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order and disorder (1995, pp. 189-190). ‘The strong emphasis on the mutual embedment of

nature and culture should not entail the perception of reality as unitary or homogeneous’

(Eisenstad 1995, p. 194). For Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland ‘nature and culture, in their

countless variants and sub-categories, form key distinctions in most cosmologies’ (1995, p.

9). Adding to these critiques, we can also say that the division between Western and Other is

also problematic. As Tsing (2005, p. 91) has suggested in relation to the development of

botanical knowledge, what we understand as Western universal knowledge, such as nature,

have also been made through colonial interactions and collaborations with diverse groups. All

of these counter arguments highlight the importance of case-by-case inquiry and they caution

against an umbrella alternative to Western eco cosmology.

Defining Tradition in Traditional Ecological Knowledge

As we can see, there was an environmental turn in social science fields such as anthropology,

which saw scholars begin to focus their attention on widening theoretical frameworks to

better understand diverse ecological cosmologies. As I have already suggested there was a

cultural turn in global environmental and sustainable development organisations. Yet the

outcome of both these turns was similar: culture was mobilsed in new contexts. That is, as

part of global sustainability debates and in addressing environmental issues in social science

fields. Both lead to the conclusion that cultural diversity and diverse ecological cosmologies

were important to move beyond the biases of Western cosmology. The terms Traditional

Ecological Knowledge (traditional knowledge), Local Ecological Knowledge (local

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knowledge) and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge emerged through these cultural and
environmental turns and offered a strategic recourse to contemporary human and planetary

problems. Knowledge came to be an important component of cultural diversity, and thus of

the task of putting cultural diversity to practice in environmental management programs and

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