Thinking Ecographically: Places, Ecographers, and Environmentalism

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Halvaksz, Jamon Alex
  • Young-Leslie, Heather E.

• The literature on environment-animal-human relations, place, and space, tends to emphasize cultural differences between global interests and local environmental practices. While this literature contributes substantially to our understanding of resource management, traditional ecological knowledge, and environmental protection, the work of key persons imbricated in both global and local positions has been elided. In this article, we propose a theory of “ecographers” as individuals particularly positioned to relate an indigenous epistemology of the local environment with reference to traditional and introduced forms of knowledge, practice, and uses of places, spaces, and inter-species relationships. We ground our analysis in ethnographic research among two Pacific communities, but draw parallels with individuals from varied ethnographic and environmental settings. This new concept offers a powerful cross-cultural approach to ecological strategizing relationships; one grounded by local yet globally and historically inflected agents of the present.

• Date created

  2008-09-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Anthropology
  • Culture-Brokers
  • Ecographers
  • Tonga
  • Cross-cultural analysis
  • indigenous epistemology
  • animal-human relations
  • resource management
  • Mining
  • Ethnography
  • Environmentalism
  • Pacific
  • multi-species relations
  • traditional ecological knowledge
  • Ecography
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Fishing
  • Tonga
  • Oceania
  • Papua New Guinea
  • Pacific

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3FX74D4T

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International