill with a bow and arrow (cf. Hames 1979: 233). The largest dietary contribution of any free-living animal, at least in terms of numbers, is that of the two species of land tortoise (Geochelone spp.), harvested by gathering rather than hunting. Like those of farming, the specific acts of appropriation involved in hunting can all be understood as directly concerned with practical effect; as such, they immediately and directly express the magic structure. However, all take place within contexts influenced by conventional stipulations located in the mythical structure. As with agriculture, the most important among these specify its social and spatial organization, particularly rights of access to and usage of hunting roads. These roads, tracks in the forest along which permanent hunting and fishing camps are located, maintained over several generations and in some cases beyond living memory, form the basic unit of tenure over hunting land. As with farm roads, of which most hunting lines are extensions, ownership of a line accrues to the first man who cut it. Usufruct rights are allocated at the discretion of this customary owner, and both ownership and rights of access are subsequently inherited cognatically. Most men thus have a customary entitlement to use of several hunting lines. Social factors, familiarity with the land and density of existing users can all affect the choice among these. Normatively, co-users of a hunting road are therefore a number of sanguinally or affinally related men. Most hunting parties are fairly stable in

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composition, and the co-users of a hunting road will comprise one or more such regular groups. In some cases, this conforms to an ideal in which the men of a single co-resident extended family unit are also hunting partners, with fairly exclusive access to a particular line. Real examples typically show some degree of deviation from this. There are also total exceptions: some hunting groups are based around ties of friendship rather than kinship, and men, for various reasons, will on occasion go hunting with people other than their regular partners and outside their usual area. However, hunting along any particular line is usually dominated by a small number of men who regularly hunt together, usually related and often residents of the same subsettlement. These groups are also important in the transmission of hunting knowledge, as they are the setting in which young men learn to hunt while accompanying fathers, uncles, older brothers and brothers-in-law, and later fathers-in-law and other male affines. Interplay among the magic, mythical and mental structures also affects intersubjective and subjective perceptions as to the edibility of the flesh of different animal categories. These are encoded linguistically in the allocation of animal segregates into wunii (eaten) and mawuniki (not eaten), perhaps the most important among several cross-cutting major categories in Wapishana ethnozoological classification (Henfrey 2002: 145–49). In most cases, designation as mawuniki seems to have clear practical grounds, animals being considered not worth eating on grounds of size – in the case of most small mammals, such as squirrels (Sciurus aestuans), opposums (Didelphis spp.), murids, bats and the smallest primate species (Saimiri sciureus and Saguinus midas) – or the perceived quality of the meat of mammals such as sloth (Bradypus spp.) and fox (Cerdocyon thous), along with that of all snakes. Customary avoidances are quite rare, and the Wapishana category wunii includes some animals commonly tabooed among other Amazonian peoples (Ross 1978) such as capybara (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris). Carnivores are not generally eaten, though some species are killed for their pelts. Foxes, pumas (Puma concolor) and jaguars (Panthera onca) that prey on domestic livestock are hunted down and killed, and some hunters pursue pumas and jaguars in their hunting area because they consider them competitors for game like collared peccaries. The only customary avoidance I recorded with no obvious prosaic explanation is for haka (Eira barbara, referred to as tayra outside Guyana). This partially frugivorous mustelid was reported in ethnoecological studies to disperse seeds of several species of forest trees. This may provide an ecological explanation of why it is not hunted, but it would require further evidence to make it a convincing one. Whatever the reason, its avoidance appears to have little of the emotive content we might expect

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to associate with the term ‘taboo’. Nobody I questioned on the matter appeared to consider it an especially interesting issue and none could give any better explanation than custom itself, expressed in terms such as ‘I don’t know why, we just don’t eat it’. Cultural perceptions of edibility are not all fixed, and there is evidence that some have been subject to postconventional re-evaluation over both long and short timescales. One hunter told me that he had once eaten a jaguar he killed and that, as a result, jaguar became wunii (edible) for him. Stories occasionally circulate of people eating oddities such as snake meat, usually under the influence of excess alcohol. Some animal categories appear to occupy borderline positions; for example, sloth meat is perceived as low quality and generally avoided, but can be eaten as an emergency food. Perceptions of edibility are also changing over time: some adults reported that their children had begun show aversion to eating monkey meat. I found an identical change in attitudes now to be entrenched among both adults and children in more acculturated Amerindian groups inhabiting Guyana’s coastal plain. In addition to linguistically encoded and relatively stable categories of edibility, patterns of consumption of many animal foods, fish as well as game, are affected by phased dietary prohibitions (Ellen 1998: 243). These may be imposed for a variety of reasons, including preparation for hunting and fishing trips under certain well-defined circumstances, for example while building a fish trap. The most important are a series of species-specific prohibitions imposed postpartum on the entire household of which the neonate is part and, also on a household basis, in response to certain illnesses. Both of these are considered times of particular vulnerability to the agency of animal spirits able to act upon people who hunt the animal or eat its flesh. For very young children and sufferers of certain illnesses, the result is a potentially fatal attack. Protection from the possibility of such attacks is the rationale behind the prohibition. At times of such vulnerability, families of affected individuals consult a marunao, who prescribes various measures including temporary prohibitions on the consumption of certain animal foods. Postpartum prohibitions against scale fish, domestic livestock and wild animals such as peccaries, laba and agoutis usually last only a few weeks. On the other hand, it may be dangerous to eat the flesh of animals associated with particularly malevolent spirits for a year or more in cases such as spider monkey (Ateles paniscus) and tapir. This extends to two or three years for the grey brocket deer (Mazama gouazoubira), which as a result is rarely hunted. Transgression produces severe physical symptoms, not in the offender but in the infant, with

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death likely without the intervention of a marunao sufficiently adept to repel the attacking spirit. Prohibitions resulting from illness are also species-specific and may be either temporary or permanent. Most of the permanent sanctions of which I was told concerned consumption of tapir meat, which is commonly implicated in such situations. Prior to his death in the 1980s, the study village was home to a particularly industrious kanaima whose activities at one point or another affected most of the current adult population. One result is that many are permanently unable to eat the meat of tapirs, hunting pressure upon which is consequently minimal over large tracts of hunted land. As this situation results from the activities of one individual, it is difficult to assess how typical it is. However, as explained in more detail below, given the ecological importance and vulnerability to hunting of tapir populations, the ecological consequences could be significant. The same animal spirits implicated in food taboos may also pose a danger to hunters. Some enforce restraint: when hunting collared peccary one should kill only part of the herd. Anyone who violates this will suffer nocturnal attacks, administered in his dreams, by the master spirit of this species; those of other species, including macaws (Ara spp.) protect them from overexploitation in the same way (cf. Balée 1994: 84). In only one case was I told of these spirits encouraging the hunting of their charge, that of the white-jawed peccary or bich. Distinct from the master spirit of the species, bich herds are led by dwarf-like anthropoid figures, picha. The lead animal in the herd is his steed, and hunters should avoid killing this animal on pain of almost certain death. Otherwise the picha encourages hunters to shoot as many hogs as possible, as their arrows and bullets become ammunition for him as he pursues his own prey, the maam (Tinamus major). Wapishana hunters, for whom bich is the most commonly caught, frequently discussed, highly prized and culturally salient species of game animal, and the focal member of the category wunii (edible animals), are more than happy to oblige. Opportunities to track or hunt bich take priority over all other tasks, most notably when herds come out from the forest to feed on the fruits of etai (Mauritia flexuosa) palms lining savannah creeks, providing opportunities for large-scale group hunts in which the entire village participates. Conversations about hunting expeditions or other trips to the forest invariably centre upon discussion of sightings of peccary herds, their size, location and movements. In this way, there is constant exchange of information about the presence and movements of bich throughout the entire geographical area used by hunters in a village. Via direct communication and negotiation with the picha, marunao are reportedly able to affect the movements of bich herds, encouraging

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them to frequent hunted grounds where they are absent or guiding away excessively large and/or aggressive herds liable to destroy farms and threaten human safety. As described in Chapter 8, section ‘The Landscape Scale’, they also mediate human interactions with another category of nature spirit, that which we might refer to as the guardians of particular locations: the malevolent entities that maintain certain hills in the forest and on the savannah and certain pools in the river free from human intrusion, or almost so. As the following paragraphs explain, these two mechanisms – temporary or permanent prohibitions on the consumption of certain types of meat by particular individuals or households, and long-term/permanent exclusion of hunting and other resource use activities – appear to combine so as to maintain the effects of hunting within the limits of ecological sustainability and to maximize biological productivity among hunted populations. As large families and high birth rates are the norm among the Wapishana, the cumulative duration of postpartum food prohibitions among men of prime hunting age – also the peak time of life for producing children – is considerable for some game species. The effects are likely to extend throughout any group of men who regularly hunt together, especially if they are also related by blood or marriage and/or reside in the same hamlet. All family members who share meals with those directly affected share in the prohibition, as consumption of prohibited meat by anyone in the household gives the spirit an opportunity to attack. Even if not directly affected by the prohibition, all members of the hunting group are likely to change their hunting behaviour as a result. An obligation to share the take among all present at a hunt and, on return to the village, distribute it through the extended family provides a powerful disincentive for the pursuit of game prohibited for any of its members or their co-resident relatives. Decisions about prey choice can be made at a variety of points in the hunt. Most terrestrial game is initially spotted by spoor or sound rather than sight. In deciding not to follow tracks, what is being relinquished is not a hunting opportunity, but the possibility of one, whose chance of fulfilment may at that point be quite low. Hunters can also affect the range of target game prior to the hunt itself, for instance, in their choice of weapons, choice of dogs, choice of which bina to prepare and carry and choice of hunting site. If hunters travel better equipped to catch some species than others, the opportunity cost of failing to pursue the latter is diminished. Another way in which hunters can respond to a prohibition is by shifting their subsistence strategy to accommodate it (cf. Dwyer 1982). Effort may be directed to fishing rather than hunting or to species-specific

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strategies for the hunting of permitted game. A domestic animal may be killed to satisfy the family’s protein needs and in the meantime hunting may be foregone in favour of farming, gardening, house maintenance, wage labour or any number of other productive tasks. The effect in such cases may simply be to oblige a diversification of the protein procurement strategy. Therefore, it cannot be assumed a priori that observing dietary prohibitions reduces the overall efficiency of subsistence. If it contributes to people following diverse strategies rather than getting stuck in a habit of visiting their favourite hunting ground and/or pursuing their preferred prey, it may even have short-term benefits in terms of overall returns on subsistence effort (cf. Moore 1957). The ecological effect of such prohibitions is to create geographically localized, temporary reductions in species-specific or absolute hunting pressure, which may last for an entire hunting season. Under some ecological conditions – and depending on population sizes, reproductive rates, and the duration and timing of prohibitions – this will provide opportunities for populations depleted by hunting to recover their numbers and thus contribute to the sustainability of their harvest. Regardless of whether or not these conditions are currently fulfilled, the effect is to increase the resilience of the system as a whole, by increasing the range of levels of human harvesting pressure that the system can absorb without any change in community structure, i.e. without any animal species being hunted to local extinction. This may be especially important in the case of tapir, the largest terrestrial mammal found locally. While its size makes it an attractive target for hunters, its low population density, reproductive rate and growth rate make it particularly vulnerable to overhunting (Bodmer et al. 1994; Bodmer 1995a; Alvard et al. 1997; Bodmer et al. 1997). It is exactly the kind of species referred to by the comment ‘from a conservation biology point of view, we should worry most about high value species with low r’ (Winterhalder and Lu 1997: 1358). Furthermore, local extinction of tapir would have significant indirect ecological consequences. According to ethnoecological studies with Wapishana collaborators, it is an important seed disperser for many forest trees, many of which are also food for humans or other hunted animals (Henfrey 2002: 186–88). This finding is consistent with ecological studies of Tapirus terrestris at other sites (Bodmer 1990; Fragoso 1997; Rodrigues et al. 1993; Olmos et al. 1999; Henry et al. 2000; Fragoso and Huffman 2000; Galetti et al. 2001). If Wapishana food taboos do have a conservation function, it is no surprise that they target tapir above almost all other species.

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Another species subject to long post-partum prohibitions is the spider monkey. This is also an important seed disperser whose population ecology makes it very vulnerable to overhunting (Roosmalen 1985: 179; Bodmer et al. 1997). The case of the grey brocket deer suggests little plausible conservation function, as this species has no great evident ecological importance, at least from the point of view of human utility. This serves as a caution against reducing this complicated array of beliefs and practice to ecological functionalism alone. It is also possible that areas of forest, savannah and river avoided by people because of the presence of malevolent nature spirits may effectively function as preserves where ecological processes take place unaffected by direct anthropic influence. Studies from a wide range of geographical and ecological settings suggest this to be an effective method for ensuring the survival of exploited plant and animal species. Customarily protected forest patches in many parts of the world have been shown to function as refugia harbouring viable populations of species depleted elsewhere (Gadgil and Vartak 1976; Aumeeruddy and Bakels 1994; Appell 1997; Byers et al. 2001). In the Indian district of Churachandapur, the conservation function of protected forests believed to harbour nature spirits has latterly become part of modern management plans (Gadgil et al. 1998: 42–44), as have taboos on the use of certain deep river pools among many fishing peoples of the Niger River (Price 1995: 290–92). Modelling of the dynamics of animal populations subject to hunting pressure indicates that the existence of spatial or temporal refuges from hunting is an effective strategy for preventing the extinction of game populations under hunting pressure (Joshi and Gadgil 1991). In societies without central authority to make and enforce any other type of regulation on resource use, the practical simplicity of this method may mean that it is the only workable solution (Gadgil and Berkes 1991: 135). Support for its potential efficacy is provided by preliminary ecological data on source-sink dynamics in populations of Tapirus terrestris, in which declines in hunted populations are buffered by immigration of animals from adjacent unhunted areas (Novaro et al. 2000). As described later (Chapter 10, section ‘Systemic Aspects of Wapishana Hunting’), this may be a key landscape-level mechanism for preserving animal populations hunted by the Wapishana. A special case of a different kind may, once again, be the white-jawed peccary, which ranges over enormous areas of forest (Kiltie and Terborgh 1983; Hernandez et al. 1995; Peres 1996; Fragoso 1998).4 The geographical scale at which this phenomenon demarcates accessible and inaccessible areas is of the order appropriate to a mechanism for providing spatial refugia for wide-ranging peccary herds. It is possible that Wapishana

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hunting strategies are especially tailored to the behaviour of this species, which also receives special symbolic treatment. It is not far-fetched to suppose that this could extend to encoding special mechanisms for its conservation.

Concluding Summary In both agriculture and hunting, Wapishana resource users flexibly and routinely employ and express each of the magic, mythical and mental structures. Collectively, they provide a complex range of alternative responses to circumstances, to be applied as conditions demand. As the next chapter shows, the coexistence of the structures as alternative problem-solving strategies is fundamental to the ecological and cultural sustainability of Wapishana resource use, and to the mutual enhancement of cultural and ecological diversity that takes places at a fringe.

Notes  1. Some people nowadays reserve a different attitude towards felling fruit trees in regularly frequented areas close to villages than in deep forest where the tree’s removal is not considered to impact resource availability so consequentially.  2. Collaborators in ethnoecological interviews on the bearded saki (Chiropotes satanas) inevitably expressed a similar attitude to its habit of eating unripe fruit, destroying the seed in the process. Some contrasted this unfavourably to the behaviour of other monkeys that were viewed, like people, as contributing to the propagation of their food plants.  3. This does not exhaust contributions to household intake of animal protein by women, some of whom also enjoy reputations for particular skill in the normatively male pursuit of fishing, usually with hook and line. Additionally, women conventionally and in the normal course of events monopolize the procurement of certain gathered animal foods, notably crabs and other shellfish.  4. For corroboration from ethnoecological reports see Henfrey (2002: 185–86).

Chapter 10

An Integral Ecology of Wapishana Subsistence

This chapter describes the systemic outcomes of systasis in Wapishana agriculture and hunting, based on a combination of ethnoecological data specific to the forests of the Kwitaro River basin and more general findings in ecological and ethnoecological literatures. The mutually constraining interactions of magic, mythical and mental structures described in the previous two chapters maintain ecological processes of key importance to resource use predominantly within their zones of maximum productivity and resilience. Appropriate long-term modification of the wider context of immediate short-term perturbations of ecological processes resulting from human action ensures that the material effects tend to maintain or elevate complexity and diversity in ecological aspects of the system. Similar relationships of mutual contextualization are evident for subjective and intersubjective aspects of the structures themselves, maximizing the psychocultural resilience of the system and its ability to absorb new information, respond to crisis events, and buffer and adapt to unexpected change.

