1According to the religión of the Naxi who leave in northern Yunnan (China), man and nature are half-brothers and are expected to develop harmonious relationships in order to avoid disasters (drought, flood, earthquakes…). This interdependence made up of complex flows is the major question posed by ethno.bio.logy, as expressed by the different components of this term.

Of nature and peoples

Plants and people

2Thousands of plants – wild, protected, cultivated, processed – enable people to perform an infinite number of activities: eating, drinking, dressing, identifying the seasons, or making music. An entire plant can be used, but also an organ – sometimes at a precise moment in its development – or a particular tissue (such as the phloem, the tender inner portion of the bark). Books and databases that compile inventories of useful species, such as medicinal plants, on the scale of a continent, a country or an eth­nic group, bear witness to the breadth of knowledge and the proliferation of expertise that such uses require.

3Folk species designations do not always correspond to scientific species; they can include several formal species or, alternatively, comprise only a few individuals. Understanding local nomenclature and identifications requires exploring the many facets of everyday life and thought patterns that determine how people make use of the plant; how they place it according to their logic that orders reality; how people talk about the plant, how they represent it, invest it with social, religious, or artistic significance, or integrate it into economic and social networks. This exploration reveals the complex but significant associations that, individually or collectively, people weave between these species and other natural and supernatural entities, between the visible and the invisible, the real and the imaginary.

Of animals and people

4Terrestrial, aerial or aquatic, singly or in herds, animals are hunted, fished, and captured to ensure the survival of humans, and to become the indispensable facilitators of their activities (draft power, means of transport...). Animals help people manage their land by their action on the environment; they can also become faithful companions. Animals have a special place in food systems; the latter represent a "total social fact" (Mauss 1947) which affects all areas of life of a group. The species consumed, and the ways in which they are acquired, prepared and eaten, are indisputable indicators of cultural or community identity.

5But the animal is not only a useful being; its relations with humans are complex and sometimes conflicting, since humans wish to distinguish themselves from animals, but at the same time see a part of themselves in them (some societies even consider that transformation of humans into animals, and back again, is a regular occurrence). The emotions aroused by the animal (admira­tion, rejection, disgust or indifference) determine individual and social behavior, and shape the material and narrative production of the human observer. Humanized, held up as a symbol, deified, banned or erased, the animal reveals the concepts at work in the conduct and structures of a society, as well as in the mental constructs that circulate in the society.

6The relationship between humans and animals is sometimes so close that some societies would lose their cultural identity if they were deprived of the animal that is essential to them. Conversely, the sheep, one of the first animals to have been domesticated, is so dependent on people that it is unable to live without them.

Of ecosystems and people

7Tropical forests, tundra, or tree savannas are all inhabited ecosystems, symbolically appropriated and transformed by humans. Historical ecology shows the importance of the encounter between human practices and ecological dynamics in the configuration of ecosystems at a very large scale, for example, in the basins of the Amazon or the Congo. In the Mediterranean region, ecosystems we today consider “natural” are the product of co-evolution with human societies since the Paleolithic Era. The changes over this time represent the signature of the societies that live and develop their own history in these places. Despite the separation made in Europe since the Renaissance between human societies and nature, which became an object subject to human control, modern humans are faced with the obvious: they are an integral part of ecosystems that have been transformed by their own powerful techniques. These socio-ecological systems act in turn on human health and well-being, on how individuals perceive nature, and on how individuals relate to others. As ecosystems are transformed, the way their constituent elements are named and classified also changes, as do the division of land and the rights and rules of access and use. Representations of living things, regardless of the ecological scale proposed, influence all knowledge – traditional ecological knowledge as well as scientific ecological knowledge.

But which people?

8Every human society, whether they inhabit a place particularly rich in biodiversity or an arid desert, a wilderness area or an area vio­lently marked by the imprint of humanity, maintains a special relationship with its environment. A society’s environment not only shapes its activities, techniques and practices and how they are deployed, but also its linguistic, cultural, social, economic and religious particularities. In turn, from these particularities stems the rich diversity of the people called "the South" or "non-Western", "local", "traditional", also known as "indigenous peoples", "ethnic minorities" (to date, none of these names have been unanimously accepted). Depending on circumstances, the life of these societies is organized around the gathering of wild resources, whether associated or not, with domesticated animals (including a pastoral nomadism organized around seasonal cycles) and/or plants. Dependence on agriculture, by allowing a sedentary lifestyle, imposes stronger social hierarchy and the division of labor, and leads to increased trade and more definitive ownership of spaces. These particularities are also what makes their study so fascinating.”

