Traditional knowledge as a scholarly practice among coffee producers in Xico, Veracruz, Mexico.

Abstract

The article discusses traditional knowledge through the lense of the anthropology of knowledge.
Based on ethnographic work, it attempts to understand the production and use of such knowledge
in the same way that modern science techniques have been used by ethnographic laboratory studies.
The exercise is carried out around through an activity in which traditional knowledge is pointed
to as “know-how”: the cultivation of coffee. The area in which the study was carried out is in the
Mexican southeast, specifically in the state of Veracruz. Case studies were used to identify chains
of activities as an appeal to the factuality of knowledge. The data allowed us to identify that the
knowledge which these coffee producers apply every day (useing observation, experimentation, the
incorporation of elements or factors, deduction, and action) was acquired “during their lifetime”,
that is - as a constituent part of their being. What they know how to do gives meaning to their being.