Systemic Aspects of Wapishana Swidden Agriculture Following previous observations in the literature (Alcorn and Toledo 1998; Posey 1998; Berkes and Folke 2002), we can regard swiddens as anthropic imitations of the gaps that arise spontaneously when large trees fall in the forest. Swiddens differ from natural gaps in numerous aspects of detail. Burning in swiddens significantly affects patterns of recruitment from the seed bank and rates of natural regeneration (Uhl 1983).1 Contrary to assertions that swiddens rival the tropical forests from which they are cut in terms of plant diversity and structural complexity (Geertz 1963: 24), many in Amazonia especially are far more simple, dominated

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largely by cassava (Beckerman 1983; Boster 1983; Hames 1983; Stocks 1983; Vickers 1983). What swiddens do provide is continuity of ecological process, as they mimic natural adaptive cycles based on the growth, establishment and death of canopy trees. In the absence of anthropic intervention, these cycles proceed as follows. In the K phase, mature canopy trees dominate exchanges of energy and matter. Canopy closure restricts penetration of sunlight to lower vegetational strata. Available nutrients are largely sequestered in biomass, of which trees comprise by far the greatest part. Collapse and subsequent decay of a canopy tree forms the Ω phase, temporarily opening the canopy to sunlight and releasing bound nutrients for uptake, in the α phase, by faster-growing, light-loving plants characteristic of early secondary succession. This sets the stage for the r phase, in which botanical composition changes over several years as different plant communities successively grow, facilitate the establishment of later species in the succession, and then decline, each passing through a shorter adaptive cycle nested within that of the gap as a whole. The relatively abundant ground and shrub layer vegetation characteristic of the first few years of succession attracts browsing terrestrial ungulates with mixed diets of both leaves and fruit, notably tapirs (Tapirus terrestris) and red brocket deer (Mazama americana). In the course of foraging, they endozoochorously disperse seeds of fruit-producing trees into the gap. Young specimens of these and fast-growing, wind-dispersed tree species from adjacent areas form the dominant vegetation of mid-stage succession, several years after the treefall. They form a layer of intermediate height, several metres above the ground but far below the level of the canopy. Several primate species adapted to secondary forest – tamarins (Saguinus midas), squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), sakis (Pithecia pithecia) and to a lesser extent the two capuchin species Cebus apella and C. olivaceous, as well as many birds and bats, can now forage in or travel through the area. As they do so, they introduce seeds of further species of fruit-bearing trees through endozoochorous and exozoochorous dispersal. One or two specimens of these slow-growing trees will eventually grow to the height of the canopy and become established as a full-size tree within the gap. This marks the return of the K phase, which persists until the new tree’s death opens another gap. Swidden agriculture involves interventions at the Ω, α and, to a lesser extent and sometimes indirectly, the r and K phases, in order to divert biological productivity in the forest to crop plants suitable for human consumption (Berkes and Folke 2002). The most dramatic of these is felling trees to make a clearing, initiating an Ω phase and then accelerating it by burning the felled vegetation, which clears the ground and releases

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bound nutrients. Wapishana hunters on occasion omit the stage of active felling and burn trees that have spontaneously fallen, opportunistically clearing a space to plant a small farm along a trail or near a hunting camp. In either case, burning may also contribute to human manipulation of the α or reorganization phase, destroying any non fire-tolerant seeds or other propagules that might be present and thus reducing the possibility of establishment of nondomesticates in the very earliest stages of succession. The main human manipulation of the reorganization phase is planting, through which farmers introduce and nurture the specific crop plants they wish to grow during early stages of succession. Although superficially less drastic than either felling or burning, both of which to a certain extent replicate processes that occur naturally, planting and the subsequent removal of crops plants actually comprise the most ecologically disruptive of all the interventions in the swidden agricultural cycle. For this reason, it is crucial that this stage, at which human disruption of ecological processes is most marked, is located at the onset of the r phase, at which both the resilience to disturbance and productive potential of the system are at their peak. At this stage, the system is best able to absorb the perturbation that results when human consumers temporarily divert the greater part of ecological productivity to the growth of crop plants. This effect diminishes following the second year of the swidden’s lifecycle, by which time active management via weeding has usually ceased. From this point, establishment of nondomesticates becomes the dominant process in the ongoing r phase. Planting cultivars introduces another adaptive cycle relating to their growth and subsequent decline, operating on a shorter timescale than the secondary succession within which it is nested. Some Amazonian swidden agriculturalists have been shown to engage in extensive active manipulations beyond this time and into the late r phase of secondary succession (e.g. Denevan et al. 1984; Posey 1985; Anderson and Posey 1989). While I saw no evidence for this in Wapishana agricultural practices, many activities incidentally affect community structure beyond the time of active cultivation (cf. Balée 1994: 154–63). As noted in Chapter 8, section ‘The Extended Family, Farm Road and Hunting Line’, some crop plants continue to grow for extended periods or indefinitely in old farms. In addition, human consumers of fruits of forest trees may disperse their seeds into farm sites either synzoochorously or endozoochorously. Tapir and red brocket deer are also crop predators, of cassava leaves and the leaves and pods of black-eyed beans respectively, whose presence may also lead to endozoochorous dispersal of seeds of fruit trees into the farm zone. According to ethnoecological

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reports, agricultural areas also harbour higher concentrations of crop predators like agoutis (Dasyprocta agouti) and laba (Agouti paca). Human predation upon these seed-hoarding species may increase the rate of synzoochorous dispersal of their food plants into farms and fallows, which occurs when they bury seeds for future consumption but die before they have an opportunity to retrieve them. Many of the tree species thus propagated are also favoured foods of the two peccary species. Dispersal, both directly anthropic and by animals favoured by ecological characteristics of the agricultural zone, is therefore likely to favour the eventual establishment of trees of direct and indirect use value to humans. Swidden agriculture thus raises food abundance for frugivorous and semivorous game animals in several ways: directly in the case of crop predators (in addition to those already mentioned, both peccary species grub up tubers in both active farms and fallows), indirectly in the case of browsing animals whose food is more abundant in gap habitats and secondary growth, and to whatever extent trees producing fruits and seeds eaten by game animals are more common in later stages of succession in fallows. Of more fundamental importance is the influence on the process of succession– and its outcome in the K phase – of its being situated within the mosaic of forest types making up the farming area as a whole. This makes the farm plot readily accessible for immigration by plant and animal species characteristic of all stages of secondary succession, ensuring that each becomes established and fulfils its facilitating role at the appropriate time. For each farm plot, the surrounding agroecological zone provides a ‘context for renewal’ or for ‘framed creativity’ (Folke et al. 2003: 352): a broader ecological setting that, within the constraints on location and timing of clearance specified by agricultural scripts, materially supports succession in clearings. This context is the source of the resilience that permits regeneration to secondary forest and the associated accumulation in biomass of sufficient matter and energy to support further cycles of clearing and cultivation. In summary, constraints on the location and timing of agricultural activities ensure that their emergent outcome at the level of the farm road is to produce a mosaic of active farms, primary forest and secondary forest in all stages of regeneration. Some of these constraints are physical and practical – within the heart of the farming area, primary forest is largely restricted to sites undesirable for farming. This may be due to inaccessibility, poor drainage (cassava cannot tolerate flooding, so many low-lying locations are avoided) or other factors – for example, farms very close to the bush mouth may be invaded by domestic cows. The greater number of restrictions on farm siting are customary, encoded in the mythical structure, which in land tenure and associated norms for agricultural

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practice provides a cultural matrix of restraints on the expression by the magic structure of impulsive need and by the mental structure of rational self-interest.

Systemic Aspects of Wapishana Hunting We can identify putative mechanisms for regulating the ecological impacts of hunting, operating at least two spatial scales. As in agriculture, these mechanisms seem to operate so as to maintain adaptive cycles within the r phase, where their resilience to perturbation by harvesting is at its maximum, at the points where human action directly impacts the ecological system. Also as in agriculture, this ecological outcome depends upon interactions among, and mutual regulation of, behaviour based on preconventional, conventional and postconventional perspectives. The majority of Wapishana hunting is either opportunistic (men generally carry weapons on the way to and from the farm or when travelling in the forest for other purposes) or generalized (hunting parties travelling along hunting lines in search of any suitable prey). Previous studies of Amazonian hunting have noted that these are efficient strategies, in terms of maximizing returns per unit effort, in circumstances where prey is sparsely and nonuniformly located, making encounters unpredictable (Hawkes et al. 1982; Hill and Hawkes 1983). Hunters go after specific prey species in cases where their movements are more predictable, such as using electric torches to shine for laba along creeks, where they are known to forage, during the dry season. The same species aggregates at mango trees in and near the farming area when they are in fruit, at which time hunters often wait for them in or near the tree. Some other species of game animal, among them red brocket deer and tapir, are also known to adopt fairly predictable foraging patterns when they turn their attention to farm raiding, giving hunters the opportunity to set an ambush. To a certain extent, both individual and collective prey choice are patterned by cultural factors. Some of the more intransigent among these are encoded in the categorization of animals as either edible (wunii) or inedible (mawuniki) (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’). More specific and potentially flexible factors include the predilections and skills of hunters and their dogs. On occasion, a certain man may gain a reputation as an expert in the capture of a particular game animal. More commonly, many species-specific techniques for prey capture require the administration of appropriate training and bina (charms) to hunting dogs. The lack of an appropriately trained hunting dog or, on the other hand, a particular aptitude on a dog’s part for

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capturing a specific prey may influence the prey choices and kill rates of the owner. These effects aside, within the range of animals generally considered to provide adequate game, the prey choice of Wapishana hunters appears to differ little from that of an opportunistic hunter whose take is based on random encounter and capture. To the extent that this is the case, human effects on prey populations will be density-dependent and hence to some extent self-regulating, for the simple reason that the less abundant any game species is, the more rarely it will be seen and killed. However, in some cases where patterns of hunting pressure have undergone significant historical changes, deviations from density dependence are too large to keep species-specific hunting pressure within the limits of resilience of game populations. Local accounts indicate that the naked-tailed armadillo (Cabossous unicinctus) was common even within villages before someone came up with the idea of flooding the animals out of their burrows with buckets of water, since when it is far less common close to permanent residences. Similarly, high harvesting pressure has led to the depletion of previously common species such as tortoises (Geochelone spp.) and iguana (Iguana iguana) in the immediate vicinity of human settlements. These are all cases of loss or disruption of the interactions among structures, so the ecological effects of behaviour associated with the expression of one structure are no longer regulated by other structures. The increased ease of capture of armadillos by the new harvesting method – a mental structure innovation – was not compensated by any mitigating mechanism in the magic or mythical structures. Prior to the introduction of the new technique, armadillos were sufficiently well protected by their burrows and nocturnal habits that no such mechanism was necessary to ensure the persistence of high populations. The depletion of iguanas and tortoises probably reflects nucleation of settlement following missionization and the provision of churches and schools – changes in mythical structure expectations affecting settlement patterns previously more influenced by the magic structure. This has led to direct increases in hunting pressure and to habitat degradation as harvesting of firewood from forest islands and removal of palms in gallery forests for fruits and leaves has locally increased beyond sustainable levels. A similar effect may explain the isolated instances of degradation of forest habitat by excessively intensive agriculture (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Agriculture’): physical limitations mean that mythical structure norms no longer adequately constrain the expression of short-term utilitarian interests (magic structure).

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As noted previously (Chapter 9, section ‘Composite Epistemology in Wapishana Hunting’), symbolic restrictions on consumption may act to buffer the impacts of hunting on populations of some game animals. In some social animals such as collared peccary and macaws, the prospect of attack by the spirit of the species deters hunters from taking entire herds or flocks, which can therefore persist as viable breeding units. Postpartum and illness-related food taboos provide temporary relief from hunting pressure within particular geographical areas, giving populations depleted by hunting an opportunity to recover their numbers. If prey populations thus incur intermediate levels of hunting pressure, averaged over time, that are sufficiently high to prevent them from reaching carrying capacity but not so high as to reduce local population densities to levels too low for continued reproduction, they will tend to remain within the r phase, where both productivity and resilience to hunting pressure are at their highest. For the tapir, whose large size makes it an attractive target at the same time as its population dynamics mean that its resilience to hunting pressure is exceedingly low, symbolic restrictions on hunting are especially strong, a combination of long postpartum prohibitions and the attachment of long-term or permanent prohibitions to many sufferers of kanaima attack. The dynamics of local game populations are also nested in broader cycles, providing them with contexts for renewal that further buffer the effects of hunting. The presence of malevolent nature spirits means that certain areas are rarely or never visited, leading to a virtual absence of hunting pressure. This can create a source-sink dynamic between unhunted and hunted zones that elevates the productivity and resilience of populations over broader spatial scales and longer timeframes. The risk of unhunted populations passing from the K to the Ω phase due to overpopulation is reduced by the scope for surplus individuals to disperse into adjacent areas in which populations are depleted by hunting and the quality of habitat enriched by swidden agriculture, maintaining productivity in the source area. These immigrants, in turn, provide a boost to populations depleted by hunting and a safeguard against occasions when customary mechanisms for regulating hunting pressure via prohibitions do not keep it within the limits of local resilience. In combination, the effect of these two mechanisms upon game populations is to tend to maintain them within the r phase of maximum productivity and resilience. Many refuge areas in the ‘East End’ villages are located east of the Kwitaro River and any ecological effects will be manifest at spatial scales of this order, tens of miles or more. Only one species commonly hunted by the Wapishana is known to range over such distances: the focal animal of the wunii category, the bich (white-jawed peccary, Tayassu pecari). Detailed

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biological information on the ranging behaviour of this species is equivocal (see Henfrey 2002: 185), but ethnoecological accounts claim that herds may roam over hundreds of miles2 and pass through certain areas only at intervals as long as several years. It seems likely, then, that any whitejawed peccary herd will at different times pass through hunted areas close to human habitation and refuge areas actively avoided by hunters for symbolic reasons, as well as places simply too remote from human settlement for there to be any likelihood of encountering hunters. Time spent in areas where there is no or only a negligible human presence may well provide peccary herds decimated by hunting with an opportunity to recover numbers; given their high reproductive rate, this can happen fairly quickly. Conversely, humans are the major predator for this species and the only one to impact significantly on its numbers. Intermittent exposure to large-scale hunting may therefore have a regulatory effect on herd and population size, keeping numbers below carrying capacity and within the productive and resilient r phase, and ensuring that populations rarely enter the Ω phase and possible decline. The white-jawed peccary might be the only species in which individuals roam over distances consistent with the scale of landscape-level regulatory mechanisms. The existence of such a mechanism might account for the anomalous symbolic encouragement to hunt this species, as well as the behavioural mechanisms for information exchange and maximizing possibilities of encounter with herds that reinforce this. The complete elimination of a large herd is beyond the capacity of even a large and determined group of human hunters. Herds range over sufficient areas both to expose themselves to the risk of decimation in largescale hunts and to spend sufficient time in refuge zones subject to little or no hunting to recover their numbers. The virtual absence of nonhuman predation upon this species – ethnoecological surveys report that this is limited to occasional capture of young animals by jaguars – may mean that periodic depletion of herds by human hunters is the only mechanism tending to retain populations within the r phase.

Interactions of the Structures Anderson (1996) provides a compelling argument that religion incorporates sets of emotionally potent cultural mechanisms to encode accumulated environmental knowledge as stipulations concerning correct behaviour. This is an instance of the more general points that worldview intercedes between empirical reality and practical action (Toledo 1992, 2004) or is a key level of analysis in traditional resource management

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systems (Berkes 1999: 13) and that culture structures information flows in human ecosystems (Casagrande 1999; Stepp et al. 2003). In their current forms, these approaches pay little attention to structural regularities in either worldview or knowledge, of which Gebser’s structures provide an operationally useful description (albeit one whose cross-cultural relevance has not been proven). As the accounts in the foregoing chapters have shown, different structures incorporate distinct, apparently contradictory perspectives, each of which exercises a key role in regulating the ecological effects of human actions, maximizing social-ecological resilience and allowing the system as a whole to maintain or increase both ecological and cultural diversity. Encapsulated in Gebser’s account of integral systasis, it is this feature that is the key difference between indigenous and Babylonian approaches to resource management. The limitations of ratio, the deficient form of the mental structure, are well documented (e.g. Murphy 1994; Abram 1996; Jensen 2000; Kidner 2001; Milton 2002; Young 2002; Argyrou 2005; Narby 2005) and provided the starting point for the present argument. The mythical structure is conservative and rule-centred; in its deficient form, these rules and customs become ends in themselves rather than reliable encodings of collective knowledge into guidelines for effective action. It requires continual criticism and re-evaluation, both from the rational perspective provided by the mental structure and in terms of continuing to provide a good fit with empirical reality as experienced through the magic structure. The magic structure alone would flounder due to its own empirical shortcomings and inability to resolve self-contradictions: already alienated from the ecological Eden as part of the psychological make-up of humans too psychologically complex to be immediately bound by simple ecological limits, yet too unsophisticated to allow the creative and insightful engagement that transforms such limits into fringes, its dominance may well have led to the extinction of many historical peoples. More worryingly, in a form peculiar for its colonization by the mental structure, it is also the basis for some extraordinarily naïve assumptions pervading Babylonian science: that continued research will, by itself and with no accompanying shift in outlook, provide solutions to previously scientifically intractable resource management problems (Ludwig 1993). In indigenous thought, by contrast, when the problem at hand becomes insoluble at any particular epistemological level or logical type, others are always available. Impulses and needs arising in the magic structure set the scope of required action, while the mythical structure provides limits as to the range of culturally acceptable ways in which this can be achieved. Rational assessment of the details of any particular situation, backed up by individual experience and knowledge acquired

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through social learning, observation and deductive reasoning, determines the exact way in which the rather rough and general rules of thumb encoded in the magic and mythical structure are to be applied to the specific problems encountered (cf. Bateson 1972: 279–308; 1979: 211–12; Bateson and Bateson 1987: 42–46). The range of application of the mental structure is thus circumscribed by prior specification of a limited subset of culturally appropriate interpretations of the situation actually encountered within the magic and mythical structures. In a direct parallel to the nesting of adaptive cycles at different ecological scales, each of these structures provides both limiting and enabling context for the others, buffering disturbance and facilitating renewal. Patterning of behaviour by norms located in the mythical structure limits expression of both impulsive action (by providing rules for its enaction) and rational enquiry (by relieving individual actors of the burden of having to work out for themselves historically encoded information about more or less invariant features of the environment, such as limits to ecological sustainability of swidden agriculture). These conventional norms are themselves limited by the need to be empirically consistent with social and ecological reality; in addition, they must be sufficiently flexible to allow their modification or abandonment when this context for their application changes (see McGovern (1994) for a contrasting historical example). The capacity to transcend the mythical structure and rationally reflect upon norms when resource use problems threaten to escalate into crises allows the patterning by individual and collective knowledge of interactions between environment and behaviour to shift to a state that is functionally adequate under the new circumstances. Just as the structures mutually limit each other’s ranges of behavioural expression and their systemic effects, by tending to restrict the latter within the r phase and mitigating release and reorganization when they do occur, they also maintain patterns of thought based upon each within their range of greatest potential and resilience, away from those of rigidity and inflexibility, or their deficient forms. Much individual learning and adaptation to novel situations takes the form of fluid and flexible shifts among perspectives according to the demands of the situation. This movement is evocatively captured by the metaphor of improvisation, as applied to traditional ecological knowledge by several previous authors (Richards 1993; Eisenberg 1998: 293; Remmers 1998). It is also the basis upon which resource users without dedicated scientific institutions or any centralized political authority collectively self-organize to address complexity, unpredictability and nonlinearity: the ‘fuzzy logic’ of complex systems (Berkes 2008: 181–202).

