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Shepard GH, Daly L. Sensory Ecology, Bioeconomy, and the Age of COVID: A Parallax View of Indigenous and Scientific Knowledge. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 37440457 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12666] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Revised: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 04/23/2023] [Indexed: 07/15/2023]
Abstract
Drawing on original ethnobotanical and anthropological research among Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, we examine synergies and dissonances between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge about the environment, resource use, and sustainability. By focusing on the sensory dimension of Indigenous engagements with the environment-an approach we have described as "sensory ecology" and explored through the method of "phytoethnography"-we promote a symmetrical dialogue between Indigenous and scientific understandings around such phenomena as animal-plant mutualisms, phytochemical toxicity, sustainable forest management in "multinatural" landscapes, and the emergence of new diseases like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Drawing examples from our own and other published works, we explore the possibilities and limitations of a "parallax view" attempting to hold Indigenous and scientific knowledge in focus simultaneously. As the concept of "bioeconomy" emerges as a key alternative for sustainable development of the Amazon, we encourage a critical and urgent engagement between dominant Western conceptions and Indigenous Amazonian knowledge, practices, and cultural values. Cognitive science, which has long contributed to studies of Indigenous categorization and conceptualization of the natural world, continues to play an important role in building bridges of mutual communication and respect between Indigenous and scientific approaches to sustainability and biodiversity conservation.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Lewis Daly
- Department of Anthropology, University College London
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Williams K, Romero OSG, Braunstein M, Brant S. Indigenous Philosophies and the "Psychedelic Renaissance". ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12161] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Keith Williams
- First Nations Technical Institute Director of Research and Social Innovation
| | | | - Michelle Braunstein
- Queensland University of Technology University of Technology Sydney and Southern Cross University ‐ Sessional Academic
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Shaffer CA, Milstein MS, Lindsey LL, Wolf TM, Suse P, Marawanaru E, Kipp EJ, Garwood T, Travis DA, Terio KA, Larsen PA. “Spider Monkey Cotton”: Bridging Waiwai and Scientific Ontologies to Characterize Spider Monkey (Ateles paniscus) Filariasis in the Konashen Community Owned Conservation Area, Guyana. INT J PRIMATOL 2022. [DOI: 10.1007/s10764-021-00272-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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Prado HM, Murrieta RSS, Shepard GH, de Lima Souza T, Schlindwein MN. Sympathetic science: analogism in Brazilian ethnobiological repertoires among quilombolas of the Atlantic forest and Amazonian ribeirinhos. JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY AND ETHNOMEDICINE 2022; 18:1. [PMID: 34980177 PMCID: PMC8725308 DOI: 10.1186/s13002-021-00499-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/24/2021] [Accepted: 12/17/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Drawing on Phillipe Descola's comparative analysis of ontological regimes across cultures, this article identifies analogism guiding ethnobiological repertories among two distinctive traditional tropical forest communities in Brazil. METHODS We carried out participant observation, semi-structured interviews and informal dialog with 48 individuals, among quilombolas of the Atlantic Forest in southeastern Brazil and ribeirinhos of the Amazon. RESULTS We documented 60 traditional practices governed by analogical principles, comprising hunting, ethnomedical practices, food taboos, and other interactions with non-human entities. We also identify and classify the analogical principles reported in the field data. Based on this classification, we address the phenomenological dimension of the ethnobiological repertoires and discuss the epistemological and ontological foundations of this form of reasoning. We also hypothesize on the role of analogism shaping ethnobiological repertories more generally in Brazil. CONCLUSION The heuristic model we apply-articulating phenomenology, epistemology and ontology-could prove valuable in ethnobiology and the emerging field of "anthropology beyond the human."
