Ecological Literacy - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 147

What is 'traditional' about traditional knowledge is not its antiquity, but the way
it is acquired and used. In other words, the social process of learning and sharing
knowledge. . . Much of this knowledge is quite new, but it has a social meaning,
and legal character, entirely unlike other knowledge. 1
An acquisition process such as this inevitably leads to greater diversity of
cultures, languages and stories about land and nature because close
observation of one set of local circumstances leads to divergence from
those responding to another set of conditions. The critical elements of
knowledge for sustainability can be defined as follows: its local legitimacy;
its creation and recreation; its adaptive quality; and its embedded nature
in social processes. This knowledge ties people to the land and to one
another. Therefore, when landscape is lost, it is not just a habitat or feature.
It is the meaning for some people's lives. Such knowledges are often
embedded in cultural and religious systems, giving them strong legitimacy.
Knowledge and understanding take time to build, though they can rapidly
be lost. Writing of American geographies, author Barry Lopez says: 'To
come to a specific understanding. . . requires not only time but a kind of local expertise,
an intimacy with a place few of us ever develop. There is no way round the former require-
ment: if you want to know you must take the time. It is not in topics.' 2
This desire for intimacy with specific landscapes lies deep within us.
For some, it involves getting away from the city lights to walk the ploughed
fields of winter, crows cawing overhead, or to step across a glacier in the
piercing mountain air, or to pause in a sun-pocked clearing deep in myster-
ious woodlands. For others, it is the intimacy of the daily connection -
with cattle that need milking every morning, or the urban park strolled
through on the way to work, or the flocks of birds feeding in a back garden.
Put together, these link us to a deep and, sadly, often unrecognized con-
nection with whole landscapes. But when these connections are diminished
- by modern farming that takes away the hedgerows or trees, or by
sprawling suburban settlements - then this intimacy is lost. People stop
caring, and the consequences are troublesome. Lopez put it this way: 'If
a society forgets or no longer cares where it lives, then anyone with the political power and
the will to do so can manipulate the landscape to conform to certain social ideals or nostalgic
visions. People may hardly notice that anything has happened.' When the people who
are intimate with the land go, the landscape no longer has any defenders.
Again, Lopez identifies the crucial issue: 'Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, while
American society continues to value local knowledge, it continues to cut such people off from
any political power. This is as true of small farmers and illiterate cowboys as it is for
American Indians, Hawaiians and Eskimos.'
What happens when you ask people in a locality about what is special
to them? We use this question as the starting point when interviewing