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In intersubjective aspects of the structures, we can observe related patterns over longer timescales. Mythical structure institutions such as property rights systems and cultural scripts normally operate more or less invisibly, as fixed conventions taken for granted by those who apply them. When extreme events, or social and/or environmental change, produce unprecedented situations beyond the range of the collective learning embodied in these norms, a crisis of learning results, entry into Ω states forcing reorganization either at the same or different levels of logical typing (Holling et al. 1998: 350; Holling et al. 2002a: 75). If conditions are beyond the range of the system’s ability to adapt, such a crisis may lead to its transformation, escalation of the crisis up the panarchy, causing cultural disruption, and reorganization at higher levels of abstraction (Berkes and Folke 2002). We have noted several examples among the Wapishana in which fixed patterns of behaviour encoded in the mythical and magic structures – concerning land allocation, cross-cousin marriage, intergenerational transmission of names, and possibly attitudes to domestic meat – ceased to provide effective guides to practical action in changing circumstances. In each, the ability to shift logical type restricted the scope of the disturbance, allowing people to reflect using the mental structure and revise specific beliefs, customs or practices that had become maladaptive without rejecting wholesale the cultural systems of which they were part. Individually and collectively, each structure can provide each of the others with the ‘context for renewal’ (Folke et al. 2003: 352) necessary to ameliorate the impact of crisis whenever it occurs. Psychological research suggests a mechanism for articulation among the structures, employing affect or mood as a psychological cue providing information about the fit between one’s expectations and the environmental conditions actually encountered (Clore and Storbeck 2006). Specifically, subjects in psychological studies tend to focus on the global aspects of a situation when in a good mood and on its details when feeling bad (Gasper and Clore 2002). If this is also true of traditional resource users, they will rely on habitual, customary information as long as it feels right to do so; in other words, as long as this provides information relevant to the details of the problem and consistent with experienced reality. When this is contingently not the case – in other words, when the particular conditions encountered are beyond the range within which custom is valid – people abandon habitual responses and instead work out rational solutions to the problem at hand. More extreme cases, where experienced reality consistently differs from the situations encoded in the mythical and magic structures over a prolonged period, demand that the latter be exposed to rational analysis and possible reorganization.

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Ecological Roles of Transrational Thought A key feature of Wilber’s Integral Psychology is its incorporation of what he refers to as transrational levels of consciousness, developmentally more advanced than rational thought and so transcending its limits. These are characteristic of Gebser’s integral structure and several modes within or emergent upon this identified by other theorists (Wilber 2000b: 148). Wapishana use of transrational modes of consciousness appears to be on the decline and I was unable to record more than fragmentary data. However, these data do provide tantalizing suggestions that they may play important ecological roles. I recorded no direct accounts of the phenomenology of shamanism among the Wapishana, but secondhand reports all seem to involve encounters with nature spirits in various phases of non-ordinary (in Wilber’s terms, subtle) consciousness. Some people described literal dream events, in some cases as a general means by which such entities attack their human victims, in other cases in recounting specific instances of this sort. Others drew analogies between the dream state and that in which a marunao interacts with nature spirits. This is, for instance, the way in which marunao are said to negotiate with the picha concerning the movement of his peccary herds, and confront kodoi din and similar spirits in order to imprison them in their lairs. I was unable to determine the exact nature of these states or to document any mechanism for their induction, so the information I have is inconclusive. It provides no direct account of the bases upon which marunao make decisions about prescription of food taboos, control over nature spirits or other actions directly affecting the activities of resource users. These may in fact be quite prosaic: some apparently esoteric divination practices involved in decision-making concerning resource use, for example, can be quite satisfactorily explained as mechanisms for randomizing choice among available hunting or farming sites (Moore 1957; Dove 1996). Alternatively, it is entirely possible that marunao simply apply traditional mechanisms in ways that, purely due to historical accident, happen to regulate resource use and thus contribute to the long-term livelihoods and survival of human groups in which they are practised – in other words, they employ areas of the magic and mythical structures that have important ecological functions and are not known to the population at large. In another scenario, these prescriptions might plausibly express the mental structure and reflect ecological observations on the part of marunao who, aware of the states of game animal populations, adjust their regulation of others’ hunting behaviour accordingly (cf. Berkes and Folke 2002: 126–27).

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If transrational modes of consciousness do have roles in Wapishana ecological regulation, they have this in common with better-studied ecocosmologies such as those of the Tukanoan-speaking peoples of northwest Amazonia, which have been characterized by researchers as native ecologies and involve mystical experience in important ways (ReichelDolmatoff 1971, 1976; Århem 1996). Detailed examination of the phenomenology of ethnomedical diagnosis by ayahuascero healers among the Jivaro lead their ethnographer, via a long and tortuous route, to come not only to understand, but also to agree with, their assertion that in their ayahuasca trances, they communicate directly with plant spirits, which provide information as to the correct course of treatment (Narby 1998). Whether the same is or at any point was true of Wapishana ecological regulation is not possible to ascertain on the basis of the available data. However, if altered states of consciousness do potentially provide access to alternative ecological epistemologies, and if the latter provide information subsequently applied in the regulation of traditional resource use, this is a phenomenon of the utmost importance. In the putative situation that they do, the role of mystical states of consciousness in traditional ecologies would parallel that of insight in Babylonian science noted by the likes of Einstein and Bohm (Bohm 1996; Bohm and Peat 2000). Information thus acquired effectively moves down the structures, being first subject to rational analysis and later, as appropriate, enshrined in the more intransigent stipulations of the mythical and magic structures. Crisis events force the elevation of the wisdom thus encoded back into the mental structure, enabling its reassessment and revision in the light of new information, the results of which may subsequently move down the structures again. On shorter timescales, in complementary cycles embedded in these broad and stately progressions of knowledge, information derived from all of the structures and integrated in mutually enhancing fashion continually informs short-term decision-making on the part of all resource users.

Notes  1. This, plus the effects of any subsequent human manipulation of succession in farms and fallows, probably accounts for the differences between the botanical composition of high forest and former farms identified by Balée (1994: 123–38).   2. Biological studies of the ranging behaviour of Tayassu pecari have recorded home ranges of between 60 and 200 square kilometres (Kiltie and Terborgh 1983; Fragoso 1998), but have taken place over restricted timescales.

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Ethnoecological reports indicate that bich are sometimes absent from particular areas for years on end, suggesting that herds might use only a part of their range at any particular time. It is possible that studies over shorter timescales could for this reason underestimate the total range for this species. It is equally possible that ethnoecological reports are confused, describing metapopulation effects resulting from local extinction and colonization of new areas as if they reflected the ranging patterns of single herds.

Part III

Frontiers

The emergent properties of the Wapishana social-ecological system allow the provision of material, intellectual and cultural utility to its human population, while at the same time maintaining and enhancing biological diversity and resource and information flows. Crucial to this is the dialectical relationship of nature and culture, based on a unity of structure and process in ecological and sociocultural systems. This, the creation of a fringe, depends on individual resource users behaving in a way that is aptly captured by the metaphor of improvisation in the performing arts (Richards 1993; Remmers 1998). Eisenberg has vividly characterized indigenous resource management systems as what he terms ‘Earth Jazz’: Respond as flexibly to nature as nature responds to you. Accept nature’s freedom as the premise of your own; accept that both are grounded in a deeper necessity. Relax your rigid beat and learn to follow nature’s rhythms. (Eisenberg 1998: 293)

This parallel between traditional resource management and jazz improvisation is consistent with the description in Spiral Dynamics of the basic characteristics of the yellow (systemic) structure as ‘flexible adaptation to change through flexible, big-picture views’ (Beck and Cowan 1996: 41, also see Beck and Cowan 1996: 274–85). We can extend this metaphor by examining a first-person account of improvisation by jazz musician Karl Peplowski (1998) in relation to Gebser’s model. Just as musical improvisation requires awareness of and responsiveness to the momentary demands of the unique conditions of every performance, resource users must respond to the specific and unpredictable demands of the every unique encounter with nature: a flexible application of the mental structure that is also the core of the way in which Richards uses the metaphor of improvisation. In addition, though, an improvised jazz solo is not a purely spontaneous, unstructured act, but occurs within the context of a particular song. This song has a chord sequence and set of characteristic musical motifs familiar to

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both performers and audience: these represent the customs and norms of this particular performance, localized in the mythical structure. These we can treat as comparable to the sets of norms concerning land tenure and other aspects of culturally appropriate conduct. The magic structure’s main concern is effect: acts of resource use have to be sufficiently consistent with both empirical reality and the specific ontological claims of local belief systems to have the desired effect. Similarly, the musical performer has to deliver something that sounds good, conforming to both the rudiments of music and the expectations of an audience expecting to hear a particular style. The archaic structure we can regard as a sort of natural background. For the subsistence resource user, this corresponds to human physiological needs, and invariant features of the ecological setting within they must be fulfilled. For the musician, its most important aspects are the physical properties of sound and the physiology of auditory perception. The rudiments of music, the conventions of any particular style and the basic melodic structure of a jazz standard all encode, at different levels of abstraction, collective knowledge about these, in the same way as the magic and mythical structure aspects of local knowledge incorporate collective environmental knowledge. In this way, traditional resource management systems reflect the features of the ecological systems within which they operate. Indeed, nothing less than such a unity of mind and nature (Bateson 1979) could possibly work. Culture is emergent upon nature, and nature is thus an inseparable part of culture (Ellen 1996a). This observation is inherent in many documented indigenous ecologies (Chapter 11, section ‘Indigenous Perspectives on Nature and Society’) and from the late 1980s became central in Ecological Anthropology (Croll and Parkin 1992b; Descola and Pálsson 1996; Ellen and Fukui 1996). An ecological fringe, in other words, represents the negotiation within a social-ecological system of its own internal complexity. This is impossible within a purely rationalist approach that necessitates an ideological rupture with nature. The failure of Babylonian science to resolve complex resource management problems is thus an inevitable consequence of the dominance of a single structure. Analysts in an ever-widening range of distinct fields are observing in increasing numbers that this aspect of the crisis of modernity is the root cause of our most compelling ecological and social ills (Murphy 1994; Roszak et al. 1995; Abram 1997; Jensen 2000; Kidner 2001). It is the cause of Babylon’s inability to create anything but ecological and cultural frontiers: its addiction to ecologically destructive development and to undermining, assimilating or eliminating the cultural diversity essential for remedying this.

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The chapters in this closing part examine the nature of frontiers in more detail. Chapter 11 examines the contrast between indigenous and Babylonian ecologies, and considers the consequences when the two meet. Chapter 12 further develops the contrast between cultural edges and frontiers with reference to encounters with Babylon of the Wapishana and neighbouring Amerindian groups.

Chapter 11

Traditional and Babylonian Ecologies

The basic distinction underlying the present argument is of systasis among magic, mythical and mental structures that I propose characterizes indigenous thought, versus the overwhelming predominance of a single structure that I treat as definitive of Babylon. This distinction is, of course, neither clear-cut nor absolute. The assertion that integral aperspectivalism characterizes societies without strongly hegemonic centralized and centralizing institutions, though consistent with the evidence presented here, has not been systematically tested and will most likely be true to varying degrees in specific instances. Nor are such societies homogeneous, and individuals within them will vary in terms of the extent to which they express balance among different structures. Conversely, it is by no means true that within Babylon only a single structure is expressed. Strong traditions of rational scholarship preceded the revolution from mythical to mental structure dominance during the Enlightenment, and centuries later elaborate mythical structure institutions, the formal religions, remain powerful. Daily life, even in Bablyon, necessarily combines rational and nonrational modes of thought and action. Furthermore, Empire, the modern form into which Babylon has transformed, has both subjective and intersubjective features characteristic of the integral structure (Hardt and Negri 2000). No individual or society is completely limited to a single structure, nor does any integrate them in absolutely harmonious fashion. Correspondingly, no real-world examples exist of a perfect ecological fringe or intercultural edge, at which the potential mutual enhancement of diversity is realized to its absolute maximum, or of a perfect frontier that completely eliminates ecological and/or cultural diversity. These ideals represent opposite ends of a continuum, and all real examples will lie somewhere between them. In general, all things being equal, one would expect indigenous societies without strong centralizing structures to lie closer to the edge/fringe end of this continuum than those assimilated to Babylon.

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Previous chapters have developed a position that identifies the dissociation of the structures as characteristic of Babylon. A spatial metaphor has illustrative value here and allows us to advance the application within Environmental Anthropology of Heidegger’s distinction of dwelling and building (Ingold 2000). A dwelt perspective is that from within a single structure, from where its strictures and limitations are invisible and cannot be overcome. A built perspective views any particular structure as if from above or without, disengaging from and objectifying it. Integral aperspectivalism integrates and transcends both of these, as it is sufficiently flexible to take either a dwelt perspective from within a structure or a built one that views one structure from the perspective of another, according to the demands of any particular situation. Classically, Anthropology viewed the expressions of the magic and mythical structures within other cultures in a built perspective, from its own vantage point within the mental structure. Relative to the mental structure, this was a dwelt perspective. Its limitations remained largely invisible until revealed by various immanent critiques (Wagner 1974; Schneider 1984; Delaney 1986), subsequently consolidated by the postmodernists. Environmental Anthropology developed its postmodern form largely by taking on features of its subject matter: the integral aperspectivalism characteristic of indigenous perspectives on ecology. In terms of practical consequences, the difference may be as clear in the ecological sciences as in any other field. Only recently has Ecology been home to self-conscious efforts to transcend the limitations of an approach wholly restricted to the mental structure. This development was in no small measure influenced by the study of traditional resource management (Holling et al. 1998; Berkes et al. 2000). The limitations of dwelling within the mental structure are clear in its singular failure to provide solutions to complex resource management problems (Berkes and Folke 2002; see also case studies in Berkes (1999)). Proponents unwilling to overcome their mental structure addiction left themselves no option but to regress to a strictly preservation perspective long since abandoned by the rest of the conservation world on practical as well as moral grounds (Wilshusen et al. 2002). In indigenous societies, by contrast, systasis, in other words synergistic interaction within the integral structure of the magic, mythical and mental structures, provides adequate complexity or depth for creation of an ecological fringe. This is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for ecological sustainability in traditional resource use. This chapter explores the contrast between traditional and scientific ecological knowledge in greater detail and examines the prospects for their integration.

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Practical Consequences of Systasis in Traditional Ecological Knowledge Chapter 10 described how systasis allows resource use to operate as a fringe. However, this does not explain why this cannot be achieved via application of the mental structure alone. Part II of this book was an essentially rationalistic account of how rational and nonrational modes interact in traditional resource management, and there are many similar examples (e.g. Ellen and Fukui 1996; Anderson 1996; Berkes 1999). If it is possible to account for these nonrational aspects, and their effects, in purely rationalist terms, it would logically seem to follow that we could replace the former with rationally devised mechanisms that replicate their ecological functionality. In practice, this is not the case (see e.g. Lansing 1991). Nonrational perspectives localized in the magic and mythical structures offer solutions to problems that are either intractable via a purely rational approach or whose resolution would raise such logistical problems as to be unworkable in practice. Their main advantages can be grouped under several headings: economy of information, allowing counterintuitive practice, restricting the range of experimentation, protection from faulty deductive reasoning, and avoiding cheating. The following sections address each of these in turn.

Economy of Information Balée has suggested that encoding environmental knowledge in customary beliefs and practices enables a mental economy important in nonliterate societies. The quantity of information that can be transmitted orally is quite limited, and responses to more or less predictable features of the environment may be more efficiently encoded – and more memorably transmitted – as some form of norm than made explicit for rational analysis (Balée 1994: 88–102). This transfers Bateson’s observation on ‘economy in consciousness’ to social and cultural realms. Responses to routine events need not be the object of reflective consciousness and can be adequately addressed via learned habits. In this way, employment of multiple levels of cognition, including modes normally inaccessible to rational reflection, reserves capacities for conscious analysis for situations that demand them (Bateson 1972: 128–52, 257).

