Lecture | Dan Weiskopf | The Myth of Natural Categories: Representing and Coordinating Ethnobiological Knowledge

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Groups adopt strikingly different attitudes and practices centered on how humans and other living beings relate to their environment. These bodies of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) have been the focus of extensive research in ethnobiology. Understanding TEK is important both theoretically and for advancing political projects such as ecological conservation and cooperative resource management. However, attempts to integrate insights from TEK with scientific biological thought often misconstrue its content and function. Ethnobiology frequently represents TEK as a cultural module that can be cleanly separated from religious, symbolic, or mythic beliefs, rites and practices, and material culture. Drawing on case studies of Indigenous botanical and zoological TEK, I argue that knowledge of the natural world does not constitute a cultural domain that can be carved off and represented in isolation. This claim is bolstered by psychological studies of belief in ritual efficacy and causal explanations of natural phenomena. In everyday cognition, natural and “supernatural” ontologies are thoroughly entwined. I propose some heuristics for advancing piecemeal ontological coordination among Indigenous stakeholders, ethnobiologists, and conservationists. These heuristics aim at facilitating cooperation while preserving difference across systems of knowledge and value.

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