How to integrate socio-cultural dimensions into sustainable development: Amazonian case studies Online publication date: Wed, 31-Dec-2014
by Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen; Sanni Saarinen; Matti Kamppinen
International Journal of Sustainable Society (IJSSOC), Vol. 4, No. 3, 2012
Abstract: The best means of integrating socio-cultural dimensions into the study and politics of sustainable development are through the ethnographic analysis of cultural models and patterns of behaviour. This is particularly mandatory in those contexts where the perception of reality is radically different from the Western point of view. We illustrate how the understanding of the Amazonian embodied thinking about relating to other subjects helps to comprehend their sustainable lifestyles and interaction within a natural environment. Through their bodies, the Amazonian native peoples and mestizos try to control and form a subjectivity that today is reflected in their striving to have better education, contemporary rites of passage and new skills that are appreciated when learned in their interaction with the dominant society. This means that the 'traditional' cultural models and patterns of behaviour are reproduced in interaction with new non-native actors, and the conditions for sustainable development consequently change.
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