The environmental issue and its ambiguous encounter with the struggle for land: challenges in approaching traditional way of life and nature conservation

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of the concept of traditional way of life by recent official
policies which discriminates traditional territories in response to the mobilization of
traditional peasant communities in the struggle for land. To do so, the article examines
the emergence of the environmental problematic in the West and the context that
enables the convergence of the environmental struggle with that of peasant communities
dwelling in natural areas. Then it discusses the difficulties and conflicts related to the
use of the concept of traditional peasant way of life in the formulation and
implementation of projects of creation and re-creation of traditional territories under the
policies of agrarian reform and environmental conservation. It concludes highlighting a
leaning of idealization of the tradition concept in the formulation of such projects,
which express the disregard of the symbolic dimension of traditional ways of life and
their dialectics with new situations throughout history.