Local populations perceive a number of changes in their environment due to climate change and explain them using the knowledge they have and the beliefs they hold about their world;  a Cultural Model (CM) of Nature. This CM is a major component of local knowledge and it plays a fundamental role in the perception and interpretation of any phenomena related to changes in the environment, including climate change. This work is about the preliminary results from the analyses conducted on data collected in the Kingdom of Tonga, Polynesia, in search of a Tongan CM of Nature. Tongan communities are deeply affected by changes in the climate such as weather unpredictability (including increasing number of typhoons and length and occurrence of dry and wet seasons), the raising level of the ocean waters, and the variability of fish supplies.

The content of the spatial relationships module has been extensively studied and a fundamental part of such content is the concept of frame of reference; that is, a set of coordinates that generates an oriented space within which relationships between objects are established. There are three major types (and six subtypes) of frames of reference: the relative, the intrinsic, and the absolute. The content of the spatial relationships module has been proposed as being foundational to the development of both language and cognition. In this work I explore the possibility that the various types of frame of reference participate in the construction of the basic patterns of the kinship terminology systems: descriptive-Sudanese, bifurcate merging-Iroquois (also Crow and Omaha), classificatory and/or generational-Hawaiian (also classificatory-Dravidian), and lineal-Eskimo.

In this article, I present an analysis of the results of a memory task (free listing) about social relationships administered to Tongans of Polynesia. Contrary to claims by Weller and Romney (1988) and Ross (2004), the free listing activity did not yield the expected results, i.e., salient social individuals occupying positions at the top of the list. The strategy used to report the village population was prominently spatial. Besides, the analysis of accurate geographical renditions of the memory lists (memory routes), revealed spatial strategies in line with the preferences already documented about spatial relationships (Bennardo, 2000a, 2002b). A discussion of the implications of such findings for an hypothesized Tongan foundational cultural model closes the article.

Climate change is one of the most challenging issues we collectively face insofar as it threatens the survival of our species. Before long, extensive action will have to be implemented worldwide to minimize its potential and disastrous effects (such actions have already been initiated in the last two decades). The populations keenly aware of and most at risk from the effects of climate change are obviously those whose livelihood depends on daily contact with the changing physical environment. Primary food producers best represent these populations: farmers, fishermen, herders, and hunter-gatherers. Of course all humans are at risk and we will eventually be obliged to change our behavior to make our presence on the planet sustainable (see Moran, 2006, 2010). However, primary food producers’ daily and close contact with the environment makes them most directly affected by climate change. Besides, they will likely be asked to implement whatever new and/or radical remedial policies are proposed. Before carrying out any strategies directly impacting these populations, it would be prudent to understand their Cultural Models (from now on, CMs) of Nature.

Scholars, policy makers, and lay individuals who actively conduct research on and pursue solutions to climate change, a challenging species-survival issue, should benefit from the articles included in this Special Issue. The research results can foster sound policies not only based on de-contextualized scientific notions, but grounded in the local knowledge of the people directly responsible for adopting changes and possibly helping to create solutions.

Tatau, tatau pé, katoa tatau ‘the same, just the same, all the same,’ is the phrase most Tongan villagers used when asked if any person within the village groups they had just mentioned was mahu'inga taha ‘most important.’ Such forceful insistence on equality among villagers seems incongruous in the context of a monarchial political system, the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving Polynesian monarchy.

At the head of this highly stratified society is King George Tupou V, heir of a dynasty that goes back at least a millennium. How can we reconcile the stated lack of local stratification with the overt positive feelings toward a monarchy and its aristocracy?

We used social network analysis to investigate the structure and sources of influence in this Tongan village. The results of the analysis reveals a nuanced local influence structure generated by a combination of traditional kinship status characteristics as well as some based in the emerging cash economy. Thus, the descriptive statements used by villagers, ‘we are all the same’, do not adequately represent the empirical nature of the local influence structure.

We present an algebraic account of the Tongan kinship terminology (TKT) that provides an insightful journey into the fabric of Tongan society. We begin with the ethnographic account of a social event. The account provides us with the activities of that day and the centrality of kin relations in the event, but it does not inform us of the underlying logic for the conceptual system of kin relations that the participants bring with them. Rather, it is a slice in time of an ongoing dynamic process that links behavior with kin and kin with behavior. To fully understand this interplay we need to account for the structure underlying their conceptual system of kin relations that is being activated during the event. Thus, we introduce a formal, algebraically based account of TKT as a way to make evident what is otherwise “hidden” logic. This account brings to the fore the underlying logic of TKT and the features of TKT that are a consequence of that logic. This also allows us to distinguish between structural features of the kinship system that arise from the logic of TKT versus features that must have arisen through the intervention of, or intersection with, other cultural conceptual systems. Finally, we revisit the ethnographic account and we consider those aspects whose explication must lie in other cultural interventions, thus linking the kinship conceptual system to other conceptual domains such as ranking and inheritance.

To advance an algebraical-computational view of knowledge representation we examine the domain of space as an abstract relational system with wide cross domain applicability with regard to relational properties generally. It is no accident that any coherent system of relations is understood as a 'space' of such relations. Jackendoff's work shows this. We have good grounds for considering spatial relations a universal ‘modular’ faculty of human cognition.

Just to set the stage for our paper and raise issues we need to address, we will first address certain fairly recent work done on the cognition of space by Levinson, Herskovits, and Talmy, and discuss their data and ours from languages like Italian, Burmese, Haka Chin, and Tongan and show that relativist conclusions follow directly from neo-behaviorist failure to be abstract enough in dealing with conceptual-relational structure.

Then we will introduce basic concepts of LOCUS, PLACE, MOTION, PATH and DIRECTION and will provide definitions of spatial prepositions like ‘at’, ‘on’ and‘in’, as well as discuss in detail prepositions like ‘to’, ‘towards’, ‘from’, ‘away from’, and ‘via’. We will conclude our work by indicating a minimal universal content of the domain of space that will eventually become the axiomatizable component of the system from which the linguistic expressions derive as theorems of that same system.