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Restricting Expression of the Mental Structure to Appropriate Situations An important limitation of human rationality is that it is highly imperfect. This is amply demonstrated by the arduous and tangled nature of academic treatises (like this one) that attempt to provide rigorous accounts of complex issues. Our evolutionary legacy is of minds that are expert at rapid, approximate assessment of situations and efficient rule-of-thumb determination of roughly appropriate courses of action, but poor and laboured in terms of working out and acting upon precise detail (Anderson 1996: 11, 27, 114–15, 175). In addition, current thinking in complexity science suggests that rational analysis is not the most effective way to understand complex systems whose behaviour is chaotic and defies precise prediction. Management approaches based on ‘fuzzy logic’ analysis – making decisions on the basis of indicators of broad qualitative features of ecological systems – may in fact be more realistic, and hence effective, than attempts at precision of detail (Berkes 2008: 181–202).1 Insistence on making such detail the basis for action is perhaps the greatest flaw in scientific approaches to resource management. It now appears to be the outcome of unsound premises that promote laborious and logistically difficult efforts towards the collection and analysis of large precise datasets, the practical value of whose implementation is undemonstrated. Workable solutions are evident in many documented examples of traditional resource management. Customary management of many offshore fisheries relies on ‘dataless’ or ‘non-parametric’ methods based on the application of rough management guidelines. The empirical finding that these have proven historically effective in conserving fish stocks was originally interpreted as showing that whatever they may lack in precision is compensated for by their workability in practice (Johannes 1978, 1998a; Acheson et al. 1998). Nowadays, we might regard them as exemplars of a fuzzy logic approach to natural resource management. The same is true for strategies such as symbolically prescribed maintenance of refugia (Gadgil and Vartak 1976; Aumeeruddy and Bakels 1994; Gadgil et al. 1998), customary prescriptions affecting spatio-temporal patterning of resource use (Berkes 1998, 1999: 111–26; Niamir-Fuller 1998) and a variety of methods for qualitative monitoring of resources (Berkes 1999: 108–9, 119–21; Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes and Folke 2002: 127–28; Moller et al. 2004). Many such systems incorporate practices whose concrete effects are either counterintuitive or obscure. Such mechanisms may well benefit from insulation from rational analysis and criticism, especially in the short term. For example, many small farmers have frustrated agricultural extension

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workers by their insistence on following strategies of risk minimization, rejecting or only selectively adopting technical measures aimed at increasing yields (Richards 1985; MacDonald 1998). Such ‘contextual rationality’ (MacDonald 1998) does not exclude experimentation, but restricts it to the most flexible and resilient aspects of the agroecological system.2 It thus provides an appropriate balance of ‘rigour and imagination’ (Bateson 1979: 228). It is an important feature of the creative, culturally specific way in which indigenous recipients of technical advice engage with the latter to produce novel hybrid forms of knowledge (see e.g. Siebers 2003), analogous to syncretic religions, that combine the broad general truths of science with understanding of the specific details of a certain place at a certain time (cf. DeWalt 1984). Other examples in the literature describe mechanisms for excluding the mental structure from decision-making in situations in which it would be positively unhelpful. Scapulamancy among Naskapi hunters of eastern Canada may act to randomize choice among hunting sites, breaking habits and routines. It thus ensures a more random distribution of hunting effort than would be possible through conscious choice, with likely benefits for both immediate returns and long-term viability of game populations (Moore 1957). Similarly, Kantu’ farmers in Borneo use augury to select sites for new fields. This seems to help them overcome an ecologically maladaptive tendency to seek to impose excessive order upon an essentially disorderly environment. In these circumstances, random choice is more appropriate than decisions based on rational deliberation (Dove 1996). Augury effectively removes conscious decision-making from a situation in which it is unlikely to provide the desired results (cf. Bateson 1972: 368–70), transferring site choice from the mental to the magic structure. Incidentally, in neither of these cases does the ethnographer propose any emic validity for his conclusion. However, every Wapishana farmer can rationally explain that black-eyed beans attract red brocket deer, which enjoy feeding on the leaves and young pods. At the same time, the characterization of black-eyed beans as a bina for this species assimilates this observation to a distinctive expression of the magic structure. Locating the basis for decision-making in the mythical or, especially, magic structure provokes a risk of empirical error. Magic belief systems such as bina generally exhibit a high degree of internal logical coherence and are, ultimately, largely based on reliable observation of empirical fact. However, many incorporate, and even rest upon, counterfactual suppositions; deductive reasoning from this flawed basis inevitably leads to faulty conclusions (Anderson 1996: 18, 33, 48–49). Insulating information of practical importance from rational enquiry by encoding it in beliefs that are not normally questioned reduces the risk of it being undermined by

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such errors. Although some such confusion of analytical modes will inevitably arise, consequent errors of judgement will in most cases be confined to relatively trivial matters.

Preventing Conscious Violations: ‘Ecological Hang-ups’ There is a classic paradox often thought to affect management of communally owned resources known as the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (Hardin 1968). Although everyone benefits in the long term from the continuing existence of these resources, if short-term benefits arise from a failure to cooperate with customary mechanisms for their conservation, modelling suggests that the only stable outcome is the mutually detrimental situation whereby short-term overuse leads to long-term depletion of the resource. We would expect rationally acting and self-interested resource users to prioritize short-term returns over conserving populations, either for the long term or the common good (Alvard 1998). Alvard has argued that ‘true’ conservation must, by definition, be based upon individual consumers choosing to exercise short-term restraint on individual consumption, with the intention of ensuring the long-term availability of the resource (Alvard 1995: 790). However, there are numerous examples of conservation taking place in the absent of intent (Puri 1995; for specific examples see Martin and Szuter 1999; Ruttan and Borgerhoff Mulder 1999; Lu 2001) and of action based on explicit intent to conserve having no such concrete effects (e.g. Trexler 1990; NortonGriffiths 1998). The intent criterion is therefore highly problematic. Some have suggested it be replaced by one of adaptive design (Alvard 1998: 64; Smith and Wishnie 2000), but this amounts to little more than tautology, as the inference that something is ‘designed’ to do something can only be made on the basis of the observation that that is what it does (Friedman 1974: 457). We can base our definitions and conclusions neither on intent nor such a flimsy notion of design, but only upon concrete ecological effects (Vayda 1993, 1996). Diverse worldviews and ethical concerns may underlie human actions whose ecological consequences are broadly consistent with accepted notions of conservation, and these underlying motivations may deviate markedly from those of Western conservationists (Berkes 2008: 232–39), but their outcomes are a far better indicator of common interest than fallacious notions of intent or design. Alvard exacerbates the problems with his definition with a further spurious condition of curtailing short-term intake for the sake of long-term ecological security. Ethnographic examples that fulfil this criterion are of course exceedingly rare, the best-known examples being the highly communalized societies of the northwest Amazon (Beckerman and Valentine

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1996). Several studies of prey choice among subsistence hunters (Hames and Vickers 1982; Hawkes et al. 1982; Hames 1987; Alvard 1993, 1995) and at least one study of subsistence fishing (Aswani 1998) show close correspondence between observed behaviour and the predictions of optimal foraging models, and have been interpreted as showing absence of restraint on the part of the hunters or fishers. Alvard’s view that conservation of biotic resources is in such cases ‘epiphenomenal’ – an incidental side-effect of unrelated factors such as low population density or technological limitations – obscures an important contextual factor. Both empirical studies and mathematical models show that in many cases criteria for short-term returns and long-term resource conservation actually coincide (Hames 1987; Bodmer 1995b; Winterhalder and Lu 1997; Ruttan and Borgerhoff Mulder 1999: 623). This common congruence of criteria for efficient resource use and for conservation shows the assertion that restraint on individual consumption is a prerequisite for conservation to be simply false. The congruence is, in addition, a result that itself demands explanation. The activities of individual resource users are affected and constrained by a complex of social factors not covered in rational choice models (Dwyer 1985; Macy and Flache 1995; Ellen 1996c). For example, social institutions that promote cooperative over antisocial behaviour, often backed up by social or material sanctions, are a prerequisite to cooperative management and therefore to sustainable use of resources (Ostrom 1998, 1999, 2005; Ruttan 1998; Berkes and Folke 1998a). Some analysts have sought to perpetuate Alvard’s misconception by insisting that these must express some form of explicit environmental ethic or overtly recognized regulatory function in order to be considered conservation (e.g. Anderson 1996; Ruttan 1998; Lu 2001), but in fact they can quite plausibly encode behaviour promoting ecological sustainability without any explicit environmentalist ideology, and no individual restraint is necessarily involved. Wapishana farmers site their fields within an ecological context conducive to renewal because they follow customary norms on choice of farm sites and cultural scripts as to appropriate practice, both located in the mythical structure. The primary motivations are adherence to culturally specified codes as to correct behaviour and, to a lesser extent, the prospect of social sanction for violating these. Men alter their protein procurement strategy as a result of food prohibitions, and avoid hunting and fishing in certain locations on the basis of magic structure beliefs in the action of nature spirits. The motivation is a perceived mortal danger, according to which people believe themselves to be acting in their own best interests. In neither case are individuals expressing any interest in the long-term ecological effects of their actions,3 and in neither case need they follow

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anything other than perceived self-interest or consider themselves to be exercising restraint. Stipulations for the collective good that are encoded in the mythical and magic structures are insulated, in normal circumstances, from rational criticism and hence from the likelihood that they will be ignored. Their uncritical acceptance makes them a powerful form in which to encode social codes, including environmentally appropriate behaviour, in the absence of strong coercive mechanisms through which to enforce customary practice or sanction defectors. An analogy from evolutionary biology may be found in group-selected mechanisms for the maintenance of sexual reproduction, which among eukaryotes entails short-term genetic and energetic costs (Maynard Smith 1986; Nunney 1989; Roughgarden 1991). Although sexually reproducing populations are theoretically vulnerable to invasion by asexual variants with a short-term reproductive advantage, this rarely happens owing to the existence of ‘sexual hang-ups’ (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995: 9): physiological mechanisms that make reversion to asexuality physically impossible. An example of these is paternal inheritance of chloroplasts among gymnosperms, which ensures that female gametes are inviable unless fertilized (Maynard Smith and Szathmáry 1995: 9; Gouyon 1999). In a similar fashion, we can observe among traditional resource users many mechanisms that prevent usurpation of collective by individual interests by ensuring that the two coincide (Rappaport 1971a: 36; 1979: 46– 47). These we may term ecological hang-ups; they take a variety of forms. As the Wapishana examples in Part II of this book demonstrate, these need not require any form of explicitly environmentalist ideology or religious injunction, or mechanisms for monitoring compliance or imposing sanctions upon violators. They can thus function as effective group-level adaptations promoting long-term stability of the ecological resource base, even among societies that lack any centralized authority. Even where there is some social capacity to enforce correct behaviour, this will be less costly and more effective the more closely individual resource users perceive collective interests to coincide with their own.

Complexity and Depth in Traditional Ecological Knowledge We could perhaps summarize the points made in the previous section under the single heading of complexity – any set of strategies for managing a complex system must encompass at least as much complexity (depth) as the system itself. Criticisms of classic rationalist approaches to resource

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management, following Bateson (Bateson 1972: 432–45; Bateson and Bateson 1987: 136–44), have focused on the tendency to oversimplify by focusing on one or a few variables, ignoring factors such as nonlinearity, unpredictability, emergence and cross-scale effects (e.g. Abel 1998; Holling et al. 1998). However, resource management problems are less about managing resources per se than about coordinating how their human users interact with them (Anderson 1996: 123; Cantrill and Oravec 1996). Socialecological systems, like ecosystems without human elements, encompass numerous spatially and temporally nested scales of structural complexity. However, they additionally incorporate the psychological complexity of their human actors. Underplaying this complexity by addressing only a single epistemological level within it – as in classic rational choice models that understate or ignore the role of emotive and impulsive factors in decision-making – can lead only to failure. Many previous studies of traditional ecological knowledge have in various ways noted its complexity or depth, specifically that it encompasses multiple modes of thought and practice. Among the earliest such characterizations was that of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss 1963), which anticipates later conclusions as to its improvisatory aspect (Richards 1993; Remmers 1998) and the distinction of technique (practical know-how) from technology (abstract knowledge) (Richards and Ruivenkamp 1996). Ellen extends this further by identifying two types of noncognized knowledge. ‘Bodily knowledge’ is based on the acquisition of sensory and motor skills, while ‘substantive knowledge’ is expressed in behaviour but not fully encoded lexically (Ellen 2003b: 48). Both of these are aspects of practical knowledge, analytically separable from and often varying independently of intellectual skills (Sternberg et al. 2001). Such noncognized aspects of traditional ecological knowledge are often expressed in artefacts such as traps (Gell 1996) and other cultural forms such as folklore, artwork and song (Nabhan 2003). The depth of traditional knowledge is also evident in its purely intellectual aspects. Kalahari foragers participating in seminars on animal behaviour revealed substantial knowledge acquired by inductive processes similar to those involved in the generation of scientific knowledge, and in practice also make extensive use of noninductive intellectual modes (Tulkin and Konner 1973). Comparable results arose in research on the ‘ethnoepistemology’ of environmental understanding among inhabits of the Marovo lagoon in the Solomon Islands: this incorporates hypothetico-deductive methods comparable to those of science with other epistemological methods beyond the limits of scientific methodology (Hviding 1996). Similarly, Nuaulu discourse about nature is situated at several different levels: concrete perception of living forms and their properties,

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classifications of observable discontinuities among these forms, and metaphysical notions concerning the origins of the diversity of natural kinds (Ellen 1996b). These levels of discourse map neatly onto those of gross, subtle and causal in the most basic multilevel framework employed in Integral Ecology (Esbjörn-Hargens 2005a). Similarly, studies of three distinct interior peoples of Papua New Guinea reveal each to relate to nature simultaneously on mundane and mystical levels (Dwyer 1996). Further examples of the expression of this complexity in practice include the combination of rational-theoretical knowledge with knowledge neither cognized nor amenable to reflective awareness among Icelandic fishing crews (Pálsson 1994). Seafarers of the Caroline Islands in Micronesia navigate using a combination of a sidereal compass, based upon a detailed knowledge of the positions and movements of stars, and mental maps incorporating complex mythologies about the relationship between spatial location and a variety of marine fauna and flora and oceanographic phenomena, intractable to rational analysis (Akimichi 1996). In characterizing those aspects of traditional ecological knowledge that diverge most obviously from science, researchers have noted treatments of both time (Posey 1998) and space (Roth 2004) as cyclic, identical to the characteristic form of spatio-temporal awareness Gebser ascribes to the mythical structure (Gebser 1983: 9–29) and distinct from the linear perspectivalism he assigns to the mental. Summary treatments include the observation that the ‘traditional ecological knowledge and wisdom’ of many native North American groups inseparably incorporates worldviews, knowledge exchange mechanisms and practical techniques (Turner et al. 2000; see also Berkes 1999; Toledo 1992, 2004). Larry Merculieff, an Aleut leader and environmentalist fluent in both scientific and indigenous approaches to ecology, argues that the latter, in contrast to the former, are inseparable from their intuitive, emotional and spiritual correlates, or ‘wisdom’ (Merculieff 2004). The emergence of genuinely holistic approaches to academic analysis now allows us to describe and examine these pluralistic environmental epistemologies more systematically and in greater detail than has previously been the case. This provides a basis for some conceptual unity in their study, which in turns helps to illuminate how they provide the basis for the reconciliation of material needs and ecological integrity characteristic of a fringe.

Indigenous Perspectives on Nature and Society We can learn much about the dialectic between traditional resource use and its fields of academic study by examining the intense intellectual

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preoccupation in the latter, which was dominant during the 1990s, with the distinction between nature and society. Many influenced by the postmodern turn began to treat this distinction as a dubious invention of the discredited Western scientific tradition, one apparently absent in non-Western thought (e.g. Ingold 1996b). In fact, most indigenous perspectives on nature and society treat their relationship flexibly, emphasizing human unity with and separation from nature under different circumstances (Croll and Parkin 1992b). Like many Amazonian peoples, the Achuar metaphorically extend social concepts to nature at the same time as they emphasize their own distinctively human character by opposing it to its biological component, as an overcoming of biological needs (Descola 1994). The ecocosmology of another northwest Amazonian group, the Makuna, simultaneously incorporates totemistic and animistic aspects: each expresses a different notion of continuity between the natural and social worlds (Århem 1996). Self-contradictory attitudes towards domesticated animals, emphasizing both social continuities and discontinuities with humans, have been documented in relation to pet parrots and dogs among the Waiwai in Guyana (Howard 1991), and to dogs among the Nuaulu in Seram (Ellen 1999b). A set of idioms and metaphors familiar to anthropologists express Wapishana ideas of unity of society and nature. Myth and tale often refer to an ancestral time when humans and animals were closer, capable of communicating via speech. One family in the study village is reputed locally to be descended from spider monkeys (Ateles paniscus). Social metaphors are readily extended to animals: according to ethnoecological informants in this study, the collared peccary (Tayassu tajacu) occupies burrows originally dug by ‘his brother-in-law’, the giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus). Perceptually similar or ecologically related animal species, such as the young male brown capuchins (Cebus apella) that are commonly seen to join troops of squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), invoke metaphors of familial relation or friendly collaboration. Seed dispersal by frugivores is commonly compared to planting by human cultivators. It is even made the basis of a moral evaluation: ethnoecological interviewees frequently criticized the bearded saki (Chiropotes satanas) for its wasteful and destructive habit of consuming unripe fruits and chewing up the immature seeds rather than planting them like other monkeys (and people). Although such interviews focused on concrete practical knowledge compatible with scientific ecology, they also revealed a rich sense of social engagement and identification with animals going far beyond the requirements of the interview context or any direct utilitarian value. Society and nature are linked through spiritual agency:

