The Cultural Value of Trees: Folk Value and Biocultural Conservation

Abstract

This volume focuses on the tree, as a cultural and biological form, and examines the concept of folk value and its implications for biocultural conservation. Folk value refers to the value of the more-than-human living world to cultural cohesion and survival, as opposed to individual well-being. This feld of value, comprising cosmological, aesthetic, eco-erotic, sentimental, mnemonic value and much more, serves as powerful motivation for the local performance of environmental care. The motivation to maintain and conserve ecology for the purpose of cultural survival will be the central focus of this book, as the conditions of the Anthropocene urgently require the identifcation, understanding and support of enduring, self-perpetuating biocultural associations. The geographical scope is broad, with chapters discussing diferent tree species from the Americas and the Caribbean, East Asia, Eurasia and Australia and Africa. By focusing on the tree, one of the most reliably crossculturally-valued and cross-culturally-recognized biological forms, and one which invariably defnes expansive landscapes, this work illuminates how folk value binds the survival of more-than-human life forms with the survival of specifc peoples in the era of biocultural loss, the Anthropocene. As such, this collection of cross-cultural cases of tree folk value represents a low hanging fruit for the larger project of exploring the power of the cultural value of the morethan-human living world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation, biodiversity, biocultural studies and environmental anthropology.