Western consumers are increasingly demanding to know the provenance of their food. In New Zealand, Māori tribal enterprises are engaged in the food producing sectors of farming and fisheries and, like other businesses seeking to remain competitive in global markets, are responding to the demand for provenance through developing systems for communicating the origin of foods to consumers. However, Māori are doing this in their own way, in a manner that authentically reflects their own understanding of place and expresses an (...) indigenous animist perspective. It is argued that an animist approach to provenancing provides an authentic means of connecting Western consumers to nature in circumstances where they have become psychologically and physically abstracted. Animism provides a relational way of understanding the world, through which food products emerge as animated representations of reciprocal place-based relationships. It is considered that this indigenous approach can provide ‘an antidote’ to the alienating effects of modernity, where food products are experienced as inert compositions of elements that can be replicated and produced anywhere via industrial processes. Furthermore, it can provide a touchstone for differentiating between authentic provenance and the cynical use of provenance marketing that exploits the needs of alienated individuals for connection to place. A case study of indigenous provenance, Ahikā Kai, is offered to explain and illustrate the theoretical perspectives provided. (shrink)

The maker of a regularly divided scale is faced with a task of such conceptual simplicity that he is bound to fail, such is the nature of real materials and men. Using sophisticated modern measuring tools, we can now accurately chart the error in every division of an old linear scale. The resulting pattern of errors across the scale provides a unique signature, containing a random component that could not be precisely repeated by the artisan, and a systematic component, reflecting (...) the fine detail of the technique he used. Taking a small sample of scales made for different purposes about 200 years ago, from a precision linear measure by J. Sisson to two mountain barometer scales by J. Miller of Edinburgh, a method of examining the error pattern is discussed using statistical techniques developed for time series analysis. From the quantitative information present in the division sizes and their errors, useful conclusions and inferences are drawn on the origin of the scales, the tools and the techniques used by individual makers. (shrink)

Although there are different approaches to sustainability auditing, those considered authoritative use scientific indicators and instruments to measure and predict the impact of organizational operations on socio-ecological systems. Such approaches are biased because they can only measure phenomena whose features lend themselves to quantification, control, and observation directly with the instruments produced by technology. This technocratic bias is a product of the mechanistic worldview, which presumes that all components of socio-ecological systems are identifiable, discrete, and material. In contrast to the (...) mechanistic worldview, indigenous people use animist familial representations. In the case of New Zealand Māori a family tree is used to represent socio-ecological systems. This is a flexible conception, which views socio-ecological systems as both composites made up of interlinking causally-connected parts but also as reciprocating systems that have intangible elements such as consciousness, emotion, and agency. The technocratic approach is ontologically incapable of incorporating intangible elements to such a degree we consider that it incompatible with animist approaches. It is not, however, epistemologically-incongruous for indigenous peoples because of the flexible hybridity of their worldview. This worldview provides a broad moral framework, which avoids discrediting subjectivity and reducing socio-ecological systems to only their instrumental value. Finally, we conclude that the indigenous approach has much to offer the field of sustainability auditing, given that it provides a moral framework, and insight into building assessment systems upon abductive reasoning. (shrink)

At the outset it will be useful, I think, to distinguish the following components in the definitional situation:1. The “definitional relation” that holds, in a given case, between either a definiendum and definiens or a definiendum, definiens, and referent the symbol being defined, the defining symbol, which is usually complex and includes descriptive terms, and any member of the class of non-symbolic referents by means of references to which the descriptive terms in are given their semantical meaning—the relation between and (...) being non-symmetrical, even though the relata are, in some contests, functionally equivalent. The former syntactical relation connects one symbol with another symbol ; the latter semantical relation also does this, but includes the additional factor of a descriptive reference, via the definiens, to a class of non-symbolic referents. (shrink)

"Biodiversity prospecting" has been touted as a mechanism for both discovering new pharmaceutical products and saving endangered ecosystems. It is unclear what values may arise from such activities, however. Evidence from transactions is incomplete and existing theoretical models are flawed. We calculate an upper bound on the value of the "marginal species." Even under favorable assumptions this bound is modest. Slightly modified assumptions lead to drastically lower estimates. We extend our findings to the value of the marginal hectare of habitat (...) and find that the incentives for habitat conservation generated by private pharmaceutical research are also, at best, very modest. (shrink)