Globalization, cultural values, and ethnobotanical knowledge among a Maya society
Abstract
Scholars and laypeople worry that traditional environmental knowledge is disappearing as societies urbanize and globalize. In nonindustrial societies, ethnobotanical knowledge-how people use plants-continues to be crucial to human survival yet in developed and urban areas, where market-economy reigns, people may know very few native plant species. We do not yet understand the process by which a society jettisons or maintains their medical ethnobotanical knowledge. Without exception, quantitative research on medicinal plant use finds intra-societal variation in plant knowledge. While past ethnobotany has been impactful, it does not address the culturally pertinent issue of cross-community comparison. Further, how an individual's values for their culture affect local ethnobotanical knowledge variation remains unclear. Our project examines how and why this long-established cultural knowledge varies within and between two populations of Tojolabal Mayans in Chiapas, Mexico, across a rural and peri-urban divide. We expect less acculturative pressure in the rural community, and greater adherence to cultural identity through tighter social norms, which we expect to link to greater ethnobotanical knowledge. This study contributes to a growing common metric to evaluate ethnobotanical knowledge between cultures using a normed measure of cognitive sharing/diversity which we develop from ethnographic methods including participant observation, informal and semi-structured interviews, freelists, surveys, and salience analysis. Findings will guide scholarly and applied efforts to document, preserve, and revitalize salient cultural knowledge and will enhance our interdisciplinary understanding of culture, cognition, and the urbanization process, emphasizing the effect these have on local knowledge, livelihoods, and health outcomes.
About the Presenter
Amanda M. Thiel
Amanda M. Thiel is currently working towards a PhD in anthropology at Washington State University. Her interests focus on cultural models, medical ethnobiology and Latin America, with present work in Maya communities. She has conducted research in Mexico, Guatemala, and the US.