9Especially since industrialization, the proliferation of cities and their expansion have caused an alienation from nature, the emer­gence of new values and new social codes, and the engagement in primarily commercial, intellectual and political activities. These consequences have shaken the customary relationships of the individual with nature and living things, but have also cau­sed new urban cultures of nature to appear.

Between the tangible and intangible

Tangible and intangible heritage

10For many societies, the natural environment is a powerful trigger of creative processes that are realized both in their "tangible cultural heritage" (objects, structures, achievements, constructed landscapes, arrangements of wild or cultivated spaces...) and in the so-called "intangible cultural heritage". The latter includes ecological knowledge, along with expertise and associated behaviors, which were developed by a community interacting with its natural environment. A convention was adopted in 2003 by the Member States of UNESCO for immaterial cultural heritage preservation. Immaterial cultural heritage reveals and defines ideological, moral, spiritual, and aesthetic values, and specific conceptions of the tangible and intangible and of life and death. These values and conceptions are transmitted from generation to generation by oral literature (myths, tales, proverbs, riddles and other kinds of oral texts), songs and dances, rituals, and so on.

11Tangible and intangible heritage are two inseparable parts of the same cultural heritage and constitute a crucial lever for the sense of belonging to a society, a place, and a story. Therefore, they contribute to social cohesion, even if their stability is only relative since, as living entities, they are constantly changing under the pressure of changes in the natural and human environment.

The worlds of the visible and the invisible

12Modern Western humanism contrasts the human and non-human, erecting people as the "masters of nature" (Lévi-Strauss 1971). Many peoples do not share this view, and consider humans as an integral part of an environment whose visible face – where humans, plants, and animals live – is tightly interwoven with its invisible fraction, populated by its ancestors, spirits, deities, "doubles", entities and various forces. The combination of these two worlds is variously designated, often by homonyms or linkages of cause and effect (an action in the visible world frequently triggers a response from the invisible one).

13The passage from one world to another can be made with the help of natural products (plants, fungi, venoms). These psychotro­pics, which induce altered states of consciousness, have been used for thousands of years for various purposes: ceremonies for social functioning, worship, divination, rites of passage, healing practices, communication with the "other" world, and fighting against evil spells... They are the cornerstone in the lives of shamans and in the operation of initiation societies. Other products and techniques also induce this link with the ancestors, the afterlife, the divine, or the void. Aromatic plants and odoriferous pro­ducts, for example, pass to this “other” world the homage and the requests of humanity, via fragrances as powerful as they are intangible and elusive.

From oral to written traditions

The transmission of knowledge

14The distinction between societies that know and practice writing and societies "without writing" is worth considering, even if the opposition of orality and writing is only apparent, not real. In societies with oral traditions, the information is, for the most part, memorized and passed from one generation to another through the voice and the body, usually during daily activities. During these, the child learns to recognize and use the components of nature as well as to appreciate the interplay of the relationship between people and nature Through helping the children to anticipate the future of actions to be taken, the distribution of tasks between men and women, and the areas to manage and travel through, information is disseminated appropriately. Storytelling is another important time for the transmission of ecological knowledge, and of society's values and the concepts that underlie them. Listeners learn the way society’s members function in accord with values. Children’s games offer yet another opportunity to circulate knowledge and practices, with the older children teaching the younger ones.

15Writing is freed from the contexts of the spoken word and allows for a cumulative progression of knowledge as well as its reorganization and revision; oral tradition requires more intangible, ephemeral and volatile forms of transmission. Consequently, practices, concepts or formulations, the fruit of borrowings or innovation, may appear only to change and disappear. The transmission of oral knowledge and practice never has as its corollary the identical reproduction of fixed data.

The tools for writing

16From the oldest cave paintings to contemporary visual and pictorial productions, from the most faithful graphic representations to the most encrypted systems of writing, humans have taken a variety of materials from the wild with which to communicate information in the absence of any form of sound or gesture. As such, writing requires a material medium, and the plant world has provided a significant number over the millennia: wooden tablets, papyrus, bark of various trees, bamboo, palm leaves, paper manu­factured in various ways. The animal kingdom has also contributed: turtle shells, shells, bone, ivory and wax, not to mention the skins of goats, sheep, calves, antelopes, and horses, which were used to make scrolls.

