Anthropology, ecology and indigenous societies in the Amazon: the trajectory of a discourse

Abstract

In this text we focus on the anthropological discourse on the sustainability of indigenous cultures in South America, privileging the analysis of some articles by two exponents of ecological anthropology and ethnoecology (or ethnobiology): Eric Ross and Darrell Posey. We begin with a brief characterization of cultural ecology and the dilemma between culture and practical reason, in which this approach was closed. Then, we approach the intense importation of ecological categories by the ethnological narrative in the 60s. Then, we describe, in general lines, the debate about the environmental conditions of the cultural development of indigenous societies in South America, in the late 70s. we point out the close link between the statement that, in the 80s and 90s, the indigenous knowledge systems as sources of preservation and promotion of biodiversity with ecological determinism and its transepistemic context.