User:Physis/Hunter-gatherer cultures and ecology

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I have thought of three improvements of Shamanism#Ecological aspect:

  1. The explanations can be extended and verbatim quotations can be presented. The section is based Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff's works, see references.
  2. Although I cannot check personally the fieldwork done by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, but there is a possibility to compare his work with other fieldworks done among Tukano people. I think of the books of an author pair Hugh-Jones.[1][2] (It can be a problem that the author pair had already to face with deteriorating of traditional culture. I have not read these two books yet, just seen a mentioning about them (and a very positive critic) by Edmund Leach.[3]
  3. I admit, at least one critic should be added. I think of The Golden Age That Never Was thought of Jared Diamond.[4][5]

Contents

[edit] Terminological critic

I am interested in the example You wrote about. Can You give some details? Now I think of that

  • what You write suggests that they were not a hunter-gatherer people.
  • If this is an African example, it can be debated that it can be termed correctly as "shamanistic". Mediums (incapable of control over their spirits, and lacking soul travel of their own) are in generally not termed as "shaman"s in the literature (although Huxley & Narby seems to challenge this distinction as definition of shamanism[6]). Till now, I found that in Africa, it is Bushmen who are mentioned as an example having some similarities to shamanism (travel of the soul, maintaining control over spirits). Your example seems to be rather a pastoralist example (I admit, also Bushmen have pastoralist language relatives: also Hottentots belong to Khoisan, and anyway, there can be other cultures in Africa that can be termed as "shamanistic" after careful examination).

[edit] Philosophy of science

You mentioned a shaman is not a scientist. I suppose (from Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff's book) he simply uses his phronesis, establishes practical rules (restricts exploitation if it seems that searching of resource begins to require longer and longer times), and there are patterns of restrictions embedded in the tradition. Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff also mentions the possiblity of abstraction and philospohy,[7] use of model, exact knowledge of ecological and physiological causes behind the mythological explanation.[8]

[edit] Calendar among hunter-gatherers

As for tradition, his example, the association of hunting seasons of various species to the visibility of their corresponding constellations, surely enables even an oral culture to manage a seasonal pattern of arranging restrictions and exploitation. The ways hunter-gather peoples mimic a written calendar are marvelous: clever associations of signs (appearance or disappearance of various species, constellations etc.) to seasons, see examples in among Australian Aborigines,[9] but also Siberian Yupik[10]and Caribou Eskimo[11] month names are referring to clues of natural phenomena.

[edit] Other authors

This ecologist-aspect of shaman seems to be mentioned also by other authors,[12][13] but I admit the given details are not large enough to explain them in a thoroughly convincing manner. Thus Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff remains my primary reference, and Jared Diamond seems to be a primary critic.

[edit] Critic

I feel that Diamond's several examples are not hunter-gatherers, and the hunter-gatherers he mentions are arriving in a new territory (invasion of man into the virgin Americas through the Bering Strait). I suspect hunter-gatherers with an established local knowledge and presence have time to work out practical rules (possibly embedded in the belief system) to restrict exploitation. Maybe Marshall Sahlin's Stone Age Economics will be a good source for that, but I have read it only ten years ago, I must re-read it.[14]

[edit] Game theory

Although it is indeed an interesting question how the shaman gets his knowledge (and what kind of knowledge he has), but it is no less important question how he enforces the restrictions. Lack of knowledge is not the only cause of ecological disasters: as we know from the game theory, people are not immune to social traps automatically. Examples like prisoner's dilemma, and tragedy of commons reveal that people can cause disasters even if everybody knows exactly that his deed is not good. The shaman's achievement is not only that he foresees depletion of resources (sometimes this may be rather evident), the main point is that he is able to make people change the behavior. The mythical belief that "overhunting may cause illness for the hunter in a magical way" may be able to enforce some coordinated self-restriction even in societies without state and central power.

[edit] Cooperation

I admit that Reichel-Dolmatoff is not an ecologist/biologist himself, he is an anthropologist, but he has done thorough fieldwork, and he has proposed the collaboration of biologists and anthropologists:[15]

“ Up to this point, I have been writing this article as a humanist, as an intellectual, as an anthropologist who is profoundly concerned about the future of the Indians and their natural environment. But now I shall begin to write as a rationalist too: as a person who is acutely aware of the realities of our present times, and who knows that the future lies in the hands of the intelligentsia, of the technologists and bureaucrats. It is they who have the power, and according to them the Indians are primitives who have to be integrated; according to them, nature is something that has to he exploited for the benefit of man.

We may know that we need the Indians; we may know that the ruthless exploitation of natural resources has limits; but the leading intelligentsia and their development agencies recognise no limits to their all-embracing technology. We have to be realistic, and accept the fact that the Indian world is on the wane. The Amazon basin and many, many other, formerly remote, regions of the Third World are being opened to outside influences and to technological development. In some regions this process will be slower and less turbulent than in others; some aboriginal societies will he able to re-adapt, but others will become profoundly modified, and some will perish altogether, biologically, culturally, linguistically. As anthropologists and biologists, we know only too well that these changes are part of the historical scheme of things.

