Towards a cohesive and critical socio-ornithology for the Neotropics
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Date
2015
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Abstract
Bird-human relationships represent the complex linkage between biological and cultural diversity, and thus integrative but also critical approaches are needed for their effectiveconservation. The Neotropics is a vast ecozone including Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean, with the world’s greatest bird diversity and nearly 1,000 human languages. Neotropical languages and other cultural dimensions (e.g. ontology,medicine, food, politics, art) are inextricably linked to birds. This link is evident in the way that environmental (deforestation, desertification, urban sprawl) and social (poverty, inequalities, cultural erosion) problems synergistically impact avian and human communities. However, increasing academic ultra-specialization narrowly treats causes of environmental problems, and isolates their impacts over either bird or human communitieswithin the ecozone. We propose a cohesive and critical “socio-ornithology” that aims to (i) understand bird-human relationships as units comprising interconnected systems, and (ii) examine environmental problems drawing on critical stands from natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities (e.g. ecology, history, environmental education, ethnosciences, ontology, political ecology, arts). We provide cases from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and Latin American immigrants in North America, to illustrate how the analysis of the interwoven nature of bird-human relationships informs about multi-scale and multi-dimensional drivers impacting bird-people systems. We suggest that ornithologists working on conservation initiatives in the Neotropics require an interdisciplinary training with local relevance because of the reciprocal links between regional environmental and social problems.
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Keywords
Political Ecology, Biocultural Diversity, Environmental Anthropology, Environmental Sustainability, Neotropics, Socio-Ecological Systems, Ethnoornithology, Ornitología Neotropical