Ethnobiological Research Research Articles

Cuando los saberes no dialogan. Prácticas en conflicto en el Parque Costero Sur (Buenos Aires)

El presente trabajo se centró en el partido de Punta Indio (Provincia de Buenos Aires) y tuvo como objetivo relevar las narrativas de los actores involucrados (gestores, docentes y pobladores) sobre el Parque Costero del Sur (PCS) como patrimonio biocultural de la UNESCO. Se aplicaron métodos y técnicas cualitativas usuales en el trabajo etnobiológico. El PCS es escenario de numerosos conflictos debido a la condición de área protegida habitada. Las principales problemáticas relevadas a través de las narrativas se relacionan con la actividad minera, la pavimentación de la RP Nº 11, la prohibición del uso de especies nativas, la dicotomía nativo/exótico y las prácticas asociadas, las especies mencionadas y los espacios representativos. Estas problemáticas incluyen tanto aspectos biológicos como culturales. En general, en los pobladores se puede observar cómo ambos aspectos se entrelazan, mientras que en las narrativas de los docentes y gestores del PCS estas dimensiones tienden a separarse. Esta diferencia depende fundamentalmente de la residencia (o no) en la localidad de Punta del Indio, de los intereses económicos y las actividades desarrolladas. Estos intereses impiden el diálogo entre dichos actores, aspecto que puede ser vehiculizado desde la etnobiología.

Etnobiologi Kota Amlapura, Karangasem, Bali: Amla, Amlapura dan Phyllanthus emblica L. (Phyllanthaceae)

Amlapura is a Sanskrit name for the city of Karangasem and the result of the ethnobiological research conducted in this study indicates that it refers to a species of plant named Phyllanthus emblica (Phyllantaceae). In Indonesian, particularly Javanese the name is known as ‘malaka’, ‘mlaka’, ‘kemloko’, or ‘mloko’. This present ethnobiological study also raises a possibility that the name ‘mlaka’ is an indigenous Austronesian word instead and entered Sanskrit through Dravidian languages.

Review: Current status of ethnobiological studies in Merauke, Papua, Indonesia: A perspective of biological-cultural diversity conservation

Abstract. Simbiak M, Supriatna J, Walujo EB, Nisyawati. 2019. Review: Current status of ethnobiological studies in Merauke, Papua, Indonesia: A perspective of biological-cultural diversity conservation. Biodiversitas 20: 3455-3466. Ethnobiology is a scientific study that examines the dynamic relationship between humans, biota and the environment. In this dynamic relationship, holistic notions that integrate humans and their cultural and biological diversity give more responsibility to ethnobiological studies. This research approach stimulates insights to integrate scientific research with awareness of political and ecological issues, loss of biological resources, including indigenous peoples' struggles over land and resources, identity degradation due to loss of culture and language. Ethnobiological studies undertaken in Merauke, Papua between 2000 and 2017 were reviewed from the perspective of biological-cultural diversity conservation. The aims and results of such published ethnobiological studies were analyzed and we found the failure of such studies in accounting for linguistic diversity in the region while documenting ethnobiological knowledge. Most of such ethnobiological studies were oriented on the topic of economic botany, focusing on recording the potential uses of plants utilized by each ethnic group in the Marind language-culture area of Merauke District, especially those belonging to the domain of medicinal plants. Some studies also used artificial community terminology to treat several ethnic groups as uniform and did not mention what language used for the local names of plants in their reports. Future ethnobiological research in the area would benefit from: (i) adopting a cognitive ethnobiology orientation; (ii) applying appropriate ethnolinguistics standards of research to document the languages; and (iii) using a quantitative approach to analyze the distribution of ethnobiological knowledge within the communities studied. The latter approach is especially important given the extreme and rapid changes of the environment in this region.

