Bu konuşmada, insanların beslenme alışkanlıklarının tarih öncesinden günümüze nasıl evrildiği hem arkeolojik bulgular hem de güncel saha gözlemleriyle ele alınacak.
Tekeli'nin antropolog olarak görev yaptığı Erzurum Pulur Höyük kazısında günümüzden beş bin yıl öncesinde keşfedilen taş aletler, tarih öncesi insanların protein ağırlıklı diyetlerini ve bu diyetin insan anatomisine etkilerini anlamamızda önemli ipuçları sunuyor. Tekeli, benzer şekilde, Etiyopya’daki saha çalışmasında, günümüzde hâlâ taş aletlerle besin hazırlayan toplulukların, tarih öncesi yaşam biçimlerini nasıl sürdürdüklerine tanıklık etmiştir. Konuşmasında da, bu iki örnek üzerinden, avcı-toplayıcı yaşam tarzının modern beslenmeyle olan farklarını ve bu farkların insan üzerindeki yansımalarını tartışacak. Bu bağlamda, ANAMED Kütüphanesi’nde yaptığı araştırmaların, bu tarihsel ve biyolojik bağlantıları anlamada nasıl kritik bir rol oynadığını aktaracak. Geçmişten günümüze beslenme yolculuğumuzun izlerinin, bilimsel ve kültürel bir çerçevede sunulması hedefleniyor.


Tarih Öncesinden Günümüze: Taş Aletler ve Beslenmenin İzinde - Evrim Tekeli

Steven Yearley interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 2. © University of Exeter.

Transcript:
I was surprised to the extent to which these groups didn’t seem to overlap very much at all. I mean so that it wasn’t that I went to the Ulster Wildlife Trust and then found that many of the same people were also attending the Friends of the Earth meetings; they tended to be different people although they were [...] in their sort of social class background and so on they were surprisingly similar; they were very solidly middle class and sort of bourgeois people. […] You know, because this was the thing with Friends of the Earth they would have four or five campaign themes which most of their work was about [...] essentially they wanted groups to campaign on things that Friends of the Earth as a whole was campaigning on at the time but they were very much generally speaking not nature conservation issues. I mean they were things that might impact conservation in a broad sense, you know through water contamination from waste sites or from climate change or whatever but most of it was about dealing with human impacts on the broader environment and possible sort of boomerang effects on society itself rather than having a nature conservation orientation, so that in a sense, you know, even if both sets of activities had gone on as fully as one could ever imagine, they wouldn’t have ended up colliding with each other very much.

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


Sociologist Steven Yearley on environmental organisations in Northern Ireland, 1980s

Steven Yearley interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 2. © University of Exeter.

Transcript:
What did it see its main reason for existing being at that time? [...]

So at that stage certainly it didn’t perceive its role as anything to do with conservation; it was for the study of natural history and that includes geology within it and the publication of information relating to Suffolk about that and providing field meetings for people to go to places and go and study that. So quite a narrow focus I would say in terms of what it would get involved in.

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


Martin Sanford on the Suffolk Naturalists’ Society in the 1980s

Steven Yearley interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 8. © University of Exeter.

Director of Community Affairs for the Wildlife Trusts in the 1990s, Peter Shirley, reflects on the related but different work of natural history and nature conservation.

Transcript:
Being an amateur naturalist, an amateur entomologist […] had no bearing at all on what I did for the Wildlife Trusts. They didn’t employ me to use that knowledge and those skills. [...] I was always doing budgets, policy documents, managing volunteers, helping other people to manage this-manage that-do the other. And none of it every involved picking up a magnifying glass and looking at an insect through it. [laughs] The two things are entirely separate from that point of view. Although interestingly the Wildlife Trusts, really, were founded on people who did pick up the magnifying glass and look and things through it, but that’s why I say there was this huge professionalization in the [...] last quarter of the twentieth century where all the knowledge and skills of those naturalists was sort of brought to bear on trying look after and improve the natural environment and all that went to inform the profession of nature conservation but the people who then actually practiced nature conservation were a whole lot of different people, so we’d employ marketing people, we’d employ finance people, we’d employ human resource people because whether it’s staff or volunteers you’re dealing with […] your most valuable resource and so you need the appropriate skills and knowledge to be able to do that effectively. 

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy

Peter Shirley on differences between amateur natural history and professional nature conservation

Mary Hollingsworth interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 2. © University of Exeter.

Transcript:
We did things that were basically a mixture of species specific and wider sort of environmental issues, so for example [leafing through project material] I’ve got here, we did something on hay fever, and then we would do things very specific like the Bat Pack [...] which was introducing schools and young people into understanding bats – because of course they are a mammal that is very hard to actually engage with. So it talks about the biology and the ecology of bats. And that was sponsored by Fruit Gums […] Then we had Frog Watch which was logging when spawn arrived, where spawn arrived […] the lifecycle of the frog. […] The worry at the time around this one, the conservation worries were that frogs had got a virus and they seemed to be in decline so there was a problem with the frogs and there was a problem with habitat loss. So it was about raising the whole interest in that. Basically what we had was a whole series of ideas – we’ve always got an ideas bank of things we could do and this if you like is the portfolio that the fundraiser would take round [...] and the sponsor would say, ‘oh I like that one, yes we’ll put our name on that one’. So that one got done. It’s as basic as that really.


Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


Mary Hollingsworth recalls projects of the Wildlife Trusts’ junior WATCH club, 1990s

Diane Warburton interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 8. © Diane Warburton.

Interviewer: Do you remember how you did think about […] the environmental future at that time, in the early 90s?

I [pause] I became; I suppose I thought the environmental movement can find solutions to a lot of environmental problems. There was a lot of research happening in environmental organisations, there was – there were a lot of solutions being proposed. You know, lead in petrol was entirely led by environmental organisations - the removal of lead in petrol. […] And acid rain as well. So, there were things which were being tackled but it was a bit like, you know, one problem gets solved and another one pops up. So, I don’t think anybody thought that environmental problems were going to solved any time soon but that specific environmental problems could be addressed and something done about them. So, I felt, you know, that sort of optimism. I think things did improve slightly but, I mean, globally the environment didn’t get any better, at all. Some things got better and as I was saying, you know, lead in petrol and acid rain and things like that were tackled and recycling happened more. Specific things could change but overall, the environment did continue to get worse and is still getting worse. There was a lot of work going on. [...] Some things got better. [...] Specific things could change but overall, the environment did continue to get worse and is still getting worse.

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


Diane Warburton on the environmental movement of the early 1990s

George Greenshields interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 2. © University of Exeter

Transcript: 
Interviewer: You have [had] these farmers who contact you – I think that was the model […]?

Yes

Interviewer: So, they contacted you. What was the most common reason for them having wanted to meet you?

Ok, the most common thing was firstly tree planting on the farm [...] hedgerow management was another one and creation of ponds was probably the third one. And also exploring the […] grants that they could access to make those things happen. 
Interviewer: What [...] explains that trees, hedges and ponds were the most commonly asked about?

I think because those – I mean ponds and tree planting were things you could accommodate on your less good land [...] there was quite a lot of hedgerow management advice and that, you know, that wouldn’t impinge on farming; they could carry on being intensive in the rest of the field and as I said the ponds and tree planting were always in areas that they could afford to lose and weren’t productive.

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


George Greenshields on his work as Farm Conservation Adviser in Dorset, 1990s

Diane Warburton interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 3. © Diane Warburton.

Transcript:
It was interesting to go from that community action, protest-y stuff into Community Development Foundation which had a very clear idea of what community development was and what the priority issues should be and as I said before environment was not one of them. Pollution wasn’t one of them. And actually, the sort of protest that […] we were doing was not really one of them. It was much more supporting the proletariat to get to the revolution, was sort of at the background of it all. And it was quite a Marxist analysis, so it was mostly about social and economic issues and class and then a bit later on also gender and women’s rights. But it was – environment didn’t figure, at all. Even though there was a big focus on housing, but it would be housing conditions rather than the way that housing was developed. So, nothing about planning; those issues didn’t come into it at all. It was supporting groups to find their voice and demand their rights on essentially social and economic issues.

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy


Diane Warburton on lack of environmental work in the Community Development Foundation in the 1970s

Maxwell Ayamba interviewed by Paul Merchant, Oral Histories of Environmental Collaboration, Track 2. © University of Exeter.

Founder of the Sheffield Environment Network, Maxwell Ayamba reflects on relations with mainstream environmental organisations in his work with ethnic minority (global majority) communities in Britain.


Transcript: 
In terms of the environmental organisations like the Wildlife Trusts and those kinds of things, you understand that these have been predominantly white organisations that have practised traditionally along the whole Eurocentric way of nature conservation and recreation. Because honestly speaking, if you understand, communities that come from the developing world see nature as a source of livelihood, because that’s what they’re dependent on [...] and moving here nature is more a creation of leisure, and so, you know, seeing nature on those terms, people are not very, very keen because – not only they are not keen, because they want leisure and recreation, but they cannot afford due to socioeconomic issues. And so, but they – white environmental organisations, or traditional environmental organisations do not understand – they are not culturally sensitive, to put it that way, so they don’t understand that different cultures have different perspectives on the environment and how they relate to the environment. So, my relationship with these environmental organisations has been an uphill task in terms of really trying to reframe the whole narrative of how they work with minoritised community groups to bring them onboard. Because it’s a whole issue to do with organisational culture – the organisational culture would need to be changed but its difficult for them to change the organisational culture because it’s a practice that has been normalised and people working within that particular space are socialised about what they do and their actions have become normalised so they don’t see what they should change that norm […] and therefore it is really difficult to break through and create that difference. 

Image: Pinecone at RENEW Collaborations Workshop. Credit: Angela Cassidy

Tarih Öncesinden Günümüze: Taş Aletler ve Beslenmenin İzinde - Evrim Tekeli

ANAMED Library

Related tracks