Biosemiotics and Ethnoecology: Prospective Synergies and Ethical Potentialities

Inspired by Eduardo Kohn’s formulations of an “anthropology beyond the human,” (2013:7), this paper explores potential productive synergies between the emergent field of biosemiotics and ethnoecology. Using empirical data from ethnographic research with and about the mountain huckleberry, I discuss how an ethnographic sensibility and methodology may be productively applied to the study of non-human selves – in this case, plants. Building on this argument, the paper then explores the ethical potentialities regarding questions of knowledge integration (specifically TEK and LEK) in the context of environmental justice. Specifically, I ask how the “more than human” turn, by moving beyond the dualisms of “indigenous” and so-called “western” scientific knowledge, might be put to work in the active and practical pursuit of decolonization of people and the land.

Keywords: Biosemiotics, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Local Ecological Knowledge, Mountain Huckleberry, More-than-human ethnography