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The cultural impact of information technologies is now being discussed outside the closed circles of academia and specialists and has acquired a national and international political dimension. For an organisation such as the Council of Europe, which since 1949 has defended democracy and safeguarded human rights, the relation between technology and culture and reflection on how the fundamental freedoms of the individual express themselves within the spaces of electronic communication are of primary importance. This is particularly true of the world of publishing. Publishers have benefited considerably from the diffusion of the new technologies. However, despite this, they are generally wary of electronic publishing for reasons which range from the costs to the lack of secure legal protection and the absence of a proper distribution circuit. In conclusion, even today, that amazing concentrate of pluralistic expression and democratic practice to be found in the catalogues of many publishers chooses the laborious and economically disadvantageous path of traditional production and distribution. There are many external factors which condition, to some extent, the development of electronic publishing. The "third revolution" of reading, after the transition from the volumen to the codex and, in the XVIII century, from an "intensive" to an "extensive" style, has still to take place. Reading, in reality, rhymes with writing: while the latter remains linear, continuous, a producer of texts, the former will faithfully follow the same course. The spread of electronic publishing therefore entails a new drive for literacy, which aims to revise the three fundamental skills (reading, writing and counting) and ensure the learning of a "minimum level" of computer knowledge, that minimum needed to prevent one drowning in the ocean of Internet. All the professional figures are changing their functions. Librarians offer a curious example of this repositioning on the book chain. Starting from the early 1970s, they have been involved in informatics and have hence found themselves experimenting avant-garde solutions in information processing, at a time when the other book professionals remained faithful to traditional work techniques and communication practices. Emboldened by this technological advantage, many libraries could be tempted to redefine themselves as economic players and producers of information. This confusion of roles between librarians and publishers does not, however, serve the interest of culture, above all in a historical period in which primary and functional illiteracy are further compounded by technological illiteracy. A recent survey by the OECD shows that adult illiteracy is on the increase. The first programmes, both Italian and international, for electronic publishing focused on content, with a distinct preference for optic technology. What is rather surprising is that electronic publishing is tending to exalt technological value-added - and, therefore, the capacity to combine text, image and sound - while neglecting the potential of communication - the possibility, for example, to generate texts whether on electronic or paper media, from an electronic source. Attention should therefore be paid to the entry strategies of small- and medium-sized publishers in the electronic environment and to the technological and econometric models which can define the steps necessary to adapt the traditional book chain to the network environment. The project "New Book Economy", inspired by the Council of Europe and financed by the EU structural funds (ADAPT programme), aims to address these problems. The project has been implemented in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, respectively by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the Internationale Buch Agentur and the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. The project shall run for two years and aims to involve the various players of the book chain in innovative projects and to initiate activities aimed at increasing awareness and the related training. This electronic publishing project envisages the involvement not only of the commercial players of the book chain but also of the non-commercial players (librarians, readers), and their co-operation. The final objective is to ensure that the migration of the melting pot of opinions, experiences and relations contained in texts published by small- and medium-sized publishers to the communication network environment is quick and takes place under the optimum conditions, before the various combined economic and socio-cultural factors make their public expression increasingly difficult. The New Book Economy is therefore also a democratic battle deserving of investment of energy and resources.

In many developing countries, community members depend on their local flora for treating diverse ailments including those affecting the respiratory system. This is often attributed to the high cost and limited access to health care facilities. This present study focused on the documentation of plant species used against cough associated with the respiratory diseases in Ede South Local Government Area of Osun State. The survey was conducted using semi-structured interviews among 100 participants. Information obtained was analyzed using different ethno-botanical indices including relative frequency of citation (RFC) and fidelity level (FL). A total of 87 plant species from 39 families, which was mostly represented by Fabaceae, were reported in the study area. Crinum jagus was the most popular plant used against cough and approximately 32% of the plants have been reported as cough remedies for the first time. However, some of the documented plants have been reported for the treatment of cough and related respiratory diseases in several countries. In terms of the life-form, trees constituted the highest proportion of the medicinal plants (37%), while leaves (36%) were the predominant plant part prescribed for cough. Decoction was the main method of preparing the plants, which were all administered orally. Approximately 63% of the plants were exclusively sourced from the wild. The current study revealed the richness and widespread use of plant species for managing cough associated with respiratory diseases in the study area. The generated inventory contributes to the expanding database of valuable plant resources with medicinal potential in Nigeria and Africa.

