No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
A Palimpsest of Mountain Geographies
Abstract
The decolonial turn of scholarly activities experienced recently in the Global South requires re-writing of concepts and ideas that were considered dogmatic in western science, but that changed now due to novel insights provided by indigenous and traditional ecological knowledges. So, as in many geographic inquiries, the search for transgressive disciplines with convergent, integrative approaches favors the consilience with which we now know about mountainscapes.The writing of a textbook on mountain geographies, thus, is never a new work. It always develops from earlier versions of ideas and concepts that are now illuminated with different lights. This is the reason why palimpsestic terms of socioecological implications include layering, superimposition, suppression, and oppression. The dynamic work of theorists of mountain science is presented as a primer of mountain geographies because of the need to incorporate the nuanced layers of new discoveries that need to be superimposed, by necessity, on the current state of knowledge. Similarly, this change in conceptual and practical epistemes, demands the suppression of dominant paradigms, such as those developed with colonial and postcolonial tenets, allowing for debunked themes to subside under the new and popular schemes that shape the understanding of mountains without the hegemony of power relations, avoiding oppression of alternative viewscapes.The chapter separates mountain ontology into different dimensions, starting with the pioneering dimension, followed by the human, physical, spiritual, biogeographic, and conservationist dimensions. In the end, epistemological dimensions grapple with transgressive and transdisciplinary montology
... Sarmiento 2022 [16] Manufactured landscape ...
... Sarmiento 2022 [16] Mountainscape ...
... The holistic sphere of multidimensional factors interacting to provide a novel epistemology of mountain systems. Sarmiento 2022 [16] Noetics Part of the metaphysics that deals with the explanatory power of the unity of knowledge. Prober et al. 2019 [18] Socioecological system Ecological properties triggered by social and cultural factors that render complex adaptations ds Sarmiento 2020 [1] Soundscape ...
The interdependence of biological and cultural diversity is exemplified by the new conservation paradigm of biocultural heritage. We seek to clarify obsolescent notions of nature, whereby cultural construction and identity markers of mountain communities need to reflect localized, situated, and nuanced understanding about mountainscapes as they are developed, maintained, managed, and contested in spatiality and historicity. Using the nexus of socioecological theory, we question whether a convergent approach could bridge montological knowledge systems of either different equatorial and temperate latitudes, western and eastern longitudes, hills and snow-capped mountain altitudes, or hegemonic and indigenous historicity. Using extensive literature research, intensive reflection, field observation, and critical discourse analysis, we grapple with the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention of Biological Diversity (COP 10, 2010) to elucidate the benefit sharing and linkages of biocultural diversity in tropical and temperate mountain frameworks. The result is a trend of consilience for effective conservation of mountain socioecological systems that reaffirms the transdisciplinary transgression of local knowledge and scientific input to implement the effective strategy of biocultural heritage conservation after the UN Decade of Biological Diversity. By emphasizing regeneration of derelict mountain landscapes, invigorated by empowered local communities, promoted by the Aspen Declaration, the UN Decade of Ecological Restoration, and the UN International Year of Mountain Sustainable Development, montological work on sustainable, regenerative development for 2030 can be expected.
... OPL and CRMR have had several uses over time. Most of them have to do with J. chilensis, but there are several other uses associated broadly with the sclerophyllous forests and, more broadly, with the multiple dimensions of the mountainscape [95]. Since colonial times, these uses have involved significant differences among actors in terms of power and access to the land and resources. ...
The Chilean palm (Jubaea chilensis) is an endangered and culturally important species from central Chile. We studied the Ocoa palm landscape (OPL), which is currently part of a protected area that harbors the largest Chilean palm population where local peasant practices have been excluded and conflict with biodiversity conservation strategies. We explored how human–landscape relationships over time have shaped present conditions and the implications for biocultural conservation. Methods included a review of archaeobotanical and historical records, and a qualitative study focused on local peasants’ perspectives. We reported the uses of J. chilensis and the OPL since pre-Hispanic times. For the last 400 years, these uses have involved important differences between landowners and local peasants in terms of power dynamics, access to the land, and intensity of use. The current palm landscape structure directly responds to past human activities, such as palm felling and agriculture. Also, we explain peasant practices linked to the OPL as ways of resisting cultural homogenization and marginalization associated with reductive conservation approaches and other presses and pulses. Chilean palm conservation can be improved by considering ecological legacies to inform future conservation strategies and adding a biocultural approach that respectfully integrates local peasant knowledge systems and worldviews.
