The environmental crisis becomes essentially cultural, to overcome the crisis and return to a point of harmonious relationship between nature and society, new conceptions are required where values, ideologies, traditions, scientific and empirical knowledge are integrated.
To do this, we propose indicators to be used in the diagnosis of community environmental culture, based on the principles of participatory action research.
Introduction
When man appeared on the planet he was totally subjected to all the forces of the natural environment, not only in his environment, but also in himself, because he was unaware of the laws that govern the functioning of nature.
The long road began then from the time when man had to dedicate a large part of his energy to obtain the necessary food, and escape from danger, to the current period in which, to survive, he had to dedicate part of his energy to reduce and correct the risks with which his very presence and activity threaten both the natural environment and the environment that he himself has created.
Our Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, has expressed: "An important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the rapid and progressive liquidation of its natural living conditions: man." (Castro; 1992).
In relation to the deterioration of the environment, he pointed out: “It is necessary to point out that consumer societies are fundamentally responsible for the atrocious destruction of the environment. They were born from the old colonial metropolises and from imperial policies that, in turn, generated backwardness and poverty that today exhaust most of humanity. They consume two thirds of the metals and three quarters of the energy produced in the world. They have poisoned the seas and rivers, they have polluted the air, they have weakened and perforated the ozone layer, they have saturated the atmosphere with gases that alter climatic conditions with catastrophic effects that we are already beginning to suffer. ” (Castro; 1992)
“The forests disappear, the deserts extend, billions of tons of fertile land go to the sea every year. Numerous species become extinct. Population pressure and poverty lead to desperate efforts to survive even at the expense of nature. " (Castro; 1992).
So far it is clear what are the environmental problems that affect the development of life on the planet and what are their causes. It is necessary to reflect on how to create the essential natural conditions for a full life on Earth? The answer must be urgent, a new economic order is necessary at a global level, equitably distribute the wealth and available technologies, the solution is not to impede the progress of the poorest nations located in the least developed world, where they live putting themselves at risk their own existence and that of the surrounding environment in a context where selfishness, social injustice and the most absolute lack of equity prevail.
It is necessary to highlight that the main objective of the social project that has been developed in Cuba since the triumph of the Revolution, has been to raise the quality of life of man through the integral satisfaction of his material and social needs, with emphasis on the summit of his level educational and cultural and incorporating the environmental dimension in the economic and social development of the country.
This work responds to the need for new criteria aimed at community diagnosis and for this purpose the following is formulated: Proposal of actions for the diagnosis of community environmental culture, based on the principles of participatory action research.
The IAP defines Dr. Rafaela Macías as: “In which it seeks to achieve a deep understanding of reality and promotes its sociocultural transformation with the participation of all the social actors involved, proposes to break the subject-object separation, the distance between theory and practice and between knowing and acting. It places the subject as a producer of knowledge in the reflection of herself and her reality, to on that basis generate changes in a dynamic way in the individual and in her sociocultural context ”. (Macías; 2004).
Development
The problems related to man are refracted from society and are provided in a direct relationship, in charge of transferring these aspirations of society according to future generations.
In Cuba, they are based on the laws, categories and principles of the dialectical materialist philosophy together with the best of national thought, thus the treatment of certain topics that respond to social interests are oriented, in whose solution the community plays an important role. These overflow due to their characteristic problems that society faces, produced fundamentally by their own development.
The aforementioned also includes environmental problems in the rigorous scientific explanation of the facts, phenomena, consequences and treatment with the community, where as a principle of said connection of the individual, with life, the social environment and work, in the process of their cultural background.
The general norms in the community are related to all the formative activities of the being with life, with the problems of the environment in which it develops, and by extension in the local and global environment.
The demand for the trained human resource necessary to introduce cognitive elements of environmental culture in communities continues to be important, and constitutes one of the permanent priorities for government action in the field of environmental culture. That is why it is necessary to eliminate these insufficiencies and strengthen the investigation and experimentation of the diagnosis of environmental culture in relation to the pedagogical treatment of environmental values.
