Lecture 1. Overview of
issues in ethnobotany, conservation and
community development
Summary
Although we have passed the
one-hundredth anniversary of ethnobotany
(coined in 1896), the golden anniversary
of ethnobiology (first used in 1935) and
the silver anniversary of ethnoecology
(appearing in 1954), there is no
consensus on the precise definition of
these fields. This is explained in part
because of their relatively recent origin
and the current surge in their
theoretical, conceptual and
methodological refinement. Disagreement
over definitions is typical of
multidisciplinary fields; in the words of
Brent Berlin, ethnobiology "combines
the intuitions, skills and biases of both
the anthropologist and the biologist,
often in quite unequal mixtures."
In one sense, ethnobotany,
ethnobiology and ethnoecology are new
terms for old practices. People have been
exploring the usefulness of diverse
plants, animals and ecosystems since the
dawn of humanity. Documentation of local
people's perception of the environment
emerged slowly over thousands of years as
scholars from many cultural traditions
recorded local ways of classifying and
using plants and animals. The onset of
European colonization of Africa, Asia,
the Pacific and the New World gave added
impetus to the study of local knowledge
of tropical and temperate organisms and
ecosystems.
Towards the end of the 19th century,
academics began to use the prefix ethno-
to refer to the way that indigenous
people see the natural world, in contrast
to the perspective of natural scientists
trained in the Western tradition. They
coined terms such as ethnobotany (first
used in print by Harshberger in 1896) and
ethnozoology to describe these emerging
fields of study that crossed the
boundaries of natural and social
sciences. Interest in traditional
environmental knowledge continued apace
in the early 20th century, and in 1935
Castetter coined the term ethnobiology,
setting as its agenda the systematic
analysis of data collected by
ethnobotanists and ethnozoologists to
achieve a deeper understanding of local
peoples’ knowledge and lifestyles.
Economic botany gained importance as a
parallel field focused on useful plants
and the products derived from them. In
1954, Harold Conklin proposed the term
ethnoecology, originally conceived as a
holistic and integrated approach to
understanding local ecological knowledge
and practice on their own terms, even
while drawing upon the concepts and
methods of diverse scientific
disciplines. A focus on classificatory
systems and the linguistic and
anthropological methods used to analyze
them gave high visibility to an approach
called ethnoscience.
In the 1980s and 1990s, further
development of these various lines of
research gave rise to new definitions,
innovative theoretical orientations and
sophisticated qualitative and
quantitative methodological approaches
applied to local knowledge of the
environment. In addition, ethnobiology
expanded beyond its original geographical
borders as the field gained importance in
countries such as China, India and
Mexico. There is now a new synthesis
emerging – as yet without consensus
– that defines ethnobiology as the
study of biological sciences as practiced
by local people throughout the world,
comprising both empirical knowledge (savoir)
and technical know-how (savoir-faire),
and inclusive of sub-fields such as
economic botany, ethnobotany,
ethnoecology and ethnozoology.
Although ethnobiology and related
fields originated in Europe and the
United States, they have now been
embraced by researchers in many
developing countries who have
subsequently adapted the techniques and
concepts to their own goals and local
conditions. The emergence of professional
societies of ethnobotanists in developing
countries, ranging from the Indian
Society of Ethnobotanists in 1980 to the
Asociación Mexicana de Etnobiología in
1993 and the Sociedade Brasileira de
Etnobiologia e Etnoecologia in 1997, are
evidence of this trend.
The internationalization of
ethnobiological research and training has
resulted in new directions in theory and
application, enriching the field. In
India, the tradition of conducting
ethnobotanical inventories in various
tribal areas has continued, but is now
supplemented by innovative approaches to
studying the harvest of non-timber forest
products in joint forest management
schemes and practical strategies to
create community biodiversity registers.
Researchers in China have contributed
studies on ecological succession in
swidden fields, marketing of useful
plants and analysis of agroforestry
practices. Equally impressive are
developments in Mexico, where
ethnobiologists have focused on the
management of anthropogenic and natural
ecosystems, as well as the process of
domestication of botanical resources.
Definitions:
- Ethnobotany and ethnozoology are
approaches to studying the
reciprocal interactions between
people and the plants and animals
in their local environment. This
definition has been criticized as
broad and open-ended, but
captures the common goals of
analyzing traditional biological
knowledge and assessing human
impact on the environment. These
approaches include subfields such
as paleoethnobotany and
paleoethnozoology, which evaluate
archeological evidence on the
past interactions between people,
plants and animals.
