Furthering Our Local Knowledge

Home What is the Colporteurs Program? Colporteurs & Events Join About Us Contact Us Links	*About Us* FOLK's conception belongs to a sunny afternoon in December 2007 inside the Ethnoecology and Biodiversity lab in the University of Georgia's Anthropology Department. With bellies full of sweet potato biscuits, collard greens, and fudge brought for the Anthropology of Landscape and Memory's final class meeting and family-recipe pot-luck, undergraduate anthropology students Zach Anderson, Daniel Jordan, and Abigail Zylla, lingered in the lab and engaged in conversation about general loss of local memory and traditions. Dr Nazarea walked up and said, "Why don't we make something happen then?" The rest is history as recorded in a series of meetings, grant proposals, graphics documents, HTML, phone calls, emails, calendars, and menus. The members of FOLK share a common interest in cultural memory and concern for the loss of traditional knowledge. Under the guidance of Dr Virginia Nazarea, FOLK and the Colporteurs-in-Residence Program were designed to provide a venue for transmission of those forms of knowledge that reside in the margins of society and are often overlooked.
	Zach Anderson is a fourth-year student at UGA majoring in Anthropology with a minor and a certificate in Ecology and Environmental Ethics respectively. As a (mostly) native Athenian he has always been interested in the crossing of cultures that takes place around us, and through anthropology has found a way to make studying it his life's work. When not glued to a computer in the basement of the anthropology building he enjoys music, backpacking, cycling, and a nice glass of homebrew.
	Daniel Jordan is a second-year student at UGA majoring in Anthropology and Comparative Literature. He hails form Birmingham, AL, but he loves Athens. At school, he spends his time with either his studies or music, and out of school he enjoys backpacking, photography, and more studies and music. For no reason in particular, he has neither read any of the Harry Potter books nor seen the movies.
	Abigail Zylla (Abby) is a fourth-year student at UGA majoring in Anthropology, minoring in Religion and Women's Studies, and working towards certificates in Environmental Ethics and Global Issues. She gravitates toward anthropology with a desire to break her own personal cultural boundaries and expand her mind in the context of unfamiliar physical, intellectual, and philosophical settings. Activism is a large part of who she is, and her long-term aspirations are to devote herself to a life in applied anthropology, working toward environmental conservation and sustainability on an international level, from the approach of multivocal political and social movement. Most of her time now is devoted to school, work, and projects like the undergraduate Anthropology Society, FOLK, and Athens Insights, but when she gets the chance she can be found following passions of literature, art, and music.
	Dr. Virginia Nazarea, a professor of anthropology at the University of Georgia, has, through her highly original research and writing, articulated the novel perspective that local knowledge and cultural memory can counteract the loss of biodiversity. Her position — that biodiversity is nurtured in marginal spaces that provide a sense of place, belonging and resistance affords people a degree of sovereignty — is a radical departure from science’s earlier focus on macro trends and programmatic design. Her work has been influential in redirecting the focus of research and development in academic programs, international centers and interdisciplinary research projects to instead focus attention on the role of indigenous peoples, women, elders, subsistence farmers and small-scale gardeners in conserving biodiversity.

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folkathens@gmail.com

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