CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Those particular contexts mentioned in the title of this contribution referred to biocultural systems that is based in both biological and cultural diversity and situated in time and space. In this framework, the local particular context is shaped by a web of significance that emerges from complex interrelationships of people or diverse communities. Consequently, pluricultural contexts are characterized by a ?way of life? constituted by the coexistence of different ways of doing, thinking and feeling, interrelated in diverse degree. Even though in the last years the conformation of pluricultural contexts has been intensified from the phenomenon known as ?globalization?, the great majority of ways of life can be characterized as pluricultural. Useful plants have not been detached from the dynamics of pluriculturality and have been subject of continuous processes of domestication and diversification resulting from a cultural selection typical of each community linked to a particular environment. Thus, new crops are generated wich become important because they are considered as belonging to the involved local actors, and frequently they remain in the condition of NUS (Neglected and Underutilized Species). From several study cases we present situations of diversification of useful plants (fruit trees in North of Argentina, diverse Phaseoleae in both Old and New World), increasing of agrodiversity (introduction of new crops in Argentina by immigrants of Chinese and of other South America countries origin, Mayan orchards in Yucatán, México, African crops in Southern Spain) and resignification of the use of species (Mediterranean thistles in South American pampas). By way of conclusion, we highlight the value of pluricultural contexts in the origin and conservation of biocultural diversity

enviar mensaje