‘Like Father, Like Son’? Baka Children’s Local Ecological Knowledge Learning in a Context of Cultural Change

Hunter-gatherer societies face social-ecological changes that have led them to alter their living strategies. Given the importance of local ecological knowledge for subsistence and for the preservation of biocultural diversity, this chapter analyses how social-ecological changes affect the acquisition of local ecological knowledge among the Baka, a hunter-gatherer group in southeastern Cameroon. As the acquisition of local ecological knowledge is embedded in daily activities, we evaluate how parental livelihood strategies relate to children’s daily activities. We analyse Baka children’s involvement in their activities using a sample of 98 children between 5 and 16 years of age. We then use three parental indicators of cultural change: (1) involvement in traditional vs. modern productive activities, (2) income, and (3) level of schooling to test differences in children’s activities related to parental indicators of cultural change. Our results indicate that children’s involvement in daily activities is not directly associated to parental indicators of cultural change. We conclude that cultural changes affecting Baka society might be so pervasive as to affect all children equally, beyond direct parental influence.