Volume 24, January 2014, Pages 223–231
Resilience of traditional knowledge systems: The case of agricultural knowledge in home gardens of the Iberian Peninsula
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Highlights
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- Traditional and modern agricultural knowledge are positively associated.
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- Traditional and modern agricultural knowledge cluster in different groups.
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- Traditional and modern agricultural knowledge are not mutually exclusive.
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- Traditional agricultural knowledge incorporates modern knowledge to adapt to change.
Abstract
The
resilience of a social–ecological system largely depends on its
capacity to learn by absorbing new information to cope with change. But,
how resilient are traditional knowledge systems? We explore the
resilience of the traditional agricultural knowledge system of home
gardeners in the Iberian Peninsula (n = 383). We use
multivariate analysis to explore the co-existence of agricultural
information derived from two different knowledge systems: (i) knowledge
and use of landraces (representative of traditional agricultural
knowledge) and (ii) knowledge and use of commercial crop varieties
(representative of modern agricultural knowledge). Our analyses show a
positive association between both types of knowledge: overall gardeners
who are more knowledgeable about commercial crop varieties are also more
knowledgeable about landraces. Despite this overall tendency, results
from hierarchical cluster analysis showed different groups of
traditional and modern knowledge holders. Our results suggest that (a)
traditional knowledge is not a frozen and static corpus of knowledge and
(b) modern and traditional agricultural knowledge are not necessarily
mutually exclusive. Both maintenance of some aspects of the traditional
knowledge and incorporation of some aspect of the modern knowledge seem
to be core elements of home gardeners’ body of agricultural knowledge
which is constantly evolving in response to changing environmental and
socioeconomic conditions. Changes in traditional knowledge can be seen
as a part of the general self-organizing process of this knowledge
system.
Keywords
- Adaptation;
- Agroecological systems;
- Farmers’ knowledge;
- Iberian Peninsula;
- Kitchen gardens
- Corresponding author. Tel.:
+34 93 586 4985; fax: +34 93 581 3331.
Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
