Nazarea, Virginia2016-04-192016-04-192006Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 317-3350084-6570http://hdl.handle.net/10919/67249Metadata only recordFor the past two decades, biodiversity conservation has been an area of concerted action and spirited debate. Given the centrality of biodiversity to the earth's life support system, its increasing vulnerability is being addressed in international conservation as well as in research by anthropologists and other social scientists on the cultural, economic, political, and legal aspects of human engagement with biological resources. The concepts of biodiversity as a social construct and historical discourse, of local knowledge as loaded representation and invented tradition, and of cultural memory as selective reconstruction and collective political consciousness have also been the foci of recent critical reflection.text/plainen-USIn CopyrightLocal knowledgeBiodiversityBiodiversity conservationCultural memoryAnthropologySocial constructCultureIndigenous knowledgeEthnoecologyAbstractCopyright 2006 Annual Reviewshttps://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123252