The protection of traditional knowledge (TK) is an issue that has gained interest in recent decades, not only because of the economic aspects that depend on it, but also because the claims surrounding the recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples have gained greater visibility. In this article, I studied the particular relationship between TK and intellectual property, focusing on a singular element, the flag of indigenous peoples. In Chile, the protection of TK is residual and although the current draft IP law contains interesting provisions, we think that the possibility of creating, within the INAPI platform, a database dedicated to the TCEs should be explored. That said, what is sought in this paper is to stimulate a reflection, knowing that a solution would only be achieved by working together with indigenous peoples, within a broader political and legal process of recognition and reaffirmation of indigenous rights. ; La protección de los conocimientos tradicionales (CC.TT.) es un tema que ha ganado en interés durante los últimos decenios, no sólo por los aspectos económicos que dependen de la misma sino también porque las reivindicaciones en torno al reconocimiento de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas han cobrado mayor visibilidad. En el presente artículo nos interesamos en la relación particular entre conocimientos tradicionales y propiedad intelectual (PI). Nos enfocamos en un elemento singular, la bandera de los pueblos indígenas. En Chile, el amparo de los CC.TT. es residual y si bien el actual proyecto de ley sobre PI contiene disposiciones interesantes, pensamos que se debe explorar la posibilidad de la creación, dentro de la plataforma del INAPI, de una base de datos dedicada a las Expresiones Culturales Tradicionales (ECT). Dicho eso, lo que se busca en este trabajo es sugerir pistas de reflexiones. No se pretende proponer soluciones ya que ellas sólo se podrán obtener trabajando en conjunto con los pueblos indígenas, dentro de un proceso político y jurídico más amplio de reconocimiento, ...

AbstractThe COVID‐19 global pandemic has adversely affected educational institutions worldwide, resulting in frequent mandatory lockdowns and social distancing rules. After waiting for a brief period, most organizations, including educational institutions, moved their operations from traditional in‐class to virtual, web‐based teaching‐learning. As a result of unprecedented change, faculty, students, and administrators faced several challenges. However, how the educational institutions were coping with this challenging situation remained an important question. To address this, we present Knowledge Management Process (KMP), Knowledge Management System Infrastructure (KMSINF), and Knowledge Management System Quality (KMSQU) as resilient strategies to convert the challenges into opportunities. Using the KM processes and practices, a complex model is constructed to positively influence employee commitment, performance, and job satisfaction. A survey instrument was used to collect data from 747 faculty members from 14 higher educational institutions in the southern part of India. After testing the measurement properties using the Lisrel package of structural equation modeling, the complex model was tested using Hayes PROCESS macros. The results indicate (i) KMP is positively related to performance and employee commitment, (ii) employee commitment mediates the relationship between KMP and performance, (iii) KMSINF moderates the relationship between KMP and employee commitment, (iv) KMSQU moderates the moderated relationship between KMP and KMSINF in influencing the employee commitment, and (v) performance is positively related to job satisfaction. The results suggest that KM processes, system infrastructure, and system quality are effective, resilient strategies to bring educational institutions to normal functioning during the present global pandemic. The implications for KM, employee commitment, and job satisfaction are discussed.

We carried out a study to determine ethno-veterinary knowledge used to treat and prevent livestock diseases in Toteng Village in Ngamiland District, northwestern Botswana. Primary data were collected through simple random sampling of 45 households in Toteng. Respondents were either livestock owners or cattle herders. Respondents were interviewed using a structured questionnaire which had both open and closed-ended questions. Cattle ownership or herdership in Toteng is an inter-generational occupation with people ranging from 15 to 94 years old. Cattle were acquired either through inheritance, buying, mafisa (reciprocal exchange) system or government scheme. Women in the study area were more involved in livestock farming activities. Eleven livestock diseases were reported to be prevalent in the study area. The top six diseases were tlhako le molomo -foot and mouth disease (FMD), matlho - eye infections, letshololo-diarrhea, madi -pasteurollosis, mokokomalo - aphosphorisis and pholoso- contagious abortion. At least nine medicinal plant species having ethno-veterinary applications were recorded in the study area. Single plants are mostly used rather than a combination of plants. A number of social strategies were mentioned such as 'go fetola mafudiso' - to change grazing areas, and 'go thaa lesaka' – to ritualistically 'protect a kraal' or livestock against evil spells and predators (lions). Although the intervention of conventional veterinary medicine is pervasive in Toteng, and many livestock owners are resorting to it, there is evidence, however, of generalized ethno-veterinary knowledge used to treat and prevent livestock diseases. Local farmers and their herders in Ngamiland are not only knowledgeable and experienced in treating a range of livestock diseases, but also in performing other veterinary tasks such as assisting in births, treating fractures and range management strategies to mitigate particular threats from their local environment. The efficacy of ethno-veterinary knowledge for preventing and treating livestock diseases and range management strategies identified in this study need to be fully investigated and integrated in veterinary extension services.

