Biocultural ethics: Recovering the vital links between the inhabitants, their habits, and habitats

Environmental Ethics

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 27-50

  Rozzi, Ricardo ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS   (United States)

^b UNIVERSIDAD DE MAGALLANES   (Chile)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84875307698     PISSN: 01634275     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/enviroethics20123414     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. For a summary of the goals and presentation in the workshop, see Ricardo Rozzi, Juan J. Armesto, and Robert Frodeman, "Integrating Ecological Sciences and Environmental Ethics into Biocultural Conservation in South American Temperate Sub-Antarctic Ecosystems," Environmental Ethics 30, no. 3 (2008): 229-34 and other articles in the issue.
2. More than sixty percent of the plants named by people interviewed in Puerto Williams in the year 2000 were species that were exotic to the subantarctic ecoregion. For details on the study, see Ricardo Rozzi, Ximena Arango, Francisca Massardo, Christopher Anderson, Kurt Heidinger, and Kelli Moses, "Field Environmental Philosophy and Biocultural Conservation: The Omora Ethnobotanical Park Educational Program," Environmental Ethics 30, no. 3 (2008): 325-36.
3. See Ricardo Rozzi, Juan J. Armesto, Bernard Goffinet, William Buck, Francisca Massardo, John Silander, Mary Kalin-Arroyo, Shaun Russell, Christopher B. Anderson, Luis Cavieres, and J. Baird Callicott, "Changing Lenses to Assess Biodiversity: Patterns of Species Richness in Sub-Antarctic Plants and Implications for Global Conservation," Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 6 (2008): 131-37.
4. See Ricardo Rozzi and Francisca Massardo, "Implicancias ecológicas y sociales de la bioingeniería: un análisis desde el sur de Latinoamérica," in Teresa Kwiatkowska and Jorge Issa, eds., Ingeniería Genética y Ambiental: Problemas Filosóficos y Sociales (Mexico: Editorial Plaza y Valdes 2000), pp. 187-207.
5. For a more elaborated definition and specific cases of biocultural homogenization, see Ricardo Rozzi, Francisca Massardo, John Silander Jr., Christopher Anderson, and Andres Marin, "Conservación biocultural y ética ambiental en el extremo austral de América: oportunidades y dificultades para el bienestar ecosocial," in Eugenio Figueroa and Javier Simonetti, eds., Biodiversidad y Globalización (Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria, 2003), pp. 51-85.
6. For studies on biotic homogenization, see M. L. McKinney and J. Lockwood, "Biotic homogenization: A Few Winners Replacing Many Losers in the Next Mass Extinction," TREE 14 (1999): 450-53;
7. J. Olden and T. Rooney, "On Defining and Quantifying Biotic Homogenization," Global Ecology and Biogeography 15 (2006): 113-20.
8. For studies on linguistic and cultural homogenization see A. Petitat, "School and the Production of Society," British Journal of Sociology of Education 8 (1987): 379-90;
9. F. Rizvi and B. Lingard, "Globalization and Education: Complexities and Contingencies," Education Theory 50 (2000): 419-26;
10. J. R. Short, A. Boniche, Y. Kim, and P. Li, "Cultural Globalization, Global English, and Geography Journals," The Professional Geographer 53 (2001): 1-11.
11. Technosphere is a term coined by ecologist Zev Naveh. See his article "From Biodiversity to Ecodiversity: New Tools for Holistic Landscape Conservation," International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences 21 (1995): 1-16
12. Christopher Flavin, "Preface," in L. Starke, ed., State of the World 2007: Our Urban Future (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute 2007), pp. xxiii-xxv.
13. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision Population Database, United Nations, Population Division, New York (http://esa.un.org/unup).
14. See Sergio Guevara and Javier Laborde, "The Landscape Approach: Designing New Reserves for Protection of Biological and Cultural Diversity in Latin America," Environmental Ethics 30, no. 3 (2008): 251-62.
