Folkecology, cultural epidemiology, and the spirit of the commons - A garden experiment in the Maya lowlands, 1991-2001

Using a variation on an experimental approach from biology, we distinguish the influence of sociocultural factors from that of economic, demographic, and ecological factors in environmental management and maintenance. This is important to issues of global environmental change, where there is little empirical research into cultural effects on deforestation and land use. Findings with three groups who live in the same rain-forest habitat and manifest strikingly distinct behaviors, cognitions, and social relations relative to the forest indicate that rational self-interest and institutional constraints may not by themselves account for commons behavior and cultural patternings of cognition are significant. Only the area's last native Itza' Maya (who have few cooperative institutions) show systematic awareness of ecological complexity involving animals, plants, and people and practices clearly favoring forest regeneration. Spanish-speaking immigrants prove closer to native Maya in thought, action, and social networking than immigrant Q'eqchi' Maya (who have highly cooperative institutions). The role of spiritual values and the limitations of rational, utility-based decision theories are explored. Emergent cultural patterns derived statistically from measurements of individual cognitions and behaviors suggest that cultural transmission and formation consist not primarily of shared rules or norms but of complex distributions of causally connected representations across minds.