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

• Main Author: Victoria Reyes-García (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: BMC, 2023-09-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.

Summary

Abstract 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.

Item Description

10.1186/s13002-023-00611-6
1746-4269