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Affiliation(s)
- Helbert Medeiros Prado
- Philosophy and Social Sciences Institute, Federal University of Pará, 01 Augusto Corrêa Str., Belém, PA, 66075-110, Brazil
| | | | - Glenn Harvey Shepard
- Department of Anthropology, Emilio Goeldi Museum, 1901 Perimetral Av., Belém, PA, 66077830, Brazil
| | - Tamires de Lima Souza
- Center of Sciences and Technology for Sustainability, Federal University of São Carlos, João Leme Dos Santos, Highway 110km, Sorocaba, SP, 18052-780, Brazil
| | - Marcelo Nivert Schlindwein
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Federal University of São Carlos, Washington Luís Highway 235km, São Carlos, SP, 13565-905, Brazil
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Daly L. Cassava Spirit and the Seed of History: On Garden Cosmology in Northern Amazonia. ANTHROPOLOGICAL FORUM 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/00664677.2021.1994918] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Lewis Daly
- Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK
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Echeverri-Sanchez H. The Many Lives of a Shamanic Chondur: Using Cyperus articulates in Yagé Shamanism of Southern Colombia. J ETHNOBIOL 2021. [DOI: 10.2993/0278-0771-41.2.263] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
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Teixidor-Toneu I, Kjesrud K, Kool A. Sweetness Beyond Desserts: The Cultural, Symbolic, and Botanical History of Angelica (Angelica archangelica) in the Nordic Region. J ETHNOBIOL 2020. [DOI: 10.2993/0278-0771-40.3.289] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Anneleen Kool
- Natural History Museum, University of Oslo. Sars Gate 1, 0562 Oslo, Norway
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Ludwig D, El-Hani CN. Philosophy of Ethnobiology: Understanding Knowledge Integration and Its Limitations. J ETHNOBIOL 2020. [DOI: 10.2993/0278-0771-40.1.3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- David Ludwig
- Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation Group, Wageningen University and Research, Hollandseweg 1, Building 201, 6706 KN,Wageningen, Netherlands
| | - Charbel N. El-Hani
- History, Philosophy and Biology Teaching Lab (LEFHBio), Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Brazil. National Institute of Science & Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution (INCT IN-
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Fotiou E. The role of Indigenous knowledges in psychedelic science. JOURNAL OF PSYCHEDELIC STUDIES 2019. [DOI: 10.1556/2054.2019.031] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
This paper reflects on potential contributions from anthropology to the field of “psychedelic science.” Although the discipline’s beginnings went hand in hand with colonialism, it has made significant contributions to the understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems. Furthermore, recent calls to decolonize our theoretical frameworks and methodology, notably the “ontological turn,” open up the space for engaging meaningfully with Indigenous worldviews. At this critical juncture of the “psychedelic renaissance,” it is important to reflect on whether the current model is satisfactory and on ways to decolonize psychedelic science. What we need is a shift in paradigm, one that will acknowledge the validity of Indigenous worldviews as equal partners to scientific inquiry. Acknowledging the contributions of Indigenous knowledges to psychedelic science is necessary and needs to go hand in hand with attempts to revise biomedical models to be more inclusive in substantial ways. The paper does not argue for the abandonment of the scientific paradigm, rather for the abandonment of its privileged position. Decolonizing psychedelic science will require allowing multiple perspectives to coexist and contribute equally to our efforts going forward.
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Affiliation(s)
- Evgenia Fotiou
- 1 Department of Anthropology, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA
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Affiliation(s)
- K. G. Hutchins
- Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison. 5240 Sewell Social Science Building, 1180 Observatory Dr. Madison, WI 53706
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Purging and the body in the therapeutic use of ayahuasca. Soc Sci Med 2019; 239:112532. [PMID: 31494522 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112532] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2019] [Revised: 08/29/2019] [Accepted: 08/30/2019] [Indexed: 01/03/2023]
Abstract
Ayahuasca is a psychoactive plant mixture used in ceremonial contexts throughout Western Amazonia. Its use has expanded globally in recent decades and become popular among westerners who travel to the Peruvian Amazon in increasing numbers to experience its reportedly healing effects. Through a review of relevant literature on Amazonian shamanism, combined with the authors' ethnographic data from shamanic tourism contexts of the Peruvian Amazon and neo-shamanic networks in Australia (collected between 2003 and 2015 - with a total of 227 people interviewed or surveyed, including healers and participants), we demonstrate that purging has been integral to the therapeutic use of ayahuasca across and beyond Amazonia. Therapeutic approaches to ayahuasca point to combined modulations of the gut and the mind, and the bodily and the social, that are expressed through discourse about healing and the body. Relating ethnographic evidence to recent scientific studies that connect the gut to emotional health, we do not approach the gut as merely biological ground on which cultural meanings are imposed, but rather as simultaneously physical and cultural. Based upon our analysis, we argue that ayahuasca purging should not be dismissed as a drug side effect or irrational belief but reconsidered for its potential therapeutic effects.
