The Selective Persistence of Local Ecological Knowledge: Honey Collecting with the Jenu Kuruba in South India

Abstract

IntroductionAjungletribe,theJenu-Kurubasgatherthehoneyinthemonth of June. Having hit upon a hive in a hollow tree,theytieabamboo,theshortcutbranchesofwhichforma convenient ladder, to the tree during the day time andat night,provided with a basket attached to a long ropeand lined with leaves, they climb up with a stronglysmoking torch which they hold near the hive. Thealarmed and half stunned bees fly away and their hon-eycombsareremovedandletdowninthebasket.Whilstthus engaged, the Kurubas have a peculiar song, madefor the occasion and expressing their feigned sympathywith the spoilated bees, so rudely disturbed of theirnightly rest. (Richter 1870: 73)Honey collection has seemingly changed little among theforest dwelling Jenu Kuruba in Kodagu, Southwest India,although many changes have come to the subcontinent sincethe time of the British Raj. The introduction of automobiles,cell phones, and cheap plastic can seem to overwhelm localcultural diversity with foreign influences. Yet some traditionsremain extraordinarily stable across generations even in theabsence of written records and formal instruction. Cultural evo-lution theory addresses how cultural traits within a populationpersistthroughinteractionamongecological,social,andindivid-ual influences (Boyd and Richerson 1985). When population-and individual-level factors both promote the continued motiva-tion to learn a culturaltraitand constantaccessto demonstrators,then we expect to see long-term persistence. If either of theseprocesses is unsupportive to cultural transmission, either nomotivation to learn or nobody to learn from, then we expect tosee change in and loss of cultural knowledge over time.In the first part of this paper, we examine the currentecological and sociological pressures on the transmission ofhoney collecting knowledge. We show how this body ofculturalknowledgeiscorrelatedtoitscompatibilitywithotherskills,preferencesandnorms,learningcontext,andthecurrentstate of the environment. Henrich and Henrich (2010)dem-onstrate the adaptive value of Fijian food taboos during preg-nancy and breastfeeding due to selective learning on the partof mothers who copy the knowledge of elder kin and pres-tigious individuals in their community. However, theresearchers do not attempt to understand how factorsoutside this narrow cultural domain can affect the acquisitionof food taboos. Current studies of social learning and culturalevolution tend to favor quantitative models that often neglect