What are elders and hunters trying to communicate in interviews and workshops? Of what subjects are they knowledgeable? How have they acquired such knowledge? What does knowing mean to them? In this paper, I focus on these basic questions to reconsider the concept of TEK (Traditional Environmental Knowledge) and propound an alternative view, based partly on my own research and partly on other studies of Inuit TEK. First, I briefly review current TEK studies to show that we cannot avoid such basic questions in developing TEK studies. Then, in the following sections, I analyze the storytelling of an Inuit elder to consider what he tried to communicate through storytelling. Based on this analysis, I show how the elder with words and gestures re-enacted and demonstrated past experiences. This is not information about environment independent of his own activities, such as abstract spatial positioning and wildlife itself, but the relationships between him and the environment, which reveal potential resources in environment, that is, 'affordance' in terms of ecological psychology (c.f., REED 1996). Furthermore, I re-examine and reinterpret what has been pointed out as the characteristics of Inuit TEK and thereby demonstrate that what has been referred to as Inuit TEK is a re-enactment of the history of the engagements between humans and the environment. Moreover, I suggest that Inuktitut (Inuit language) place names as clues to reveal the history of the engagements play a crucial role in Inuit TEK. Then, I argue that TEK should be regarded not as an alternative science, but as the practice of 'poetics of life', narratives of which give form with words and gestures to engagement between humans and the environment, and underlies any sort of knowing practice including modern science. Finally, I conclude with the viewpoint that 'poetics of life' suggests a way to overcome the problem of essentialism in anthropological research.
抄録全体を表示