Mes lecteurs se souviendront sans doute de mes déboires avec la revue Pomme d'Api: le rédacteur en chef m'avait signifié que l'article que je proposais n'entrait pas dans leurs cadres éditoriaux, sans plus d'explication. Dans un contexte scientifique, c'est faire preuve d'une singulière légèreté que de ne pas formaliser les critiques que l'on adresse à un confrère.
Mais la question plus urgente est celle de la qualité des revues de rang A en France. Lorsqu'un article est accepté, les motifs de l'acceptation ne sont guère plus éclairants que ceux de son refus. Passons sur la formule rituelle "Bien que le sujet soit déjà amplement traité..." (sans aucune justification bibliographique) et "Le style pèche par sa maladresse, l'auteur devra corriger certaines lourdeurs" (non spécifiées) : à l'arrivée on ne voit pas très bien pourquoi la revue, en fin de compte, accepte l'article.
Par comparaison, voici le courrier reçu de la revue américaine Current Pommology, qui a mis six mois à me répondre, me refuse l'article, mais me dit clairement pourquoi:
REVIEWER COMMENTS
Reviewer #1: Review of "Cultural Diversity and Biodiversity"
This piece seems to be more of a reflection than a coherent review of the alleged relationship between cultural and biological diversity. The starting point for this essay appears to be a set of relationships in an UNESCO document that not only correlates cultural and biological diversity but is somehow related to poverty. The question I have is why should someone seriously consider these vague and unfounded claims even if they are uttered by an well-known international organization? To some extent the author reviews some of the general statements about native peoples as keepers of biological diversity. While I agree with the author that statements by Harmon, Appadurai, and those at the Rio Summit should not be taken seriously because they are not based on any sort of coherent review of the literature it is not clear to me that what the author presents in this manuscript is going to further our understanding of native peoples and the environment and how contact,
colonization, or development projects may alter their relationship or lift them out of poverty.
The second part of the paper deals with specific problems of enhancing sustainable development in the Amazon among the Uacá and Pataxó other groups. Much is made of the native statement that "I only hunt in order to eat or to feed my family". The author then shows that such a statement, much valued in certain quarters as evidence of sustainability, may lead to unsustainable consequences. This being said, the section wanders, the DURMAZ project is not defined, and the list of "Pertinent Indicators…" is not explained.
I cannot recommend this manuscript. It is structured like a rambling essay.
Reviewer #3: The paper criticizes claims made for the correlation between biological and cultural diversity and argues for context-specific, multidisciplinary studies linked to specific environmental concerns. The author claims that "amongst the scientific community, the current dominating view takes for granted that "native" cosmologies are respectful towards the environment and generate biodiversity", and counters this view by citing examples of environmental degradation, both from the published literature and from the author's observations from fieldwork in Brazil. The depiction of the views of the "scientific community" is drawn largely from the 2002 Johannesburg Summit document. The author notes the importance of moving beyond cosmological representations to actual environmental impacts, which is achieved through long-term, multidisciplinary, research.
There are several problems with the argument. First, cultural diversity may be correlated with biological diversity, which is not the same thing as saying that indigenous or traditional populations are naturally conservationist. Second, the claim that indigenous or traditional populations are not inherently conservationist, even if their cosmologies reflect respect towards the environment, is not new, and relevant discussions are summarized in the review by Hames (2007; see also the review by Michael R. Dove, 2006, "Indigenous People and Environmental Politics", Annual Review of Anthropology, 35:191-208. Given the topic, the omission of Smith and Wishnie's 2000 much-cited article, "Conservation and Subsistence in Small-Scale Societies" is also notable). It does not seem that the manuscript adds anything new to this discussion (and also unclear why the 2002 Johannesburg Summit document is taken as representing the views of the "scientific community"). Finally, there are sections of the manuscript that are hard to follow, or that include concepts that are incompletely developed. For example, the table on page 11 on "Pertinent Indicators for the extractivist or ribeirinhas communities" is not really explained.