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DALY LEWIS, SHEPARD GLENN. Magic darts and messenger molecules: Toward a phytoethnography of indigenous Amazonia. ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY 2019. [DOI: 10.1111/1467-8322.12494] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- LEWIS DALY
- Social anthropologist and ethnobotanist who lectures in environmental anthropology at University College London (UCL). Lewis is currently working on a series of articles on human‐plant engagements in Makushi culture and cosmology. He is co‐editor of the online magazine TEA: The Ethnobotanical Assembly
| | - GLENN SHEPARD
- Ethnobotanist, medical anthropologist and film‐maker based at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (MPEG) in Belém, Brazil. He is engaged in fieldwork among the Matsigenka people of southern Peru, studying traditional medicine, health status, ethnobiology and community‐based resource management. He is currently working on a monograph entitled ‘Sorcery and the senses'. He blogs at Notes from the Ethnoground (ethnoground.blogspot.com)
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Abstract
Recent years have witnessed burgeoning interest in interspecies relations and multispecies ethnography. This review explores what such perspectives bring to long-standing anthropological attention to agrarian worlds. Considering why so much recent scholarship only minimally engages with longer disciplinary traditions found within ecological and environmental anthropology and ethnobotany, the review examines continuities and discontinuities across these different modes of attending to interspecies relationships. From here, it explores how contemporary scholarship renews anthropological attention to questions of domestication, relatedness, agency, and personhood and how it charts new ground by engaging theories of biopolitics, biocapital, biosemiotics, and plant ontologies. While noting that recent work has distinctive theoretical preoccupations, the review concludes by suggesting that fruitful possibilities lie in working with, and across, established and emergent anthropologies of the agrarian.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shaila Seshia Galvin
- Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva 1211, Switzerland
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Affiliation(s)
- Nils Bubandt
- Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene, Aarhus University
| | - Anna Tsing
- Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene, Aarhus University
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Armstrong CG, Shoemaker AC, McKechnie I, Ekblom A, Szabó P, Lane PJ, McAlvay AC, Boles OJ, Walshaw S, Petek N, Gibbons KS, Quintana Morales E, Anderson EN, Ibragimow A, Podruczny G, Vamosi JC, Marks-Block T, LeCompte JK, Awâsis S, Nabess C, Sinclair P, Crumley CL. Anthropological contributions to historical ecology: 50 questions, infinite prospects. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0171883. [PMID: 28235093 PMCID: PMC5325225 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0171883] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2016] [Accepted: 01/28/2017] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a consensus-driven process identifying 50 priority research questions for historical ecology obtained through crowdsourcing, literature reviews, and in-person workshopping. A deliberative approach was designed to maximize discussion and debate with defined outcomes. Two in-person workshops (in Sweden and Canada) over the course of two years and online discussions were peer facilitated to define specific key questions for historical ecology from anthropological and archaeological perspectives. The aim of this research is to showcase the variety of questions that reflect the broad scope for historical-ecological research trajectories across scientific disciplines. Historical ecology encompasses research concerned with decadal, centennial, and millennial human-environmental interactions, and the consequences that those relationships have in the formation of contemporary landscapes. Six interrelated themes arose from our consensus-building workshop model: (1) climate and environmental change and variability; (2) multi-scalar, multi-disciplinary; (3) biodiversity and community ecology; (4) resource and environmental management and governance; (5) methods and applications; and (6) communication and policy. The 50 questions represented by these themes highlight meaningful trends in historical ecology that distill the field down to three explicit findings. First, historical ecology is fundamentally an applied research program. Second, this program seeks to understand long-term human-environment interactions with a focus on avoiding, mitigating, and reversing adverse ecological effects. Third, historical ecology is part of convergent trends toward transdisciplinary research science, which erodes scientific boundaries between the cultural and natural.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Anna C. Shoemaker
- Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Iain McKechnie
- Department of Anthropology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
- Hakai Institute, Heriot Bay, Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Anneli Ekblom
- Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Péter Szabó
- Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic
| | - Paul J. Lane
- Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
- School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
| | - Alex C. McAlvay
- Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
| | - Oliver J. Boles
- Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Sarah Walshaw
- Department of History, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Nik Petek
- Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Kevin S. Gibbons
- Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America
| | | | - Eugene N. Anderson
- Department of Anthropology, University California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America
| | - Aleksandra Ibragimow
- Polish-German Research Institute, Adams Mickiewicz University in Poznań, European University, Viadrina, Poland/Germany
| | - Grzegorz Podruczny
- Polish-German Research Institute, Adams Mickiewicz University in Poznań, European University, Viadrina, Poland/Germany
| | - Jana C. Vamosi
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada
| | - Tony Marks-Block
- Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America
| | | | - Sākihitowin Awâsis
- Department of Geography, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
- Atlohsa Native Family Healing Services, Canada, London, Ontario, Canada
| | - Carly Nabess
- Department of Anthropology, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, British Columbia, Canada
| | - Paul Sinclair
- Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
| | - Carole L. Crumley
- Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
- Integrated History of Future of People on Earth (IHOPE) Initiative, Uppsala, Sweden
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