The development of the theory related to environmental culture is little finished and politics in Cuba has the purpose of forming a man who actively participates in the construction of the new society, with a high level of responsibility, practical skills, human feelings and values. aesthetic and ethical-moral, which implies forming a revolutionary and educated man. This requires the permanent cultivation of all the possibilities that lead to a more efficient scientific research work in the direction of environmental culture. To guarantee that culture achieves that essential purpose, it is necessary to form a high level of integrality, based essentially on the philosophical, social and epistemic aspects necessary for the formation of the values that our society demands today.It is in this inclusive direction that environmental culture plays a main role due to its community character.
The training of promoters requires the introduction of the environmental dimension in an integral way throughout the professional process, which implies a coherent and significant treatment of the problem, which enables them to recognize the potential of the community in terms of culture. environmental being able to develop new designs for its activity, making it a task of great importance today.
In the National Strategy for Environmental Education (1997, p.13), they are identified among the main problems. An insufficient theoretical and practical preparation from the scientific-technical point of view to undertake the introduction of the environmental dimension in development processes, with a conception of environment-development interdependence and therefore with a cultural character.
The environment as a problem of great importance has been addressed in the international and national area by authors such as Leff, Novo, Ender Egg, Núñez Jover, Roque Molina, Báez Montes de Oca, Margarita Mc pherson Juan. J León, Joaquina Proenza that address different aspects of environmental education, but we have not yet found a specific scientific position regarding environmental culture as preferred.
The environmental problem has become one of the main concerns for man, since it is not a phenomenon that becomes individual but collective. There is an imbalance between the nature-society relationship, which was barely noticeable before but today these forms of relationship acquire a dimension that has repercussions from the local to the global.
The Environment is considered as a complex and dynamic system of natural, social, economic and cultural interrelations. Dr. Antonio Núñez Jiménez insisted that the culture of nature should be required as a basic component of the general culture of the individual. Currently, this conception is given great importance because culture constitutes a fundamental element in the personological formation of each social actor.
The environmental crisis becomes essentially cultural, to overcome the crisis and return to a point of harmonious relationship between nature and society, new conceptions are required where values, worldviews, ideologies, traditions, scientific and empirical knowledge are integrated.
Milton Santos defines environmental culture as "forms of communication between man and the social group with the universe, seeing it as an inheritance, and as a relearning of the deep relationships between man and his environment" (Rodríguez. Mateo.José, 2001).
Environmental culture is necessarily related to environmental education by achieving the acquisition of skills, habits and attitudes necessary for a new form of cultural adaptation to environmental systems, to achieve a new lifestyle capable of solving any problem of this nature based on an axiological ethical environmental framework.
Dr. Rosa Elena Simeón pointed out “one of the main environmental problems in Cuba is that we have not been able to prepare citizens to maintain daily behaviors to preserve the environment where they live. Strengthening the environmental culture, by itself, must lead to reducing problems ”(Taken from television interview. 1998).
Starting from a systematization of the different theories of culture, community and environment, theoretical-methodological tools are formulated that will serve as study material for future research. The environmental culture facilitates various spaces of confrontation of these in the communities where the social actor is integrated with its environment.
Taking into account that the environmental culture for the conservation of the environment becomes an indispensable part of the cognitive of a social being integrated into a community, aware of the role that as an individual should act in the treatment of the main environmental problems in this framework, which makes this research of great importance and topicality.
Research is based on the theory of social representations, expression of unfinished thought; They focus on social objects, they are elaborated by a group, they evaluate social objects based on discourse and their beliefs.
The approach to the subject is carried out from cultural anthropology. She provides a starting point, balanced and objective, a scientific platform that makes it possible to get closer to a full understanding of the ways of being and living; and the sociology of culture presents one of the most dynamic perspectives of the Social and Humanistic Sciences in which ideas about culture have been developed.
The scientific process demands a materialistic dialectical philosophical base, while it aims to achieve objective knowledge about the diagnosis of community environmental culture, which allows an adequate interpretation of the phenomenon and provides the necessary scientific instruments for the study of environmental culture. community in the treatment of the main environmental problems and their modification, since from the materialist dialectic thought and cognition in their development are examined, treated from a scientific perspective, promoting a better vision of what is addressed.
As a complement to this approach, it also starts from the cultural one, which views community work from culture, dimensions its development and takes cultural identity as a substantial variable, placing man at his roots, traditions, customs, habits and beliefs as the center. of attention.