The Silk Route Between Past and Present. A Paradigm Beyond Space and Time. On the threshold of the third millennium, in an atmosphere of anachronisms and contradictions, dominated and conditioned by scientific and technological discoveries, new ideas seem to take flight whilst regional barriers and territorial boundaries are collapsing to give way to a new form of comprehensiveness. Sharing ideas and intellectual stimuli, amalgamating cultural elements circulating along its intertwining branches, the Silk Route has more than once given life to new scientific forms, cultural and intellectual systems and, amongst these, artistic shapes and religious syncretism. The "Silk Route", which, with its articulated network of twisting routes and sub-routes, even now well represents the challenging paradigm of a new age yet standing at its threshold.
A paradigm beyond time and space. The following paper aims at focusing on the Silk Route's Religious-Cultural dimension in the middle-inner Asia of the 13th-15th Centuries, when, whatever may have happened regarding local realms and rulers, it played the role of junction and meeting point of different worlds and their civilisations. Even now we are confronted with a political trend that is at once and the same time a cultural current; emanating from the past, it is re-linking Europe and Asia and, re-uniting territories with their individual and traditional cultural forms, is shaping a renewed kaleidoscopic framework. We are confronted with new forces deeply rooted in the past, which, emanating from the far eastern fringes of Asia, by the second decade of the 21st century have reached the far western fringes of Europe, dynamics that are not only 'economics' and 'scientific technologies' but also thought, religion, and other intellectual values. These forces are heir of past times, nevertheless they endure in the present and are the active lively projection of a future time…though still largely to be understood and matured. A vision of life and universe where speculative and religious values coexist with astounding technological and scientific discoveries in a global dimension without space and time.
At the verge of this millennium, the Information and Communication Revolution has given life with its advanced technologies to a new space conditioned and dominated by no-distances. And this space with its always-evolving scientific discoveries today involves the society in its entirety (what is commonly named as "global space" actually symbolised by the Silk Route), endeavours to amalgamate it creating new links between civil and political society and positioning them in a new military dimension. New forms and structures that are rapidly evolving in search of some balance between technological development and preservation of ancient traditions, which might make possible social and economic justice, yet an utopia more than a reality. However, both (social and economic justice) form the ideological basis of order and stability, anxiously pursued by the young generation in search of an economic and speculative order where stability, security (hard and soft security) and religious structures should in their turn become the platform of new political-institutional structures.
Be that as it may, this is not a new phenomenon. Technological advancements are astoundingly new, but not the process and its aims. We are confronted with a phenomenon that has already occurred in more than one historic phase. Epochal phases. That is the human search for economic and social justice, and their framing into new conceptual schemes. And within this ratio, it would be unrealistic to ignore an additional key-factor. It would be unrealistic to deny that Religion has always been a major player. It has been at the basis of more than one revolution, it has represented the culturalpolitical response to foreign challenges, it has legitimised military action, it has given life to new spaces and political systems, it has filled with its pathos cultural and political voids. It has given to Mankind and Universe a new centrality, creating a new space within which Man and Mankind, History and Philosophy, Cosmos and Universe with their laws meet and merge in new systems and structural orders. The World and its Destiny, core of lively debates, conditioned by the eternal dialectic between economics and society, between society and religion, between science and technology on the one hand, and religion on the other, between formal ratio and ideologies or myths, which underline with their voice the eternal antithesis between cultures and civilisations.
At the verge of the third millennium, the intellectual world is facing a new historiographical debate, into which the Religious Factor has also entered. Knowledge and the vision of the world and its new order/disorder are translated into a new philosophy of culture and history, of society and religion. Rationality, historicity of scientific knowledge, nature and experience, nature and human 'ratio', science and ethics, science and its language, science and its new aims and objectives are amongst some of the major themes of this debate. But not only this: which aims, which objectives? And within which new order that might ensure security and stability, social and economic justice? Thence, revolution and power are coming to the fore with another factor: Force and its use…a stage that, however, does not disregard dialogue and tolerance, or, as recently stated by Francesco Bergoglio, more than tolerance, "reciprocal respect". These are only 'some' amongst the main issues discussed and heard of also in the traditional culture of ordinary people.
Undoubtedly, the end of the Cold War and the well-known "global village" dealt with by Samuel Huntington, the global village with its technological revolutions, have induced to re-think our own speculative parameters, traditional paradigms and models of society and power, mankind and statehood. And once again we have been confronted with elements that might bring to new forms of sharp opposition and a global disorder. However, beyond and behind the Huntingtonian cliché of the "clash of civilizations", a new cultural current seems to take flight spurring from the roots of a traditional past, which however has not yet disappeared. The Silk Route stems out emanating from the far-eastern lands of Asia as the conceptual image, the paradigm of a conceivable new order. By merging the material, scientific-technological and economic dimension of life with a new cultural (or neo-cultural) vocation it seeks (and seems to be able) to give life to a new social body and new systemic-structural answers, a comprehensive order capable of tackling the challenges opened by the collapse of the traditional cultural parameters and the dramatic backdrop of a mere clash of civilisations.
