Lecture 5. Historical
framework of ethnobotany
Summaries:
Ethnobotany and related fields:
By the end of the 19th century,
researchers began to recognize the study
of traditional biological knowledge as a
separate discipline. John W. Harshberger,
a professor of biology, initiated the
fashion of using the prefix ethno-
to indicate the study of local people's
natural history. In 1896, he used the
term ethnobotany in print, and it began
to replace names such as "aboriginal
botany" and "botanical
ethnography" that had been used
previously by other authors. In the words
of Richard Ford (1978), after a
"half century of scientific
attention and an even longer history of
casual observations" the study of
other people's interaction with nature
finally had a name and recognition as a
distinct line of academic endeavor.
The emergence of ethnobotany,
ethnozoology and related fields coincided
with important developments in the
natural and social sciences towards the
end of the 19th century. The diverse
elements of natural history, including
botany, zoology, pharmacognosy and other
fields, began to mature into distinct
disciplines, each with separate methods
and goals. Scott Atran (1990) has
characterized this as the "breakaway
of science", a time when natural
historians began to leave behind common
sense descriptions of natural phenomena
– drawn in part from local
peoples’ perception and
classification of nature – in order
to embrace rigorous experimental methods.
Social scientists began to focus on
separate aspects of human society and
culture, with the consequent emergence of
fields such as anthropology, linguistics
and sociology.
Economic Botany: Nineteenth
century botanists, who focused primarily
on the utility of plants and only
secondarily on indigenous culture, began
to refer to their approach as economic
botany. The goal of their research has
been to document local uses of plants and
to organize the resulting data according
to the Western system of plant
classification. They have produced
detailed works on plants employed by
local people for food, medicine,
textiles, utensils and many other
purposes (see for example Schultes and
Raffauf 1990).
Research on the commercial value and
utility of plants expanded as botanists
from the United States and Europe
explored the New and Old World tropics in
search of products that would increase
the wealth of developed countries and the
wellbeing of people in general. Today,
economic botanists continue to look for
marketable products in tropical forests
and elsewhere, but they are increasingly
interested in how the commercialization
of these resources can contribute to
resolving the poverty, malnutrition and
diminished social status of local people
as well as spurring economic development
in developing countries. An increasingly
important offshoot of this enterprise is
bioprospecting (a term derived from
'biodiversity prospecting'), the search
for useful and novel chemical
constituents in plants, animals, fungi
and other biological organisms.
Ethnoscience: While botanists
were establishing economic botany,
anthropologists and other social
scientists were developing a different
perspective. In the tradition of
ethnography developed by anthropologist
Franz Boas, ethnoscience emerged as a
minor subfield dedicated to recording in
minute detail local peoples’
knowledge of biological organisms and the
physical environment. The subfield
underwent a further transition in the
1950s and 1960s, when cognitive and
linguistic anthropologists began to focus
on the empirical categories, social
rules, symbolic systems and modes of
behavior that reflect how local people
perceive the natural world. These early
anthropological studies formed the
foundations for a new ethnoscientific
approach that advocated rigorous analyses
of ethnobiological knowledge, with
particular emphasis on systems of
ethnobiological classification. Thus,
while economic botany emerged as a
utilitarian practice firmly rooted in
commerce and development, ethnoscience
developed as an intellectual endeavor
oriented towards a deeper understanding
of human culture and cognition.
Ethnoecology: Even though he is
most associated with the development of
the ethnoscientific approach, Conklin is
credited with coining the term
ethnoecology in 1954. Given the precedent
set by terms such as ethnobotany and
ethnozoology, it would be natural to
assume that ethnoecology would refer to
the study of local perceptions of
ecological processes, such as nutrient
cycling, vegetational succession or the
interactions between plants and animals.
A growing group of researchers propose a
different definition, using the term to
refer to local peoples’ perception
and management of the complex and
co-evolved relationships between
cultural, ecological and economic
components of anthropogenic and natural
ecosystems. This emerging subfield, much
as the broader field of ethnobiology, is
concerned with the interaction between
knowledge, practice and production, and
is oriented towards applied research on
conservation and community development.