Reviewer #4: The author raises an important issue that is how relationship between cultural and biological diversity has been built up through arguments brought forward in particular in prepatory documents for the 2002 Johanesburg Summit. He analyses the analogies and correlations made by different environmental groups between cultural and biological diversity. His analysis supports the idea that there are a diversity of levels and types of representations of local groups ( which the author terms as a heuristic of representations) based on contextual and cosmological views. He further advocates the fact that the real impacts of indigenous groups on the environment can only be assessed through an interdisciplinary approach integrating ecological and biological sciences as well as anthropology. Although the overall framework of the demonstration is correct and therefore brings new elements in the debate on the relationship between biological and cultural diversity, presentation of the data supporting the thesis of a lack of correlation between cultural and biological diversity is largely insufficient. It is partly true that the scientific community tends to idealize the role of indigenous cosmologies in nature protection as there are many works and studies today that show in great details how and under what conditions indigenous people and their knowledge may effectively or not protect nature. More bibliography is needed here. The scientific vision is not such a stark and caricatural vision as is presented. You also also oppose sustainable development which is effectively not an anthropological concept to anthropisation of the environment which is considered as an anthropological concept. I am not sure that anthropisation of the environment is much more an anthropological concept than the latter. Please give any reason or epistemological definition of the second concept. The intuition, indeed, put forward by UNESCO that cultural
diversity and biological diversity would be closely linked is indeed not a simple statement but, this idea is supported by many authors such as Dove, Conklin etc,not only on the basis of a pragmatic and economic use of natural resources. Rather these authors analysed in great detail the interactions between indigenous communities and their natural resources and drew some conclusions between their complex knowledge system, their representations and the fact that they valued a large array of biological resources.
In the field of agricultural diversity, as much regarding landscapes, as well as intraspecific diversity of domesticated animals and plants, which represent the most examplary expression of biocultural diversity, the analysis is not clear as this is linked to the argiument of poverty. The linkage between the two statements is not demonstrated and overall we have the impression that the very fact that agricultural diversity may have a coupled bio-cultural dimension is questionned. Scientific studies on the subject is sufficiently advanced on the subject so that this cannot be questionned any more. That UNESCO builds on this example of relationship between cultural diversity and biological diversity is totally logic.
It is right though that biodiversity cannot be conceptualized as human cultures. Criticism about Descolas work, epecially because he describes classification is partly true, because Descola links classification to praxis thus showing how classifications lead to the formulation of different types of "management" of biological resources.
Regarding the demonstration termed as heuristics of representation. Firts of all I guess you mean heuristics and not heuristic, the latter being an adjective. Anthropoogical research within the spode of study of ethnoscience, (ethnobotany, ethnobiology and ethnoecology) has the tools today to investigate much more than simply representations. Rather anthrompologists who investigate the linkages between man and nature generally approach the dialectal relationship between representations, practices and knowledge systems. Your theory to understand complex representations should be spelt out. One cannot take it for granted that you methodology is the right one.
The cartographic representation shown does not show any legend, scale and is hardly understandable. Please give a version that can be analysed by the reader. If this is taken as a heuristic representation of data that is misinterpreted by anthropologists and environmentalist, the reader should at least be able to analyse directly the map.
Further in this paper you wrightly show that there is a great gap between discourse and practice. This is nothing new for anthropologist. It is on the contrary part of the method to relate discourse to praxis and explain the contradictions between the two. In that respect it is not so much the fact that interdisciplinary appriaches are absolutely needed but that anthropologists take it seriously that there exists gaps between practice and discourse and that it is also their responsability to identify these gaps, why these exists, whether this is just a matter of political context or ideologies built by environmentalists etc. Certainly a multidisciplinary approach is needed so that ecological sciences may correctly evaluate the effects of human practices on natural resources. DURAMAZ is not the sole project that approaches this issue and more bibliographical references are needed to hsow that there is a convergence of approaches in the scientific community regarding such
approaches.
Reviewer #5: The question raised by the article is very interesting. Questioning the relevance of the relationship between cultural diversity and biodiversity that anthropology established, is indeed essential to lay down the foundations for a mutually understood interdisciplinary field.
Unfortunately, the article spends too much time on a sterile controversy giving less importance to fieldwork's information that are yet very original. We wait until page 8 to find the arguments related to fieldwork! The article would have gained credibility if it was focused primarily on ethnographic examples, escaping as much as possible to the controversy. It is advised to the author to give front-stage to the fieldworks examples, which should suggest themselves the controversy. All the introduction and the beginning of the article are to review as well. The introduction and portions of the beginning of the article present arguments that are totally baseless.
The article claims a remobilization of anthropology on the issue of sustainable development, and particularly the study of individual and collective motivation of indigenous peoples to development. However, the fieldworks information presented in this article invite rather to choose as a main problem the relationship (constructive or deconstructive) between cosmology and individual experience in development context.