These are disturbing thoughts, to say the least, and I wish I could be more positive when thinking of the future of rainforest Indians and aboriginal peoples in general. But in fifty years, I have seen too many traditions being lost; I have seen entire tribes disappear; I have seen too much misery among gentle, helpless people.

Although I know that the Indians' world is on the wane, I believe that this knowledge does not exempt us from certain obligations. So, here, I shall attempt to suggest a few approaches to these problems; I shall try to make an effort to envisage a better future for the Indians, by suggesting a few personal ideas.

In the first place, I think we should make a combined effort to study the Indians' knowledge of their biotype, taking into account not only our, but above all their, concepts of ecosystems. Every square kilometre of forest contains a library of important biological, cultural and psychological information, and if we study it in the company of the Indians our insights in all these fields will be enormously enriched. The death of an old Indian who never had the chance to share with us his knowledge of the forest and the river is the equivalent of a whole library disappearing. If we undertake this study alone, we will get a mere inventory but if we work together with the Indians our insights will be greatly enriched by a kind of knowledge which, at present, still lies beyond our experience. For 500 years we have witnessed and played along with, the destruction of the Indians; now we are witnessing the destruction of the natural habitat. What are we waiting for?

There can also be no doubt that as anthropologists, biologists and ecologists we possess an enormous amount of information, or practical field experience, and of the many forms of human vulnerability and of the destruction of the natural environment. By transforming this information into practical knowledge, in a manner that would make it understandable and convincing to national leaders and planning agencies, we can influence the process of decision-making; we can convince those in power of the biological and social necessity to conserve these lands; and we can convince them of the dignity and value of our Indian societies.

It is not sufficient to say that what we owe to the Indians is potatoes, maize and quinine. It is not sufficient to retell their myths and tales in florid Portuguese or Spanish or to stage their dances in a pseudo-Indian setting on television. What we must show is the Indian's philosophy of life, their cosmogonic and cosmological schemes, their ethical and aesthetical attitudes. What we must show is their courage of choice, their option of other ways of life, different from ours; the courage and genius of having built their societies, their cultures based upon an astonishing combination of realism and imagery.

 ”

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Hugh-Jones 1980a
  2. ^ Hugh-Jones 1980b
  3. ^ Leach 1982
  4. ^ Diamond
  5. ^ The Golden Age That Never Was
  6. ^ Huxley & Narby
  7. ^ Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997: 8
  8. ^ Reichel-Dolmatoff 1997: 18
  9. ^ Elkin
  10. ^ Меновщиков 1962: 94 (= § 65)
  11. ^ Gabus 1970: 172–173
  12. ^ Hoppál
  13. ^ Boglár 2001: 26
  14. ^ Sahlin
  15. ^ Reichel-Dolmatoff 1999: 279–280

[edit] References

[edit] Latin

  • Boglár, Lajos (2001). A kultúra arcai. Mozaikok a kulturális antropológia köreiből, TÁRStudomány (in Hungarian). Budapest: Napvilág Kiadó. ISBN 963 908294 5.  The title means “The faces of culture. Mosaics fom the area of cultural anthropology”.
  • Diamond, Jared. "The Golden Age that never was", in The Third Chimpanzee.
  • Elkin, Adolphus Peter. The Australian Aborigines.
  • The Golden Age That Never Was
  • Gabus, Jean (1970). A karibu eszkimók (in Hungarian). Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó.  Translation of the original: Gabus, Jean (1944). Vie et coutumes des Esquimaux Caribous (in French). Libraire Payot Lausanne. 
  • Hoppál, Mihály: Nature worship in Siberian shamanism
  • Hugh-Jones, Christine (1980). From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. 
  • Hugh-Jones, Stephen (1980). The Palm and the Pleiades. Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge University Press. 
  • Leach, Edmund (1982). Social Anthropology. Glasgow: Fontana Paperbacks. 
  • Huxley & Narby. Shamanism.
  • Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1997). "Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: A View from the Rainforest", Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano Indians of the Northwest Amazon. Dartington: Themis Books, 7–20. ISBN 0-9527302-4-3. 
  • Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1997). "Desana Animal Categories, Food Restrictions, and the Concept of Color Energies", Rainforest Shamans: Essays on the Tukano Indians of the Northwest Amazon. Dartington: Themis Books, 23–75. ISBN 0-9527302-4-3. 
  • Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (July 1999). "A View from the Headwaters". The Ecologist 29 (4). 
  • Sahlin, Marshal. Stone Age Economics.

[edit] Cyrillic

  • Меновщиков, Г.А. (1962). Грамматиκа языка азиатских эскимосов. Часть первая (in Russian). Москва • Ленинград,: Академия Наук СССР. Институт языкознания.  The transliteration of author's name, and the rendering of title in English: Menovshchikov, G.A. (1962). Grammar of the language of Asian Eskimos. Vol. I.. Moscow • Leningrad: Academy of Sciences of the USSR.