Victor M. Toledo
AND
In its development, science The scientific world has gone through four key moments. The foundation of the first scientific societies in the 17th century (the Royal Society in England in 1660 and the Académie Royal des Sciences in France in 1666); the 19th century, when the main fields of scientific knowledge were outlined by Ch. Darwin, K. Marx, A. Von Humboldt, H. Spencer, Ch. Lyle and P. Kropotkin; the 20th century with the explosive expansion that led to the specialisation and fragmentation of knowledge, and a phase of integration of knowledge towards the end of the 20th century. Four innovative theoretical constructions have appeared in this last phase: a) the so-called science for sustainability (sustainability science); b) the socio-environmental approach; c) social metabolism, and d) the biocultural paradigm. All of them develop concepts and methods that integrate social and natural processes in a single approach. As we explained in a recent publication, biocultural diversity or richness is the result of the confluence between biological diversity, linguistic diversity and agrodiversity (species of domesticated plants and animals). This allows us to evaluate the biocultural heritage of a country, region, state, municipality, etc. Mexico is the second country with the greatest biocultural richness in the world after Indonesia and ahead of India, Australia and Brazil (https://shorten.link/nczCaY).
On August 9, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) organized and celebrated a well-deserved tribute to Eckart Boege, the anthropologist who, during a 50-year academic career, broke the canons of studies on Mesoamerican cultures and introduced the biocultural perspective. Instead of applying the learned theory, Boege sought to understand reality from reality itself, and that led him to have to learn botany, zoology, ecology, cartography, demography, etc., that is, to become multi and interdisciplinary. But also to put his knowledge into practice together with indigenous peoples and comparable communities and other actors, in what are now called transdisciplinary actions. From his vast work (see: https://www.aacademica.org/eckart.boege) highlight the book The biocultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of Mexicopublished in 2008; the organization and publication of the Masewal Codex, carried out with Luis Enrique Fernández; a Life Plan for the next 40 years designed by the indigenous cooperative Tosepan Titataniske of the Sierra Norte of Puebla (40 thousand organized families), and the publication of the five volumes of the Ethnography of the biocultural heritage of the indigenous regions and territories of Mexicowritten by more than 70 researchers in 31 communities in the country and published by the INAH.
The adoption of the biocultural paradigm in Mexico has had many consequences. The first is that it has committed academia and public institutions to join in the defense of peoples’ territories, since it is in the territories where biocultural processes take place, where biodiversity is housed, and where the elements that give identity to cultures emerge. The second is that it led to the defense of corn and milpa, as the greatest biocultural expressions of the Mesoamerican tradition. Today, Semarnat already has an entity dedicated to the subject, and in both Chambers the concept is used by many legislators, starting with the president, Senator Ana Lilia Rivera. There is a Network of Biocultural Heritage of Mexico, which we founded in 2011, which has published more than 60 books and which today brings together some 180 researchers (https://patrimoniobiocultural.com/ ) and the Puuc Biocultural Reserve already exists in Yucatan, an initiative that emerged from five Mayan municipalities that formed an alliance in a self-managed manner (https://shorten.link/GuCSbX).
This modality should be multiplied throughout the Republic. In some way, biocultural is a derivation of the theses that Guillermo Bonfil Batalla developed in his book Deep Mexicoand which today support the vision that the President of the country holds on the Fourth Transformation. Bioculturality already permeates the life of the country.
