Contingency and adaptation over five decades in Nuaulu forest-based plant knowledge

Older studies of local knowledge in traditional societies often describe it as if it were a fixed ahistorical quantum. But we now know enough about the systems in which such knowledge is embedded to realise that, on the contrary, it presents a dynamic changing landscape, constantly altering in response to new circumstances and events; less a ‘thing’ than a process of continual engagement. This paper explores several ways in which the forest knowledge of the Nuaulu (a people of central Seram in the eastern Indonesian province of the Moluccas) has shifted over the last five decades, while in other ways has remained remarkably stable. The argument is illustrated with reference to three very different examples – the genus Canarium harvested for its proteinaceous nuts, the category ‘firewood’, and rattan as a construction material - but in the common context of how forest as a more encompassing cultural and ecological entity is being transformed in people’s material and social lives.