Lecture 8. Coevolutionary approach to ethnobotany

Summary

Because ethnobotany is a multidisciplinary field, we must address the interrelationship of various biological and social factors when analyzing local use and management of plants. A coevolutionary approach, developed by Richard Norgaard and other colleagues, provides a framework for combining the natural and social sciences in multidisciplinary studies. How can we characterize the elements of a coevolutionary process – including environment, knowledge, values, organization and technology – in the context of ethnobotany? How do these factors interact to form a coevolutionary process of change and adaptation in people’s management of plant resources? How can we apply a coevolutionary approach at various levels of analysis, such as specific people-plant interactions, community park interfaces and regional processes?

In his book, Development Betrayed: the End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future, Norgaard discusses several interdependent factors in a coevolutionary process of development and conservation. As presented in the following figure, he highlights the linkages between values, social organization, technology, environment and knowledge. This conceptualization gives us a framework for understanding the role of local knowledge in conservation and development, a subject that attracts many adherents as well as some skeptics. In addition, it justifies integrating approaches from the natural and social sciences, one of the key elements of ethnobiology.

Norgaard emphasizes that the interaction between the various elements in the coevolutionary process is not static, but is rather in a constant state of dynamic interaction. A change in the environment, for example, may result in changes in knowledge, values, social organization and technology. These changes will have a subsequent impact on the environment, and on each other. In this way, cultural and natural systems are in a continual state of interaction and flux.

Definition:

Norgaard (1994:26) defines coevolution as used in biology: "In biology, coevolution refers to the pattern of evolutionary change of two closely interacting species where the fitness of the genetic traits within each species is largely governed by the dominant genetic traits of the other. Coevolutionary explanations have been given for the shape of the beaks of hummingbirds and of the flowers they feed on, the behavior of bees and the distribution of flowering plants, the biochemical defenses of plants and the immunity of their insect prey, and the characteristics of other interactive species. Note that coevolutionary explanations invoke relationships between entities which affect the evolution of the entities. Entities and relationships are constantly changing, yet they constantly reflect each other, like the flowers and the hummingbirds' beaks. Everything is interlocked, yet everything is changing in accordance with the interlockedness."

Basic text:

Norgaard, R.B. 1994. Development Betrayed: the End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future. London, Routledge. Chapters 3, 4, 14

Other readings:

A group of colleagues who work in Southeast Asia (particularly Kalimantan) have used a coevolutionary approach to analyzing forest use and traditional agriculture. Other examples are based on research in Africa and Latin America.

Dove, M.R. 1994. Transition from native forest rubbers to Hevea brasiliensis (Euphorbiaceae) among smallholders in Borneo. Economic Botany 48 382-396.

Dove, M.R. 1996. So far from power, so near to the forest: a structural analysis of gain and blame in tropical forest development. Pages 41 – 58 in C. Padoch and N.L. Peluso, editors, Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press.

Padoch, C., E. Harwell and A. Susanto. 1998. Swidden, sawah, and in-between: agricultural transformation in Borneo. Human Ecology 26:3-20.

Peluso, N.L. 1992. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java. Berkeley, University of California Press. Chapters 1, 2, 3

Peluso, N.L. and C. Padoch. 1996. Changing resource rights in managed forests of West Kalimantan. Pages 121 – 136 in C. Padoch and N.L. Peluso, editors, Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation, and Development. Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press.

Poffenberger, M. 1990. The evolution of management systems in Southeast Asia. Pages 7 – 26 in M. Poffenberger, editor, Keepers of the Forest: Land Management Alternatives in Southeast Asia. Manila, Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Richards, P. 1996. Fighting for the Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford, James Curry and Portsmouth, Heinemann. Chapter 3. The Making and Remaking of Forest Society.

Rival, L. 1996. Blowpipes and spears: the social significance of Huaorani technological choices. Pages 145 – 164 in G. Palsson and P. Descola, editors, Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London, Routledge.

Excerpts for discussion:

"Imagine that each subsystem of Figure 3.1 - values, knowledge, social organization, technology, and the environment - is composed of different "types" of ways of valuing, knowing, organizing, and doing things. Similarly the environmental subsystem consists of numerous different types of species and other natural characteristics as well as relationships between them. The dominance, or frequency, of each particular type in each subsystem is explained by its fitness with respect to the types of things in the other subsystems. Since the relative importance, or frequency distribution, of types results from selection processes, it is perhaps best to elaborate the process. Imagine a new type is introduced into one of the subsystems. For example, imagine that a new way of understanding, let us call it N for Newtonian, is transferred from Western culture into the knowledge subsystem of a heretofore un-westernized culture. The survival and relative importance of N will depend on the selective pressures from the other subsystems of this culture. If N does not fit, it will not survive in this culture. If N "fits," it will survive. If N fits better than other ways of knowing, it will replace them, or at least reduce their relative importance, and thereby increase its own dominance relative to others. If N survives it begins to put selective pressure on the components of the other subsystems and if N is increasing in dominance, it will exert more and more selective pressure on the relative dominance, or frequency distribution, of components within the other subsystems. With each subsystem applying selective pressure on each of the other subsystems, they all reflect each other."

"Environmental subsystems are treated symmetrically with the subsystems of values, knowledge, social organization, and technology in this coevolutionary explanation of history. New technologies exert new selective pressures on species; while transformed environments, in turn, select for different technologies. Similarly, transformed environments select for new ways of understanding environments. I admit that this is an unusual way to think about how people affect environmental systems. Our dominant reaction is to think of people as degrading environments rather than of changing the selective pressures within which species, relationships between species, and other factors prove fit or not. There need not, however, be a contradiction in these ways of thinking. To emphasize coevolutionary processes is not to deny that people directly intervene in and change the characteristics of environments. The coevolutionary perspective merely stresses the next step, how different states of the environment alter the selective pressure and hence the relative dominance of species and relationships between species thereafter."

From Norgaard, R.B. 1994. Development Betrayed: the End of Progress and a Coevolutionary Revisioning of the Future. Pages 35-36.

Examples:

The Totontepec Mixe live in the Sierra Norte Mountains in Oaxaca, Mexico. Traditional agriculturalists, they have a mixed subsistence and commercial economy. While they have been integrated into local and regional markets, they still depend on domesticated, managed and wild plants to a large extent.

The Mixe have traditionally used a variety of plants for soap:

Over the last few decades, alternatives to soap plants – detergents, soap and shampoo – have arrived in Totontepec. First through Zapotec traders, then through government programs and finally in stores in the town itself, these manufactured substitutes have essentially displaced the use of soap plants for most purposes.

How can this example illuminate a coevolutionary approach to ethnobotany?

Questions for discussion:

With a coevolutionary approach in mind, address the following issues:

• Is there a link between sustainable management of biodiversity and the persistence of traditional knowledge and subsistence systems?
• In a more general sense, are linguistic, cultural and biological diversity interrelated?

Exercise:

Apply Norgaard’s coevolutionary model to a specific ethnobotancical case study by considering the mutual interactions between environment, knowledge, technology, values and organization. Divides the following table into sections to be discussed in small groups. Give hypotheses of positive and negative feedbacks that could be tested in empirical research.

Interactions between environment, knowledge, technology, organization and values in a coevolutionary analysis of ethnobotany

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