Adaptation and the Question of Cost-Effective Change: Outlining Socio-Ecological Exertion of <i>Khasi</i> in Bangladesh Context

Abstract

The enduring problems of economic mobility of Khasi people through “access-condition imperatives” have reflected in the discussion from the cultural, ecological perspective. The study illustrates that the traditional culture of Khasi people has regulated stratified access to natural resources. The modernize effort of the community towards coping with environmental limitations is typically inducing actor-oriented rather than community-based absorption of adaptation practice. The process of sustainable development requires holistic consideration of change from the socio-cultural encompasses of natural resources. The research works on the limited understanding of adaptation in the context of the co-existing reality of a small scale society with a dominant socio-cultural environment. Finding the cultivation as the reduced practice for the indigenous Khasi, relatively it was in the tradition, the theoretical stand of Neo-Marxist philosophy has followed at this point. The idealized and judgmental practice of specified social relation of Khasi cultivation has an address here with cultural principles, elaborating the pattern of capital intensive changes generating in the access-conditions of “land” use. The implication of modern heterogeneous society requires the necessity to ensure the reproduction and sustainability of a changing social system. The ecological cost-benefit understanding should emphasize positive feedback, concentration on ethno-political and cultural flow trends, and a purposive modification of social value. The purposive change does not mean the closure of traditional practice but promotes the practice where it found an ecological rationale for community interest.