3.3.1. The Influences of Many Factors
Many factors, such as age, gender, education, and profession, can influence the willingness and ability of the inhabitants to learn about and use traditional practices. The correlation between the factors of age, gender, education level and profession and the awareness of the traditional knowledge and practices were analyzed using varied methods.
Age is correlated to the knowledge level and the participation in activities, as tested by Pearson correlation: values of 0.663 and 0.782, respectively, and significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
The correlation between genders and knowledge level/participation activities was 0.663 and 0.782. Correlation between gender and knowledge/participation was tested by T-test in 95% confidence interval of the difference. The significances of T-test for equality of means were 0.009 and 0.002, and both were less than 0.01. There is a significant difference in the traditional knowledge level and participation in practices in different genders.
Educational attainment level and profession also influence both knowledge level and participation in traditional activities, as tested by the Kruskal-Wallis Npar Test. In the analysis, educational level was grouped into four categories: no school education, primary school education, junior school education and senior school or higher education. The observations data in the four groups were 5, 16, 16, and 8, with the mean rank of knowledge level being 31.40, 27.78, 15.25, and 23.96, respectively, and for participation was 33.90, 28.41, 17.88, and 15.62. The Chi-Square values were 10.648 and 11.264. Correspondingly, the asymptotic significance values were respectively 0.014 and 0.010. Based on the results, the four groups of different educational levels were differentiated. The “no school education” group had the most influence on both traditional knowledge level and the participation in TEK activities. The second was the “primary school education” group. The “senior school or higher education groups” master traditional knowledge more than the “junior school” group did, but participated less in TEK activities.
In the analysis on main occupation, we divided the informants into four groups, which were farmer, worker, student and the other. The data size in the four groups was 22, 16, 3, and 4, the mean rank of knowledge level was 28.27, 21.00, 9.33 and 12.25, and for participation it was 31.64, 15.91, 16.83, and 8.50. The Chi-Square values were 10.742 and 19.984. Correspondingly, the asymptotic significance values were respectively 0.013 and 0.000, less than 0.05, which means the influences of the four groups are different. As expected, farmers knew about traditional knowledge most and took part in the practices more often. Students knew the least about traditional knowledge, while the “other” work group engaged in traditional practices the least.
Age, gender, education and profession all have some influences on participation in traditional practices, but age affected the traditional knowledge level in the village of Mitian. It was easy to see that farmers who work in the terraces have a better understanding of and make more use of these traditional practices, compared with other people in the village. These farmers are usually older and have little formal education. Traditional knowledge and practices were the main way to manage their lands. To find out if there was one key influence on knowledge and participation, the correlations between age and education level as well as between age and profession were analyzed. The coefficients of Pearson Correlation were –0.559 and –0.639, with the significance level at the 0.01 (2-tailed). This means that older residents had a greater probability of being farmers, and were less school educated than the others.
Gender is an independent variable in the discussion. Therefore, age and gender were taken as two influential variables to analyze further.
3.3.2. The Correlation between Age and TEK
As a result of this analysis, we focused on the relationship between age and traditional knowledge and practices in Mitian, and the results are shown in
Figure 2A,B.
Figure 2A indicates the result of knowledge transfer for three generations. It can be seen that older people have more traditional knowledge than the young. For those people aged more than 40, two-thirds of them knew all of these traditional practices, which means that all of the practices have been passed down to this generation. Although the younger generation had heard of the traditional practices, few of them were familiar with them. The trend of the correlation of age to knowledge increases logarithmically.
Figure 2B shows that there is a clear correlation between age and participation in these practices. It can be stated that the older the inhabitants are, the more practices they have used. The young generation group had seldom participated in the traditional practices, and none had been engaged in more than eight practices. In addition, the older generation group (except two individuals) had exercised more than 10 of the 11 practices, accounting for 91% of the total. Furthermore, two of the old interviewees had participated in all of the 11 traditional practices. This result shows a big decrease in the middle generation taking part in TEK practices.