Mexican ecologist Victor Toledo has
stated that the aim of ethnoecology
should be the ecological evaluation of
the intellectual and practical activities
that people carry out during their
appropriation of natural resources.
Although the definition of
ethnobiology includes a reference to
knowledge and know-how (savoir and
savoir-faire), for ethnoecologists
the distinction is between an
ethnobiological corpus, local
peoples’ repertories of concepts,
perceptions and symbolic representations
of nature, and praxis – the
art, science and skill of appropriating
nature and biological resources. The
interrelationship between knowledge and
practice is manifested in production, as
people apply their intellectual
understanding of nature to the everyday
tasks of farming, gathering and hunting
for subsistence and commercial purposes.
In order to understand these complex
interactions, ethnoecologists seek to
elucidate how the management of
anthropogenic and natural ecosystems
– and the biological organisms they
harbor – has arisen through a
process of co-evolution between the
environment, knowledge, technology,
social organization and values of local
peoples.
While attractive conceptually, the
development of this conception of
ethnoecology has been limited by the lack
of a unifying theoretical framework and a
practical methodology. This distinguishes
it from ethnobiology, which is developing
a central organizing theory, an
orientation towards hypothesis testing
and an increasingly elaborate set of
qualitative and quantitative methods,
drawn in part from ethnobotany,
ethnozoology and economic botany.
Ethnobiology: Clément (1998)
proposes that the starting point for
ethnobiology – as the field which
integrates related approaches such as
economic botany, ethnobotany,
ethnozoology and ethnoscience – be
the 1860s, when the first designations
for the field began to be used by Western
scientists. In a historical sketch that
spans a period of over 130 years, he
discusses the origins, key theories and
methodological approaches of the main
trends of ethnobiology. While no such
historical framework of a scientific
discipline is without controversy and
potential modification, Clément’s
synopsis is a serious effort to provide a
detailed historical analysis of
ethnobiology.
Clément divides the development of
the discipline into three eras and seven
periods (table 1). The preclassical
period, from 1860 to 1953, is dedicated
to gathering empirical data on the uses
of plants and animals from an etic
perspective, and to the first syntheses
that begin to define the scope of the
discipline. During the classical period
(1954 – 1980), there is a shift to
studies carried out from an emic
perspective, and a particular focus on
ethnobiological classification. An
increase in collaborative work between
academic specialists and local people,
and the formation of professional
associations of ethnobiology,
characterize the postclassical period,
from 1981 to the present. Later in the
period, there is an increased focus on
the appropriation and management of plant
and animal resources, and a concern for
application of research results to the
resolution of environmental and social
problems. This historical review provides
an appropriate starting point for
considering the current trends in basic
and applied ethnobiological research.
Facts:
- Despite the insights provided by
archaeological and historical
linguistic studies, setting an
even approximate date of the
emergence of local biological
knowledge is a matter of opinion.
- A detailed understanding of the
natural world was key to the
independent emergence of plant
and animal domestication over a
period ranging from 8,500 B.C. in
southwest Asia to 2,500 B.C. in
the eastern United States. Yet
environmental knowledge reaches
even further back into history,
when hunting and gathering
dominated subsistence activities.
- Some researchers would put the
beginning of human ecological
knowledge at the dawn of
humanity, some seven million
years ago. Early human ancestors,
who lived on the African
continent 2.5 million years ago,
apparently fashioned stone tools
for harvesting and processing
food, probably allowing them to
adapt to new environmental
conditions.
- It is widely assumed that humans
have been observing natural
phenomena, distinguishing between
biological organisms and
discovering their uses ever since
the emergence of early Homo
sapiens some half a million
years ago.
- The archeological record reveals
that by 50,000 years ago,
Cro-Magnons had developed
technologies for construction,
fishing, gathering and hunting
that were dependent on a detailed
understanding of plants, animals
and other elements of the natural
environment.
Basic readings:
Clément, D. 1998.