The use of the interpretive paradigm is what characterizes this work, which makes it possible to penetrate the social life of the community. It allows us to understand what happens in the framework as a social and individual being of the community members.
The methods of qualitative research were used:
The IAP is applied in the general process of the diagnosis, especially it is the method for the studies of communities, since it has the intention of involving all of which intervene and transform the communities.
The phenomenological one, by means of which it was possible to obtain information on the emergence and development achieved by the communities in the treatment of environmental problems, taking as a starting point the predominant lifestyle, the criteria of various people, using descriptions, understandings and interpretations of different beings that provide data of great validity and importance that contributes to a better research result.
For the collection of the information, questionnaire surveys were applied to community members and structured interviews were carried out with specialists who possess extensive knowledge on elements related to environmental treatment.
The scientific process starts from the following theoretical methodological assumptions:
- The cultural development of a town implies the respect of each citizen to the preservation of the natural environment, to achieve the desired balance between development and the environment.
In the current conditions, it is up to the communities to elevate the environmental culture of the individuals towards the environment and a concrete treatment to be exercised on the environmental problem from the local to the global.
The environmental culture for sustainable development in spaces called communities, faces the presence in the literature of various conceptualizations about it, in the Aristos Illustrated Dictionary of the Spanish Language. Scientific-Technical Editorial, Havana 1977 is defined as: Quality of common, or of what belongs to several. Board or congregation of people living together under certain rules.
Thus the concept of community also undergoes changes due to the need to represent these new qualities at all times.
The composition of society not only within biological limits but also within the limits of other spheres such as political, economic, social, cultural, sociological, cognitive, volitional, makes the previous definitions of community no longer respond to methodological and epistemological requirements. than the same demand.
This definition must encompass the new universes of human action, taking into account the variables and indicators that affect it. In the Program of the National Council for Community Work (National Center for Community Culture, 1988), community is defined as: A space of interdependence and development of socialized interpersonal relationships between man and his environment that cannot be associated with a specific geographic space.
Although the concept makes it explicit that it should not be associated with a certain geographic space, it implies that it is not the human group, itself, the object of this concept, but the social environment, whatever its nature and composition where the human relations. This judgment is limited and insufficient as it exposes the space of interdependence as the main, if not the only, element that conditions its subsequent development.
In the Integrated Community Work Project (National Center for Community Culture, 1988), he defines the community as: Objective conformation of the physical-environmental space, geographically delimited where a system of socio-political and economic interactions take place that produce a set of interpersonal relationships on the basis of needs.
This system is the carrier of its own traditions, history and identity that are expressed in the identification of interests and a sense of belonging that differentiate the group that integrates said environmental space from the others. Essential element of economic life and as an essential part of community life are social needs such as education, sports, recreation. All of them form a unit and demand a cooperative effort.
It is striking in this definition the exposition of several considerations that make it detract from it according to the interests of this study. It is first hinted that the community is itself the geographically delimited environmental physical space, the reactions that are mentioned are mentioned. They establish in it, but who acts in them and the nature of the relationships referred to are not reflected.
Who are the protagonists of the transmission of the cultural heritage referred to?
These are limitations that prevent the author from subscribing to this definition, although the contributions that, due to their content, make to those already studied and that complement them are recognized.
Finally, the author of the present study ascribes to the concept of community exposed by the researcher Ezequiel Ander Egg (Egg, 1993), which proposes a definition of community that brings together the distinctive elements of those previously analyzed, which make it organic for the objective of the investigation. Starting from the study of the functions, relationships and necessary indicators that are established in a community, he defines it as:
Organized grouping of people who perceive themselves as a social unit, whose members participate in some feature of interest, objective element or common function, with awareness of belonging, located in a certain geographical area in which the plurality of people interact more intensely than in another context.
The definition of the term culture is essential if it is to carry out a study on the expression of relations between the community and the environment. From the first manifestations of the transforming action of men to the environment, culture was the expression with which these actions were defined. For example, agriculture represented one of the first most complex actions that men carried out in nature to satisfy your needs.
From there to the present day, as human development actions have become more complex, culture has had varied and complex forms of expression, representation and meaning.
Franz Boas, represented a reaction against the trend of evolutionism, or "linear evolution" through which all cultures had to go through the same stages identically, difference between biological inheritance and social inheritance.
