Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity
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AR254-AN34-29 ARI 7 September 2005 21:35 Linguistic, Cultural, and Biological Diversity Luisa Maffi Terralingua, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia V8K 2N6, Canada; email: maffi@terralingua.org Annu. Rev. Anthropol. Key Words 2005. 29:599–617 linguistic diversity, cultural diversity, biodiversity, biocultural First published online as a Review in Advance on diversity June 28, 2005 Abstract The Annual Review of Anthropology is online at Over the past decade, the field of biocultural diversity has arisen anthro.annualreviews.org as an area of transdisciplinary research concerned with investigat- doi: 10.1146/ ing the links between the world’s linguistic, cultural, and biologi- annurev.anthro.34.081804.120437 by 142.173.101.138 on 10/09/05. For personal use only. cal diversity as manifestations of the diversity of life. The impetus Copyright c 2005 by for the emergence of this field came from the observation that all Annual Reviews. All rights three diversities are under threat by some of the same forces and reserved from the perception that loss of diversity at all levels spells dramatic 0084-6570/05/1021- consequences for humanity and the earth. Accordingly, the field of Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:599-617. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org 0599$20.00 biocultural diversity has developed with both a theoretical and a practical side, the latter focusing on on-the-ground work and policy, as well as with an ethics and human rights component. This review provides some background on the historical antecedents and begin- nings of this field and on its philosophical and ethical underpinnings, and then surveys the key literature on biocultural diversity, concen- trating on three main aspects: global and regional studies on the links between linguistic, cultural, and biological diversity; the mea- surement and assessment of biocultural diversity; and the protection and maintenance of biocultural diversity. The review concludes with some considerations about future prospects for this emerging field. 599 AR254-AN34-29 ARI 7 September 2005 21:35 quences of loss of these interlinked diversities; Contents (c) approaches to the joint maintenance and revitalization of biocultural diversity; and (d) INTRODUCTION................. 600 development of the related aspects of human HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS . 600 rights. DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENT This review first outlines the history of the LINES OF RESEARCH ......... 601 field’s emergence and then appraises various PHILOSOPHICAL AND aspects of the relevant body of literature. ETHICAL UNDERPINNINGS . 602 LINGUISTIC AND BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY: GLOBAL AND HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS REGIONAL STUDIES .......... 604 Parallels and affinities between evolutionary MEASURING AND ASSESSING biology and historical linguistics and between BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY. 610 languages and species were already drawn by PROTECTING AND Charles Darwin (in both his Origin of Species MAINTAINING and The Descent of Man; Darwin 1859, 1871) BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY. 612 and commented on by linguist August Schle- FUTURE PROSPECTS ............ 612 icher in Darwinism Tested by the Science of Lan- guage (Schleicher 1863), although such re- marks soon led to a reaction in linguistics against what was interpreted as a likening INTRODUCTION of languages to natural organisms. Analogies If the 1980s might be remembered as the between languages and species became dis- decade of biodiversity—in which the term credited and were relegated to the shelves of biodiversity was coined to call attention to the misconceived ideas until recently. massive, human-made extinction crisis threat- As for the links between language and the ening the diversity of life in nature—then the environment, interest in this topic has prece- 1990s might be dubbed the decade of biocul- dents in the history of anthropology. In the tural diversity—when the concept of an in- North American anthropological tradition, timate link between biological, cultural, and the study of Native American languages nat- linguistic diversity was put forth and its im- urally led to such interest, as linguistic an- by 142.173.101.138 on 10/09/05. For personal use only. plications for life in both nature and culture thropologists such as Boas, Sapir, and Whorf began to be explored. By the mid-2000s, a were struck by the elaborate ways in which small but significant body of literature on bio- indigenous languages encoded and invento- cultural (or, in a less widespread version, bi- ried, among other things, the characteristics olinguistic) diversity has accumulated, and a of the local landscape and its flora and fauna. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:599-617. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org related field of both scholarly research and In particular, Sapir noted that language bears practical applications is emerging. “the stamp of the physical environment in The main foci of this emerging field are which the speakers are placed” while reflect- as follows: (a) the parallels and correlations ing “the interest of the people in such en- between biodiversity and linguistic diversity, vironmental features” (Sapir 1912, pp. 228, the overlaps in the global distribution of lan- 229). From Boas’s famous notes on Eskimo guages and biodiversity, and the relationships words for snow (Boas 1911; see Martin 1986, between language, traditional knowledge, and Pullum 1989 on the later vast misinterpreta- the environment; (b) studies and assessments tions and distortions, both scholarly and pop- of the common threats to biodiversity, cul- ular, of this topic) to Whorf’s related remarks tural diversity, and linguistic diversity and of in his popular 1940 article “Science and Lin- the sociocultural and environmental conse- guistics” (Whorf 1940), these early studies had 600 Maffi AR254-AN34-29 ARI 7 September 2005 21:35 a foundational role in anthropology. How- full understanding of culture” (Kroeber 1963, ever, this was not specifically to the effect of p. 1)—a statement that might be taken as pro- giving rise to a distinct tradition of research on grammatic for the current lines of research, the relations between language (and/or cul- if with the addition that recognition of these ture) and the environment. By and large, these relationships is, conversely, also central to the early observations on the language of the en- full understanding of nature. vironment rather contributed to the devel- opment of concepts of linguistic and cultural relativity. DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENT Another pioneer of North American an- LINES OF RESEARCH thropology, Alfred Kroeber, studied the re- Despite such significant antecedents, the de- lationships between Native American cul- velopment of an integrated field of research on ture areas and the natural areas (today, we cultural, linguistic, and biological diversity has would say ecosystems or ecological niches) long been in the making. Recent interest in of the North American continent, finding the links between language and the environ- significant geographical correlations between ment has arisen in part from the work carried the two (Kroeber 1963). Whereas several of out over the past few decades by ethnobiolo- Kroeber’s students (including Julian Steward) gists and ethnoecologists studying indigenous later developed a focus on cultural ecology, knowledge and use of local flora, fauna, and Kroeber’s specific approach in this classic ecosystems, as well as by researchers inter- work did not directly result in an established ested in indigenous place naming. In part, this research tradition on the links of cultures interest also stems from research in linguistics (and/or languages) and biogeography. Rather, on the notion of “linguistic ecologies,” seen as the idea of such correlations tended to be un- networks of human relationships that encom- popular among scholars, as it was also before pass not only the linguistic and social envi- Kroeber’s work, because it evoked romantic ronment, but also the physical environment, nationalist theories of geographic and biolog- as interrelated parts of a whole (Muhlh¨ ausler¨ ical determinism. 1996). Investigation of these topics has led to This unpopularity is somewhat of a para- increasing recognition of the value of the eco- dox in light of Kroeber’s conviction that this logical knowledge and practices of indigenous area of inquiry offered a special opportunity and other local peoples, and of the significant by 142.173.101.138 on 10/09/05. For personal use only. for “a modern, nonsimplistic environmental extent to which such knowledge and prac- study which would almost certainly stimu- tices are developed, encoded, and transmitted late analogous research elsewhere” (Kroeber through language. 1928, quoted in Heizer 1963) and that his More specifically, a focus on the relation- work in no way represented “a relapse to- ships between linguistic, cultural, and biologi- Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2005.34:599-617. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org ward the old environmentalism which be- cal diversity, their global overlapping distribu- lieved it could find the causes of culture in tions, and the common threats they are facing environment” (Kroeber 1963, p. 1). Kroeber emerged in the mid-1990s in the wake of an made it clear that “[w]hile it is true that cul- alarming and thought-provoking observation: tures are rooted in nature, and can therefore that the ongoing worldwide loss of biodiver- never be completely understood except with sity is paralleled by and seems interrelated reference to that piece of nature in which to the “extinction crisis” affecting