Comments and critics of the text:
The article starts on the basis of a false controversy, that of "ecological conscience" of ethnologists. The author presents two observations that I think are totally false
1 - The scientifically peripheral concern felt by Levi Strauss in the end of his career, regarding Man's destructive capacity toward the natural environment (paragraph 1, page 2)
To address the first point, I would suggest seeing the pessimistic view of Levi Strauss about Man as a relative view. Early in his career, Levi Strauss adopted the Hobbes' logic: "Man is a wolf to Man". After reading the citation of Levi Strauss on the beginning of the article, one might even say that "Man is a wolf to Man, just as he is to other species." But this ideological stance is the basis of the sociological theory of Levi Strauss: It is actually this destructive side to his own kind that motivated Man to establish a social order, in particular through the exchange of women. So if one follows the logic of Levi Strauss, it could be true of man's relationship to nature. It's not Man's destructive behavior that makes him incapable of creating ecological order. It's quite the opposite.
2 - The impossibility to apply anthropological theories involving non-humans (paragraph 2, page 2)
Concerning the implementation of anthropological theories involving non-humans, it is too early to claim that it is impossible. After all, the concept of biosphere has been theorized almost a century ago, and it has been just two decades since it was put into practice.
In general, the author adopts very general and outdated positions concerning the perspective on anthropologists. He describes anthropology as if it still considered the indigenous people as "bons sauvages":
Example 1:
« …while allocating specific areas to native or traditional inhabitants who are allowed to continue their lifestyle and traditions, calling upon their ancestral customs and their role as the keepers of ecological equilibrium (Posey, 1985; Balée, 1994; Diegues, 1996), ethnologists continually protest against all attempts to devise a contract with these peoples for the reason that, since they are on their own land, they can act as they wish ». (Last paragraph, page 2)
This observation was valid 30 years ago, but today it is unrealistic to defend this position because there are few regions of the world where indigenous peoples are still masters of their land and their resources. In fact, many anthropologists have focused their research on analyzing the types of relationships that develop between indigenous people and new actors in the governance of nature.
Example 2:
« Amongst the scientific community, the current dominating view takes for granted that "native" cosmologies are respectful towards the environment and generate biodiversity. » (Paragraph 3, page 3)
The author bases his arguments on a very naive approach to anthropology and its relationship with ecology. On the other hand, many researchers have highlighted the incidental appearance of positive impact of cosmologies and practices of men on ecosystems. Others, like Maurice Bloch, demonstrated how the perception of landscape, visual quality in Madagascar could go against the ecological interest (Bloch Maurice, 1995, « Devenir le paysage. La clarté pour les Zafimaniry », in Paysage au pluriel, Claudie Voisenat (ed.), La Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Editions, Paris).
Example 3:
And, since the anthropological investigation rests essentially on representations delivered to us by native discourse, how do we create a heuristic of a view that allows for an understanding of the different strata of representations, including those which remain unformulated ? (dernier paragraphe, page 8)
For a long time, ethnology courses in college have been teaching us not to focus on the speech, but rather on the relationship between speech and practice.
The analogy between biological and cultural diversity is an anthropological matter, because Man is simply this discipline's major subject of study. Contrary to the author's claim (« The first danger is that biodiversity cannot be considered and conceptualised according to the same model as human cultures », last paragraph on page 4), anthropologists did not suggest conceptualizing biodiversity along the lines of cultural diversity. What culturalists underline is the link between cultural diversity and biodiversity, a link that no discipline had stressed before, and made of it an object of study.
The author ignores the complexity of cultural evolution to better represent that of biological evolution. In my opinion, this approach is difficult and dangerous (paragraph 2, page 5). Concerning the death of a language, contrary to what the author thinks it can cause significant changes in a cultural group. Some languages are dying because they give birth to other languages, dialects, to diverse and varied mixes. The death of a language and birth of another is a complex cultural process that still eludes us, just like the consequences of the disappearance of a species in a particular ecosystem.
In short, this article gives the example of an interdisciplinary misunderstanding that highlights the difficulty to agree on the terms and formulas defining diversity, whether cultural or biological.
Reviewer #6: This manuscript has too many problems to recommend publication.
The first problem is a structural one: the manuscript as a whole jumps around too much and doesn't make very much sense. First it starts off looking at the 2002 Johannesburg summit and then it jumps to a discussion of indigenous epistemology and hunting. Then it jumps to a discussion of sustainability and then tries to insert a small set of anecdotes from some fieldwork in Brazil. Unfortunately there's nothing that holds the whole manuscript together.
