Abstract
The history of ethnobiology has been addressed by different authors to portray the development of the discipline, its main authors, and its theoretical and methodological approaches, challenges, gaps, and perspectives. At first, ethnobiological studies were characterized by more descriptive approaches and by the documentation of the uses of plants and animals. Currently, it is considered that ethnobiology is in its interdisciplinary stage, where a greater cooperation among researchers from different areas is sought in order to handle more complex problems that can affect biological and cultural diversity. In this chapter, we briefly review the history of ethnobiology starting with the characterization of its stages, its main authors, and prospects for the future.
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Notes
- 1.
The emic perspective represents the worldview of indigenous/traditional peoples regarding natural resources (e.g., names and descriptions of species and natural phenomena), as opposed to the ethical perspective, which is the researchers’ interpretation of these phenomena. To learn more about the emic/ethic distinction, see Batalha (1998).
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Sobral, A., Albuquerque, U.P. (2016). History of Ethnobiology. In: Albuquerque, U., Nóbrega Alves, R. (eds) Introduction to Ethnobiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28155-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28155-1_2
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