Middle-Inner Asia of the 13th -15th Centuries: the Silk Route and its Reflection on Painting and Architectonic Forms. As just pointed out, nothing is new in the course of History. Professor Axel Berkowsky has authoritatively lingered on the Silk Route – or better "the New Silk Route" – with specific regard on practical aspects of these last decades. In the following text, I wish to linger on a past historic period, particularly fertile when confronted with the collapse of traditional values and the challenges posed by new fearful forces and their dynamics: the Mongols with their hordes (ulus) and, some later, Tamerlane with his terrible Army. Sons of the steppe and its culture, these people suddenly appeared on the stage, raced it from Mesopotamia to the north-eastern corner of Asia with their hordes and their allied tribal groups, shattered previous civilisations and imposed a new dominion, a new political-military order and new models of life. But, with their Military superiority, they also brought the codes and the ancient traditional knowledge of the nomadic world. It is misleading to watch to this epochal phase only as a phase of devastation and horrors. With their codes, Mongols and Timurids brought with them the Chinese algebraic, mathematical and scientific knowledge, and fused it with Mesopotamian mathematical and medical sciences reaching peaks of astronomical, arithmetical, numerical, geometric, algebraic theoretical and practical knowledge. They also brought with them from vital centres of religious scholarship and life a large number of theologians, pirs, traditionists and legal religious scholars with their individual religious features and systems. Shamanism, Buddhism, Muslim forms, Nestorianism and other cults vigorously practised in the mobile world of the steppe gave life to an important phase of religious culture and multifarious practices largely imbued with mystic feelings and traditional emotional states.
Then, and once again, within the global space created by the military conquests of the new-comers, the Silk Route – or more precisely, the Silk and its Routes – reorganised and revitalised trades and business, gave life to close diplomatic connections and matrimonial allegiances reinforced by a vigorous traditional chancery and official correspondence, that tightly linked Asia with Europe. Within this new global order, the Silk and its routes played the crucial role, shaped new political, institutional, scientific and intellectual formulae, gave life to new conceptual forms that – at their core – had Man and Mankind as centre of the entire Universe. We are confronted with a cultural development begun at a time when the sons of the steppe were taking over lands of the classical Arabic civilisation (like Syria, Iraq and al-Jazīra), at a time when the Iranian world was still centre of intellectual life and its social norms were still spreading over large spaces of Inner Asian territories. Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon.
We witness a process that renovated itself 'from within' in the course of three centuries and did not stop even when the arrival of the European Powers on the Asian markets seemed to sign, with the decay and end of the traditional market economy, also the closing of the cultural interactions created by the Silk Routes of the time. Once again, Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon: a dramatic transitional, fluid period, marked by a distinctive timeless reality, which had no longer territories well delimited by frontiers to conquer or defend.
Herewith I have dealt, as an example, with the reflection of the new conceptions of Life and Universe on visual Fine Arts in the 13th-15th centuries, specifically painting and architectonic forms. Ideological values that aimed to forge new relationships among different peoples and their individual human values, religious thinking, moral codes…and economic, scientific, technological achievements.
'Fine Arts'. Visual fine arts, in my case painting and architecture, are the mirror of feelings shared by the Lords of the time, registered by painters and architects in plastic forms, the signal of these stances to an often confused Humanity. Here, I linger on two pictorial themes: Nature and Landscape on the one hand, and Religion with its very images on the other. With regard to architectonic forms, these reflect the same conceptual paradigm shaped through technical features. By those ages, Nature and Landscape were perceived by contemporary painters and architects with formal, stylistic and technical characteristics which strongly reflected the impact with a world which lived its life in close, intimate contact with nature, a world and a culture which observed Nature and the Cosmos, and perceived them in every detail over the slow rhythmical march of days and nights, of seasons and the lunar cycles. These artistic features depict a precise image, that of a world which lives its life often at odds with nature for its very survival, a world which conditions nature or is conditioned in its turn. At that time, it was a world and a cosmic order which were often perceived by the artist in their tension with uncertainty and the blind recklessness of modern-contemporary times. However, to a closer analysis, these same artistic forms shape a celestial order which was at one and the same time a culture and a religion.
In the vast borderless space of the Euro-Asiatic steppes, cut by great rivers, broken by steep rocky mountainous chains and inhospitable desert fig.aux, the Silk succeeded in building and organising its own network of twisting routes and sub-routes, along which transited (albeit, yet still transit) caravans with their goods…but also cultural elements and their conceptual-philosophical forms. Of these latter and their syncretic imageries and dreams, the fine arts have left evocative pictures and architectonic images, which depicted a world that is the projection of a precise social and political reality and its underlying factors, such as the restlessness of a nomadic pattern of life and the culture of the Town and its urban life. Little is changed today despite the collapse of the Soviet empire and its order. Features and forms change, but in both cases they announce a different world with its order built on a robust syncretism, which is at the same time science, knowledge, harmony and religion (divine or human, or both). A world that is the projection of a precise political, social and economic reality. A reality that, at one and the same time, is the silent voice of a humanity often disregarded by contemporary writers, an 'underground world' that echoes traditional forms and their dynamics, and a no less authoritative de facto power that politically, economically and militarily conditions and dominates its times. A reality that finds an authoritative voice through the Silk Route.