For F. Boas, every culture must be investigated and described in its historical context with its characteristic features that constitute its individuality, and a parallel comparison with other cultures should be avoided. This critical school of "linear evolution" also includes RH Lowie and AL Kroeber, among others Bronislav Malinowski and AR Radcliffe-Brown, who were members of the school of functionalism and pointed out the existence of a mutual relationship between cultural traits, but believed that the simple enumeration of these and their cultural characteristics did not explain the coordinated functioning as a dynamic system of societies.
Culture has been the subject of treatment from diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives and has been conceptualized for each development that science has arrived at.
The culturalist school includes Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Ralph Linton, Melville J. Herskovits, among others, who worked on the notions of "… social model and social norm…" explain culture as something that is already structured, hierarchical, selected, but underneath these conceptualizations are the behaviors that could be observed and the value systems shared by the social group studied.
This school later brought to the trend of culture and personality some of its members such as Ruth Benedict, who affirmed that cultural traits were not only related to each other, as the functionalists maintained, but were organized according to certain dominant characteristics that constituted the society culture.
Influenced by social Darwinism E. Adamson Hoebel, treats culture as an integrated system of (patterns) of behavior learned as a result of biological inheritance.
This influence is clearly defined by the development that the natural sciences had at that time.
The structuralist school, which as an antecedent was the idea that culture is also a system of rules, ideas that come from Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Later, Claude Lévi-Strauss as maximum exponent deepened in the search for an explanation, taking as context to nature where man lives and has a product of that interaction, stressed that culture was, the absence or presence of rules for what is distinguished; that is why culture is: “… everything that is universal in man belongs to the order of nature and is characterized by spontaneity; while everything that is subject to a rule belongs to the order of culture and presents the attributes of the relative and the particular ”. (Bohannan: 2003,72) However,There is no possible comparison between the "rules" of the structuralists with "the norms" or "guidelines" of the culturalist school.
Abel Prieto, Minister of Culture in this regard, specifies it in the knowledge transmitted from one generation to another, the collective memory, the social heritage that makes possible the integration of the members of the community, impregnating their norms of behavior, values, wisdom and abilities.; the synthesis of the material and spiritual values of a given society, the personality of each people is itself, its culture ”. (1996: 28).
Dra. Rafaela Macías Reyes in her sociocultural methodology book frames it as "Culture is revealed in the accumulation of habits, skills, customs and knowledge, which have their expression in the daily actions of men and women in all spheres of life, of its regular, coherent, repeatable, stable and recurring behavior (…) it presents itself to us as the self-awareness of a historically conditioned community, indicating the micro and macro levels, the degree of development that man as a gender has reached. ”(Macías2004).
The contribution that this definition has from the methodological point of view is important, in being able to assume culture, in this research as the expression of the relationships that have existed between men and their environment, in the process of shaping each social group, where each one assumes in his own experiences the environmental inheritance that has preceded him and incorporates it into his current social construction where the form of manifestation is undoubtedly culture.
The author of this study assumes that culture is defined as: any social construction, acquired or inherited, that expresses a certain quality in socialized relationships, in the environment in which they are carried out.
In this concept, it is possible to understand that through culture, man-nature relations find their maximum expression and objective character, within the framework of which the historical conditions in each era context are specified, marking the development of humanity, and therefore, among other indicators is that culture is given an eminently class character.
Currently, any assessment of culture should not exclude the environmental dimension, which as part of human knowledge has come a long way. Thus, diverse paradigms, multiple epistemologies, and varied approaches are part of the universe in the construction of environmentalist thought that have had a marked influence on the worldview of much of humanity.
Scientists, philosophers, artists, the community in general through the process of human development have expressed their concern about human actions in nature and have spoken to protect it.
In ancient times, cultures bequeathed to the present highly sensitive critical reflections regarding man-nature relations, which although they have not been fully assimilated by contemporaries, a certain level of their influence is observed in some authors.
George P. Marsh in his book "Man and Nature" 1864 presented a detailed analysis of man's action on natural resources, although at this time the concept of the Environment had not yet been enunciated. In these texts, notes appear on the evolution of anthropic action on nature, the tendencies of the environmental situation and the intensification of the political and economic contradictions between and within states that exacerbate the situation of environmental degradation.