- Ethnobiology, a term coined in
1935, has been defined as the
study of the reciprocal
interactions between people and
the biological organisms in their
local environment, and more
recently as the study of
biological sciences as practiced
in the present and the past by
local people throughout the
world. Many researchers consider
that ethnobiology comprises
numerous subfields – such as
ethnobotany, ethnoecology,
ethnoscience and ethnozoology
– but there is as yet no
consensus on this point.
- Ethnoecology is typically defined
as the study of local knowledge
and management of ecological
interactions. More recently, some
researchers have proposed an
alternate definition, considering
ethnoecology as an emerging field
that focuses on local
peoples’ perception and
management of complex and
co-evolved relationships between
the cultural, ecological and
economic components of
anthropogenic and natural
ecosystems. It is concerned with
the interaction between
knowledge, practice and
production, and is oriented
towards applied research on
conservation and community
development.
- Economic botany, as originally
conceived, was a branch of
applied botany that arose during
the colonial period to identify
and characterize economically
important plants and the products
derived from them. Currently, it
is a scientific endeavor that
seeks to document the properties
of useful plants through
agronomic, archaeological,
ecological, ethnobotanical,
genetic, historical,
phytochemical and other empirical
approaches. It overlaps broadly
with ethnobiology, as both fields
have witnessed a similar
development in theory and
methodology in recent years.
- Ethnoscience arose as a minor
subfield of ethnography concerned
with recording in great detail
local peoples’ knowledge of
biological organisms and the
physical environment. Later, the
term came to be used in a more
restricted sense by cognitive and
linguistic anthropologists to
refer to local classificatory
systems (as an object of study)
and their semantic analysis (as a
methodological approach). In
France, the term is used to refer
to ethnobiological studies in
general.
Basic readings:
Alexiades, M.N. 1996. Selected
Guidelines for Ethnobotanical Research: A
Field Manual. The New York Botanical
Garden, New York.
Atran, S. 1990. Cognitive
Foundations of Natural History: Towards
an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Balée, W. 1994. Footprints of the
Forest. Ka'apor Ethnobotany – The
Historical Ecology of Plant Utilization
by an Amazonian People. Columbia
University Press, New York.
Balick, M.J. and P. A. Cox. 1996. Plants,
People and Culture: The Science of
Ethnobotany. Scientific American, New
York.
Berlin, B. 1992. Ethnobiological
Classification: Principles of
Categorization of Plants and Animals in
Traditional Societies. Princeton
University Press, Princeton.
Cotton, C.M 1996. Ethnobotany.
Principles and Applications. John
Wiley & Sons, London.
Ellen, R.F., P.S.C. Parkes and A.
Bicker, editors. 2000. Indigenous
Environmental Knowledge and its
Transformations. Studies in
Environmental Anthropology. Harwood,
Amsterdam.
Issues in People and
Plants
Many of the basic issues of applied
ethnobotany are explored in the People
and Plants Handbook, a source of
information on applying ethnobotany to
conservation and community development.
It is designed for people who work in the
field, including park managers,
foresters, students, researchers,
cultural promoters, and members of
non-governmental, governmental and
indigenous organizations. An overview of
the following issues, illustrated by
slides from diverse projects around the
world, provides a general introduction to
the subjects to be covered in the course.
- Keeping
in Touch: Journals, Networks,
Newsletters, Organizations and
Professional Societies
- Protecting
Rights and Resources: the Ethics
of Ethnobiology
- Returning
Results: Community and
Environmental Education
- Measuring
Diversity: Methods of Assessing
Biological Resources and Local
Knowledge
- Cultivating
Forests: the Evolution of
Agroforestry Systems
- Managing Resources: Community
Forestry Initiatives
- Growing Diversity: Crop Genetic
Resources
- Healing the World: Ecology,
Cultural Transition and the
Health of Local Peoples
- Reading the Landscape: Cultural
Perspectives and Geographical
Information Systems
- Supporting Projects: Grant
Writing and Foundations
- Feeding the World: Food and
Nutrition from Non-Cultivated
Plants
- Greening the Earth: Ecological
Restoration and management in
Arid and Semi-Arid Zones
- Harvesting the Forest: Non-Timber
Forest Products and Extractivism
- Inheriting Knowledge: Culture,
Conservation and Development
- Getting Organized:
Non-Governmental and Indigenous
Organizations
- Travelling Green: Cultural,
Ecological and Scientific Tourism
- Taking Stock: Resource
Inventories, Systematics and
Ethnobiological Classification
- Planting Seeds: Ethnobotanical
Gardens, Local Registries and
Germplasm Banks
- Valuing Plants: Ecological
Economics and Ethnobotany
- Crafting the Future: Cultural
continuity and resource
sustainability of plant-based
artefacts
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