Beyond artificial academic debates: for a diverse, inclusive, and impactful ethnobiology and ethnomedicine

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

Debate

Victoria Reyes-García¹ 

[1] Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), 08010, Barcelona, Spain;Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193, Barcelona, Spain;Departament d’Antropologia Social i Cultural, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193, Barcelona, Spain;

关键词: Biological indices;    Co-production of knowledge;    Epistemology;    Indigenous and local knowledge;    Methods;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s13002-023-00611-6

 received in 2023-05-12, accepted in 2023-08-31,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

In answer to the question “Should ethnobiology and ethnomedicine more decisively foster hypothesis-driven forefront research able to turn findings into policy and abandon more classical folkloric studies?”, in this essay I argue that a major strength of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine is their ability to bridge theories and methods from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Hypothesis-driven research is a powerful way to structure thinking that can lead to forefront research findings. But hypothesis-driven research is not the only way to structure thinking and is not a necessary condition to impact policymaking. To increase policy impact, ethnobiology and ethnomedicine should continue nurturing a mixture of complementary methods and inclusive approaches as fragmentation through opposing different approaches might weaken the discipline. Moreover, with the aim to play a fundamental role in building bridges between different knowledge systems and co-producing solutions towards sustainability, the discipline could benefit from enlarging its epistemological grounds through more collaborative research. Ethnobiologists' research findings, hypothesis-driven, descriptive, or co-constructed can become leverage points to transform knowledge into actionable outcomes in different levels of decision-making.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023