Honey Hunting with the Jenu Kuruba: An Exploration of the Social and Individual Pressures on the Transmission of Local Ecological Knowledge

In the face of great change in some areas of traditional knowledge among the Jenu Kuruba, we find that honey collecting remains fairly stable in this small-scale south Indian society. The behavior of “honey collecting” is a conglomeration of skills and knowledge acquired in different manners and independently affected by variation in individual ability and learning context. Sociological factors such as norms about independence, kinship and residence practices, gender roles and access to the forest also affect patterns of social learning. Through a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, we examine how individual and social factors intertwine to produce a gestalt in the stability or instability of socially acquired traditional knowledge. We find that economic motivation combined with flexible social learning contribute to a stable body of knowledge.