Fermentation and the Ethnobiology of Microbial Entanglement

Fermentation preserves and transforms foods through autochthonous or introduced microorganisms. Fermentation is of special interest to ethnobiologists because it relies on place- and practice-based knowledge, local flora and microbial taxa, is sensitive to cultural and ecological conditions, and illuminates the interactions through which communities shape and are shaped by the world around them. In this short topical review, we discuss recent anthropological and ethnobiological research into fermentation, arguing that this topic deserves further attention during the current moment of microbial interest across social and natural sciences. We present a typology of scholarship on human-microbial relationships that delineates three intellectual camps in this literature: neo-cultural ecology, microbiopolitics, and the environmental humanities. In light of biomedical and scientific attention to microbes—not only as threats but also as complex and beneficial actors in our lives—it is crucial to understand how socioecological practices including growing, preparing, and consuming fermented foods sustain microbial communities, heritage foodways, and human wellbeing.

Glimpses of Loptuq Folk Botany: Phytonyms and Plant Knowledge in Sven Hedin’s Herbarium Notes from the Lower Tarim River Area as a Source for Ethnobiological Research

This interdisciplinary study discusses the vernacular phytonyms and other ethnobiological aspects of vegetation in the Loptuq (Loplik) habitat on the Lower Tarim River. This small Turkic-speaking group lived as fisher-foragers in the Lopnor (Lop Lake) area in East Turkestan, now the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China. Information about this unique group, and especially the folk knowledge of plants in the area, is scant. In 1900, Swedish explorer Sven Hedin collected plant voucher specimens for the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm. He noted local names on herbarium labels, thus providing modern researchers a rare glimpse into the Loptuq world. As the traditional way of life is already lost and the Loptuq language almost extinct, every trace of the former culture is of significance when trying to understand the peculiarities of human habitats and survival in arid areas. The ethnobiological analysis can further contribute to other fields, such as climate change, and define the place of the Loptuq on the linguistic and cultural map of Central Asia.

Inawendiwin and Relational Accountability in Anishnaabeg Studies: The Crux of the Biscuit

Researchers working with Indigenous nations often recognize the need to build respectful relationships with nation representatives, but too often assume that everyone has the same understandings of respect and accountability. Relational accountability, an ethical guideline for conducting research with Indigenous nation partners, references the kincentric beliefs among many Indigenous Peoples. It implies that researchers are responsible for nurturing honorable relationships with community collaborators and are accountable to the entirety of the community in which they work, potentially including collaborators' more-than-human network of relations. This research examines relational accountability in ethnobiology and other research contexts, with a focus on work within Anishnaabe territories. Anishnaabe inawendiwin, a teaching about kinship, provides a path for centering research ethics and praxis in Anishnaabe ways of knowing and being. Anishnaabe inawendiwin urges us to remain committed to Indigenous nation partners regardless of budgets and beyond research grant timelines; to attend to accountabilities towards more-than-human communities; to foster loving, personal relationships with research partners; and to involve youth genuinely in the partnerships.

Biomonitoring and Ethnobiology: Approaches to Fill Gaps in Indigenous Public and Environmental Health

Ethnobiology is well positioned to work in tandem with biomonitoring research to create a more complete understanding of how people experience and are affected by contaminated environments. Indigenous communities in proximity to unconventional natural gas (“fracking”) facilities face potential health risks that are often poorly assessed or not assessed at all. This contribution reviews a biomonitoring pilot research project in British Columbia (Canada) that was informed by Indigenous Peoples' concerns of contaminant exposure from traditional foods and their environment. Preliminary biomonitoring results indicate higher levels of a benzene metabolite in pregnant Indigenous women near fracking facilities, compared to what measured in non-Indigenous women. We investigate how Indigenous Peoples' concerns of exposure to industrial contaminants should inform biomonitoring and toxicological studies and, conversely, how biomonitoring studies can complement ethnobiological research with assessable data. By focusing on environmental knowledge and human health in the context of oil and gas development, we critically evaluate how action, environmental justice, and scientific research can and should contribute to more ethical and methodological frameworks and practices. Together, ethnobiology and biomonitoring can be used to fill in important knowledge gaps in environmental health and ethical research practices.

