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Marginalities of the Marginalities of the MindMind

or the Anthropology or the Anthropology of Quirkinessof QuirkinessVirginia D. NazareaUniversity of Georgia

But the fairy tale does not allow itself to be fooled by the present owners of Paradise. Thus, it is a rebellious, burned child and alert. One can climb a beanstalk up into heaven and then see how angels make gold

Bloch (1988)

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Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) Article 8 states that signatory countries should:

regulate or manage biological resources important for the conservation of biological diversity whether within or outside protected areas, with a view to insuring their conservation and sustainable use

and

respect, preserve, and maintain knowledge, innovations, and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider applications.

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Centres of Diversity

Wild relatives landraces

Collection

Genebanks

Variety improvement

Creation of varieties

Cultivars

Production diffusion

Exploitation agriculture

Gene pool top level

Indigenous communities

Traditional farmers

Collectors

Curators

R&D institutions

Breeders

Seed companies

Farmers

The PGR System

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IPGRI Global Program on In situ Conservation of Biological Diversity (1995)Supports research on the biological and social bases of in situ conservation:

• Collecting a basic data set that links farmers’ decision making on the selection and maintenance of crop cultivars to measurable indices of genetic diversity

• Training natural scientists in in situ conservation research

• Identifying target areas for in situ conservation programs

• Building bridges between conservationists, farmers, agricultural development agencies, and policy makers

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Example: A National Framework for Implementing On-Farm Conservation in Nepal

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Example: A National Framework for Implementing On-Farm Conservation in Hungary

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Will the seed remember?

13The Andean Ayllu

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McClintock’s Challenge to biologists:

to study how the cell “senses unusual and unexpected events and responds to them….how the cell senses danger and instigates responses that are truly remarkable.”

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MITES – Miniature MITES – Miniature Inverted Repeat Inverted Repeat Transposable Transposable ElementsElements

“Tourist” “Stowaway” “Alien”

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When a large power wants to deprive a small country of its national consciousness, it uses the method of organized forgetting…

Connerton (1996)

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ColporteursColporteurs

Itinerant peddlers of cheap reading materials such as primers, cookbooks, romances, fairy tales, and adventure books, popular in the 17th -19th centuries

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The alternative commemorative narrative that directly opposes the master commemorative narrative, operating under and against its hegemony, thus constitutes a countermemory. As the term implies, countermemory is essentially oppositional and stands in hostile and subversive relation to collective memory. If a master commemorative narrative attempts to suppress alternative views of the past, the countermemory in turn denies the validity of the narrative constructed by the collective memory and presents its own claim for a more accurate representation of history.

Zerubavel (1993)

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