Paper short abstract:

Could fluidity and flexibility of cultures be one of the solutions to more balanced ecosystems? Can anthropology, while being an “inaccurate science” that studies other cultural contexts, represent as doable other (more ecologically sustainable) lifestyles, product of diverse cultural values?

Paper long abstract:

During a small fieldwork I started in Australia, an Aboriginal person I talked with told me that their cultures never stagnated: in fact, in order to survive colonization, they had to adapt, and he brought the example of a plant that got imported in the country. Aboriginal people learnt to use that plant for traditional medicine; the government had planned to spend thousands of dollars into poison to get rid of that, considering it as a harming weed, but in the end they managed to find an agreement with the Aboriginal communities of the area, so that they would use the plant, and the government would not need to waste money.

If we look at the environmental challenges we are facing nowadays, we can see that culture plays a big role not only in how these challenges are approached (e.g. bushfires that hit Australia last summer), but also in how they can be triggered by particular cultural aspects more than others. Ethnological research, in its fluidity and uncertainty, emphasises in turn the fluidity of cultures, and despite some of them being considered more “stabile” than others, they are still changeable and challengeable under many aspects.

By learning to appreciate fluidity, changeability, and even inaccuracy, can bring the cultural context that we give for granted to challenge itself, especially with regard to some aspects, and to understand and accept that there are also other ways of living the world, which can all bring positive inputs in these times of deep uncertainty.