Frontiers are Frontlines: Ethnobiological Science Against Ongoing Colonialism

Ethnobiologists are capable of making transformative scientific contributions when they participate in localized direct actions and acts of colonial dissent. Direct action tactics like blockades, protests, and re-occupations of territories are often used as (alternative) approaches for marginalized and disenfranchised communities who face expensive and oppressive justice systems. As natural resource extraction and development in settler nations continues to have uneven impacts on Indigenous Peoples and communities, this research reviews the long history of resistance to colonial expansion on the “frontier” of northwestern British Columbia, Canada. Currently, an emergent trend for legalizing and legitimizing resource extraction in rural and frontier communities is through consultation and impact assessment processes. These processes can undermine scientific rigor and hierarchies of knowledge that undercut Indigenous Peoples' knowledge, and rights to use and be on their territories. Using ethnobiological research methods to fuse cultural and natural scientific prescriptions of land use, we consider how cultural resistance camps—primarily Lelu Island, but also Madii Lii—are troves of Tsm'syen and Gitxsan experiential knowledge and cultural exchange, while resisting powerful and well-funded liquid natural gas (LNG) development in traditional territories. Ethnobiologists working in these contexts are challenged to support and stand behind their Indigenous colleagues to transform the frontier into a frontline and foster rigorous scientific research alongside Indigenous resistance.

Remembering Darrell Posey´s Contribution to Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology

The main purpose of this article is to provide an account of Darrell Posey’s academic life, from a north-American undergraduate student interested in entomology into one of the main figures and builders of Ethnobiology and major advocate of Indigenous Peoples ‘rights around the world. This short biography highlights his relations with the Kayapo indigenous people and his role in coordinating a decade-long interdisciplinary ethnobiology research project named “The Kayapo Project”. It was mostly through the development of this team effort that he contributed fundamental and long-lasting theoretical, methodological and practical advancements to the field of ethnobiology.

Bumblebee Honey in the Nordic Countries

Research in historical ethnobiology can provide information about little known and seemingly insignificant practices in the past. The utilization of insect products as a foodstuff is a rare custom in Europe and data on this practice are scarce. From Nordic countries, we have information about producing ant schnapps with the help of the red wood ant, Formica rufa L., which has been used both as a remedy and as a drink. Honey and beeswax were once gathered in the forests from wild honey bee colonies, but have been replaced with products from the domestic honey bee, Apis mellifera L. Another product, once a well-known and appreciated sweet, especially among children, was nectar gathered from bumblebee nests. Collecting the nectar from bumblebee nests is an activity that has been practiced within living memory in many parts of the Nordic countries. This seems to be an ancient practice dating back at least a millennium that has survived until recently. It is an example of how methods and sources established within historical ethnobiology can be used to gain knowledge on the past as well as possible future uses of available biological resources.

Does Cognition Still Matter in Ethnobiology?

Ethnobiology has become increasingly concerned with applied and normative questions about biocultural diversity and the livelihoods of local communities. While this development has created new opportunities for connecting ethnobiological research with ecological and social sciences, it also raises questions about the role of cognitive perspectives in current ethnobiology. In fact, there are clear signs of institutional separation as research on folkbiological cognition has increasingly found its home in the cognitive science community, weakening its ties to institutionalized ethnobiology. Rather than accepting this separation as inevitable disciplinary specialization, this short perspective article argues for a systemic perspective that addresses mutual influences and causal entanglement of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in socio-ecological dynamics. Such an integrative perspective requires a new conversation about cognition in ethnobiology beyond traditional polarization around issues of cognitive universals and cultural relativity.

