Today, the conservation of biodiversity is a major international goal of policy makers and scientific researchers whose work informs policy. Increasingly, indigenous and folk knowledge of biodiversity is addressed as a significant source of insight into the ways in which ethnobotanical knowledge is not practically useful but constitutes intellectually coherent systems of knowledge. Critical analysis of biodiversity has shown that indigenous and folk ecological knowledge is gendarme to the survival of cultural identity as well as the broader biosystem and, in recent years, much attention has been drawn to the anthropogenic character of what were previously assumed to be natural features of the ecosystem. As the pressures on traditional and indigenous communities mount, the search for effective forms of documentation to support the study, conservation and transmission of indigenous knowledge is becoming increasingly urgent. This thesis explores and documents the folkecological knowledge ofthe people ofPedregal, an urban neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. It examines those domains and aspects of folkecological and folkbotanical knowledge that have persisted throughout the transformation of Pedregal from a rural hamlet to an urban neighbourhood exploring the effects of drastic social changes on the conservation and renewal of nature related systems of knowledge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:500023 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Leizaola, Ricardo |
| Publisher | Goldsmiths College (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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