15. Data from Boletín Demográfico de enero de 2003, Santiago, Chile: CEPAL.
16. Cf. Ricardo Rozzi, "Ética ambiental: raíces y ramas latinoamericanas," in Richard Primack, Ricardo Rozzi, Peter Feinsinger, Rodolfo Dirzo, and Francisca Massardo, eds., Fundamentos de Conservación Biológica: Perspectivas Latinoamericanas (Mexico D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001), pp. 311-59.
17. Cf. Amos Nascimento, "Environmental Philosophy in Brazil? Theoretical and Practical Reflections on a South American Question," International Society for Environmental Ethics Newsletter 21, no. 1 (2010): 7-22.
18. Eliane Ceccon and Octavio Miramontes, "Mechanisms and Social Actors in the Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon," Interciencia 24, no. 2 (1999): 112-19.
19. See Isaías Tobasura Acuña, "Ambientalismos y Ambientalistas. El Ambientalismo Criollo a Finales del Siglo XX," Universidad de Caldas, Colombia, Cuadernos de Investigación, no 21 (2006).
20. Cf. Ricardo Rozzi, "Ética ambiental: raíces y ramas latinoamericanas," in Primack et al., Fundamentos de Conservación Biológica, p. 314.
21. An encompassing collection of essays about the interrelations between poverty and environment in Latin American countries is presented by Ernesto Hajek, ed., Pobreza y Medio Ambiente en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios sobre el Desarrollo Latinoamericano, 1995).
22. See Rozzi, "Ética ambiental.
23. See Gladys Parentelli, "Latin America's Poor Women," in Rosemary R. Ruether, ed., Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996), pp. 29-38.
24. Ivonne Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 1999);
25. Ricardo Rozzi "South America Environmental Ethics," in J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman, eds., Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (Detroit: Cengage Learning, 2008), vol. 2, pp. 262-68.
26. Cf. Peter Feinsinger, Laura Margutti, and Ramona Oviedo, "Schoolyards and Nature Trails: Ecology Education Outside the University," Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12 (1997): 115-120;
27. Carl Leopold, "Living with the Land Ethic," BioScience 54 (2004): 149-154;
28. Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (New York: Algonquin Books, 2005).
29. Paul M. Lewis, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16th ed. (Dallas, Tex.: SIL International 2009). Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.
30. Ethnologue Online (http://www.ethnologue.com).
31. Cf. Michael Krauss "The World's Languages in Crisis," Language 68 (1992): 4-10;
32. Luisa Maffi, ed., On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language, Knowledge, and the Environment (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001).
33. Cf. Luisa Maffi, "Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity," Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 599-617.
34. See Manuel Lizarralde, "Biodiversity and Loss of Indigenous Languages and Knowledge in South America," in Luisa Maffi, ed., On Biocultural Diversity: Linking Language, Knowledge, and the Environment (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), pp. 265-81.
35. See Rozzi et al., "Conservación biocultural y ética ambiental.
36. One major step toward multilinguism is represented by the creation of the "Dirección General de Educación Indígena" (General Division of Indigenous Education) in Mexico in 1973.
37. The Mexican educational law of 1973 recognized fifty-six indigenous languages, and stated explicitly that the teaching of Spanish should not occur to the detriment of the linguistic and cultural identities of indigenous school children. Similar educational reforms have taken place in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. However, multilingual indigenous education reaches only a minimal fraction of the indigenous populations, and it is restricted almost exclusively to primary education. See "La educación intercultural bilingüe en América Latina: balance y perspectivas," by Luis Enrique López and Wolfang Küper, Revista Iberoamericana de Educación 20 (1999): 17-85.
38. The prevalence of economic language does not only affect Latin America. See Eugene Hargrove, "A Traditional and Multicultural Approach to Environmental Ethics at Primary and Secondary School Levels," Environmental Ethics 30 (2008): 263-71.