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the intrusion of animal spirits into the domain of human affairs and communication between these spirits and marunao, the spiritual attributes of certain plants, and the requirement in certain esoteric practices to take on animal characteristics. On the other hand, Wapishana people also frequently express clear conceptual separations between human society and nature. Various spatial distinctions routinely made in Wapishana speech express this: village versus bush, savannah versus forest, house versus farm, farm versus bush, and bush mouth versus high bush. Another example is the attribution to animals of incest and other forms of behaviour unacceptable to humans. The primary dimension of contrast in Wapishana ethnobotanical classification encodes domestication, being that between cultivated and uncultivated plants. Domestic and wild animals also have different conceptual status, though wild animals may cross this boundary when adopted as pets (cf. Howard (1991) for the Waiwai), as occurs from time to time with representatives of a great many mammal, bird and reptile species. Modern-day, largely sedentary, church-going Wapishana, participants via local government in the nation state, also distinguish themselves from ‘wild Indians’, those living isolated from wider human society in remote forest locations. Seeing these two perspectives as contradictory and incompatible simplifies indigenous realities by denying their plurality, and hence their psychological and cultural complexity. Analyses that focus on only one aspect reduce their full complexity to whatever narrow part of it the researcher chooses to privilege. Received anthropological wisdom at any point in time often tells us more about fashions and intellectual trends among its practitioners than anything about the people who are its supposed subject matter (Kuper 1998). It is certainly true that understanding of the complexity of indigenous systems has progressed according to the sophistication of the conceptual tools available to researchers. Early views of indigenous environmental management as crude and primitive were indicative not of their lack of sophistication, but of the lack of sophistication of the anthropological methods and theories of the time. Once researchers began to concern themselves with assessing the scientific validity of indigenous ecological knowledge, the demonstration of common epistemological, technical and substantive features made its boundary with science obscure (Agrawal 1995). This reflects the important role in both scientific and indigenous knowledge of the mental structure, an emergent feature of which is that it overcomes the parochialism inherent to both magic and mythical structures, limited by their respective preperspectival and unperspectival senses of space (Gebser 1983: 45–97). This capability for global expression and outlook, rooted

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in a discursive and analytical approach to problem solving, allowed the mental structure to form the first locus of productive interchange between indigenous and scientific ecologies. This dialogue is imperative as rapidly changing circumstances mean that the problems currently faced by many indigenous peoples, unprecedented in both nature and scale, exceed the scope of the cultural knowledge encoded in traditional systems (Ellen 1986). The geographically, ecologically and socially delimited contexts in which these systems arose compelled them to achieve the complexity or depth of the integral structure as a prerequisite for mechanisms for ecologically sustainable resource use essential to the survival of any society without the means to externalize environmental damage. The narrow breadth of context also in large measure facilitated the emergence of integral thought, as a limited span is adequate to the relatively small set of situations each structure was historically required to address; this allowed a focus in sociocultural evolution on increasing depth rather than span (Wilber 2000b: 238–40; cf. Stepp et al. 2003: 7; Hochachka 2005b: 40). The mental structure is the major locus of rapid adaptation to change, innovation and incorporation of novel information in traditional ecological knowledge. This allows it to incorporate locally meaningful scientific information relevant to tackling novel problem situations beyond its previous scope. This may happen spontaneously (Frossard 1994; Pinkerton 1998; Iskandar and Ellen 2000; Dove 2002) or as a result of deliberate collaboration with scientifically trained management, conservation and development professionals (e.g. Clay 1988: 64–67; Hanna 1998; Johannes 1998b; Ortiz 1999; Becker 2003; Becker and Ghimire 2003; Moller et al. 2004). Access to the immense body of knowledge, theory and practice represented by Western science can thus increase the span of indigenous ecologies in the mental structure. It can also contribute to rectifying maladaptations that arise in the magic or mythical structures, which in addition to their capacity to propagate counterfactual information (Chapter 11, section ‘Restricting Expression of the Mental Structure to Appropriate Situations’) exhibit a parochialism and conservatism often counterproductive in the globalized contexts within which they must now operate (cf. Ruddle 1998; Donovan and Puri 2004). These conservative and parochial features of the magic and mythical structures are not inherently dysfunctional; in fact, they are the precise source of the traditional and local character of indigenous knowledge. Their integration with the mental structure is the reason why neither of the common designations ‘traditional’ or ‘local’ adequately characterizes such knowledge (Ellen and Harris 2000). It is also the reason why it is compatible with Babylonian science in a complementary fashion

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(DeWalt 1994; Clark and Murdoch 1997; Mackinson 2001; Moller et al. 2004). In such engagements, the indigenous partner contributes the depth and the scientists the span. On this basis, indigenous and scientific ecologists increasingly collaborate developing common research programmes and conservation agendas, scientifically informed and locally relevant (Noss 1999; Bodmer and Puertas 2000; Ticktin and Johns 2002; Ticktin et al. 2004; Moller et al. 2004). This has also contributed to a transcendence of the mental structure in scientific ecology, which has begun to take on both the general form of and specific practices within indigenous knowledge (Berkes et al. 2000; Berkes and Folke 2002; Ellen 2007). From the dialogue between indigenous and scientific ecologists are emerging hybrid and integral ecologies that may, for the first time, equip us with intellectual and practical tools that are adequate to address the resource management problems faced by modern globalized society, and the potential to produce ecological fringes on the grand scales at which we now collectively engage with nature.

The Colonization of Indigenous Knowledge Unfortunately, the scenario described above – where indigenous and scientific knowledge interact as a cultural edge, enriching each and, correspondingly, enhancing the capacity of each to produce ecological fringes – remains rare and is evident only in a minority of real cases. Its crucial feature, from the vantage point of the indigenous partner, is retention of control over the process: this must remain locally rooted in terms of both objective circumstances and subjective horizons, ensuring that the resultant hybrid knowledge exhibits the complexity of its indigenous component. The scientific partner must subvert itself to indigenous subjectivities in order to transcend its own dominance of the mental structure, overcome consequent deficiencies in the magic and mythical structures, and begin to assume an integral form. More commonly, the relationship is the exact reverse: Babylon’s domination of the intercultural exchange creates a cultural frontier, immediately impoverishing to its indigenous partner and further entrenching Babylon in its own limitations. The result, termed ‘decontextualization’ (Hornborg 1996) or ‘scientization’ (Agrawal 2002), is the reduction of indigenous knowledge to those components amenable to extraction from their native context and assimilation to a scientifically informed, purely technocratic agenda (Escobar 1995: 192–211; Assies 1997: 75–76; Stirrat 1998). Traditional or local knowledge thus loses all of those attributes that make it traditional and local (Ellen and Harris 2000: 13–15; Agrawal

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2002: 291): the magic and mythical structure features whose systatic interaction with the mental structure is essential to the capacity to produce ecological fringes. Rather than learning from indigenous knowledge, Babylon mines it as a source of increased complicatedness in the mental structure. This, a classic case of systemic addiction, can in the long term only exacerbate the very problems with whose solution it is supposedly concerned (Bateson and Bateson 1987: 125–34): intellectual and practical interest in indigenous knowledge as a set of tools for resource management ultimately reinforces Babylon’s inherently destructive forms of intercultural and ecological engagement (Young 2002). Ecology’s delineation as a distinct field is an artificial one peculiar only to Western science, with no necessary significance either in any other epistemology or in the real world (Ellen 1982: 277–79; Berkes and Folke 2002: 124–25; Folke et al. 2003: 353). However, the clarity with which available theory and data enable us to describe the integral nature of indigenous ecologies, and the consequences of this, makes it an ideal subject area in which to demonstrate a point that, although more generally true, is perhaps less evident in other areas (cf. Ingold 1996b). The integral perspective applied in ecological relations is not restricted to ecology, but is a feature of indigenous society in general. Neither is it some privileged insight available only within such populations (nor the revolution in human consciousness diagnosed by Gebser, Wilber and many others examining it from the point of view of Babylonian history): it is a universal human capacity, perhaps a default one, but one that is suppressed in the abnormal and pathological subjectivities characteristic of Babylon. The conclusions of this and previous chapters concerning human capacities to generate ecological fringes apply with equal force to the generation of edges and frontiers in all situations of intercultural contact, as the following chapter examines.

Notes  1. Gladwell (2006) describes similar phenomena in other fields of action.  2. It seems reasonable to consider farmers’ decisions to maximize food security entirely rational, and the view of agricultural extension workers who would undermine food security in favour of risky methods aimed at maximizing profits as irrational. The point is that insulating some areas of decision-making from rational scrutiny – as long as they are working – reduces the risk that a decision in favour of apparent short-term benefit, arrived at through rational analysis, could have unforeseen detrimental outcomes in the long term.

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 3. This contrasts instructively with recently adopted behaviours, such as when people refrain from felling trees with the explicit motive of ensuring that their fruit will be available in the future.

Chapter 12

Cultural Edges and Frontiers

Common Ecological and Cultural Frontiers The national and international political-economic systems into which the South Rupununi is becoming increasingly drawn are an emerging level of context for Wapishana social and ecological relations. At the forefront of this growing encounter with Babylon are its initiatives for conservation and development, whose agents play crucial roles in mediating this cross-scale interaction. As shown in earlier chapters, lacking the complexity that permits indigenous resource management to generate fringes, Babylon is capable only of producing ecological frontiers. The same is also true of intercultural encounters, in which Babylon tends to produce cultural frontiers, reducing complexity in other sociocultural formations to that which can fit into its dominant structure, normally the mental. Integration into national and global markets has thus led to measurable decline in quantifiable aspects of ecological knowledge among indigenous populations who have neglected or abandoned subsistence pursuits in favour of market activities dependent upon far narrower bases of both ecological and cultural diversity (Ichikawa 1996; Lizarralde 2001; Zent 2001; Ross 2002). Increased Westernization also often undermines magic and mythical structure beliefs upon which traditional strategies for resource management are based (e.g. Johannes 1978; Aumeeruddy and Bakels 1994; Ichikawa 1996), as well as their unique encoding in specific indigenous languages (Balée 2001; Hunn 2001). Strong correlations between loss of linguistic and ecological diversity (Lizarralde 2001; Maffi 2001a, 2005) demonstrate the interconnectedness of Babylon’s ecological and cultural frontiers. However, the link between integration and acculturation, in the form of declines in traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), is contingent rather than inevitable. In fact, TEK can remain undiminished even in the face of marked socioeconomic changes if native languages are retained and people persist with traditional subsistence pursuits (Zarger and Stepp

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2004). Commercial activities connected with use of natural resources can even lead to the development of new knowledge and the expansion of TEK (Godoy et al. 1998; Reyes-García et al. 2005). This seems to have been an outcome of Wapishana involvement in the commercial production of both balata and livestock (Chapter 1, section ‘Cultural Edges in Wapishana History’, Chapter 4, section ‘Patterns of Change’ and Chapter 7, section ‘Mapping the Mental Structure’). Often, the effect is not uniform, with degradation in some aspects of local knowledge accompanied by stability or enhancement in others (e.g. Warren and Pinkston 1998). These different patterns are explicable in relation to the central conclusion of the present work’s comparison of scientific and indigenous ecologies. The delineation of ecology as a distinct field may be artificial, but can provide a unifying perspective for the study of human systems less readily apparent in other approaches (Forde 1948; Ellen 1982: 279; Moran 1993: 142). This means that conclusions reached via a narrow focus on ecology are often more broadly true. Indigenous subjectivities characterized by high complexity – whether or not we can accurately label them ecological – can readily extend their existing range of expression of the structures to accommodate additional complicatedness originating in Babylon. However, the converse is not true: the tendency of Babylon’s dominant structure to suppress the expression is incompatible with the higher complexity of indigenous systems, and systematically eliminates this complexity in all cases in which Babylon is the dominant partner in an intercultural exchange. As a consequence, the creation of a cultural edge at such a meeting point depends largely on maintenance of the customary institutions of the indigenous participant, or at least in change in these institutions being driven by local aspirations and needs rather than imposed from without. This restates in more general – and somewhat different – terms the nowadays-familiar observation that development can only be equitable, genuinely participatory and favourable to local needs if indigenous knowledge plays a central and dominant role as the locus of intercultural exchange (Sillitoe et al. 2002; Bicker et al. 2003; Sillitoe 2006, 2007). To give one example, Xavante people in Brazil countered, and indeed reversed, simplistic predictions that market integration would lead to declines in traditional resource use activities and consequent environmental degradation when they scaled down or abandoned their involvement in government-initiated schemes for rice cultivation in favour of locally determined commercial initiatives (Santos et al. 1997). In other cases, the outcome reflects the willingness of government to accommodate customary mechanisms in implementation of statutory law. In the Solomon Islands, a relative lack of specific legal stipulations means that

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most coastal fisheries are under de facto customary control, allowing flexible and adaptable local systems to adjust in the face of the novel contexts of modern times (Hviding 1998). A study of relationships between traditional and state-based systems of land tenure in Mexico and the implications for resource use (Alcorn and Toledo 1998) provides a powerful conceptual tool for examining intercultural encounters. Property rights systems are modelled as ‘shells’ that exert powerful influences on patterns of resource use. Such shells may interact horizontally, at boundaries between groups with different property rights regimes, or vertically, as levels in a nested hierarchy linking local shells with broader national regimes. In the latter case, the nature of interactions among levels in the hierarchy is crucial to the viability of local systems. This reflects the more general observation that panarchy – interactions among processes in social-ecological systems at different spatial scales – is among the most important factors affecting their resilience (Holling et al. 2002a; Walker et al. 2004). In postrevolutionary Mexico, an unintended consequence of government recognition of traditional systems of land tenure was strong positive benefits for forest conservation, resulting from institutional shells that insulated local production systems from broader changes in the national economy, allowing them to follow self-determined patterns of economic development consistent with the maintenance of biocultural diversity (Toledo 2001). Similar effects have been documented in parts of Oceania where government support for customary systems of marine tenure has allowed them to retain their functions in terms of regulating access to and ensuring sustainable exploitation of fish stocks (Johannes 1998b) or to adapt to new roles within hybrid modern systems (Adams 1998; Hviding 1998). All of these examples contrast with cases where lack of state recognition of or support for traditional regimes undermines their integrity, providing opportunities for resource users to act in ways that, although legally sanctioned, contradict customary patterns in ways incompatible with their role in mediating ecological and socioeconomic conditions (Alcorn and Toledo 1998: 218–24; Graham and Idechong 1998; Gelcich et al. 2006). Inconsistent recognition and enforcement of indigenous land rights in Guyana makes relationships between local and national shells highly ambivalent. Although titled Amerindian land totals 6,000 square miles, comprising seven per cent of the national territory, many communities remain without title, land holdings of some are inadequate or exclude areas of vital importance, enforcement mechanisms are weak and the legal conditions of land title include several provisions that undermine security of tenure (Anselmo and Mackay 1999: 12–43). In communities with land title, state nonintervention provides a sort of empty shell within which

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communal land tenure and other local customary institutions can operate, but are vulnerable to external pressures (e.g. Forte 1995; Roopnaraine 1995, 1996). Local government, although embodying Amerindian notions of democracy, can, due to its isolation, be ill equipped to cope with problems associated with unregulated intercultural contact. Many such problems began to arise following the opening of Guyana’s economy to foreign investment in the 1990s following an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-led programme of structural adjustment (Fox and Danns 1993; ARU 1995; Colchester 1997). This vulnerability is more marked where title is absent or its extent does not correspond with actual patterns of land use. In some cases this led to government complicity in threats to land tenure both before and after structural adjustment. These include an abortive plan to dam the Upper Mazaruni River in the early 1980s (Bennett and Colson 1981), the inclusion of several untitled Carib villages and homesteads and part of the Carib reserve in the large Barama logging concession in northwest Guyana (Colchester 1997: 119–20), the inclusion of lands settled and used by Makushi people in the Iwokrama forest reserve (Colchester 1997: 148), the extension of Kaiteur National Park to enclose forests and rivers vital for subsistence and transport to neighbouring Patamona villages (APA 1999; Chenapou Village Council 1999), and the inclusion in the proposed boundaries of a protected area in the Kanuku Mountains of areas used by Wapishana people. Agitation on the part of the people affected and their representatives has in many of these cases led to dialogue, and in some to rectification of the situation, but they nonetheless illustrate the precarious situation in which Amerindian communities in Guyana can find themselves. Following structural adjustment, and in parallel with the growing presence of international market forces, several organizations became established to buffer contact between Guyana’s Amerindian communities and broader social, political and economic systems. These include the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs,1 established by the PPP-Civic government after it came to power in 1992, but, initially at least, neither staffed nor resourced at levels adequate to its mandate. The Guyana Human Rights Association fought for many Amerindian causes during the 1980s and early 1990s, later ceding that role to national indigenous associations, notably the Amerindian Peoples Association (APA) and Guyana Organization of Indigenous Peoples (GOIP). The APA links village-level issues raised by its local cells to national and international fora, providing a platform for local causes (especially transgressions of land rights) at the national level and, via its participation in international indigenous and human rights networks, globally. In the absence of such intermediation,

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direct exposure of Amerindian groups to Babylon in many cases resulted in the production of cultural frontiers, accompanied by significant declines in ecological knowledge and local livelihoods.

Cultural Frontiers in Guyana The factors that cause production of cultural frontiers vary from case to case. In some, including the Makushi (northerly neighbours to the Wapishana in Guyana) and many communities affected by industrial mining and timber operations, an aggressive external presence in close geographical proximity to indigenous settlements simply imposed itself. In others, the situation is more complicated: Amerindians have become involved in small-scale mining and timber production, and the unskilled labour market in Brazil, largely by their own volition and design. The problem in these latter cases is relative rather than absolute disempowerment: a decision to engage with Babylon on its own terms, meaning primary attention to fiscal criteria and consequent neglect of others. The common factor is that the relative disempowerment of the Amerindian partner in the intercultural encounter undermines its scope for self-determination and limits it to the single structure available within Babylon, which becomes inflated at the expense of the others. Wapishana and Makushi populations in Guyana mostly occupy geographically distinct areas. The Makushi mostly reside in the North Rupununi savannahs, to the north of Lethem and the Kanuku Mountains.2 Reports from the late 1930s and early 1940s contrasted the situation in Makushi villages in the north savannahs and neighbouring Brazil unfavourably with that of the Wapishana, reporting alarming population decline, high infant mortality, loss of traditional craft-making skills and replacement of indigenous languages by Portuguese and English. Factors suggested to be responsible for this were a greater intensity of contact with Brazilian society and, in particular, its policies of ‘civilizing’ Amerindians by settling them into villages or ‘aldeamientos’, a direct descendant of the practice of early Jesuit settlers, and of adopting Amerindian children to be raised in Brazilian households (Myers 1944: 75–77). In Guyana, British ranchers settled in the North Rupununi in greater numbers and closer to indigenous villages than in the South. Demands from ranches for local labour at critical times in the agricultural cycle and direct conflict resulting from depletion of game and fish stocks had dire consequences for the Makushi (Baldwin 1946: 55–56; Myers 1946: 21).