... Palimpsestin, kavramsal açıdan incelendiğinde, farklı ışıklarla aydınlatılan fikir ve kavramların önceki versiyonlarından geliştiği görülür. Sosyo-ekolojik bağlamda palimpsest terimlerin katmanlama, üst üste bindirme, bastırma ve baskıyı içermesinin nedeni budur (Sarmiento, 2023). ...
Palimpsest, yazı yazılan yüzeylerin nadir bulunduğu eski çağlarda, yeni yazılara
yer açabilmek için parşömen kâğıtlarının üzerinin silinerek yenilerinin yazılmasına
atıf yapan bir kavramdır. Yer ve mekân bağlamında ise palimpsest, her yeni
katmanın eskilerden izler taşıyarak geçmişle bugünü güncelde yaşatması analojisini
ifade etmektedir. Turizm temelinde ele alındığında ise bu kavram bir uzamın,
yapının, yerin veya mekânın farklı fiziki katmanlarında hikâyesel, ruhsal ve
anlamsal bağlamdaki çok katmanlı birikimlere vurgu yapar. Eskinin ruhundan izler
taşınırken, yeni toplumsal dinamikler belirleyici olmaktadır. Turistik
destinasyonlar, oteller, tesisler ve mekânlar da zamanın ruhuna ve değişen
ihtiyaçlara göre yeniden yaratılabilen özellikler ortaya koymaktadır. Geçmişte bir
hapishane binası olarak kullanılan yapı, günümüzde bir otel olarak
kullanılabilirken; eski çağlarda çok farklı bir kentsel dokuya sahip kentler,
günümüzde farklı bir karakter kazanabilmektedir. Mekânlar her bir katmandan
anlamlar taşıyabileceği gibi, eski katmanların anlamını tamamen yitirmesi ve
mekânın yeni bir karakter kazanması durumu da söz konusu olabilmektedir. Bu
bilgiler ışığında araştırmadaki amaç turizm temelinde palimpsesti, kavramsal ve
metaforik bağlamda şehir, yer ve mekân örnekleriyle ele almaktır.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
El presente trabajo ofrece una mirada antropológica al paisaje cultural de montañas y promontorios sagrados de Gales, basado en ascensos realizados por la autora a los montes Snowdon, Cader Idris, Great Orme y Pen-y-Fan, además de visitas a los promontorios costeros de San David y Saint Catherine. Se abordan la apropiación física y la construcción simbólica del paisaje a través de la mitología, la religiosidad popular, el senderismo y el turismo, completándose el panorama de estudios previamente realizados en montañas sagradas y emblemáticas de Inglaterra, Escocia e Irlanda. La dimensión simbólica de estas montañas se refleja tanto en la mitología y el folclore como en las iglesias, castillos y capillas dispersas en la enigmática geografía galesa, con inesperada proyección en prácticas culturales y educativas que los colonos galeses y sus descendientes introdujeron en la Patagonia argentina.
El monte Champaquí alcanza una altitud de 2790 msnm y constituye la máxima altura de las Sierras Grandes cordobesas. La cumbre resulta fácilmente accesible gracias a una carretera vehicular que conduce a un conjunto de antenas cercanas a la cima y a la presencia de refugios que permiten pernoctar en las largas caminatas que se emprenden desde su vertiente oriental. Si bien su atractivo como destino turístico y de senderismo es bien conocido, la dimensión simbólica de su cumbre no ha recibido merecida atención en la discusión académica. El presente trabajo reúne las observaciones realizadas durante un ascenso grupal a pie por la vertiente occidental del monte, en un trayecto de 22 km de longitud y más de 1500 metros de desnivel positivo. El foco de la investigación está puesto en los distintos promontorios graníticos que rodean a la pequeña laguna en la cima, donde abundan cruces tapadas de ofrendas (rosarios, pañuelos, medallitas), placas mortuorias, monumentos conmemorativos, bustos, exvotos, imágenes de santos y vírgenes y toda suerte de elementos de insoslayable importancia religiosa, que dan cuenta de una intensa y sostenida utilización ritual de este espacio de alta montaña. Las entrevistas a guías de senderismo, el testimonio espontáneo de baqueanos y el análisis antropológico comparativo –en relación con otros montes emblemáticos de las Sierras Centrales–, permiten ahondar en la comprensión de la creciente importancia del Champaquí como lugar de peregrinaje de facto, que recoge innumerables, pero todavía poco reconocidas manifestaciones de la devoción popular en el centro de Argentina.
