Hi everyone,
here’s my abstract– would love to see you and get your feedback
The role of children’s lived experience in changing human ecologies of the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico
I present an ethnographic perspective of children as important actors in the ecological processes of landscape use, landscape management, and landscape interpretation over time. I argue that children’s ecological practice and knowledge construction represent a central locus for change and continuity in complex human ecosystems. I report here on a study of Rarámuri children’s perceptions of and interactions with their local landscapes, discussed in the context of their elders’ recollections of ecological learning and Rarámuri epistemologies. I discuss livestock caretaking, map-making, play, family networks and spiritual practices as sites for learning ecological principles and Rarámuri environmental practices in rapidly changing political and biological landscapes. I explore how human ecosystem perspectives can inform and be informed by historical ecology—particularly, in the contributions of social-political events, contexts and continuities to landscapes, and in applying sophisticated understandings of social and biophysical interactions through time. This research contributes to a larger goal of developing ecological, interactionist models linking individual learning, landscapes, and community processes of change.