NSF WORKSHOP

Intellectual Imperative in Ethnobiology: Research, methodology, analyses, education, and funding for a rapidly expanding field

Ethnobiology is a field growing rapidly in research and in student and public interest within the US and globally. There is an immediate need in Ethnobiology to define and focus research objectives; to explore modern methodology appropriate for studying plant/animal-people interactions; to quantitatively analyze our multidisciplinary data based on hypotheses; to develop interdisciplinary education models to train students and practitioners of ethnobiology; and to access academic funding sources free of controlling agenda. To facilitate the growth and maturation of ethnobiology, and to seek academic institutional funding sources, we are proposing a workshop to address research, methodology, analysis, education, and funding within ethnobiology. The immediate results of the workshop will be published in an Ethnobiology bulletin to focus research, to support methodologies, to encourage quantitative modeling analyses, to structure interdisciplinary education, and to solicit funding; the long-term results we anticipate are to identify and support a developing field in research and with interdisciplinary, academic sources of funding.

Research objectives in ethnobiology are changing. In the past, cataloguing long lists of plants and animals with their associated preparations and uses constituted ethnobiology. Recently our research objectives have become more process oriented. For example, we now study the processes of cultivation and domestication; the management of useful plant and animal populations; the process of traditional knowledge acquisition and organization, etc. Research on process has reoriented the objectives in ethnobiology, which greatly need redefinition and clarification.

Methodology in ethnobiology is becoming more experimental, more technological, and more participatory. Passive observation or informant query is being reinforced by experimental biology techniques borrowed from molecular, population, autecological, community, and ecosystem experimentation. Technology, from molecular to global, is becoming increasingly important in ethnobiology. Indigenous people have become increasingly empowered within ethnobiology to define research, development, and conservation priorities and to participate in the research and education efforts associated with ethnobiology. Data from these methodologies must be subject to statistical rigor. These methodological changes are profound and require explicit characterization to facilitate their creative utilization within ethnobiology.

Analyses of ethnobotanical data may be undertaken with current demographic models (of plants, animals, and/or people), with nonlinear analyses to model combined interdisciplinary data, with bioinformatics to analyze the plethora of molecular data generated by relatively simple evolutionary models of plant or animal domestication, etc. We would like to facilitate interactions between ethnobiologists and their applied math colleagues so that these techniques are put to best use in analyzing interdisciplinary, biocomplex data in Ethnobiology.

Interdisciplinary education in ethnobotany bridging the natural and social sciences needs to be developed systematically with flexibility to accommodate interests of individual students and variable strengths of different programs. Basic educational elements need to be defined such as organismal biology, cultural anthropology, archeology, comparative methodologies, quantitative skills, and evolutionary and environmental ecology. Training in ethnobiology for professionals and for international counterparts also needs to be reviewed. Research must be an integral part of all educational approaches. Ethnobiological education within a research context needs to be developed.

Funding for ethnobiology is problematic. Ethnobiology is interdisciplinary and all too often falls between disciplinary research funding objectives. No one disciplinary panel is willing to take responsibility for such a wide-ranging field of study. Funding for bioprospecting and conservation has transformed Ethnobiology with applied goals. Ethnobiology needs to promote its own academic funding objectives, free of disciplinary, commercial, and other agenda. Production of competitive, academic, interdisciplinary grants will be an outcome of the workshop.

The proposed ethnobiology workshop will be organized in two parts: an initial 3 day workshop of the organizing committee of mid-career leaders in Ethnobiology, followed by a widely advertised seminar to which attendance will be open. Invitations with transportation, food, and lodging will be offered to the organizing committee and to key invited speakers from outside the field. Government Organizations (GO) and Non-Government Organizations (NGO) representatives including NSF are invited to participate as observers. International research partners from the International Society for Ethnobiology will be included as international program funding is available. Output will be a bulletin on developments and future goals for research, methodology, analyses, education and funding in Ethnobiology. The bulletin will define the intellectual imperatives in Ethnobiology to our members, as well as supply information to develop funding consortia. Research proposals will be prepared.