The article focuses on the online storytelling concerning the Xylella fastidiosa outbreak in the Apulia region (Italy), as represented by a collection of User-generated content retrieved from Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit over a time span of 6 years (>16k comments). We examine the episode as a revelatory case of framing mechanisms that, in many technoscientific conflicts, enable different epistemologies to compete on an equal basis: «mainstream» scientific knowledge, and «alternative» contents (i.e. «non-orthodox» science, local and traditional knowledge). We use Computer-Assisted Text Analysis (CATA) to investigate popular themes and their semantic vocabulary. We find that discourses on Xylella fastidiosa are strongly polarized and structured around two conflicts: «expertise vs. politics» on one hand, and «scientific vs alternative» solutions on the other. Then, we identify three main knowledge production strategies and introduce a typology of «non-mainstream» methods and cures, highlighting the formal traits and argumentation strategies that may have made them more credible than knowledge provided by «official» science. We nevertheless call for more research that may find a recursiveness in such framing mechanisms in the online representation of other technoscientific conflicts.

The paper aims at discussing the shift in agricultural culture. Most Balinese people live in the agricultural sector. They have a variety of traditional knowledge and technology called rural knowledge. Knowledge and technology were used as a foundation by the community in carrying out various activities, including agricultural activities. For example, knowledge of ala-ayuning dewasa to start work in the fields. However, the implementation of the green revolution program by the New Order government, to ensure food availability for 111.8 million residents, from 1969-1974, shifted much of local wisdom value. This study used a qualitative analysis method with an interpretive approach. The results showed several factors that were causing the shift in agricultural culture in Subak Abian, Jembrana Regency, for example, modernism, ideological factors, Dutch colonialism influence, economic development orientation, science, and technology. The shifting process of agricultural culture tends to start from changes in aspects of material infrastructure, then affect of social structure, and ultimately also influence the ideological superstructure aspects. The implications of this shift are seen in social, economic, religious life, and community kinship system.

AbstractThe subarctic Teno River is one of the most significant spawning rivers for Atlantic salmon in Europe. In 2009, research indicated that the Teno salmon stock was in a weak state, and concern about the future of Atlantic salmon in the Teno River arose on both sides of the river, in Finland and Norway. In 2017, the governments ratified the new Teno fishing agreement (Teno Fishing Act 2017). The agreement aimed to reduce the fishing volume by 30%, and the new regulations concerned all users, including the indigenous Sámi, other locals, tourists, and fishing entrepreneurs. This triggered concern and anger in the Sámi community and among other locals generally. The dispute raised a question concerning the management of Teno salmon. We conducted a Q inquiry with 43 statements, covering aspects of interest, knowledge, management, and policy needs related to Teno salmon. We hypothesised that the key reason for the management tensions lay in how scientific and traditional knowledge fitted administrative knowledge requirements. By using self-organising maps (SOMs), four webs of beliefs emerged from the data: traditional Sámi fishing; salmon protection; equal economic opportunity; and evidence-based decision-making. We also further analysed the statements according to how they reproduced diverging and similar beliefs. We discuss the identity-related struggle, rights, and stakes and the underlying issue of confidence and respect.

