Global threats to biocultural diversity and decolonial alternatives: Indigenous engagements with agrobiodiversity and language maintenance in Yucatan, Mexico

• Applicant: Dr. Eriko Yamasaki
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 492410488

Situated in the transdisciplinary research field of biocultural diversity (Maffi 2005), this project investigates indigenous people’s struggle to maintain local agrobiodiversity and the indigenous language in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Observing the parallel and alarming loss of biological and linguistic diversity at the global level, scholarship has increasingly begun to focus on the relationships between these different forms of diversity since the mid-1990s. Concerning its manifestation at the local level, particular attention is paid to the role of indigenous knowledge, world conceptions and practices in maintaining biodiversity. In this context, the continued vitality of indigenous languages is considered to be linked to the conservation of biodiversity as they embody traditional ecological knowledge (Zent 2009), which is essential for sustainable management of the local ecosystem. In Yucatan, the everyday practice of Maya speakers has played a central role in maintaining biocultural diversity. The continued practice of traditional agriculture has sustained local agrobiodiversity, conserving maize landraces in situ. At the same time, Yucatec Maya language has been transmitted from generation to generation through socialization practices in family and community life. However, the two forms of diversity – agrobiological and linguistic – are currently under threat owing to the increasing tendency to turn away from the traditional milpa agriculture as well as the shift from Yucatec Maya to Spanish in daily language use. In view of the pressure on local biocultural diversity, meanwhile there are a number of Yucatec Mayan initiatives to maintain both indigenous grains and language. Indigenous people in Yucatan increasingly engage in biocultural diversity conservation in a variety of ways ranging from everyday practice to digital activism. In these actions, the issues of environmental sustainability and language maintenance become increasingly connected with each other, forming an essential part of the proposed indigenous alternative to the dominant model of development. This research project investigates the Yucatec Mayan struggle to defend indigenous grains and language as a prominent example of active indigenous engagements for a decolonial future in the present age of globalization.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position