He drew attention to the causes that led ancient civilizations to erode ecosystems, projecting how the relationship of man with his environment would be maintained in modern civilizations, conditioning the destruction of the habitats and with it the destruction of all forms of existence of the living matter on the planet to follow humanity traveling the same path of self-destruction in the process of material creation.
Later, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) maintains a similar line of thought regarding the accusation of pragmatic Christianity, explaining that it fails to appreciate the values inherent in nature (Leopold, 1941).
This researcher had the merit of anticipating the scientific thought of his time in the questions associated with the need for a human rationality regarding the use of nature's resources, despite the importance of his appreciations regarding excessive aggressiveness. who was characterizing human relations in front of his environment, his work was not fully assumed and his conceptions and analyzes almost ignored.
In his articles for the newspaper “San County Alamanac” (Leopold, 1948) he repeatedly called attention to the need for an ethic to adequately face the use of the Earth's resources. In his criteria there is a theoretical and methodological foundation. that in later decades appeared as the first postulates on Environmental Education.
The definition of identity is permanently implicit in the research, as this - identity - constitutes a determining element that expresses values, abilities, history, perception and they are necessary links to take into account when promoting directed strategies, programs or projects. to the adoption and development of environmental culture in communities.
The eminent Cuban researcher Marta Arjona, specialist in research related to heritage conservation and historical memory, has defined identity as: Production and consequence of cultural heritage, identity is expressed as implicit value of the cultural phenomenon, it is not expressed As an object in itself, identity reflects the degree of awareness that each social group has of itself, this recognition, sifted through historical and social conditions, becomes identity.
This definition has the importance of approaching identity as an accurate indicator of the community's recognition of the natural environment to which it belongs, whether it assumes it or not as part of its values and has incorporated it as a defining element in the construction of its historical memory and its daily reality.
With the above elements as theoretical and practical references, the study of the environmental culture of the population that makes up the community can be assumed. The application of the same must contribute to:
- Facilitate individual and collective conditions so that conflicts and contradictions between the elements that have constituted their practices emerge more clearly. Promote the creative activity of different community actors in the face of environmental problems and that they are in harmony with the needs of the community. population and integrate accurately into their life projects. Evaluate the possibilities of self transformation and self responsibility both individually in the face of the environmental situation.
Indicators to use in the diagnosis of environmental culture:
- Development of the environmental concept Identification of environmental problems in the community Capacity for self-recognition and self-transformation of community members in the face of the environmental situation.
Final considerations on the results obtained in the diagnosis of the community environmental culture.
- There is an important reserve of knowledge and cultural practices that have marked the development of the community, which have been "discarded" in the last decades of the agendas of both individual and collective life projects in the community. Although in recent times There is a greater orientation towards the incorporation of the community in decision-making and execution of actions, the process is weighed down by narrow criteria and limited methodological conceptualizations in the application of the important principle of action - participation for community development. The processes of cultural changes in the community must be developed endogenously,where the planned actions must take into account the preservation of historical memory as a main element and do not foster processes that violate the identity of community groups. The analysis of the indicators will contribute to the improvement of theenvironmental management at the local level, which calls for the incorporation of individuals into a process of satisfactory formation of environmental culture in correspondence with cultural changes that have an impact on the quality of life and environment in the communities.
Conclusions
The methodological instruments used during the investigative process served as a guide for the collection of information, facilitating the way to reach the desired results.
After carrying out the analysis of the bibliography consulted, it can be said that culture has several facets, observing it in the development of the various ways in which man relates to the environment as part of his culture.
Therefore, the direct nature-society relationship for its harmony must take into account that the environmental culture in the conservation of the environment becomes an indispensable part of the cognitive of a social being integrated into a community, aware of the role that as an individual must act. in the treatment of the main environmental problems so that in the community framework strategies can be created followed by the implementation of the aforementioned indicators for the diagnosis of environmental culture.
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Webgraphy
• http: // WWW. Wild life. Org. Ar / serdeduca / teoria.asp
• http: // www. Unincca. Educ.co/esgrales/dipeti-1.htm
• http.// WWW. Upo.es/depa/webdwx/nrb/ambien. Htm
