Quantitative Ethnobotany or Quantification in Ethnobotany?

Abstract

www.ethnobotanyjournal.org/vol7/i1547-3465-07-001.pdf Ethnobotany Research & Applications 7:001-003 (2009) Ulysses Paulino de Albuquerque, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco, Departamento de Biologia, Area de Botânica. Laboratorio de Etnobotânica Aplicada (www.etnobotanicaaplicada.com.br). Dom Manoel de Medeiros s/n. Dois Irmaos, Recife, Pernambuco, BRAZIL. upa@db.ufrpe.br ent an opportunity to benefit and improve our scientific practices. One of the first explicit responses to the “weak science” criticism (due to the largely descriptive nature of much of the published research) can be found in Phillips and Gentry (1993a,b). The term quantitative ethnobotany is defined in these works “as the application of quantitative techniques to direct analysis of contemporary plant use data”. The term quantitative ethnobotany appears for the first time in Balee (1987) in an article published in a Brazilian journal, and was mentioned in that same year in an interesting paper by Prance and collaborators (1987) that had William Balee as one of the coauthors. Since then, the term “quantitative ethnobotany” has been increasing used by other workers in the field. According to the “Web of Science” data base, this phrase has appeared in approximately 87 publications, and with the references cited in the paper by Phillips & Gentry comes to a total of 142 citations.