Cultural knowledge and its repercussions on the use of natural resources

Abstract

The present work results from a study on a set of socio-cultural practices that inform the daily life of an island community, whose existence of ancestral territoriality is effective through a diversity of local cultural knowledge. It aims at knowledge, the understanding of this knowledge that is built and / or experienced in the daily lives of men and women in their relationship with biodiversity. It assumes that the majority of rural-riverside communities in the context of the Amazon of Pará, although they face a reality marked by adverse conditions on a daily basis, build social strategies that guarantee their material and symbolic reproduction in relation to nature. It was guided by the following context-question: How is the relationship established between the local knowledge that dynamizes the daily social practices of an ancestral territoriality and the processes of appropriation and use of natural resources and what effects do they have for the realization of more sustainable perspectives locally and valuing biodiversity? It encompasses Colares Island, a typical place in the Paraense Amazon, whose plurality of identity welcomes singular marks of pre-defined places due to the existence of mangroves, forests, streams, rivers, in the state of Pará. It used socio-historical research procedures, such as the narrative with the use of semi-structured interview. It is theoretically based on sources of study that deal with and reflect on the possibilities of building new epistemologies, that account for local cultural knowledge and practices. The results show a series of socio-environmental problems; the local concern with maintaining good environmental conditions; of a vast knowledge of uses of medicinal plants and herbs, among others. We conclude that based on local knowledge, they develop socio-environmental practices that seek to give local sustainability and continuity to their ways of life and customs.