Report on Geography and the New Ethnobiology

Bibliographic Data

ID7435570
AuthorsK S Zimmerer (0000-0002-3616-4862, Institute of Geography of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume91
Issue4
Pages725-734
Publication date2001-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1931-0846.2001.tb00251.x
OpenAlexW2017664144
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited5

BLACK RICE: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. By JUDITH A. CARNEY. xiv and 240 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 0674004523; $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0674008340. ETHNOBIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION: Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies. By BRENT BERLIN. xvii and 364 pp.; ills., bibliog., index. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. $82.50 (cloth), ISBN 0691094691. ETHNOECOLOGY: Knowledge, Resources, and Rights. Edited by TED L. GRAGSON and BEN G. BLOUNT. xviii and 163 pp.; maps, bibliog., index. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 0820320676; $25.00 (paper), ISBN 0820321281. FOLKBIOLOGY. Edited by DOUGLAS L. MEDIN and SCOTT ATRAN. ix and 504 pp.; diagrs., ills., index. Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford Books and MIT Press, 1999. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 0262133490; $32.50 (paper), ISBN 026263192X. MAYA ATLAS: The Struggle to Preserve Maya Land in Southern Belize. By the TOLEDO MAYA CULTURAL COUNCIL and the TOLEDO ALCALDES ASSOCIATION. xi and 154 pp.; maps, ills., index. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 1997. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 1556432569. NATURE AND CULTURE IN THE ANDES. By DANIEL W. GADE. xiv and 287 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0299161120X; $18.95 (paper), ISBN 0299161242. PLANTS, PEOPLE, AND CULTURE: The Science of Ethnobotany. By MICHAEL J. BALICK and PAUL ALAN Cox. ix and 228 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. New York: Scientific American Library, 1996. $32.95 (cloth), ISBN 0716750619; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0716760274. REDEFINING NATURE: Ecology, Culture, and Domestication. Edited by ROY ELLEN and KATSUYOSHI FUKUI. xxii and 642 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Oxford, England, and Washington, D.C.: Berg, 1996. $55.00 (cloth), ISBN 1859731309; $24.50 (paper), ISBN 185973135X. SACRED LEAVES OF CANDOMBLE: African Magic, Medicine, and Religion in Brazil. By ROBERT A. VOEKS. xvii and 236 pp.; maps, ills., bibliog., index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. $37.50 (cloth), ISBN 0292787308; $17.95 (paper), ISBN 0292787316. A promising web of connections is being interwoven between geography and ethnobiology, longtime cognate fields. Compelling shared interests are evident in a series of major new works that stem from field research, policy analysis, and political activism. This report evaluates recent advances around three themes: geographical meanings and environmental change; proliferation of landscape-based issues involving indigenous rights (political, territorial, intellectual property), plant and animal domestication, and environmental justice; and the innovation and diffusion of local or indigenous knowledge systems. Works on each theme build on the centrality of landscape concepts. To analyze each theme, and to aim for synthesis, I draw on nine important texts, on field research undertaken not long ago in Bolivia and Peru, and on my attendance and delivery of the keynote lecture at the Seventh International Congress of Ethnobiology, held in October 2000 in Athens, Georgia. Ethnolandscape is a term that effectively entwines the new melding of geography and ethnobiology in the research under review. As a perspective, ethnolandscape ecology refers to the analysis of cultural environmental knowledge in relation to humanized landscapes that are often highly politicized. The knowledge itself includes both site-specific vernacular (or folk) knowledge and scientific knowledge. Like contemporary ethnobiology, the works in ethnolandscape ecology are concerned with comparisons of vernacular knowledge, often of indigenous people or other local cultural groups, and the scientific know-how of various coteries of technicians, development agents, and Western-trained experts. Unlike older ethnobiology, the new works see knowledge of environments as culturally conditioned in both the vernacular and scientific contexts

Ethnobiology · Ethnobotany · Maya · Agriculture and Rural Development Research · Environmental and Cultural Studies in Latin America and Beyond · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

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