39. See the rich series of books, The Folk Literature of South American Indians, which encompasses ecological narratives of thirty-one indigenous cultures, edited by UCLA anthropologist Johannes Wilbert, and published by the University of California Press. For a worldwide picture of ecological worldviews, see J. Baird Callicott, Earth's Insights: A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
40. Quote from "Historia Política de Chile y su Evolución Electoral (desde 1810 hasta 1992)" by Germán Urzúa Valenzuela (Santiago: Editorial Jurídica de Chile, 1992). In his book, the lawyer Urzúa Valenzuela also refers to similar cases in other Latin American countries ruled by military dictatorships. He cites Edgar Montiel, Peruvian philosopher and economist, writing that "The lack of culture of the dictators is as grotesque as dramatic. Alejo Carpentier told us that the dictator Machado (1928) had ordered to confiscate 'red books'; well, among the confiscated books . . . was Red and Black by Stendahl, The Knight of Maison-Rouge: A Novel of Marie Antoinette or The Knight of the Red House by Alexander Dumas, The Red Lily by Anatole France. . . . The Red Hood. And they forgave as a "religious book" The Holy Family by Engels. . . . Fifty years later the sinister intelligence services ordered to collect all the literature about 'cubism,' because as they said, it was about a movement of 'Castrist painters'" (p. 716). Regarding Chile, Urzúa Valenzuela emphasizes that "the national authorities appointed by Pinochet, tried to fight "the Marxists" going to the source of Marxist literature in any possible way; that is, they stated the destruction of all that "on their judgment, have the serious transgression to be a political thought." Among many examples, registered how "until 11 September 1973 [military coup date]. The School of Administrative and Political Sciences (Escuela de Ciencias Políticas y Administrativas) was part of the Faculty of Law of the University of Chile (Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Chile). Immediately after the military coup, this school was part of the Economy School (Escuela de Economía), and its just appointed dean ordered the total destruction of all books with some relation with politics. . ." (p. 715). Then, he adds that "the main danger from an imposed politic come from forced or voluntary, censure coming not only from the media (radio, television, press), but from the close of mind the Chilean people was forced over him or herself trying, at least, to survive. Consequently, during many years they could not express themselves, not even in the family circle, afraid of denunciation" (p. 716).
41. For the case of Brazil, see Nascimento, "Environmental Philosophy in Brazil?
42. See, for example, the prevalence of European authors and the history of the "universal philosophy" in the curricula of the undergraduate and graduate programs in philosophy in the Chilean universities, compiled on one of their web pages (http://www.filosofiaenchile.org/dondeestudiar.htm).
43. Latin-American authors that have shaped philosophical proposals for regional contexts-starting with anthropological philosophy, Marxist critique, and the rediscovery of geocultural identity-have been left out or relegated to a marginal position in philosophy programs in the main Chilean universities (also Argentinean universities). Foundational works such as Félix Schwartzman, El sentimiento de lo humano en América (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1950)
44. Rodolfo Kusch, América Profunda (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1963)
45. Geocultura del Hombre Americano (San Antonio de Padua, Argentina: Editorial Castañeda, 1976) are not included in these programs. It is necessary to point out, nevertheless, that these works and those of other Latin-American thinkers are studied with growing interest in interdisciplinary programs, such as post-colonial studies in the Latin-American Studies Program of the University of Chile (Postgrado de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de Chile); the project about ethics, modernization and social control in the Bío-Bío Region in the Master Program in Western History of the University of Bío-Bío; or the field environmental philosophy program associated to the Master Program in Subantarctic Biocultural Conservation at the University of Magallanes, Chile.
46. Santiago Castro-Gómez in La Postcolonialidad Explicada a los Niños (Popayán, Colombia: Universidad del Cauca-Instituto Pensar, 2005), p. 63 (English translation by Ricardo Rozzi).
47. See also Santiago Castro-Gómez, La Hybris del Punto Cero: Ciencia, Raza e Ilustración en la Nueva Granada (1750-1816) (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2005).
48. See Rozzi, "Ética ambiental," pp. 311-59.
49. Ricardo Rozzi, Peter Feinsinger, and Roxana Riveros, Enseñanza de la Ecología en el Entorno Cotidiano (Santiago, Chile: Ministerio de Educación de Chile, 1997).