The Current Status of Ethnobiology in Ecuador

This article gives an account of the current status of ethnobiology in Ecuador. Our goal is a generalized diagnosis of Latin America’s ethnobiological research production, which portrays Ecuadorian ethnobiology as practically non-existent. We perform an updated search of online databases, using a range of keywords, to show that elements of an ethnobiological research program are indeed present in Ecuadorian scholarship. While ethnobotany is the most developed sub-discipline of ethnobiology in Ecuador, there is also research on ethnomedicine, ethnozoology, and, to a lesser extent, ethnomycology. The development of these sub-disciplines promotes further ethnobiological scholarship in Ecuador. Beyond these sub-disciplines, ethnobiology is interwoven with contemporary anthropological accounts that emphasize the relationships between nature and culture and shine a light on the epistemic plurality of ethnobiology. If ethnobiology in Ecuador is distinguished by an epistemic plurality—understood through these different styles of reasoning—then it can be characterized without being confined to sub-disciplines with the ethno- prefix.

Taking an Early Step in Ethnobiological Research: A Proposal for Obtaining Prior and Informed Consent from Indigenous Peoples

Based on my own experiences from the field, in this paper I reflect on my work in Bolivia and Guatemala, collaborating with the Tsimane’ and Q’eqchi’ peoples, respectively. The aim of this reflection is to propose a set of guidelines for an early step in ethnobiological research. I understand an early step of research to be obtaining prior, informed consent of the peoples with whom we collaborate; a step I argue should be formalized and included as part of research proposals and documents (publications) resulting from the research. This guideline is offered simply as a reference for encouraging researchers to engage with the collaborating communities in a proper, ethical, and respectful way as a first step in our fieldwork. This proposed guideline, while motivating researchers to engage in this process, also encourages them to adapt and modify the guideline to the particular local situation where the planned research will take place. The proposal responds to local customs and traditions, while also following critical ethical guidelines for ethnobiological research, as well as national and international policy relevant to our field of research. It is therefore relevant to any region and community of collaborators where research takes place.

From Ethical Codes to Ethics as Praxis: An Invitation

Ethical guidance for research involving Indigenous and traditional communities, cultural knowledge, and associated biological resources has evolved significantly over recent decades. Formal guidance for ethnobiological research has been thoughtfully articulated and codified in many helpful ways, including but by no means limited to the Code of Ethics of the International Society of Ethnobiology. We have witnessed a successful and necessary era of “research ethics codification” with ethical awareness raised, fora established for debate and policy development, and new tools evolving to assist us in treating one another as we agree we ought to within the research endeavor. Yet most of us still struggle with ethical dilemmas, conflicts, and differences that arise as part of the inevitable uncertainties and lived realities of our cross-cultural work. Is it time to ask what more (or what else) might we do, to lift the words on a page that describe how we should conduct ourselves, to connecting with the relational intention of those ethical principles and practices in concrete, meaningful ways? How might we discover ethics as relationship and practice while we necessarily aspire to follow adopted ethical codes as prescription? This paper brings together Willie Ermine’s concept of “ethical space” and Darrell Posey’s recognition of the spiritual values of biodiversity with a unique selection of insights from other fields of practice, such as intercultural communication, conflict resolution and martial arts, to invite a new conceptualization of research ethics in ethnobiology as ethical praxis.

Remembering Darrell Posey´s Contribution to Ethnobiology and Ethnoecology

The main purpose of this article is to provide an account of Darrell Posey’s academic life, from a north-American undergraduate student interested in entomology into one of the main figures and builders of Ethnobiology and major advocate of Indigenous Peoples ‘rights around the world. This short biography highlights his relations with the Kayapo indigenous people and his role in coordinating a decade-long interdisciplinary ethnobiology research project named “The Kayapo Project”. It was mostly through the development of this team effort that he contributed fundamental and long-lasting theoretical, methodological and practical advancements to the field of ethnobiology.