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Makushi lands in Guyana became yet more exposed to national and international forces during the 1990s following the construction and progressive improvement of a road passing through the North Rupununi, linking the Brazilian city of Boa Vista with Georgetown and Guyana’s coast. Guyanese analysts raised concerns as to the benefits for Guyana of this Brazilian-led project from its earliest days (Forte 1990; Forte and Benjamin 1993), and the consequences at the time this research took place were double-edged. As well as the inevitable problems resulting from easier outside access, Guyanese Makushi began to encounter a conservation and development community ever more sophisticated in its outlook and receptive to their needs. Relatively easy transport and comfortable working conditions made the North Rupununi the destination of choice for numerous national and international NGOs, some of which have had a positive impact on life there. Perhaps more important is the deep engagement of many North Rupununi communities with the operation of the Iwokrama Forest Reserve, which almost from the outset offered many prospective long-term benefits (Wolfangel 2004). It appears that in the Iwokrama project, relatively low levels of external activity in the early years of the project, combined with constructive early involvement on the part of sympathetic NGO workers and researchers from the Amerindian Research Unit at the University of Guyana3 allowed Amerindian groups in the area to appropriate it somewhat, transforming it into an opportunity to take an active role in the reorganization of their relationship with the outside world. Continued positive engagement with local efforts on the part of project managers perpetuated and extended this, leading to it becoming a cutting-edge exercise combining local and global/scientific knowledge, and conservation interests, to the enrichment of both. Guyana’s logging and mining industries show a contrasting situation, with sites of intercultural encounter dominated by frontier rather than edge characteristics. Small-scale, often illegal mining in western areas of Guyana, notably the Upper Mazaruni Region, home to the country’s Akawaio population, and the Patamona-dominated Pakaraima Mountains, grew to problematic levels during the 1990s. Independent miners, locally known as ‘pork knockers’, often worked on or close to Amerindian lands, their destructive methods polluting waterways and damaging fish and game stocks. Many Amerindians, including both locals and immigrants from elsewhere in the interior, were themselves enthusiastic participants in mining activities (Roopnaraine 1995, 1996). The situation provoked grave social problems in nearby Amerindian villages, including neglect of subsistence activities in favour of mining,

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breakdown of family units, increased economic inequality and schoolgirl pregnancy (Forte 1997: 77–81; Anselmo and Mackay 1999: 46–47, 61–64). In the earliest days of colonial engagement, the logging industry was an important cultural edge at which coastal Amerindian communities exchanged timber for European trade goods (Forte 1995). Information was another important currency, and the passage of many Lokono Arawak names for trees into Guyanese Creole (Mennega et al. 1988) reflects the foundation of the Guyanese timber trade on Amerindian ethnobotanical knowledge. In later times, the timber trade became more frontier than edge for the most closely involved Amerindian communities. Many became dependent for survival upon cash incomes generated by timber sales or casual employment in logging concessions. In both of these situations, they commonly find themselves severely disempowered relative to buyers and employers. Consequences include depletion of timber stocks through excess harvesting, intermittent and unreliable incomes, and neglect of subsistence activities, leading to severe material hardship and consequent social tensions (Fox and Danns 1993; Henfrey 1995). Like the Makushi, Wapishana populations in Brazil suffered from Roraima’s interspersed pattern of Amerindian and non-Amerindian settlement in all but the remote forest regions near the Venezuelan border, a lack of government presence prior to the mid twentieth century that left effective political control in the hands of rancher settlers and, until the 1990s, a lack of legal recognition of indigenous land rights (Hemming 1994). By the 1980s, all twenty-three nominally Wapishana villages in Roraima included substantial non-Wapishana and mixed-race populations (Foster 1990: 138), a situation only encountered (and problematically so) in Guyana in the single village of Achiwuib (ARU 1992: 38–40). The highly stratified Roraimense social system treats Amerindians as an underclass for whom upward mobility can be achieved only by completely abandoning traditional lifestyles and, to reach the highest ‘civilizado’ status, denying Amerindian ancestry (Rivière 1972: 28–32). More generally, Brazilian Wapishana are far more acculturated than their Guyanese counterparts. By the 1970s, government surveys reported that 60 per cent of the state’s Wapishana population spoke Portuguese as their first language, the rest being bilingual (Migliazzi 1978: 9). Foster’s research during the 1980s reported dramatic impoverishment of material and oral culture: only Guyanese informants were able to provide full kinship terminologies or give firsthand accounts of traditional practices such as use of hunting bina (Foster 1990: 38, 197–98).

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Cultural Edges in Wapishana History In contrast to the situation in Brazil, a comprehensive survey of the conditions of Amerindian populations in British Guiana conducted on behalf of the colonial authorities in the 1940s assessed the situation of the Wapishana very favourably (Peberdy 1948). Since then, populations have continued to grow, Wapishana remains most people’s first language, and both ecological systems and the cultural capacity to make a living from them remain intact. These are the results of a marginalization that has spared them the worst effects of integration, but has also largely excluded them from its benefits, a situation reflected in the prominence of these benefits in the development needs expressed by local residents. Geographical remoteness and, until the 1990s, low levels of outsider interest in the area’s natural resources kept direct Wapishana contact with Babylon’s social, political and economic systems and institutions at a low intensity. As a result, the interaction was largely on locally determined terms and had the form of a cultural edge. I attribute this to two main factors: first, the lack of any permanent outside presence within the main area of Wapishana settlement, interactions taking place by way of intermediaries based at considerable distances from most Wapishana settlements;4 and, second, those individuals in direct contact with the Wapishana being largely sympathetic – and at worst indifferent – to their interests, offering support in the first instance and noninterference in traditional life in the second. I include among the former Jesuit missionary Cary-Elwes, despite his disapproval of many traditional practices that he regarded as unchristian, due to his evident sympathy and enthusiasm for most aspects of Amerindian life not obviously incongruent with his own belief system (Bridges 1985). In any case, his missionary zeal seems not to have prevented modern-day Wapishana from developing and practising a syncretic form of Catholicism. Christianity provided a relative cosmological coherence perhaps favoured by the mythical structure, complementing those aspects of traditional belief, more strongly centred in the magic structure, with continued practical, psychological, structural or symbolic importance. More recently, missionary activities since the 1960s have included invaluable contributions to making Wapishana a written language (ARU 1992: 65–66). Members of the Unevangelized Field Mission based in the South Rupununi provided support to locally initiated programmes in Wapishana literacy, and collaborated with the local language group Wapichan Wadauniinao Ati ’o (WWA) in producing the first WapishanaEnglish dictionary. The aim of the missionaries was quite explicit: to ensure the existence of a potential readership for their translation into

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Wapishana of the Bible. However, they have transcended this goal, and abetted local appropriation of their work for more general purposes. 5 Although the missionaries’ main priority was firmly located in the mythical structure, their willingness also to support the aims of their Wapishana colleagues means that the interaction overall has taken the form of an edge. Chief among the locally determined priorities is a bilingual education programme initiated by Wapishana schoolteachers. This has several purposes: promoting literacy in Wapishana, increasing the local relevance of the school curriculum and helping integration of young children in the early years of school. Although Wapishana is the only language spoken in most Wapishana homes, English was the language of instruction in schools from nursery level upwards. This was problematic for the majority of children, who began school speaking little or no English and thus had great difficulty in following lessons. The bilingual education programme received the support of regional and national education authorities, and at the time of research was well on its way to becoming established in nursery and primary schools in Wapishana villages. The introduction of bilingual education perhaps extends a trend towards increasing Wapishana influence over what happens in their schools. All of the major Wapishana villages have primary schools. A secondary school, the first in the Rupununi Region outside Lethem, opened in Aishalton in the late 1990s. Despite the limited direct relevance of the curriculum to local concerns, most parents encourage attendance, seeing a Western-style education as important in adapting to current challenges and developing the capacities necessary to improve individual and collective circumstances. However, children’s contributions remain important in the domestic economy, and during school holidays, as well as Saturdays during term time, the village is largely deserted as people take advantage of freedom from school commitments to take the entire family to the farm. In this way, and by accompanying their parents in the subsistence tasks appropriate to their gender, Wapishana children combine traditional with state education rather than replacing the former with the latter (see also Chapter 6, section ‘Overview of Wapishana Agriculture’). The overall effect of local modification of the state education programme is to ensure that the extension of the mental structure it provides complements rather than subverts local, integral subjectivities. Involvement in the state education system is also among the most important forms of economic integration in remote Wapishana villages that provide very few opportunities to earn cash incomes. In surveys, over 70 per cent of households reported earning money from what are conventionally subsistence pursuits, such as selling game, fish or

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agricultural produce. Their customers or employers are mostly teachers, whose wages are the only regular input of cash into the local economy and whose professional responsibilities limit the time they have available for subsistence pursuits. Delays in payment of teachers’ wages cause the amount of money in circulation in remote villages to drop dramatically. The relationship has parallels with those between Agta hunter-gatherers and the Palanan agriculturalists to whom they provided animal foods and agricultural labour in exchange for farm produce or cash (Petersen 1978). In the Wapishana case, teachers fulfil an essential function in the local economy as specialist earners of cash incomes. The subsequent redistribution of their wages throughout the village is the main link to the cash economy for many other people. The main other ways to generate a cash income are commercial agriculture and livestock rearing. Both of these are compatible with subsistence production. Commercial agriculture is limited to growing peanuts, grown as the first in a two-stage cropping cycle (to be followed by cassava and other crops for domestic consumption) and bought by a small number of traders from the coast. Farmers give lower priority to commercial fields than subsistence fields: early rains in 2000 forced many to abandon their plans of cultivating peanuts that year, having not burnt their fields in time, but in all cases the family’s main cassava plot was already prepared. Concern with the market has not colonized the spheres of subsistence production. An important income-generating activity for many Wapishana people is involvement in the livestock trade. In contrast to the situation in the North Rupununi and despite conflict with neighbouring Wapishana villages over land (Peberdy 1948: 18, 31), the first half-century of contact with the cattle industry was largely beneficial for the Wapishana (Baldwin 1946: 45). The first rancher to settle long term in the region, the Scot H.P.C. Melville, married two Atorad sisters, members of the family who found him lost and moribund on the savannahs, and served an important role as an informal intermediary between the Wapishana and colonial society (Myers 1944: 77; Peberdy 1948: 9, 31). The vast grazing lease of the Rupununi Development Company, headquartered at Melville’s former home at Dadanawa, still dominates the south savannah geographically. The ranch provides many essential infrastructural services – notably in terms of maintaining road access during the rainy season – and like other ranches in the South Rupununi has a predominantly Wapishana staff. More generally, perhaps partly due to the influence of Dadanawa and other ranches, cattle and other domestic livestock are nowadays important in indigenous subsistence and cash economies. Independent Wapishana stockholders rely for sales mostly on transportation of stock to markets in

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Lethem. There they face several disadvantages relative to buyers who are geographically closer to the town and have stronger social connections. These include weight loss and death or disappearance of animals during the journey, their marginal position in local networks through which market information circulates, and the need to make quick sales to minimize the expense and inconvenience of being away from home. These adverse circumstances reduce the scope for creative engagement in the situation, and indigenous ranchers must either trade on such uneven terms or not at all. The formation of the Rupununi Livestock Producers Association during the 1990s could mark a watershed in economic relations, being the first formal collaboration of indigenous and nonindigenous stockholders, with the potential to link village with urban and national economies in a form more consistent with local interests. Little such hope existed for the majority of Wapishana wage labourers based outside the South Rupununi, who found themselves extremely disempowered. Most such migrants end up in or around Boa Vista, capital of the neighbouring Brazilian state of Roraima. Lack of official documents, formal qualifications and professional training made them highly vulnerable to exploitation (see also ARU 1992: 52–53). These unfavourable circumstances led many into badly paid, insecure, demeaning or dangerous work, although a lucky few found more congenial situations, settled down quite comfortably and in some cases even prospered. In contrast with the prevalent forms of culture contact within the South Rupununi, the Wapishana people involved cannot negotiate this cultural frontier on their own terms. The outcome is consequently closer to the historical situations of the Makushi and Brazilian Wapishana. In contrast, the Guyanese balata trade, as we have seen, involved Wapishana workers on terms they were able to make compatible with their domestic commitments, building upon and enhancing existing skills. The difference is not that the balata company was a particularly enlightened organization – it was a commercial venture much like any other – but that Wapishana balata bleeders were able to approach employment on their own terms and adapt working conditions to suit their needs. Cash incomes supplemented rather than replaced subsistence production, and the work itself did not undermine subsistence systems or related elaborations of the magic and mythical structures. When the balata industry closed down in the 1980s, people missed – and still lament – the material advantages of a reliable income. However, having maintained traditional systems for production of staple foods intact, they were able to persist with subsistence production. The loss was a relative – and tolerable – hardship, not the absolute deprivation it would have been if the means for subsistence production no longer existed. Engaging with the

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cash economy on an integral basis meant that it complemented rather than undermined parallel systems for subsistence production, creating a cultural edge more resilient to the decline in balata markets and closure of the trade. Perhaps ironically, overt concern with conservation of natural resources among the Wapishana is largely the result of acculturation: awareness of resource depletion in other areas and its economic and cultural effects (cf. Ellen 1999a). By the time of fieldwork, depletion of natural resources, when evident at all, was rare and localized. This was due to the continued effectiveness of the covertly encoded mechanisms for regulating the ecological effects of use of natural resources detailed in Part II of this book. Changes in subsistence practices and associated belief and knowledge had not been dramatic, and mechanisms for ensuring the ecological sustainability of resource use remained within their limits of resilience.

Locally Determined Development as a Cultural Edge This section summarizes aspirations for development within the South Rupununi as expressed to me by Wapishana collaborators at the time of fieldwork, and compares and contrasts these with conservation and development activities elsewhere in Guyana. Its account of local development priorities does not attempt to be definitive and is in any case based on data that by the time of publication are nearly two decades old. It certainly does not seek to speak on behalf of Wapishana people and is mainly an academic exercise undertaken to illustrate the point that these priorities are themselves multilevelled, and consequently cannot be addressed by an approach that reduces local interests purely to their material and fiscal aspects, and thus subverts them to a centralized agenda concerned only with economic goals. As an analytical framework, this section uses Spiral Dynamics (Beck and Cowan 1995; Chapter 2, section ‘Levels’), which identifies a range of modes of perception and action referred to here as values, and overlapping with Gebser’s descriptions of the structures: beige corresponding with the archaic structure, purple and red with the magic structure, blue with the mythical structure, and orange and green with the mental structure. Green is the site of incipient integral consciousness, realized in yellow and turquoise, in which the capacities of beige through to green are simultaneously available. Beige addresses basic survival needs and biological reproduction. Most Wapishana people in Guyana are largely self-sufficient in these respects due to the ecological sustainability and continued viability of

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subsistence economies based upon the use of local natural resources. This economic autonomy depends crucially upon access to land, and is thus threatened by weaknesses in security of land tenure and the possibility of ecologically destructive industrial-scale resource extraction, as well as ecological degeneration of endogenous origin. There is a great deal of scope for improvement in basic living standards, most notably in terms of food security and access to medical care, in particular to reduce infant mortality. Some manufactured goods – metal tools, clothes, sugar, salt, matches and soap – have become more or less essential to material reproduction, which consequently depends on a certain degree of economic interaction with the fiscal economies of Guyana and/or Brazil. Purple values emphasize domestic reproduction and coherence of the extended family unit, which is particularly threatened by labour migration. Some job-hunters emigrate permanently, while others return after a number of years – often to settle and raise a family – or move back and forth in response to changing economic needs and opportunities. This can disrupt long-term cycles of domestic reproduction: materially when people do not accumulate the capital represented by regenerating fallows and maintaining a homestead, fruit groves, forest trails and camps; psychologically (meaning within Wilber’s upper-left or subjective quadrant) when people fail to acquire detailed knowledge of the ecological properties of the land available to them for resource use or the technical skills necessary to make use of such knowledge; and culturally when the modified aspirations of returning immigrants leave them alienated from a village life in which they are no longer able to find personal fulfilment. Red values emphasize freedom of choice and the status of the extended family as an autarchic unit for independent decision-making concerning economic and resource use strategies. Wapishana people with whom I discussed conservation repeatedly raised the concern that it would involve the imposition by outsiders of rules and regulations to curtail these freedoms, a prospect most people utterly reject. It was also widely recognized that the persistence of these freedoms depends on continued ecological health. This could provide powerful self-motivation for identifying and addressing instances of resource depletion. However, many people saw the historic ecological sustainability of traditional resource use as inherent, and outside intrusions such as industrial logging and mining as the only serious threats. Predominantly healthy Wapishana expressions of blue values emphasize the contextualization of red values concerned with personal or household autonomy in relation to the needs of the broader social group and the individual’s prescribed role within it. Modern-day, positive attitudes towards biological conservation expressed in interviews and public

