INTERDISCIPLINARITY, POLITICAL ECOLOGY AND TRADITIONAL COMMUNITIES IN LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

Latin America is a historically dispossessed region, within the constitution of the world system, and excluded, in relation to the social thought it produced. However, it is one of the regions with the greatest biodiversity and cultural diversity in the world, elements constantly threatened and put into dispute between peoples and hegemonic interests of the processes of capitalist modernity. Thus, we intend to discuss the relevance of interdisciplinarity, complexity and Political Ecology in studies involving traditional peoples and communities and the environmental issue in Latin America. For this, we follow an approach that transits between traditional and scientific knowledge and that is capable of providing aspects for understanding the so-called environmental crisis, whose peoples and traditional communities are subjects that have the potential to mitigate it, as they adopt productive systems less predatory. The methodology, with a qualitative approach, was a review and bibliographical analysis in which some classic authors on the subject were used, giving preference to Latin American authors, in order to use approaches from Latin American critical epistemologies and from the field of Political Ecology.