Abstract The subarctic Teno River is one of the most significant spawning rivers for Atlantic salmon in Europe. In 2009, research indicated that the Teno salmon stock was in a weak state, and concern about the future of Atlantic salmon in the Teno River arose on both sides of the river, in Finland and Norway. In 2017, the governments ratified the new Teno fishing agreement (Teno Fishing Act 2017). The agreement aimed to reduce the fishing volume by 30%, and the new regulations concerned all users, including the indigenous Sámi, other locals, tourists, and fishing entrepreneurs. This triggered concern and anger in the Sámi community and among other locals generally. The dispute raised a question concerning the management of Teno salmon. We conducted a Q inquiry with 43 statements, covering aspects of interest, knowledge, management, and policy needs related to Teno salmon. We hypothesised that the key reason for the management tensions lay in how scientific and traditional knowledge fitted administrative knowledge requirements. By using self-organising maps (SOMs), four webs of beliefs emerged from the data: traditional Sámi fishing; salmon protection; equal economic opportunity; and evidence-based decision-making. We also further analysed the statements according to how they reproduced diverging and similar beliefs. We discuss the identity-related struggle, rights, and stakes and the underlying issue of confidence and respect.

The subarctic Teno River is one of the most significant spawning rivers for Atlantic salmon in Europe. In 2009, research indicated that the Teno salmon stock was in a weak state, and concern about the future of Atlantic salmon in the Teno River arose on both sides of the river, in Finland and Norway. In 2017, the governments ratified the new Teno fishing agreement (Teno Fishing Act 2017). The agreement aimed to reduce the fishing volume by 30%, and the new regulations concerned all users, including the indigenous Sámi, other locals, tourists, and fishing entrepreneurs. This triggered concern and anger in the Sámi community and among other locals generally. The dispute raised a question concerning the management of Teno salmon. We conducted a Q inquiry with 43 statements, covering aspects of interest, knowledge, management, and policy needs related to Teno salmon. We hypothesised that the key reason for the management tensions lay in how scientific and traditional knowledge fitted administrative knowledge requirements. By using self-organising maps (SOMs), four webs of beliefs emerged from the data: traditional Sámi fishing; salmon protection; equal economic opportunity; and evidence-based decision-making. We also further analysed the statements according to how they reproduced diverging and similar beliefs. We discuss the identity-related struggle, rights, and stakes and the underlying issue of confidence and respect.

Abstract
In the context of China's "Constructing ecological civilization" initiative, Tibetan environmentalists are proactively incorporating ecological science into their wildlife conservation efforts. This ethnographic study explores the logics, rationales and motivations behind this approach among Tibetans in Qinghai province. The article contends that Tibetan environmentalists adopt ecological science to gain legibility in the eyes of both the state and the wider environmental conservation community, thereby enhancing their political legitimacy and social recognition. On one hand, this practice counters the stigmatizing narratives that depict Tibetan pastoralists as backward. By embracing scientific discourses and practices, they challenge such derogatory views and position themselves as forward-thinking conservationists. On the other hand, this strategy indirectly preserves the traditional knowledge of pastoralists. Through their involvement with ecological science, they merge traditional insights with scientific methodologies, ensuring the protection of their cultural heritage while adapting to the sociopolitical landscape of contemporary conservation dynamics in China.

Abstract:This article analyzes drafts put forth by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to examine the gaps that are created when institutions attempt to assign authorship of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions to individuals and communities and how these gaps impact the use of folkloric dance in cultural institutions. The analysis produced via anthropological mappings of policy is underpinned with an examination of terminologies that circulate between fields of discourse, spiraling their way into public policies concerning marginalized peoples' rights, economies of art, and intellectual property. This is followed by ethnographic accounts of Afro-Cuban folkloric dance classes, for it is in the dancing bodies that gaps between policies of authorship and the reality of unstable streams of transmission and reception materialize. By reproducing and circulating these unstable streams, combined with various legal doctrines put forth by WIPO, cultural institutions appropriate Afro-Cuban folkloric dance to commodify individuals and communities.