Forest transformation modified the Quijos’ ancient mountainscapes in three ways: scientific approximation, entrepreneurial investing, and community engagement. We concentrate the study in the Cumandá Protected Forest reserve as exemplar in the Quijos valley. Our objective is to understand forest transition trends and prospects of sustainability by answering qualitative research questions of impact on cloud forest vegetation from a socioecological standpoint. We used ethnographic work, personal interviews, surveys to the community, and queries to authorities; our qualitative methods included critical discourse analyses, onomastic interpretation, and matrix comparison for ecological legacies, focused on three sectors of the economy that we posit impacted these forests, all indicative of a more competitive, globalized framework: forest tourism, retreating forest frontier, and mining forested watersheds. We found that these sectors also helped alleviate poverty in local communities so that ecotourism, non-traditional forest product harvest, and subsistence mining of water could become stewards, despite the fact that such a nuanced approach has not yet been fully implemented by local governments. We conclude that Hostería Cumandá promotes new conservation narratives in positive ways, since it fuels grassroots organizations to incorporate nature conservation into restoration ecology efforts, provides studies on mountain forest species of concern in the area, generates local employment, and converts a transitory, ephemeral attraction into an international tourism destination.
The book contains a nuanced analysis of socioecological issues of montane forests from past plant diversity, climate change and mountain conservation, after the final International meeting of the VULPES project (Belmont Forum) in Ecuador. It is pubished by the Institute for Cloud Forest Research and Sustainable Development (INDES-CES) at the National University Toribio Rodríguez de Mendoza de Amazonas (UNTRM), in Chachapoyas, Peru.
ontology, the transdisciplinary science of mountains, applied to education incorporates several pedagogical approaches that could be used to energize the transformative change from sustainable to regenerative development from different perspectives. We include pedagogies with learning outcomes that apply 9 different educational methodologies, and we revisit them in the context of montology to focus on integrative, holistic mountainscapes as subjects of scholastic and nonscholastic educational initiatives. We discuss how these pedagogies must engage different stakeholders, including students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. We conclude that the future of mountain education relies on incorporating the new narrative of regenerative development, not only sustainable development, for the convergent science of mountain teaching and learning to be effective. This paper encourages educators to change paradigms to address the future agenda for education about mountains.
Mountains as archetype frame some meta-geographies of the vertical dimension. Mountain metaphors, thus, have remained as key guidance in developing not only animistic belief systems and religious cults, but also military strategies, economic potential, and scientific innovation. This paper seeks to explain the need to integrate western knowledge, where mountains became known via natural history’s mechanistic explanations, with other epistemologies. Mountain scientists therein developed linear approaches that required exploration, experimentation, and pragmatic interpretation of generalizable mountain phenomena. Little is known, however, about other civilizations’ more encompassing cognition due to heuristic explanations of mountain myths. Local knowledge holders therein developed approaches that required familiarization, observation, and romantic meditation about situated mountain phenomena. Using a multimethod approach of human geography that includes onomastics, geocritical discourse analysis, political ecology, and critical biogeography, the author posits that there is a paradigmatic shift of geographic fad, when even “nature” is thought of as a “social construct” in the socioecological mountainscapes. Between these tendencies of either Cartesian or Spinozan dogmas about scientific objectives, methods and implications, mountains continue to elicit geographical research. The author thus concludes that integrating narratives of mountain studies with geocritical analyses of political ecology that allow for transgressivity and referentialilty of mountain cognition can be done with transdisciplinary science. Montology, henceforth, couples dialectic thinking with the trifecta of spatiality, complexity and historicity in highlighting mountain microrefugia for biocultural conservation. Use of montological approaches will bring mountain scientists to a new level, where the application of local ecological knowledge and cutting-edge technological instrumentation could render sustainable mountain communities, in dynamic biocultural heritage scenarios of convergent mountain science.