Because of economic and cultural reasons, fewer individuals in the young group than in the middle and old groups were willing to practice TEK. The young individuals stated that they prefer to work in the town or a city to get better incomes. Only the old people, due to their experiences with water allocation and the other resource management practices, used some of the TEK practices. The young people took less part in the traditional practices than the middle group. When most people of a generation have no idea about the traditions, TEK and the practices of water utilization and terrace management will begin to fade away.
Figure 2.
The scatter plots of the correlations between age and the number of knowledge/participation questions answered affirmatively. (A) The result of number of knowledge questions answered affirmatively for different age groups; (B) The result of number of participation questions answered affirmatively for different age groups.
Figure 2.
The scatter plots of the correlations between age and the number of knowledge/participation questions answered affirmatively. (A) The result of number of knowledge questions answered affirmatively for different age groups; (B) The result of number of participation questions answered affirmatively for different age groups.
From the survey and key informant discussions, it is evident that more and more young people choose to work in non-agricultural jobs and give up farming the terraces. At the same time, with the improvement of educational level, young people have more chances to master modern knowledge, and thus they may prefer modern methods (such as machinery, advanced techniques, and the use of chemicals in their terraces), instead of traditional practices. They may believe that some of the traditional practices have no scientific value (such as the many “Beliefs”), and thus the young may abandon TEK and its associated practices.
In the questionnaire survey, the number of participation questions answered affirmatively was usually less than the number of knowledge questions answered affirmatively. It can be concluded that some people might know about the traditional practices, but they are not willing to practice them. The average ratio of the number of TEK practices to TEK awareness in the old group is 88% in average, which is the highest. The ratio in the middle and young groups are 71.2% and 68.0%. It suggests that participation in traditional knowledge practices is consistently less than the number of people who have some awareness of TEK. The ratio shows the different interests of people in different age groups in the practice of TEK: the old attach the most importance and the young pay least attention to traditional practices.
3.3.3. Differences of TEK and Its Practices between Genders and Age
The correlation between gender and the Traditional Ecological Knowledge and practices was also observed in
Figure 3 and
Table 6. Although the number of informants in each gender is not the same, the general idea of knowledge transference is displayed.
Figure 3 presents the differences in knowledge of and participation in the traditional practices between men and women. Men know an average of 12 practices and undertook an average of 9.7 of all of them, compared with the average of 10 and 7.0 practices for women. Overall, the old and middle-aged men and women had similar experiences with TEK, while numbers were different in the younger generation group.
Figure 3.
Correlation between gender and traditional practices by age.
Figure 3.
Correlation between gender and traditional practices by age.
Table 6 shows the condition of knowing about and participating in the four categories of traditional practices for men and women in different age groups. The results suggest that men and women know very well about the “Festival” practices, followed by the “Water Management” practices. There were no significant differences in learning about the two types of practices between men and women. However, men participated in more practices than women in these two types, partly because some practices can only be undertaken by men in Hani society, such as the “Worship of Dragon Tree” practices. Furthermore, the “
shuizhang” is also traditionally dominated by men. Compared with their male counterparts, women know less about “Belief” practices, due to having less opportunity to take part in them. Both men and women seldom sing “Folk Songs”. In brief, out of the four categories of TEK in Mitian, women have a good understanding (knowing or participating more than 80% TEK or practices) of the Festivals and the Water Management categories, while men score well in all of the four categories. The local inhabitants prefer participating in the practices of “Festivals” and “Water Management” to singing “Folk Songs”. For the practices of “Festival” and “Beliefs”, men have more chance to take part, while women are more willing to sing folk songs than men are.
Table 6.
The gender differences in knowing and participating in different categories of traditional practices in Mitian Village (%).
Table 6.
The gender differences in knowing and participating in different categories of traditional practices in Mitian Village (%).
Gender | Festivals | Beliefs | Folk Songs | Water Management |
---|
K | P | K | P | K | P | K | P |
---|
Male | 100.0 | 74.0 | 83.8 | 53.8 | 84.5 | 13.5 | 95.0 | 66.3 |
Female | 92.0 | 50.0 | 65.8 | 35.5 | 52.5 | 23.5 | 80.7 | 63.0 |