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Dissertation
Ethnobiological Models of Plant and Animal Illnesses In a Changing Subsistence System
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006285
Abstract
Over many generations, human societies develop complex systems of cultural knowledge related to how people interact with and understand living things—a society’s ethnobiology. Ethnobiology includes the ways that people think about health and the internal workings of organisms, which are well-studied in terms of human-centered ethnomedicine and ethnophysiology. However, gaps remain in research into the ways people think about other organisms’ (e.g., animals’ and especially plants’) physiology. Such cultural theories about biology are especially important within the context of rapid environmental and food system changes, as is occurring in indigenous populations. There, long-held traditions that mediate human interactions with animals and plants may no longer remain feasible. Meanwhile, local beliefs and practices collide with external knowledge systems. To contribute to the understanding of cognitive anthropology and cultural evolutionary perspectives on folk science and ethnobiology, I ask the following central questions: (1) How do people explain biological processes (e.g., illnesses) for different kinds of living things, such as plants and animals? (2) How do explanations about plants and animals reflect changes in human environments and societies (e.g., following a shift to a new subsistence system and the influx of externally produced practices and knowledge)? I conducted ethnographic research with a Maasai community in Tanzania where—after centuries of semi-nomadic cattle pastoralism—economic and environmental stressors have led many families to adopt plant-based agriculture and bioscientific technology. I found that experts and lay people in the community use similar causal theories to explain illnesses for plants and animals that they also use for human ethnomedicine. Overall, participants tend to be more knowledgeable about animal illnesses than they are of plants and may have more complete mental models of livestock ethnophysiology and medicine than they do of agricultural plants. When asked to spontaneously explain an illness and its treatment in response to short vignettes describing an unwell cow and an unwell bean plant, participants tend to combine traditional Maasai ethnobiological theories with Western bioscientific interventions. These results suggest that people’s explanations reflect both cognitive biases and differences in experience with different types of organisms at the individual and cultural level.
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Details
- Title
- Ethnobiological Models of Plant and Animal Illnesses In a Changing Subsistence System
- Creators
- Cynthia Ann Heckelsmiller
- Contributors
- Marsha B Quinlan (Advisor)Courtney L Meehan (Committee Member)Robert J Quinlan (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Anthropology
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 190
- Identifiers
- 99901086432401842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation