Lecture 12. Ethnobiological classification: categorization

Summary

Studies of ethnobiological classification were in vogue in the 1970s and 1980s, and they continue to be of importance today. Why did classification become a focal point of ethnobiology? In the early 1970s, Brent Berlin and his colleagues proposed a set of universal principles to describe systems of ethnobiological classification. After many critiques and much controversy, he presented modified principles and more evidence for his perspective in 1992. What are the seven principles of categorization and the five principles of nomenclature he proposes? Are they as universal as he asserts?

Definitions

Berlin provides the following summary of the proposed seven general principles of ethnobiological categorization:

1. In ethnobiological systems of classification, conceptual recognition will be given to a subset of the existing flora and fauna. This subset will be composed of the biologically most distinctive (hence, salient) species of the local habitat.

2. Ethnobiological systems of classification are based primarily on the affinities that humans observe among the taxa themselves, quite independent of the actual or potential cultural significance of these taxa.

3. Ethnobiological systems of classification are organized conceptually into a shallow hierarchic structure.

4. Recognized taxa will be distributed among from four to six mutually exclusive ethnobiological ranks, with taxa of each rank sharing similar degrees of internal variation and separated from each other by comparably sized perceptual gaps. The six universal ranks are the kingdom, life form, intermediate, generic, specific, and varietal. There is some evidence that foraging societies have poorly developed, or lack entirely, taxa of specific rank. No foraging society will exhibit taxa of varietal rank.

5. Across systems of ethnobiological classification, taxa of each rank show marked similarities as to their relative numbers and biological ranges.

a. Taxa of genenc rank are the most numerous in every system, with rare exceptions number no more than five hundred classes in each kingdom, are largely monotypic (roughly 80 percent in typical systems), and, with notable exceptions, are included in taxa of life-form rank.

b. Taxa of life-form rank are few in number, probably no more than ten or fifteen, are broadly polytypic, and include among them the majority of taxa of lesser rank. Substantively, life-form taxa designate a small number of morphotypes of plants and animals that share obvious gross patterns of stem habit and bodily form.

c. Taxa of intermediate rank generally group small numbers of generic taxa on the basis of their perceived affinities in overall morphology (and behavior). Intermediate taxa are included in taxa of lite-form rank.

d. Specific taxa subdivide generic taxa but are fewer in absolute number. Folk varietals are rare; when they occur, they subdivide folk species. Unlike taxa of superordinate rank, a major portion of subgeneric taxa in ethnobotanical systems of classification is recognized primarily as a result of cultural considerations, in that such taxa represent domesticated or otherwise economically important species.

e. The taxon marking the rank of kingdom in ethnobotanical as well as ethnozoological systems of classification is comprised of a single member.

6. Ethnobiological taxa of generic and specific rank exhibit an internal structure in which some members are thought of as prototypical of the taxon while others are seen as less typical of the category.

7. A substantial majority of ethnobiological taxa will correspond closely in content with taxa recognized independently by Western botany and zoology, with the highest degree of correspondence occurring with taxa of generic rank. Taxa of intermediate rank often correspond to portions of recognized biological families. Taxa of life-form and subgeneric rank exhibit the lowest correspondence with recognized biological taxa.

References:

Atran, S. 1985. The nature of folk-botanical life forms. American Anthropologist 87:298-315.

Berlin, B. 1973. Folk systematics in relation to biological classification and nomenclature. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:259-271.

Berlin, B. 1992. Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. Princeton University Press. Chapter 1 (pages 3 –51) "On the making of a comparative ethnobiology".

Berlin, B., D.E. Breedlove and P.H. Raven. 1966. Folk taxonomies and biological classification. Science 154:273-275.

Gould, S.J. 1980. The Panda’s Thumb. London, Penguin. Chapter 20 (pages 170 – 177) "A Quahog is a Quahog".

Hunn, E. 1975. A measure of the degree of correspondence of folk to scientific classification. American Ethnologist 2:309-327.

