Ecological Knowledge Essay

Humans, no matter where they live or what their backgrounds are, we find ourselves at the center of the fight with concern for sustainability of the environment. Knowing the land that you live on is an important part of connecting with nature and life around you. It is especially important to connect with the environment for those who work and live in less developed part of the world. Those in third world countries, India for example, rely on nature to provide support and much of their livelihood. The role of nature and how ecological knowledge play a part in our lives is important to examine. There are distinctions within the certain aspects of life that involve the expertise of local practices, especially when addressing the ideas of cultural and development in certain parts of the world.

Deane Curtain argues that women is Third World countries such as India, have knowledge of nature that is more distinctive and privileged than other people have. This ecological knowledge is based on their local practices that have been passed down generation-to-generation, and how over time they have perfected them.

Women have always been better known for having a more caring nature, and for the role they play within the family dynamics, they are seen as the loyal housewife and loving mother. What Deane Curtain draws the readers attention to, is how we should recognize the ecological knowledge women have, because they are the world’s agriculturists, they are the ones who have been cultivating the land, and learning about the way nature works for centuries (Curtain 305). When you look up the word knowledge, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary states that knowledge is; information, understanding or skill that you get from experie...

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...ape time and place. This is one reason for calling typically women’s knowledge ‘expert knowledge’” plays into the whole idea, and brings his opinion to a point (Curtain 318). I agree that because women are the ones providing and having to understand that there is always a reason for what they do they have ecological knowledge. I believe that the conviction that traditional methods of living, with the land, cultivating only what your family needs, raising the children and staying alive, plays a privileged role in how they understand and have a relationship with the environment. I think that everyone should look to the way women in Third World places interact; we should use this as a model of how we should be treating our land. Why destroy land that is useful for more than we know if we only focused on just getting enough and not following the path of consumerism.