Abstract
John William Harshberger, an American, formally designated the term “ethnobotany” in 1895. In an article published in 1896 (entitled The purposes of ethnobotany), Harshberger considered that ethnobotany could help to elucidate the cultural position of the tribes that use plants for food, shelter, or clothing, and that such elucidation, in turn, could clarify the problem of distribution of plants. Harshberger posited that it would be possible to understand an entire culture from how it made use of plants, but this idea has been rejected by many researchers, since the relationship with nature is only one component of a complex cultural system. Today we understand that the use and knowledge of plants as a part of complex social-ecological systems can help us understand how we relate to nature and how this relationship evolves in time and space.
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Notes
- 1.
Here we understand social-ecological systems as a product of the intimate relationship between two systems: the sociocultural, formed by the knowledge, practices, and values of a human group; and the ecological, composed of living beings and their relationships. See: Berkes and Folke (1998).
- 2.
- 3.
Archaeobotany is the study of the remains of plants from archaeological contexts. In a biological perspective, it can be defined as the study of plants in contexts affected by human factors.
- 4.
Still, in this book, we present the folk taxonomy studies in the chapter on classical approaches in ethnobotany.
- 5.
For a relevant and in-depth discussion of the distinction between emic and ethical, we strongly recommend the text of Batalha (1998).
- 6.
- 7.
Recently we reviewed this interesting work of Wade Davis. See Albuquerque et al. (2012).
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Albuquerque, U.P., Ramos, M.A., Júnior, W.S.F., de Medeiros, P.M. (2017). History and Concepts. In: Ethnobotany for Beginners. SpringerBriefs in Plant Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52872-4_1
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