The second problem is that it essentially sets up a straw man argument. The author argues that somehow ethnologists think that all indigenous people live in harmony with nature. This is an indefensible statement, given how much work has taken place over the last 20 or 30 years both for and against the ecologically noble savage argument. There is far more complexity in this literature than the author presents - the author repeatedly says that academics/ethnographers think that indigenous peoples are "ecofriendly" which is why they are given rights to use protected areas, when in reality there are multiple reasons why indigenous peoples have rights to forest use, why they are used as allies in conservation, etc, many of which reasons have little to do with some sort of essentialist belief that indigenous people are environmentally benign. Unfortunately, throughout the piece the author sets up essentialized straw man arguments that show a lack of familiarity with the nuances
and complexity of the work on the subject of indigenous peoples and conservation. One example is Darrell Posey's work which the author should have engaged with thoroughly but did not; other examples would include Terrance Turner's work. Hames' 2007 review of the ecologically noble savage literature is much more thorough than what the author of this MS has done.
Troubling patterns of overstatement are found throughout the MS. For example, in the section labeled "a new paradigm", the author asserts that ethnographers have argued that cultural diversity and biological diversity are 2 parts of the same ecological equilibrium. However, the authors that they cite here say no such thing. These authors talk more about the politicization of this position (i.e. how indigenous people claim the mantle of 'environmentally aware' in order to gain political rights and allies). The propensity of the author to simply say that generic ethnologists (unnamed) "do this" and "do that" throughout the manuscript is extremely problematic. There needs to be much more detail about specific authors. For example, the author treats a UNESCO document as some sort of nearly universalist statement and keeps asserting that everyone believes that cultural and biological diversity are entwined when in fact no evidence is given that specific authors have supported
that position (other than one who is named). Who are these unnamed ethnologists who had a role in the Unesco materials for the Johannesburg conference, since only one person is ever directly quoted? What would be more interesting is if the author had looked at how the representation of cultural and biological diversity has evolved over time and been mobilized by different groups for political purposes. A much more interesting argument could have been constructed from the problem of that metaphor of endangered cultural and biological diversity here.
The overstatements and strawman arguments continue in further sections of the paper. In section 2, the author jumps into a number of overstatements about how environmentalism can only happen after the extinction of megafauna, which is simply an untrue overstatement contradicted by much evidence, and which conflates evidence from human prehistory to indigenous peoples in protected areas today. Further in this section, the author seems to be arguing that the only type of biodiversity one should care about is species endemism, but then gives no reason why this should be so.
The section on the anthropological method is too disjointed and unclear. Some anecdotes regarding the indigenous group with which the author worked are put in here, but we have no contexts for how the stories were collected, who these people are, what their relationship to protected areas in the Amazon is. These examples appear to be use to assert that because some indigenous people's have an attitude towards nature in which the killing of animals is sanctioned that somehow this negates any sort of environmental sentiment that may be held by other ethnic groups. This sort of belief that the author is the only person to have challenged the ecologically noble savage argument makes very little sense, and the evidence is too flimsy to hold much weight. There's also not very much context for the stories that are told, making it difficult for us to judge the significance.
There is also a lack of attention to the broader context in which indigenous peoples must operate. For example, the last sentence of a paragraph discussing hunting practices and how the group with whom the author works has no environmental ethic, then offhandly mentions that there is illegal wood trade, deforestation, and NGOs unable to protect the environment: these are all political ecological trends that affect whether indigenous people have the ability to use their lands sustainably or not. This context cannot simply be thrown away with one sentence.
In another example of oversimplification and strawman arguments from others' work, the argument about slash and burn agriculture doesn't make very much sense. The author may be arguing that certain agricultural systems don't protect endemic species, but some of the authors that work on swidden agriculture are primarily arguing that these agricultural systems are more diverse than other types of monocrop agriculture that often replace traditional systems- not that they are always more diverse than the climax ecosystems they may have replaced.
The transition to a discussion of the need for multiple methods in fieldwork and the DURAMAZ project seems out of context -- it's not clear what this project is about, or what relationship it bears to the author's previous field work. There no information of even a basic sort; there's no context for the table that's given on indicators for extractivist communities. It's nearly impossible to understand what this project is about because there is simply not enough information about the various sites in which it took place.
The conclusions are far far too sweeping for the evidence that is presented. The author's argument that protected areas given over to indigenous people for their protection is somehow wrong and misguided because indigenous people's are not 'eco-friendly' is definitely an overstatement given the minimal evidence presented.
Finally, the manuscript is not professionally presented -- there a number of wordy sentences, places where species names are not properly capitalized, mistakes in the bibliography, unclear use of sourcing. The title also makes no sense from the paper -- it isn't clear at all in the paper what a "Brazilian model" is or what it is based on. The paper very much suffers from being written in a style which directly comes from French and is not adopted for English speaking audiences.
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