Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is a term used to refer to the academic discipline that deals with people's interaction with plants. As an academic discipline, the definition of Ethnobotany is varied but there are some common elements in the concept. It is broadly defined as the study of the relationship between plants and people (Balick and Cox: 1996:3).

Ethnobotany has also been described as "a unit of an ecological study specialising in the interaction of man and the plant world"(Ford: 1978:11). The popular prefix "ethno" refers to the study of people while "botany" is the study of plants. It has been advanced that the prefix 'ethno' means "that is the way other people look at the world"(Martin: 1996).In the past ethnobotany was seen as the study of the interactive relationship between non-industrial societies and their floral environment (Schultes and Von Siri: 1995:52).

The field involves a spectrum of inquiry from archaeological investigation of ancient civilizations to the bioengineering of new crops. It is an attempt to understand how other peoples view the world of plants and their relation to it.

History

All human cultures depend on plants in different ways, without exception. This intricate and fundamental relationship between plants and people is a phenomenon that has intrigued scientists for a long time and is the focus of ethnobotany.

The systematic investigation that we now call ethnobotany has a long history in the West (Minnis: 2000:6). The term "Ethnobotany" was introduced by Harshberger in 1895, and replaced the term aboriginal botany, as the preferred term describing the study of plants and how people use them. At this time, only the Aboriginal and North America Indians were the subject of study.

Botanists of this period considered ethnobotany to be the study of scientifically identified data and therefore focused on utilitarian matters and the cultural importance and significance of plants in the lives of people (Ford: 1978:39).Only much later did anthropologists focus on the native's point of view and their rules and categories for ordering the universe.

Ethnobotany as an organised subject and discipline that has developed during the last 100 years (Table 2). However, according to Minnis (2000:3) there are two fundamental misconceptions about ethnobotany. One is that it is the study of how a given tribe uses a specified plant for a particular purpose, and the other is that it only applies to non- industrialised, non-western and non-urbanised societies.

This leaves out both thecultural and biological meanings of plants,as well as their use in industrial, western and urbanised societies and this has led to the denial of the intellectual life of non-western people and even excluded enquiries into western cultures (Ford: 1978:31). A more useful definition is that Ethnobotany involves; (i) the exploration of economically useful plants (economic botany) and (ii)the quest for the people's ecological knowledge.

Important dates in the development of Ethnobotany as a discipline (Source: Cotton (1996:7).

  • 1492: The discovery of the New world initiates the identification of several plants of considerable economic value and is based on observation of native people.
  • 1663 : John Josselyn begins his study of the natural history of New England, later publishing his text on native herbal medicine, New England realities Discovered.
  • 1871-78: Seminal works by botanists Palmer and Powers is published. A period of 25 years dominated by economic botanists
  • 1893 : Anthropological interest in aboriginal botany lays more emphasise on cultural significance
  • 1895 : Harshberger introduces the term ''ethnobotany''
  • 1896 : Fewkes introduces the term ethnobotany in Anthropological literature
  • 1898 : Ethnology Department of US National Museum endeavours to document all useful plants of North American Indians
  • 1900 : The the first PhD in Ethnobotany is awarded to David Barrow for his doctoral dissertation in ethnobotany.
  • 1919 : Gilmore pioneers into research in traditional peoples resource management
  • 1930-30 : Castetter establishes a masters programme in ethnobotany at the University of New Mexico
  • 1950-1970: Ethnobotany, linguistic classifications ,folk classification paleoethnobotany emerges lead by, among others, Conklin is firmly established.
  • 1980s : The Society of ethnobiology publishes the first issue of its journal of Ethnobiology in 1981
  • 1990s : Both post graduate and undergraduate programmes in ethnobotany become increasingly available, while many research projects focus on practical applications of plant knowledge.

Useful education links

Below is a list of some of the higher institutions teaching courses on Ethnobotany and Ethnobiology, and conservation in general.

Other useful links;