L’Ethnobiologie/Ethnobiology. Anthropologica
40:7-34.
Diamond, J. 1998. Guns, Germs and
Steel: A Short History of Everybody for
the Last 13,000 Years. Vintage,
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.
Ford, R.I., editor. The Nature and
Status of Ethnobotany.
Anthropological Papers 67, Museum of
Anthropology, University of Michigan.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Johns, T. 1990. With Bitter Herbs
They Shall Eat It: Chemical Ecology and
the Origins of Human Diet and Medicine.
University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage
Mind. University of Chicago Press,
Chicago.
Martin, G. 1995. Ethnobotany.
Chapman and Hall, London.
Plotkin, M. and L. Famolare. 1992. Sustainable
Harvest and Marketing of Rain Forest
Products. Island Press, Washington,
D.C.
Posey, D., editor. 1999. Cultural
and Spiritual Values of Biodiversity.
Intermediate Technology Publications,
London.
Prance, G.T., D.J. Chadwick and J.
Marsh. 1994. Ethnobotany and the
Search for New Drugs. Wiley,
Chichester.
Schultes, R.E. and R.F. Raffauf. 1990.
The Healing Forest: Medicinal and
Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia.
Dioscorides Press, Portland.
Simpson, B.B. and M. Connor-Ogorzaly.
1995. Economic Botany: Plants in our
World, 2nd edition. McGraw
Hill, New York.
Table 1. Features of
various historical periods and stages in
ethnobiology (adapted from Clément 1998)
Period
|
Stage
|
Dates
|
Features
|
| Preclassic (1860
– 1954)
|
Economic uses |
1860
- 1899 |
Studies
of biological resources and their
utility carried out by
researchers affiliated with major
museums and universities; general
lack of appreciation of the
sophistication of local knowledge
and subsistence systems from an
emic perspective. |
| Information gathering |
1900 - 1931 |
Greater empirical depth
in research, but continued
emphasis on economic uses of
plants and animals; better
appreciation of complexity of
local knowledge and use of plants
and animals, especially as
reflected in systematic attempts
to record local terminology,
myths and beliefs, and knowledge
of anatomy and behavior;
emergence of comparative studies
and standard methods. |
| The first syntheses |
1932 - 1953 |
Emergence of
ethnobiology as a distinct field
of enquiry, and appearance of the
first syntheses that delimit its
scope; growing distinction
between economic botany and
ethnobotany, with the latter
emphasizing the systematic
documentation of local knowledge
and management of plants;
continued lack of recognition of
scientific aspects of traditional
biological knowledge. |
| Classic
period (1954
– 1980)
|
Emic knowledge |
1954 – 1968 |
Emergence of
ethnoscience, leading to a focus
on the organization of knowledge
systems from the local
perspective, with insights from
linguistics and empirical
anthropological methods;
relegation of the study plant and
animals resources themselves to
secondary importance; beginning
of interest in ethnobiological
classification and appreciation
of the scientific basis of
traditional knowledge. |
| Classification |
1969 - 1980 |
Focus on ethnobiological
classification, including
principles of categorization and
nomenclature, and the analysis of
correspondence between scientific
and local classifications;
accumulation of evidence for the
scientific basis of local
biological knowledge; growing
interest in ethnobiology beyond
the United States and Europe,
especially in Latin America and
the Pacific. |
| Post
classic (1981
à )
|
Associations |
1981 - 1992 |
Production of major
empirical works based on close
collaboration between academic
and local researchers;
development of theoretical
approaches beyond classification,
including gender relations in
resource use, cultural
significance of plants and
historical reconstruction of
ethnobiological knowledge
systems; emergence of academic
societies and specialized
journals of ethnobiology,
especially in developing
countries. |
| Resource management |
1993 à |
Publication of standard
methods manuals, quantitative
techniques and innovative
empirical studies; emergence of
concern about applying
ethnobiology to conservation and
development; renewed interest in
economic botany, including
nutritional and medicinal
benefits of plants, but
incorporating novel theoretical
and methodological approaches,
and informed participation by
local people. |
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