!Ethnobotany
&
Cross-Cultural
This course explores cultural diversity in the human relationship with plants and the role of plants in diverse worldviews, emphasizing medicinal and ceremonial plants in indigenous cultures of North America, Mesoamerica and South America. Diversity in use of plants as medicines, in magic, and in spiritual ceremony and ritual. Specific plants are studied in the context of their place in cultural belief systems, mythologies and religious practices.Traditional understandings of plant properties are contrasted with scientific knowledge of plant chemistry and its effect on human neurophysiology. Examining the interactions of modern and traditional cultures, plants serve as a vehicle for interpreting how different cultures understand human place in the cosmos, and how people with divergent worldviews communicate across cultural differences. We explore the legal, ethical, and philosophical problems associated with cognitive liberty and religious freedom in emergent and syncretic religious practices involving entheogenic plant sacraments.
Tuesdays and Thursdays
5:00 until 6:15 pm in Sciences 215
Required Texts:
Schultes, R. E (ed.) 1995. Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline. Timber Press.
Davis, Wade 1996. One River. Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest. Touchstone Press
This course satisfies the General Education
Synthesis and Applications requirement in the Sciences
Ethnobotany and Cross-Cultural Communication on the Internet
Cross-cultural Communication and Education
Crossing Cultures
People and Plants Online
Ethnography and Participant Observation
Biodiversity and Cultural Knowledge Research and Prospecting
Cross-cultural Communication Challenges
From Diversity to Pluralism - UNESCO
Mimetics and Selected Mimetic Publications
Ethnobotany Leaflets
Ethnologue - Languages of the World
Indigenous Peoples in Brazil
Archeobiology - Smithsonian
Terralingua - Partnerships for Linguistic and Biological Diversity
Mesoamerican Ethno-ecological Atlas
Mesoamerican Ethnobotany
Biopiracy
Native American Spirituality, Religion, Medicine - Smithsonian
World Health Organization Policy and Strategy on Traditional Medicine
Center for International Ethnomedicinal Education and Research
Foundation for Shamanic Studies
Center for Consciousness Studies
Journal of Cosmology, Philosophy, Myth, and Culture
Ethnobotany and the Afro-Cuban Science of the Concrete
Santo Daime and A Summary of Santo Daime
Eleusinian Mysteries
Web page produced and maintained by Steven L. Jessup, Department of Biology, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR 97520