50. See H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (New York: Oxford Press, 1996).
51. See also Juliana Gonzalez, El Ethos: Destino del Hombre (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), pp. 9-12.
52. Juliana Gonzalez, El Ethos.
53. See also Todd Frobish, "An Origin of a Theory: A Comparison of Ethos in the Homeric Iliad with that Found in Aristotle's Rethoric," Retoric Review 22 (2003): 16-30.
54. For a concise historical account of the meaning of the term ethos in the pre-Aristotelian period, see Shirley Darcus, "Daimon as a Force in Shaping Ethos in Heraclitus," Phoenix 28 (1974): 390-407.
55. See Simonides' Danae fragment (543.8-9 PMG) and Solon's passage (24.13-14D = 36 West), both quoted in Darcus, "Daimon as a Force in Shaping Ethos in Heraclitus," p. 391.
56. Darcus, "Daimon as a Force in Shaping Ethos in Heraclitus," p. 393.
57. See the analysis of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics by Arthur Miller in "Aristotle on Habit and Character: Implications for the Rethoric," Speech Monographs 41 (1974): 309-16.
58. See Michael Halloran, "Aristotle's Concept of Ethos, or if not his Somebody Else's," Retoric Review 1 (1982): 58-63, who highlights Aristotle's focus on the polis as the milieu where habits are cultivated.
59. As much as in the early meanings of ethos, this modern ecological-evolutionary translation of the Greek concept applies to both animals and humans. For example, a woodpecker can only perform its habit of pecking wood where there are trees to peck. The trees will have holes that will provide nesting and roosting habitat to the woodpecker and other bird species only if the woodpecker performs its pecking habit. Hence, a series of reciprocal links are established between the habits, the habitats, and the community of co-inhabitants. Moreover, the identity or "character" of the woodpecker emerges through the habit of pecking performed in a woody habitat. As much as under an Aristotelian ethics, the lyre players need a lyre to cultivate their habit, under an ecological perspective, the woodpeckers need the woods to cultivate their habits. The reciprocal links between habits or behavior and the habitats where they take place have been recently emphasized in ecological sciences by the concepts of "extended phenotype" and "niche construction," which have also been integrated in theories of human biological and cultural evolution. For a concise account, see Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, and Marcus W. Feldman, "Niche Construction, Biological Evolution, and Cultural Change," Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2000): 131-75.
60. Nowadays the Pewenche collect these large cones using ropes, which they throw like lassos in order to bring the cones down from the top of the trees. Pewenche people eat the seeds or ngülliw raw, toasted, heated in the ash of the fire, and boiled. See Alberto Tacón, "Recolección de piñón y conservación de la Araucaria (Araucaria araucana, Mol. Koch.): Un estudio de caso en la comunidad de Quyinquen" (Master's thesis, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile, 1999).
61. See also Ricardo Rozzi and Francisca Massardo, "The Road to Biocultural Ethics," Frontiers in Ecology 9 (2011): 246-47.
62. See David Aagesen, "Indigenous Resource Rights and Conservation of the Monkey-Puzzle Tree (Araucaria araucana, Araucariaceae): A Case Study from Southern Chile," Economic Botany 52 (1998): 146-60.
63. Cf. Ricardo Rozzi and Francisca Massardo, "Similitudes y diferencias interculturales en las éticas ambientales," in Primack et al., Fundamentos de Conservación Biológica, pp. 319-321.
64. Thora Martina Herrmann, "Indigenous Knowledge and Management of Araucaria Araucana Forest in the Chilean Andes: Implications for Native Forest Conservation," Biodiversity and Conservation 15 (2006): 654-55.
65. Luis Suárez and Doris Ortiz, "Producción de camarones y destrucción de manglares en Ecuador," in Primack et al., Fundamentos de Conservación Biológica, pp. 195-97.