Children and Ethnobiology

A child-focused approach to ethnobiological research has the potential to contribute to our overall understanding of human-environmental relations in at least two important ways: by improving our understanding of how children acquire knowledge and by highlighting the specificities of children's own ethnobiological knowledge. However, despite this potential, research on children's relations with their environment is scarce. To help fill this gap, this Special Section on Children and Ethnobiology compiles works that explore the many ways in which children use, think, and perceive their environment and the role children play in their own societies. Works in this special section are organized around three main topics: the dynamics of ethnobiological learning; the importance and specificity of children's ethnobiology; and suitable methods to work on children's ethnobiology. Taken together, the contributions selected for this Special Section not only expand research on children's ethnobiology, but also open new insights for future research on the topic.

The role of ethnic tourism in the food knowledge tradition of Tyrolean migrants in Treze T\xedlias, SC, Brazil

BackgroundFood knowledge and consumption in the context of migration is an important topic in ethnobiological research. Little research is done on the process of how external factors impact food knowledge amongst migrants. Taking into account social organisation and power relations of food knowledge transmission and distribution of food knowledge, this study sheds light on how the accessibility of resources, the predominant cuisine in the host country and ethnic tourism influences the food knowledge tradition of Tyrolean migrants and their descendants in Treze Tílias.MethodsField research was conducted in Austria and Brazil in 2008–2009, using free-listing, social network analysis and participatory observation. The collected data was analysed by calculating Smith’s Salience index, visualising personal and social networks and qualitative text analysis.ResultsTyroleans in Austria had a different perception and a higher agreement of what Tyrolean food comprises than Tyroleans in Brazil, indicating different developments: Tyrolean migrants adapted their food habits according to available resources and over time in Brazil. Later, ethnic tourism had a strong impact: In Treze Tílias, dishes with the highest Smith’s Salience index—forming the core of cultural food knowledge—strongly coincided with Tyrolean food served in ethnic restaurants, whose staff were perceived to be experts in Tyrolean food.ConclusionDespite most food knowledge in Treze Tílias was transmitted within families, ethnic food prepared in restaurants and hotels determined the shared perception of what Tyrolean food comprises. Perceived as experts, the staff in ethnic restaurants were in a powerful position to transform cultural food knowledge by providing institutionalised and standardised knowledge about Tyrolean food.

A theoretical review on the origin of medicinal practices in humans: echoes from evolution

Humans have been coping with diseases throughout the evolutionary history. The emergence of medical systems, which integrate knowledge and practices related to health management, can be assumed as one of the reactions of the human species to respond to the pressures of diseases. An intriguing question is related to the understanding of how these systems have emerged in our species. To answer this question, some authors created scenarios to explain the origin of these systems, from an ecological and evolutionary logic. In this article, we briefly introduce some of the key ideas linked to these scenarios and how they may be important in guiding ethnobiology research.

Edible insect resources and their use among the dimasa kacharis of Dima Hasao District, Assam

Entomophagy, the practice of eating insects and insect products as food is common among the Dimasa Kacharis of Dima Hasao district. The district constitutes a biodiversity rich area but largely remained unexplored particularly due to lack of road connectivity with remote villages. The present study documents the edible insect resources and their therapeutic uses among the Dimasa Kacharis. Group discussion and semi-structured interview methods resulted in documentation of 19 species belonging to 13 families, 16 genera and 6 orders out of which 11 species are known for their medicinal value. Edible insects are known to have high nutritive value while some are highly effective in therapeutic uses. The present study documents the Dimasa traditional knowledge system and their insect resources. This baseline information will be of use for researchers interested in undertaking ethnobiological research in Dima Hasao district.

Traditional Knowledge of Plant Classification among Dimasa Tribe of Dima Hasao District, Assam, India

The cognitive aspect of ethnobiology i.e. how the traditional people view nature is very significant in ethnobiological research. The present paper deals with the cognitive attribute of ethnobiology prevalent amongst the Dimasa tribe of Dima Hasao district, Assam, India. A total of 161 plant species were recorded. A comparison of the traditional classification system of the plants with Berlin's classification principle was also made. The various life forms of plants and their corresponding Dimasa names also categorized. The study depicts the deep knowledge base of Dimasa tribe of the district and the potential of folk taxonomy in identification of local species found in a community.