The road to biocultural ethics
Date: May 2011
Creator: Rozzi, Ricardo, 1960- & Massardo, Francisca
Description: This article discusses the road to biocultural ethics. As a child, Ricardo Rozzi visited indigenous communities in the high Andes with his grandfather and was enchanted by their close relationship with the natural world. Later, he and his wife would return to the region to explore the traditional ecological knowledge of the world's southernmost indigenous people.
Contributing Partner: UNT College of Arts and Sciences
Permallink:digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc130193/
Biocultural Ethics: Recovering the Vital Links between the Inhabitants, Their Habits, and Habitats
Date: 2012
Creator: Rozzi, Ricardo, 1960-
Description: This article discusses biocultural ethics. Abstract: Biocultural homogenization involves three major drivers: (a) the physical barrier to everyday contact with biodiversity derived from the rapid growth of urban population, (b) the conceptual barrier derived from the omission in formal and non-formal education of native languages that contain a broad spectrum of traditional ecological knowledge and values, and (c) political barriers associated with the elimination or reduction of the teaching of ethics under the prevailing neoliberal economy governance since the 1960s. Biocultural ethics aims at overcoming these barriers by recovering the vital links between biological and cultural diversity, between the habits and the habitats of the inhabitants. These links are acknowledged by early Western philosophy. Amerindian traditional ecological knowledge, and contemporary ecological and evolutionary sciences, but have been lost in prevailing modern ethics. There is an overlooked diversity of forms of knowing and inhabiting regional ecosystems, each of them having diverse environmental and social consequences. A better understanding of the regionally diverse mosaics of ecosystems, languages, and cultures facilitates the distinction of specific causes and responsible agents of environmental problems, and the disclosure of sustainable practices, forms of ecological knowledge and values that offer already existing options to solve socio-ecological problems.
Contributing Partner: UNT College of Arts and Sciences
Permallink:digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc130202/