Chiloe ― The Ethnobiology of an Island Culture

This volume focuses on the ethnobiology of southern Chile’s Archipelago of Chiloé. Chiloé presents a unique perspective on the intersection of society and biology owing to its vast natural resources, historic culture of cooperation, geographic isolation, and external resource exploitation. Contributions to this volume cover knowledge bases in both marine and terrestrial systems, and how specific local knowledge types contributed to a variety of strategies, including subsistence, social-ecological resilience, resource conservation, cultural heritage preservation, economic systems, and mitigating uncertainty. This book addresses the specificities of human-environment interaction on a resource-rich island, and how historic knowledge and practices can help configure adaptation to a changing social-ecological landscape.

Anton Daughters is an assistant professor of anthropology at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. His field research in Chiloe focuses on the cultural changes that have accompanied economic shifts in the region over the past forty years. He received a BA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico, a PhD from the University of Arizona, and a two-year Mellon Fellowship at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. He has published in Anthropology Now, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Kiva, and Journal of the Southwest, and is a co-editor of Moquis and Kastiilam: Hopis, Spaniards, and the Trauma of History, a two-volume documentary history of the Hopi published by University of Arizona Press.

Ana Pitchon is a researcher with the firm INSITUM Consulting. A former associate professor of anthropology at California State University Dominguez Hills and assistant professor at San Jose State University, she received a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from Colby College and a PhD in Ecological Anthropology from the University of Georgia. She has conducted research on fisheries and coastal communities in multiple countries, with a focus on social-ecological resilience. She has published in Human Organization, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Journal of Anthropological Research, CalCOFI Reports and Urban Coast.