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966 [1962]. The Savage Mind. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Chapter 5, "Categories, elements, species and numbers".

Malinowski, B. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and other essays. Garden City, Doubleday Anchor.

Martin, G. 1995. Ethnobotany: a Methods Manual. London, Chapman and Hall. Chapters 7 (201 – 221) "Linguistics".

Mayr, E. 1997. This is Biology: the Science of the Living World. Cambridge, Belknap/Harvard. Chapter 7 (pages 124 – 150) "What?" Questions: The Study of Biodiversity".

Example:

The correspondence of Tzeltal Maya plant generics to botanical species is an illustration of Berlin’s principle seven. As part of their analysis of Tzeltal Maya folk botany, Brent Berlin and his colleagues looked at the correspondence between plant generics and botanical species in a systematic way. The results of their analysis are shown in the following table.

They found that most generic categories included one and only one scientific species, which is called one-to-one correspondence. There were very few cases of over differentiation, that is, when two or more folk generics correspond to a single scientific species.

Finally, there was under-differentiation in over one-third of the cases. Berlin considered two types of under-differentiation – when a generic refers to two or more species of (1) the same genus or (2) more than one scientific genus. As an example of the first type, he gives the category ch’ilwet, which refers to some five species Lantana, a genus in the Verbanaceae. The second is exemplified by tah, a folk generic which includes several species of Pinus and at least one species of Abies, both genera of Pinaceae.

Useful overheads:

Figure 1.1 of Berlin (1992:16) Schematic relationship of five of the six proposed universal ethnobiological ranks and their relative hierarchic positions.

Figure 1.2 of Berlin (1992:23) Highly schematic telescoping representation of the five primary ethnobiological ranks and their respective taxa.

Questions for discussion:

Split into two groups to discuss and debate the following two generalizations included in Berlin’s principles. Do you agree or disagree? Can you provide examples that provide support for or against these proposals?

• People recognize a subset of the existing flora and fauna that includes the biologically most distinctive species of the local habitat.

• Ethnobiological classification is based primarily on the affinities that people observe among plants and animals, and not the actual or potential cultural significance of these organisms (consider the following perspectives during the discussion).

Perspectives for discussion:

"We have seen that food is the primary link between the primitive and providence. And the need of it and the desire for its abundance have led man to economic pursuits, collecting, hunting, fishing, and they endow these pursuits with varied and tense emotions. A number of animal and vegetable species, those which form the staple food of the tribe, dominate the interests of the tribesmen. To primitive man nature is his living larder, to which – especially at the lowest stages of culture – he has to repair directly in order to gather, cook, and eat when hungry. The road from the wilderness to the savage's belly and consequently to his mind is very short, and for him the world is an indiscriminate background against which there stand out the useful, primarily the edible, species of animals or plants. Those who have lived in the jungle with savages, taking part in collecting or hunting expeditions, or who have sailed with them over the lagoons, or spent moonlit nights on sand-banks waiting for the shoals of fish or for the appearance of turtle, know how keen and selective is the savage's interest, how it clings to the indications, trails, and to the habits and peculiarities of his quarry, while it yet remains quite indifferent to any other stimuli. Every such species which is habitually pursued forms a nucleus round which all the interests, the impulses, the emotions of a tribe tend to crystallize. A sentiment of social nature is built round each species, a sentiment which naturally finds its expression in folklore, belief, and ritual."

From B. Malinowski 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and other essays.

"In fact the importance of the notion of species is to be explained not so much by a propensity on the part of the practicing agent to dissolve it into a genus for biological and utilitarian reasons (which would amount to extending to man the famous dictum that it is grass in general which attracts the herbivore) as by its presumptive objectivity: the diversity of species furnishes man with the most intuitive picture at his disposal and constitutes the most direct manifestation he can perceive of the ultimate discontinuity of reality. It is the sensible expression of an objective coding."

Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966 [1962]. The Savage Mind.

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