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meetings unfailingly considered it a means to safeguard essential and/or valuable natural resources for the benefit of the village or the Wapishana people as a whole and the wellbeing of future generations. Such views value natural resources predominantly as communal heritage, a source of livelihood and security for a defined group of people, and an important feature of collective identity, and see all of these as rights to which this group should assert its collective claim. These are classically conventional or mythical structure values, activated in response to perceived threats to ecological integrity and land tenure arising from the interventions of outside actors, and modified by acculturation and adaptation to changing sociopolitical circumstances. More generally, blue values are most strongly manifest in a general wish to maintain a coherent collective identity as a culturally distinct people. This, too, is strongly influenced by modern forms of culture contact and is nowadays expressed in a variety of distinct social affiliations: to the hamlet, the village, the Wapishana people – sometimes divided into Guyanese and Brazilian Wapishana – or the newer categories of Amerindian and indigenous. Both of the latter emerged as forms of group identity due to the need to organize across linguistic and territorial divisions in response to colonial and later state presence. The multiplicity of notions of group affiliation is further complicated by the ambiguity of Wapishana relations with the Guyanese state. Particularly before the building of the Georgetown–Lethem road reduced its isolation from the Guyanese coast, the Rupununi had stronger social and economic links with neighbouring parts of Brazil. Among older Wapishana speakers, Portuguese is far more common as a second language than English. In fact, in the early days of 1969 national authorities only narrowly thwarted the region’s breakaway in an armed rebellion instigated by leading ranchers (Ridgwell 1972: 221–22). Despite ethnicity being a strong feature of individual self-identification and widespread criticism of specific aspects of government policy, I experienced only very isolated Wapishana criticism of the fact of incorporation into the Guyanese state. Some of those most dissatisfied with the consequences of this voted with their feet and formed deep forest settlements totally out of contact with national society (see e.g. Bahuchet 1995: 111). There is much to admire in these radical positions, but for most of the country’s Wapishana residents, Guyanese nationality has become another important facet of self-identity with a variety of behavioural expressions, including swearing of the national oath before council meetings and participation in national elections. Participation in some Guyanese institutions – such as attending state schools and taking what few opportunities exist for wage labour – reflects

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Wapishana interest in expanding the span of orange values. Orange subordinates blue’s parochial concerns to an ethic of individual self-advancement through rational means. Like the overlap of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge (Chapter 7, section ‘Mapping the Mental Structure’), the common ground within the orange value between local interests and the effects of Babylon is only partial. The crucial difference is that Wapishana expressions of orange are mitigated by the demands of other structures. Babylonian orange, in contrast, is in an involuted form that systematically constrains the expression of other structures, preventing systasis. This is an instance of what Gebser described as the deficient form of the mental structure, or Bateson as addiction to a single epistemological level. Its consequences for Amerindian groups in Guyana mirror those of its global expression and have included the destructive effects of uncontrolled logging, mining and labour emigration on family relations, social networks, local knowledge and participation in subsistence activities. All of these prospects undermine the long-term prospects that Wapishana integration into national social and economic systems will be culturally sustainable – in other words, compatible with their participation as a culturally distinct people. The potential for material advancement in traditional ecological knowledge is ambiguous. Uptake of opportunities to earn cash incomes based on this knowledge has been enthusiastic in cases such as the balata and wildlife trades, participation in ecological research over the course of the present study, and work on ecological surveys organized by conservation groups interested in establishing protected areas after it. Everyone is of course aware of the practical value of their own knowledge of the local ecology, which is applied on a daily basis in routine acts of subsistence. Many people also have some understanding of its potential commercial value and the danger of biopiracy, not least because of the well-publicized scandal surrounding the patenting by phytochemist Conrad Gorinsky of products based on Makushi and Wapishana ethnomedicine.6 In this – and in contrast to Babylon’s propensity towards decontextualization or scientization (Chapter 9) – here the blue reins in the orange value; any realization of this commercial value would have to be for direct local benefit, not for that of outsiders or any nebulous notion of economic growth. We can see a contrast in the way in which Babylon’s deficient form of orange sought to appropriate blue values in the name of biological conservation and related assertions that the interests of human populations should be modified to reflect scientifically (or commercially) determined agendas for the conservation of biotic resources in the areas in which they reside rather than conservation agendas building on the interests of local populations. This position was ideologically expressed

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in documents such as the policy statements of major conservation organizations and the treatment of indigenous knowledge in the Convention on Biological Diversity (Posey 1990: 114–15). A proposal submitted by the operators of Karanambo Ranch in the North Rupununi around the same time was rejected following an independent assessment that raised possible negative consequences for indigenous land rights and traditional resource use (Shackley 1998). A similarly colonial mentality was evident in early plans for the designation of a protected area in the Kanuku Mountains, which suggested that armed patrols ensure exclusion of Makushi and Wapishana people from lands in the ironically named ‘Kanuku Amerindian National Park’ (Agriconsulting 1993). The Amerindian Peoples Association publicly condemned later agreements between the Guyanese government and Conservation International for the establishment of a protected area, which were reached in the absence of consultation with affected Amerindian communities (APA 2002). Later processes emphasized local consultation (e.g. Stone 2002), and when the government finally announced the legal designation of Kanuku as a protected area, it claimed to be doing so with the full support and consent of neighbouring communities.7 This represents a genuine advance over Babylon’s attempts to harness local subjectivities to its agenda via nominally ‘community-based’ or ‘participatory’ approaches (cf. Cooke and Kothari 2001), failure of which during the 1990s led to an unfortunate revival in support among conservation biologists for a misanthropic, preservationist approach (Wilshusen et al. 2002). This was despite compelling ethical and theoretical arguments, along with ample practical demonstrations, of the inviability of preservationism, and is a clear example of the toxic consequences of addiction for even the best of intentions. Orange values do have important roles to play when appropriately contextualized by the other structures in the systasis typical of indigenous thought. Potential commercial initiatives based upon local knowledge, often expanded in its scope by the incorporation of scientific findings but nonetheless amenable to local management, are numerous; Wapishana collaborators in the present study made a number of suggestions along such lines. There is scope for expanding the range of commercial agriculture, particularly in connection with interest in savannah agriculture or developing expanded agroforestry systems. Transportation difficulties and distance from markets make this most practical for products that can be preserved on site, such as dried fruits or nuts. There is strong interest among the Wapishana and the neighbouring Waiwai in commercial extraction of Brazil nuts (Bertholletia excelsa), which are reported to grow in vast stands in the Kwitaro and Rewa River basins, evidence of anthropic manipulation of these forests by the ancestors of their modern residents

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(see Balée 1989). The balata trade, at the height of which virtually the whole of southern and eastern Guyana functioned as an extractive reserve, remains lamented by its Wapishana former staff. Elsewhere, a commercial conservation project in the North Rupununi village of Nappi based itself upon the sale of balata carvings made by resident artisans. Although conceived and implemented by the squarely orange-centred Conservation International, which also provided access to international markets, the low-key nature of the project meant that it led to a successful reconciliation of aspirations for material advancement with local needs located in other structures or values. Combining traditional with scientific monitoring methods could ensure the ecological sustainability of a revived wildlife trade, many local species having demonstrated potential for sustainable harvesting at higher than subsistence levels via appropriate management or domestication (Dallmeier 1991; Ojasti 1991; Smythe 1991; Thomsen and Brautigam 1991; Thorbjarnarson 1991; Vaughan and Rodriguez 1991; Werner 1991; Hoogesteijn and Chapman 1997). The commercialization of local natural resources and of the knowledge associated with their exploitation still carries the danger of local needs being subverted to those of the market, making local knowledge an instrument of its own assimilation into the mental structure’s deficient form (Corry 1993). Like the integration of mental structure aspects of traditional and scientific ecological knowledge, only if locally determined can commercial endeavour of this type fully incorporate the complexity of local subjectivities and hence function as a cultural edge. The likelihood that this will be the case increases with the increasing prominence in conservation and development practice of the green value, in which the mental and integral structure intersect in a pluralistic attitude that is respectful of diversity and sensitive to local needs. Its emergence was the basis of a growing tradition of methods giving due priority to local subjectivities in conservation and development (e.g. Freire 1970; Chambers 1983; Posey et al. 1984; Richards 1985; Berkes 1989; Croll and Parkin 1992a; Hobart 1993; Moran 1993: 141–62), now of course well established, in theory at least, as community-based or participatory approaches. Early practical examples within Guyana included participatory methods for community development devised and implemented by Michael Shook and colleagues (Shook 1993), and stakeholder dialogue initiated by the Guyana Marine Turtle Conservation Society concerning Shell Beach in Northwestern Guyana, leading to its eventual designation as a protected area The green values that characterize Wapishana local politics (Chapter 7, section ‘Institutionalization of the Mental Structure in Village Politics’) are readily extended to broader groupings in which they participate

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on a corresponding basis, such as national Amerindian organizations and international networks such as the Amazon Alliance and the Forest Peoples Programme. They are also increasingly relevant in national politics as it gives greater attention to Amerindian contributions to Guyana’s multiculturalism. This was reflected in the experiences of the appointed Amerindian representative on the government-established committee for reform of the national constitution during the late 1990s. Dialogue quickly overcame an initial hostility to Amerindian interests on the part of other delegates, who came to adopt a receptive and sympathetic attitude conducive to their discussion and recognition (LaRose 1999). Green’s inherent limitation is in its difficulty accommodating expressions of other values. Engaging with approaches based in this value often forces indigenous groups to conform to outsider notions of how they should be (Conklin and Graham 1995; Brosius 1997). While perhaps more benign than cultural frontiers rooted in more basic values, it nonetheless fails to allow expression of the full complexity of indigenous subjectivities. This is possible only with the emergence of true systasis in the yellow value, which generally reflects the influence of indigenous thought itself. In Guyana, the Iwokrama Forest Project provides an important example of this. Although initiated as a top-down process that at first ignored the indigenous presence in the area, an activity vacuum in its first few years of operation during the mid 1990s provided space for its appropriation by local indigenous populations, with the collusion of sympathetic NGOs and University of Guyana researchers. When central staff for the reserve’s scientific management were finally recruited in the mid to late 1990s, key members recognized the value of this process and facilitated its continuation. Genuine, self-determined indigenous participation, formalized in the participation of the North Rupununi District Development Board at a managerial level, has thus been a central feature of Iwokrama since its earliest days, to the mutual benefit of local interests and the project’s long-term conservation and development goals (Chapter 10, section ‘Ecological Roles of Transrational Thought’; Wolfangel 2004). Iwokrama has the potential to become an example of the genuinely integral ecology that can arise through institutional mechanisms for reconciling diverse viewpoints (e.g. Riddell 2005; Tissot 2005). In the years since the research reported in this book was undertaken, Wapishana people, assisted by the Forest Peoples Programme, have been developing the basis for an indigenous-led conservation programme that may take this a step further. Building upon the original Deep South and South Central land claims put to the Amerindian Lands Commission (see Chapter 7; Henfrey 1999), Wapishana researchers have been mapping materially and culturally valuable resources in their area (David et al.

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2006). Subsequent consultation and discussion exercises in communities throughout the South Rupununi led to the development of a management plan for a 1.4 million hectare conservation area in Wapishana territory, which was released for public discussion in February 2012 (South Central and South Rupununi Districts Toshaos Councils 2012). This proposal links traditional knowledge and concerns with local livelihoods with international agreements such as the Convention on Biodiversity and UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in a call for dialogue at national level within Guyana. It provides an exemplar of how indigenous systasis and its ability to be the basis of a cultural edge can provide new approaches to environmental management reconciling local concerns and the urgent need for solutions to global environmental, social and cultural crises.

Cultural Edges and Indigenous Empowerment Ethnographic research on Amerindian understandings of nature and their relevance to issues of political ecology in Guyana’s interior conducted since completion of the core argument of this book leads to conclusions that complement and extend those presented here. Two recent doctoral theses place greater emphasis on indigenous subjectivities as primary analytical frameworks in their own right, rather than factors in an objectivist social-ecological analysis. Convergence between their conclusions and the argument made in this book for greater indigenous empowerment in pluralistic dialogue on future conservation and development trajectories deepens and broadens the case for this. It also further strengthens the argument for basing dialogue and decision-making in these areas on integral ecologies that incorporate diverse subjective understandings of nature. Lewis Daly’s doctoral thesis focuses on Makushi perceptions of and relationships with plants (Daly 2015). His analysis emphasizes the ‘poly-ontological’ nature of Makushi ethnobotany and ethnoecology as complex mixtures of material, social and semiotic relationships that incorporate plants and their associated qualities as nonhuman persons with their own subjectivities and forms of intersubjective encounter with humans. These ontologies are of increasing political importance as diverse perspectives and interests increasingly converge on the Rupununi, raising new possibilities for both contestation and conflict, integration and cooperation. From ethnographic research in the Upper Mazaruni and other parts of the circum-Roraima region in western Guyana arises a description of

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an indigenous land ethic (Cooper 2015). Articulated and sustained via various traditional, shamanistic practices, this land ethic socioculturally structures understanding and action about land and resource use, incorporating ecological knowledge of spiritual, cultural and prosaic origins. It also informs contemporary movements to assert land rights and otherwise strengthen Amerindian interests within the political ecology of forest use and conservation in Guyana. In line with some of the more speculative suggestions in this thesis about cultural resilience, this is a dynamic body of knowledge that is constantly reassessed and reasserted through revitalization movements – notably the Areruya (Alleluia) church – and in ongoing dialogue with fast-changing national and international political and economic contexts. Alongside the argument presented here, these findings further emphasize the vital need for indigenous interests and subjectivities to be strongly represented in decisions over conservation and development. The situation of Amerindian peoples in Guyana is, while far from perfect, in many ways favourable for such representation. Large-scale land clearance has so far been largely avoided, land tenure is at least partly recognized and respected, and both grassroots mobilization and formal political engagement are relatively strong. Respect for cultural diversity and recognition of the importance of indigenous rights are prominent in government, NGO and grassroots agendas. In short, more grounds for optimism exist in Guyana than in many other places in the world, and emergence of genuinely pluralistic national policies for conservation and development is a viable, if by no means certain, prospect.

Notes  1. Renamed the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs in 2015.  2. Makushi speakers are numerically dominant in one village of the South Rupununi, Shulinab, colloquially referred to in the region as Makushi village.  3. Concrete outputs from this collaboration included preliminary ethnobotanical surveys (Forte et al. 1996a, 1996b).  4. See Netting (1981: 62–69) for a comparable example of the ecological benefits of self-determination, permitted by isolation, in the very different setting of the Swiss Alps.  5. While writing this book, I was saddened to learn of the tragic and brutal murder of Richard and Charlene Hicks, missionaries working with the Unevangelized Field Mission and active supporters of Wapishana language projects, at their home in the South Rupununi in late March 2005.  6. Gorinsky, who is originally from Guyana and claims part-Atorad ancestry, justified this action on the basis of his own intellectual input into the

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extraction process, inaction on the part of the Guyanese government in legally securing intellectual property rights, and his intention to share with the Amerindian communities involved any material benefits that might accrue from commercial application. However, his unilateral action was condemned at both local and national levels.  7. See http://gy.chm-cbd.net/convention/protected-areas.

Conclusion

This book has sought to explain the relative success of indigenous environmental knowledge in solving complex social-ecological management issues compared with apparently better-resourced approaches rooted in scientific ecology. In order to do so, it has deployed the concepts of edge, fringe and frontier. Edges are mutually enhancing interactions between ecological, sociocultural or social-ecological systems. Fringes are sites of mutual enrichment between ecological and sociocultural components of a social-ecological system. Frontiers are sites of material and subjective degradation of ecological, sociocultural and/or social-ecological features of one system by another. Explaining the reasons why interactions operate as edges or fringes rather than frontiers has required use of a holistic analytical framework derived principally from integration of the work of Bateson, Wilber and Gebser with Resilience Theory and the postmodern approaches in Environmental Anthropology that led to the concept of Biocultural Diversity. Bateson emphasized interdependent and co-arising complexity – successive levels of epistemological and organizational abstraction – in subjective and material aspects of all phenomena (mind and nature). Gebser provided detailed characterizations of the forms of epistemological abstraction that were dominant at various points in European history, which we have here taken as reflecting broad epistemological modes available cross-culturally. Wilber integrated these into a broader framework highlighting common influences of Gebser’s structures in objective, systemic, subjective and intersubjective aspects of phenomena. Resilience Theory shows how dynamic patterns of interrelationship among structural levels affects whether material systems persist or do not in the face of change. Biocultural Diversity shows how such persistence depends on indigenous subjectivities that exist in intimate co-evolutionary relationship with detailed features of the local ecology. The detailed ethnographic analysis of Wapishana subsistence undertaken here identifies systasis, flexible interaction among Gebser’s structures, as the key necessary condition for creation of edges and fringes. Mutual contextualization of shared beliefs, knowledge, actions and

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systemic properties located in the different structures allows epistemological flexibility commensurate with social-ecological complexity. This allows decision-making over resource use to navigate ecological dynamics in ways that tend to keep the latter in their states of maximum resilience. It additionally mitigates against addiction, or epistemological restriction to a single structure. Cultural edges arise when sociocultural systems interact on the basis of systasis. When they do not – because addiction in one partner dominates the interchange – the result is a cultural frontier or site of sociocultural degradation. Correspondingly, addiction to a single structure leads to creation of ecological frontiers when it is a society’s predominant form of ecological epistemology. Reference to relevant research elsewhere suggests consistency between the findings of this detailed case study and processes of social-ecological change more generally. It seems a reasonable conjecture at this point that the key role of systasis in navigating social-ecological complexity is a general feature of indigenous resource management and a precondition for outcomes consistent with sustainability and resilience. This conjecture could be tested, and the analytical model devised here refined, by applying it to other case studies of indigenous environmental management, intercultural contact and socio-ecological change. Such application would be most effective if undertaken within participatory programmes that fully invest indigenous partners with complete intellectual and decision-making authority. This would be consistent with the practical and ethical requirement for greater indigenous empowerment in decision-making over land use, the scientific case for which is strengthened by the findings and analysis presented here. Refinement of the model presented here, particularly via participatory methods, would also help overcome what in my view is its major current academic limitation. The analysis conducted here is rather objectivist: while it acknowledges and takes account of indigenous subjectivities, it treats them as explanatory variables in what might be termed a neo-functionalist analysis rooted in systems science, not as framing parameters in their own right. To the extent that this is a source of imbalance, the analysis falls short of being truly integral, in Wilber’s sense, or multiperspectival. Genuinely integral ecologies would arise as emergent outcomes, both theoretical and applied, of equitable dialogue among diverse perspectives on ecology. Nothing less than this will be necessary for humanity to navigate global socio-ecological complexity in ways that resolve current sustainability challenges.