17Regarding the information transmitted, although an important function of writing has always been to circulate in space, and conserve over time, laws, contracts, accounts, medicinal formulas, tributes, prayers and texts, such is not its sole function. Writing can also be used for ritual, therapeutic or magical purposes. In these cases, the media used are sometimes unexpected, as in Algeria where it is on the wing of a fly that one must be able to write "Go, by the will of God" (Mozzani 1997) to definitively ensure the disappearance of this unwelcome insect.

The consequences of writing: a transformation of knowledge

18Since the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity focused on the need to ensure "sustainable development", projects that assert the value of natural resources have increased and, with them, the inventory of traditional ecological knowledge. The transition from the oral to the written tradition gave birth to a "written word" (Viti 2009) that has allowed the conservation of traditional knowledge and has, at the same time, projected it towards international recognition (enabling, or even requiring, interaction with other cultures). The writing down of this knowledge makes possible its use for legal purposes, to enforce the economic rights of a society to their intellectual property or in benefit sharing.

19This conversion to the "written word" requires us to examine the relevance and legitimacy of this transformation from oral to written tradition, and challenges plural discourses and partial approaches. How does one choose data and informants representative of a society? What moment do we choose to “capture” in a snapshot knowledge that is otherwise in constant movement or flux? Which version should be recorded, and from thenceforth be interpreted as authoritative? What language should be used for disseminating traditional knowledge captured in this new form? The questions are endless. Whatever the answers to these problems, writing down oral traditions is always a source of inaccuracies, loss, and transformation, because writing itself, between formal and conceptual constraints, is never remote and impartial. In drawing on the dominant models for thinking about nature and spirit, the written word pulls local knowledge toward greater homogenization.

From ancient to contemporary: harmonies and dissonances

Diachronic and synchronic research

20Contrary to the world that earlier researchers explored, the world of today is finite: completely blank spaces and unknown popu­lations have almost disappeared. The simultaneous loss of cultural diversity, biodiversity and agrobiodiversity, has provoked and encouraged the "conservation of cultural heritage" for both material elements (objects, seeds ...) and intangible ones (languages, traditional knowledge, practices ...) which are likely to disappear, be forever damaged or erased from memory. This "heritage conservation" of knowledge and traditional skills also opens links to the future, and requires a great deal of research. Some studies, called "synchronic", compare different peoples at the same moment in time. They allow, among other things, the high­lighting of phenomena of convergence, that is to say, the occurrence of similar practices among people who do not have (and have not had) any contact with one another. In the field of pharmaceutical research, for example, similarities in the use of certain plants in different parts of the world have led to the discovery of particularly effective natural substances.

21But the safeguarding of heritage demands not only investigations into “live” data. To know and understand the practices and behaviors of a society, and the ideas that circulate within it, it is necessary to delve into its past. Diachronic research, exploring history, can reveal the imprint of past generations through all kinds of traces, such as the boundaries of territories or fields, or bio­logical remains that provide evidence of human activity. Numerous words in a language, as well as cultural traits and practices, are revealed to have been introduced, products of migration, favored by the great movements of history. In the light of the past, the present becomes intelligible and rich with alternatives for the future.

Land, memories and re-appropriation

22In the field, researchers can work within societies that have managed to keep alive an ancient culture, or on the contrary within communities deeply disturbed by epidemics, wars or colonization. By imposing language, religion, attitudes and ways of thinking, colonization damaged and degraded many cultures, leveling some of the diversity of languages and habits among neighboring societies, leaving only disharmonious fragments of the original cultures.. Later, the great wave of "modernity", which steamrolled many societies into Western systems of economy, education and health, sensitized populations to their cultural singularities and stimulated assertions of identity by different groups. In this context, the preservation of ecological knowledge, like the collection of endangered languages, can sometimes play an important role in helping to strengthen the sense of belonging to a culture.