There is a growing trend for inclusion of the food sovereignty dimension as a driving force of biodiversity conservation in mountain production landscapes. This is particularly important when dealing with agrobiodiversity in the tropical and temperate Andes, whereby complex agricultural systems and domesticates have incorporated ethnographic overtones in food production and consumption. One segment of this new imperative relates to foodstuff associated with rituals or religious practices and community-based observance of heirloom varieties and recipes of Andean food staples. These foods include specialty corn staples, potato races, quinoa varieties, rare lupines, and a collection of tropical fruits, seeds and fibers, including plants and animals, as former elements of a continuous forest cover that has now been reduced to patches amidst the herbaceous matrix of the Páramo, Jalca, Puna and temperate highlands. By using case studies of mountain foodscapes of the tropical and temperate Andes, changes to the foodscape narrative for vernacular culture-nature sustainability are suggested, making specific reference to field observations and research projects conducted in these regions. As global environmental change lures closer in the mountain development horizon, the stewardship of heirloom practices should be highlighted, and the cultivation of respect and observance of Andean traditions with syncretic undertones, found in historical and contemporary foodscapes of the tropical and temperate Andes, must be observed. For this, using the Montology framework as a way to fuse Western science (WS) with Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), new research agendas are devised via transdisciplinary applications in the complex socio-ecological production landscapes (SEPLS) of the Andes, concluding the need of managing them as foodscapes deserving protection as biocultural microrefugi
More than most other landforms, mountains have been at the vanguard of geographical inquiry. Whether promontories, cultural works on slopes, or even metaphorical/spiritual heights, mountain research informs current narratives of global environmental change. We review how montology shifts geographic paradigms via the novel approach of critical biogeography in the Andes. We use it to bridge nature and society through indigenous heritage, local biodiversity conservation narratives, and vernacular nature–culture hybrids of biocultural landscapes (BCLs), focusing on how socioecological systems (SES) enlighten scientific query in the Andes. In our Andean study cases, integrated critical frameworks guide the understanding of BCLs as the product of long-term human–environment interactions. With situated exemplars from place naming, wild edible plants, medicinal plants, sacred trees, foodstuffs, ritualistic plants, and floral and faunal causation, we convey the need for cognition of mountains as BCLs in the Anthropocene. We conclude that applied montology allows for a multi-method approach with the four Cs of critical biogeography, a model that engages forward-looking geographers and interdisciplinary Andeanists in assessments for sustainable development of fragile BCLs in the Andes.
The Elgar companion to geography, transdisciplinarity and sustainability
- F O Sarmiento
- Frolich
Sarmiento, F. O., & Frolich, L. M. (Eds.). (2020). The Elgar companion to geography,
transdisciplinarity and sustainability. Edward Elgar Publishing. 428pp. https://doi.
org/10.4337/9781786430106
Indigeneity and the sacred: Indigenous revival and the conservation of sacred natural sites in the Americas
Sarmiento, F. O., & Hitchner, S. (Eds.). (2017). Indigeneity and the sacred: Indigenous revival and
the conservation of sacred natural sites in the Americas. Berghahn Books. 266pp. Hardcover
edition. (2019 paperback edition). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvw04ck0
Applied Montology using critical biogeography in the Andes <https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2016.1260438>
- FO Sarmiento
- JT Ibarra
- A Barreau
- JC Pizarro
- R Rozzi
- JA González
- LM Frolich
428pp. <https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786430106>
- FO Sarmiento
- LM Frolich
266pp. Hardcover edition. (2019 paperback edition). <https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvw04ck0>
- FO Sarmiento
- S Hitchner