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Index

A Achiwuib, 9, 139, 199 adaptive cycle, 20–21, 63–64, 160–61, 163, 168 Afro-Guyanese, 17 agouti, 11, 13, 116, 129, 132, 138, 151, 153, 162 Agouti paca, See laba agriculture savannah, 3, 9–12, 15–16, 96, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 110–11, 127–30, 132–35, 139–40, 142n1, 143, 147–48, 151, 154–55, 157, 188, 197, 202, 208 swidden, 10, 12–13, 65, 66–67, 100, 126–27, 129, 131–32, 136–37, 144–49, 159–62, 165, 168 trail, 12–13, 103, 161 Aishalton, 9, 96–97, 106, 115, 139, 201 Akawaio, 10, 106, 112, 198 Alleluia, 112, 212 Alouatta seniculus. See howler monkey Amazonia, 8–9, 34, 85, 159, 171 Amerindian Lands Commission, 105–6, 210 Amerindian Research Unit (University of Guyana), 198 anaconda, 123, 140 animism, 29, 109, 111, 187 AQAL (all-quadrant all-level) framework, 30, 37, 47–48, 52, 55, 57, 59–61, 73 Arachis hypogea. See peanuts archaic structure, 26–27, 29, 31, 93, 107, 174, 204 armadillo, 11, 129, 132, 151, 164, 187

Ateles paniscus. See spider monkey Atorad, 14–15, 111, 202 Attalea regia. See kokerite palm Awarewaunau, 9, 99, 106, 140 B Babylon/Babylonian, 4–9, 19–21, 28–29, 33, 34, 36, 51, 53, 64, 68, 70–71, 73–78, 84, 91, 109, 125n4, 167, 171, 174–75, 177–78, 189–91, 193–94, 197, 200, 207–8 balata, 17, 66–67, 117, 133, 150, 194, 203–4, 207, 209 Bateson, Gregory, 46–47, 57, 59, 61–64, 73, 77, 81, 91, 93–94, 179, 185, 207, 214 bearded saki, 117, 158n2, 187 bina, 109–10, 123, 150, 155, 163, 181, 199 biocultural diversity, xi, 8, 57, 70, 80, 195, 214 biodiversity, 3–4, 7, 19, 85, 211 blowing, 109, 110, 123, 141, 150 Brazil, 8–9, 13, 15–16, 21n4, 68–69, 87n10, 90, 100, 106, 115, 125n3, 194, 197–200, 203, 205–6, 208 border dispute, 8–9, 15–16, 68–69 migration, 15, 21n4, 197, 199, 203 bush island, 9, 11–12, 142n1 C caiman, 11 capuchin monkey, 117, 138, 160, 187 capybara, 11, 152 Carib, 14, 196 Cary-Elwes, Fr., 16, 96–97, 108–9, 112–13, 125n4, 200

254 | Index

cassava, 10, 67–68, 101–3, 110, 125n3, 128–29, 133–34, 136–38, 147, 160–62, 202 Cebus. See capuchin monkey Chiropotes. See bearded saki Christianity, 16–17, 28, 85, 97, 109, 111–12, 125n4, 200 Catholicism, 16, 97, 200 conservation, 3, 6, 9, 18–20, 42, 63, 69–70, 78, 82, 106, 126, 156–57, 178, 182–83, 189–90, 193, 195, 198, 204–5, 207–12 Correntyne River, 106 couvade, 109–10, 123 cultural diversity, x–xi, 4–7, 19–20, 32, 85, 143, 167, 174, 177, 212 cultural ecology, 14, 46, 53–54, 94, 107, 126 Cultural Materialism, 54 Cuniculus paca. See laba D Dadanawa, 16, 202 Dasyprocta agouti. See agouti deer, 11, 13, 117, 122–23, 132, 138, 146, 151, 153, 156, 160–61, 163, 181 grey brocket, 153, 156 red brocket, 13, 117, 123, 138, 146, 151, 160, 161, 163, 181 white-tailed or savannah, 11, 132, 151 development, xi, 5, 18–20, 23, 25–26, 30–38, 41–42, 51, 57, 59, 61–64, 69–71, 74, 76–78, 90, 92, 94, 126, 134, 174, 178, 189, 193–95, 198, 200, 204, 209–12 E Ecological Anthropology, x, 20, 22, 36, 46–58, 59–72, 89, 174 ecosystem approach, 54 edge cultural, x, 3–8, 7–8, 13–19, 38, 43, 70–71, 79, 89, 99, 109, 175, 190, 193–213, 215 ecological/ecotone, 3–8, 19 Empire, 5–6, 44n11, 84, 177

Environmental Anthropology, 22, 39, 41, 46–48, 53, 55, 57, 59, 85, 178, 214 Epistemological complexity, 7–8, 20–21, 91 Essequibo River, 8, 9, 13, 106 etai palm, 10, 11, 12, 102, 133, 154 Ethnobiological classification, 51 Ethnoecology, 50, 56, 60, 73, 90, 117, 122, 211 Eunectes murinus. See anaconda F fallow period, 103, 146, 148 farm house, 10, 67, 89, 101, 135, 138 farm settlement. See farm house fishing, 10–13, 66–67, 69, 72n3, 89, 100, 103, 110, 116, 127–35, 138, 150–51, 153, 155, 157, 158n3, 183 food taboos/prohibitions, 52, 82, 109, 133, 150, 154–56, 165, 170, 183 forest island. See bush island forest farming. See swidden agriculture four quadrants, 24, 26, 30, 33, 35, 47–48, 61 fringe, x–xi, 3–8, 13, 19, 21, 43, 79, 81, 84–86, 89–95, 104, 143, 158, 167, 173–74, 177–79, 186, 190–91, 193, 214 frontier, x–xi, 4–5, 8, 13, 15–16, 19–21, 21nn1–2, 37, 71, 77, 85–86, 90, 125n4, 145, 173–175, 177, 191, 198–99, 214–15 cultural, 4–5, 8, 18–20, 70, 190, 193, 197, 203, 210 ecological, 4–5, 7, 8, 18–20, 70, 91, 193 G Gebser, Jean, 26–30, 33–35, 42–43, 44nn5–6, 74–75, 78–79, 81, 86nn3–5, 90–92, 94, 107, 114, 124, 143, 145, 167, 170, 173, 186, 191, 204, 207, 214 Geochelone. See tortoise Guiana saki, 117, 138 H heterarchy, 57, 61, 94, 127, 141 hierarchy, 25, 37–38, 59, 61, 195

Index | 255

Historical Ecology, 39, 57, 61–62, 85 holism, x, 19–20, 22–23, 29, 42–43, 49, 53, 55–57, 60, 81, 186, 214 howler monkey, 117 hunting, x, 10–13, 44n8, 49, 66–67, 72n3, 82, 89, 94, 100, 103, 110–11, 114, 116–18, 126–35, 138–39, 144, 147, 150–59, 161, 163–66, 170, 181, 183, 199 Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris. See capybara Hymenaea coubaril. See locust (tree) I iguana, 11, 116, 130, 164 Indo-Guyanese, 17 Information Ecology, 56, 60–61 Integral Ecology, x, 20, 22–23, 26, 37–43, 44n10, 46–48, 52, 55, 57, 60–61, 79, 89, 159, 186, 210 ethnocentrism within, 37–40 integral structure, 28–29, 35, 44n6, 68–69, 81, 84, 87n5, 91–92, 170, 177–78, 189, 209 Integral Theory, 20, 22–24, 26, 30, 33, 35–40, 44n11, 46–47, 55–57, 59, 62, 64, 85, 90, 92 Ischnosiphon arouma. See mokoro Iwokrama, 196, 198, 210 K kanaima, 109–10, 123, 141, 154, 165 Kanuku Mountains, 9, 97, 139, 196–97, 208 kari. See parakari Kassikaityu River, 106 Kokerite palm, 130, 136 Kujuwini River, 9, 12 Kwitaro River, 9, 12, 97, 99, 132, 138, 140, 159, 165, 208 L laba, 11, 13, 16, 117, 129, 132, 138, 151, 153, 162–63 labour migration, 15, 205 Lethem, 16, 67, 96, 100, 102, 197, 201, 203, 206

levels, 25–33, 37–38, 44n5, 47–48, 51– 52, 55, 57, 59–62, 64–65, 71, 73–74, 76, 85–86, 93, 95, 126–27, 141, 149, 169–70, 174, 179, 185–86, 195–96, 214 livestock, 10, 12, 67, 72n3, 85, 100, 104, 110, 115–16, 127, 129–30, 133–34, 148, 152–53, 194, 202 locust (tree), 17 logging, 99, 196, 198–99, 205, 207 Lokono Arawak, 16–17, 199 M magic structure, 26–27, 29, 31, 33, 43n4, 69, 79, 81, 83–84, 92–94, 105, 107–8, 110–13, 116, 122–23, 143–45, 149–51, 163–64, 167, 169, 171, 174, 181, 183–84, 200, 204 Makushi, 9, 14, 112, 116, 139, 196–99, 203, 207–8, 211, 212n2 Manihot escuelenta. See cassava Manilkara bidentata. See balata manora/manorin, 101–2, 147 Marunao. See piaimen/piaiwomen Maruranau, xii, 8–9, 12, 16, 67, 89–90, 93, 96–103, 108, 111, 114, 138, 140–41, 142n1, 148 Mauritia flexuosa. See etai palm Mazama Americana. See deer, red brocket Mazama gouazoubira. See deer, grey brocket Mazaruni River/Region, 106, 196, 198, 211 mental structure, 27–29, 31, 33, 36, 43, 44n5, 64, 68–71, 74, 77, 79, 81, 84, 86, 91–94, 106, 108, 111–13, 116–117, 122–24, 127, 144, 150, 152, 158–59, 163–64, 167–71, 173, 177–81, 188–91, 201, 204, 207, 209 mining, 15, 16, 197–98, 205, 207 mokoro, 100 mythical structure, 27–29, 31, 33, 36, 44n5, 64, 69–70, 82–85, 86n3, 87n8, 92–94, 105, 108, 111–13, 116, 122, 127, 144–45, 147, 149–51, 162,

256 | Index

164, 167–70, 174, 177–79, 183, 186, 188–91, 193, 200–1, 203–4, 206 O Odocoileus virginianus. See deer, white-tailed P Piaimen/women, 110, 123, 141, 153-4, 170, 188 panarchy, 20, 56, 62–63, 76, 85, 124, 126–42, 169, 195 parakari, 102, 110, 136, 147 Paravilhana, 14 participation, 27, 81, 114, 147, 196, 206–7, 210 Patamona, 112, 196, 198 peak experience, 31–32, 112 peanuts, 67, 102, 128, 147, 149, 202 peccary, 11, 13, 110, 116–17, 120, 122, 132, 138, 147, 151–54, 157, 162, 165–66, 170, 187 collared, 117, 154, 165, 187 white-jawed, 11, 117, 132, 147, 151, 154, 157, 165–66 Pithecia. See Guiana saki Political Ecology, 40, 57, 61, 71, 211–12 R ranching, 16, 67, 110 ratio, 28, 74, 167 reductionism, 23–24, 28, 47–49 resilience (social-ecological), 8, 21, 36, 43, 70, 75, 84, 91, 141, 150, 167, 215 Rewa River, 9, 13, 99, 106, 133, 140, 208 Rio Negro, 8, 13–14 Roraima, 13, 199, 203, 211 Rupunau, 9, 11, 100, 139 Rupununi, 8–9, 12–17, 68, 89, 96, 100, 102, 106, 108, 115, 130, 132–33, 143, 148, 193, 197–98, 200, 201–4, 206, 208–10, 211, 212n2, 212n5 Rupununi Development Company, 16, 99, 202

S Sand Creek village, 9, 11, 67, 96, 100, 139 school, 10, 16, 68, 89–90, 96–98, 101, 111, 127, 135, 164, 199, 201, 206 Shea, 9, 12, 99, 140–41 Shulinab, 9, 14, 139, 121n2 spider monkey, 117, 153, 156, 187 Spiral Dynamics, 26, 29, 34, 37, 42, 52, 57, 63–64, 86n2, 92–93, 107, 114, 145, 173, 204 Symbolic Anthropology, 46, 52 systasis, 29, 35, 43, 71, 74–75, 77–78, 85, 91–92, 122, 124, 144, 159, 167, 177–79, 207–8, 210–11, 214–15 T Takutu River, 8–9, 14–15, 106 tapir, 13, 117–18, 122, 132, 138, 146, 153–54, 156–57, 160–61, 163, 165 Taruma, 14, 125n4 Tayassu pecari. See peccary, whitejawed Tayassu tajacu. See peccary, collared tortoise (red-footed and yellowfooted), 116, 130, 132, 151, 164 toushau, 106, 115, 124n1 trail agriculture, 12–13, 103, 161 trapping, 17, 129–30, 132, 150, 153, 185 V village council, 93, 98–100, 114–15, 124n1, 149, 196 W Waiwai, 104n4, 125n4, 128, 187–88, 208 Wapichan Wadauniinao Ati’o (Wapishana Writers’ Association, WWA), 200 Wilber, Ken, 22–26, 30–33, 35–38, 40, 42, 43n1, 44n4, 44n6, 44nn10–11, 47–48, 53, 59–62, 73–74, 76, 81, 86n2, 87n5, 90–92, 94, 131, 170, 191, 205, 214–15

Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology General Editor: Roy Ellen, FBA Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology, University of Kent at Canterbury Interest in environmental anthropology and ethnobiological knowledge has grown steadily in recent years, reflecting national and international concern about the environment and developing research priorities. ‘Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology’ is an international series based at the University of Kent at Canterbury. It is a vehicle for publishing up-to-date monographs and edited works on particular issues, themes, places or peoples which focus on the interrelationship between society, culture and the environment. Volume 1 The Logic of Environmentalism Anthropology, Ecology and Postcoloniality Vassos Argyrou Volume 2 Conversations on the Beach Fishermen’s Knowledge, Metaphor and Environmental Change in South India Götz Hoeppe Volume 3 Green Encounters Shaping and Contesting Environmentalism in Rural Costa Rica Luis A. Vivanco Volume 4 Local Science vs. Global Science Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development Edited by Paul Sillitoe Volume 5 Sustainability and Communities of Place Edited by Carl A. Maida Volume 6 Modern Crises and Traditional Strategies Local Ecological Knowledge in Island Southeast Asia Edited by Roy Ellen Volume 7 Traveling Cultures and Plants The Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacy of Human Migrations Edited by Andrea Pieroni and Ina Vandebroek Volume 8 Fishers and Scientists in Modern Turkey The Management of Natural Resources, Knowledge and Identity on the Eastern Black Sea Coast Ståle Knudsen

Volume 9 Landscape Ethnoecology Concepts of Biotic and Physical Space Edited by Leslie Main Johnson and Eugene S. Hunn Volume 10 Landscape, Process and Power Re-evaluating Traditional Environmental Knowledge Edited by Serena Heckler Volume 11 Mobility and Migration in Indigenous Amazonia Contemporary Ethnoecological Perspectives Edited by Miguel N. Alexiades Volume 12 Unveiling the Whale Discourses on Whales and Whaling Arne Kalland Volume 13 Virtualism, Governance and Practice Vision and Execution in Environmental Conservation Edited by James G. Carrier and Paige West Volume 14 Ethnobotany in the New Europe People, Health and Wild Plant Resources Edited by Manuel Pardo-de-Santayana, Andrea Pieroni and Rajindra K. Puri Volume 15 Urban Pollution Cultural Meanings, Social Practices Edited by Eveline Dürr and Rivke Jaffe Volume 16 Weathering the World Recovery in the Wake of the Tsunami in a Tamil Fishing Village Frida Hastrup

Volume 17 Environmental Anthropology Engaging Ecotopia Bioregionalism, Permaculture, and Ecovillages Edited by Joshua Lockyer and James R. Veteto Volume 18 Things Fall Apart? The Political Ecology of Forest Governance in Southern Nigeria Pauline von Hellermann Volume 19 Sustainable Development An Appraisal from the Gulf Region Edited by Paul Sillitoe Volume 20 Beyond the Lens of Conservation Malagasy and Swiss Imaginations of One Another Eva Keller

Volume 21 Trees, Knots, and Outriggers Environmental Knowledge in the Northeast Kula Ring Frederick H. Damon Volume 22 Indigeneity and the Sacred Indigenous Revival and the Conservation of Sacred Natural Sites in the Americas Edited by Fausto Sarmiento and Sarah Hitchner Volume 23 Edges, Fringes, Frontiers Integral Ecology, Indigenous Knowledge and Sustainability in Guyana Thomas Henfrey