23Current ecological turmoil includes, among other things, population movements, environmental degradation, climate change, and the loss of crop genetic diversity. Curiously, this turmoil also seems to encourage groups to undertake a revaluation of traditional knowledge, which may be a rich source of novel ways to understand the natural environment and manage it sustainably and equitably. In addition, safeguarding the memory of traditional ecological knowledge and expertise, and the behaviors asso­ciated with them, can also have important and positive consequences, for example, by allowing certain communities access to land ownership or preventing their dispossession.

Research, one and multiple

Encounters between local and scientific knowledge

24Empirical knowledge of human societies is based on reciprocity between concrete practices and symbolic values, representations of nature and complex processes of knowledge development. This collective knowledge of a sociocultural group is developed in a localized territorial context, linked to larger socio-political and historical contexts. It is built through daily experiments and transmitted according to the rules of apprenticeship and of social and cultural exchange inscribed in a collectively shared universe of meaning.

25Scientific knowledge sees itself as universal. Although it is also constructed from empirical experiments, it generates theories, such as the Darwinian theory, that explain universal phenomena extracted from a sociocultural context and particular location. In the field, the ethnobiologist, holder of scientific knowledge, explores local empirical knowledge and generates a continual back- and-forth between his knowledge, his own conceptions of nature and those of local societies which are impregnated with cultural, symbolic, technical and historical components often very far removed from his. From this constant back-and-forth between scientific and local knowledge comes the researcher’s understanding of the otherness he is exploring, requiring him to maintain the "view from afar" (Lévi-Strauss 1983) of the field researcher.

The ethnobiologist as a border crosser

26Neither naturalist nor ethnologist, the ethnobiologist is rather an "educated third party" (Serres 1991), located at the intersection of these two disciplines. Members of the society within which the ethnobiologist works, would not be able to share their knowledge of nature if the ethnobiologist were unable to distinguish, for example, between one plant species and another, or variations in plumage between birds of related species. But these skills of a naturalist alone are insufficient to enable the ethnobiologist to collect ethnographic data. These two approaches place the ethnobiologist in a multidisciplinary environment, focusing both on natural dynamics and the complexity of human relationships. This stance is shared by linguists, anthropologists and agronomists because it is essential to understand phenomena that are neither purely natural nor purely cultural, but located "beyond nature and culture” (Descola 2006) at the intersection of biological and cultural dynamics. In addition to this interdisciplinary nature of his scientific practice, the ethnobiologist is a true border-crosser who sometimes must consult with chemists, question linguists, or seek out colleagues in evolutionary biology, while enriching these other areas of research with ethnobiologoical perspectives. From this very particular stance, the ethnobiologist is able to perform an interdisciplinary synthesis, which is essential given the complexity of current societal and environmental issues.

Developing methodologies

27Methodologies in ethnobiology are based on a compilation of the lexicons, nomenclature, discourses, myths, rituals, customs, practices and concrete interrelations of people concerning nature. Ethnobiology is anchored in a field approach, that of anthropology, whose main methods are interviews or participant observation, in which one stops asking questions of the Other but simply observes and records the practices and discursive exchanges of daily life. With a field notebook and a pencil as principal equipment, the ethnobiologist practices, in addition to these qualitative methods, a quantitative approach through systematic surveys of plants, animals, topography and other elements necessary to be able to refer to scientific knowledge. Data collection is based on an extended relationship with a society that offers a high degree of otherness relative to one’s own society, and this requires learning the local language.

28The methods of some ethnobiologists have changed. Now, participatory approaches permit the integration of local knowledge holders in research procedures. Together, ethnobiologists and local people build research approaches that meet societal demands and the need for sustainable development, which has become a standard for environmental management. Methodologies have also evolved towards an integration of quantitative approaches that facilitate interactions with researchers from other various disciplines.

Multifaceted local science vs. a univocal scientific international approach

29Local sciences have long been devalued as tainted, because they are perceived as being sullied by scientifically unfounded beliefs. Knowledge and expertise on health, agriculture or food rely on empirical and conceptual approaches adapted to the local context. In matters of health, for example, the wide range of health practices of human societies is built not only around family practices, but also the intervention of traditional healers who act on the psyche, and on choices in the prescription of drugs that are based on representations of the body and disease specific to a society and its geography. The advent of scientific medicine has called into question the diversity of healing practices. But scientific medicine, itself, developed an approach to medicine and healing based on representations of the body and diseases that represent only one of many ways of understanding reality. In the agricultural arena, the set of pre-industrial practices have also experienced a shock wave, caused by a monolithic modern agriculture driven by emphasis on productivity. Scientific advances have therefore imposed a vision of agriculture built on the massive use of inputs. The dialogue reestablished today between local and modern sciences is strewn with obstacles, with some industrial lobbies having a vested interest in perpetuating models that are poorly adapted to local conditions. Practices such as placing local knowledge in databases simplify this knowledge, distorting and obscuring important dimensions that are poorly understood by science.