66. Joan Martinez-Alier, "Ecological Conflicts and Valuation: Mangroves versus Shrimps in the Late 1990s," Environment and Planning C 19 (2001): 715-16.
67. Cf. Suárez and Ortiz, "Producción de camarones y destrucción de manglares en Ecuador," n. 24.
68. Cf. Verónica Mera, Género, Manglar y Subsistencia (Quito, Ecuador: Ediciones Abya-yala, 1999).
69. Cf. Mike Hagler, "Shrimp-The Devastating Delicacy," Greenpeace Reports, May 1997 (http://archive.greenpeace.org/oceans/shrimpaquaculture/ shrimpreport.html).
70. See Ricardo Rozzi, "Filosofía Ambiental Latinoamericana, " in Enrique Dussel, Eduardo Mendieta, and Carmen Bohórquez, eds., El Pensamiento Filosófico Latinoamericano, del Caribe y 'Latino' (1300-2000): Historia, Corrientes, Temas y Filósofos (México, D.F.: Siglo XXI, 2010) pp. 434-45.
71. Cf. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970);
72. Enrique Dussell, Liberation Philosophy (New York: Orbis Books, 1980);
73. Leonardo Boff and Jum Cumming, Ecology and Liberation (New York: Orbis Books, 1995).
74. Cf. J. Baird Callicott, Earth's Insights: A Survey of Ecological Ethics from the Mediterranean Basin to the Australian Outback (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
75. Stuart Chapin, Mary Power, Steward T. A. Pickett et al., "Earth Stewardship: A Framework to Transform the Trajectory of Society's Relationship to the Biosphere," Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences White Paper, no. 9, Ecological Society of America, 2010 (http://www.esa.org/ earthstewardship/files/SBEWhitePaper9-29%20ESA.pdf).
76. See Ricardo Rozzi and collaborators, "Field Environmental Philosophy and Biocultural Conservation at the Omora Ethnobotanical Park: Methodological Approaches to Broaden the Ways of Integrating the Social Component ("S") in Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) Sites," Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 83 (2010): 27-68.
77. The field environmental philosophy methodology is described in greater detail in Ricardo Rozzi, Juan Armesto, Julio Gutiérrez, Francisca Massardo, Gene Likens, Christopher Anderson, Alexandria Poole, Kelli Moses, Eugene Hargrove, Andrés Mansilla, James Kennedy, Mary Wilson, Kurt Jax, Clive Jones, J. Baird Callicott, and Mary Kalin, "Integrating Ecology and Environmental Ethics: Earth Stewardship in the Southern End of the Americas," BioScience 62 (2012): 226-36.
78. The multiple scale approach of the Omora Ethnobotanical Park and the Sub-Antarctic Biocultural Conservation Program is described in detail in Rozzi and collaborators, "Field Environmental Philosophy and Biocultural Conservation.
79. Rozzi et al., "Changing Lenses to Assess Biodiversity";
80. Bernard Goffinet, Ricardo Rozzi, Lily Lewis, William Buck, and Francisca Massardo, The Miniature Forests of Cape Horn: Eco-Tourism with a Hand-lens ("Los Bosques en Miniatura del Cabo de Hornos: Ecoturismo con Lupa"), bilingual English-Spanish ed. (Denton, Tex.: UNT Press and Punta Arenas, Chile: Ediciones Universidad de Magallanes, 2012).
81. Field environmental philsophy has been incorporated as a methodology in graduate programs, which requires students and other participants to work through an interrelated a four-step cycle of (i) interdisciplinary ecological, ethno-ecological and philosophical research; (ii) composition of metaphors and communication through narratives; (iii) field activities guided with an ecological and ethical orientation, having the experience of direct or "face-to-face" encounters with human and other-than-human beings in their habitats; and (iv) implementation of areas for in situ biocultural conservation, to protect native habitats, to enable visitors to observe and enjoy these habitats, and to foster in the participants a sense of responsibility as ecologically and ethically educated citizens. See a more detailed description of the cycle in Rozzi et al., "Integrating Ecology and Environmental Ethics.