The researcher: a person, a personality

30The ethnobiologist accumulates extensive field experience, sometimes carried out on different continents. S/he works in a relational framework strongly linked to lived experience. This experience transforms their understanding of the world. Research topics are built based on scientific objectivity, but also on personal commitment and sensitivity as a citizen, traits that enhance the ethnobiologist’s ability to interact with non-scientists. Indeed, the ethnobiologist’s role in transmission of knowledge between local science and glo­bal science entails a special responsibility vis-à-vis the societies with which he or she works. In addition, the ethnobiologist produces data on topics which are vital to local societies, be they health, agriculture, gathering of local resources, or intangible aspects such as representations and beliefs. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that this work, the questioning and the approach taken in the field, are deeply related to the ethnobiologist’s individual experience and sensitivity, and to the person’s greater or lesser desire to engage.

Actions and actors

31The Declaration of Belem, written during the founding Congress of the International Society of Ethnobiology in 1988, explicitly encouraged researchers to work with local actors and societies. In 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity recognized the potential role of indigenous knowledge for environmental management on a global scale. Moreover, the World Health Organization has also recognized the fundamental role of traditional medical practices for public health, particularly in the South. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has gradually incorporated the role of dynamic management by small-holder farmers in the development of sustainable agriculture. Ethnobiologists have therefore had to broaden the range of actors - local and international - with whom they interact to achieve concrete action. This is especially true when the goals are to revita­lize traditional knowledge, increase participation in actions to conserve biodiversity, or preserve biocultural heritage.

32The increased role of local actors in research projects has led to a reconfiguration of roles, social practices and techniques, but also of knowledge and its methods and media for transmission. New encounters bring together people who had different roles in society and, as such, did not previously interact, giving rise to innovations but also to power struggles around knowledge.

33The new emphasis on local knowledge has led to demands for recognition, indigenous movements, and the conversion of customs and practices into heritage, which is renegotiated in a modern context, in interaction with new actors, national and international. Thus representatives of international NGOs appear on the local scene, and urban dwellers work as intermediaries between local and national levels. In some cases, new solutions have been found to protect knowledge and expertise by inscribing them within initiatives for economic profit, like the use of geographical indications such as PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). These situations have created new conflicts in power relationships between the knowledge of international experts and that of local experts. Beyond knowledge, these are the collective representations of nature that reconstitute themselves today in a new space-time framework.

From projects to achievements: meetings and convergences

34In a Western view now shared by many people, nature is conceived of as subject to the will of humans. But when natural disas­ters, urban growth, air and water pollution and ecosystem degradation disrupt natural areas, where local distinctive features begin to dissolve, and when crises give rise to the fear of shortages, then anthropocentric certainties are shaken and Western values are brought into question. The way of seeing relationships between people and nature is then reconsidered, and the researcher can contribute to this process. Because knowledge is also an effective lever for change, the researcher must occasionally become personally involved. In the difficult exercise of positioning oneself between two stances – that of the scientific (but distanced) observer and that of the activist researcher (but sometimes devoid of rigor) – the ethnobiologist thus labors in the fields of information, advice or action, often torn between a synthetic approach and the study of complexity, differences and invariants, between a singular conception of a common project and case-specific approaches. Ethnobiology, being fundamentally multidisciplinary, cannot exist without collaborations among the greatest diversity of disciplinary partners. This openness also helps to create links and promote exchanges of knowledge, and helps partners to meet, share resources, and overcome barriers.

35As a global community, we face many challenges today, including the use of drugs outside their traditional context, the relations­hips between humans and a “nature” often considered wild and dangerous, the problem of world hunger, and the changing concept of sustainable management of ecosystems - whether viewed from a perspective of development or degrowth. Amid these challenges, ethnobiology offers a space where different groups can come together to seek resolution, and where encoun­ters can be facilitated to achieve a union of wills and to combine energies toward common goals.