XI. Reflections on the Field

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To me, the critical moment in ethnobiology was the point at which anthropologists began to specify what words meant in traditional small-scale languages, instead of “translating” words by finding an English or Latin equivalent. Self-conscious use of “native categories” began with Lewis Henry Morgan and Frank Cushing in the 1870s, and won its way slowly against some opposition. The term “ethnobotany” was coined by John Harshbarger in 1895. By the time of John Peabody Harrington, indigenous categories were focal to research, and “ethnozoology” appeared as a term. Harrington had much to do with spreading the idea. I got into the field in 1960, by which time “ethnoscience” had just been added to the mix. My personal experiences at the dawn of that field may be useful to historians of ethnobiology.

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Ethnobiologists are increasingly turning to the economic and political consequences of our interdisciplinary scholarship. In this talk, I ask what ethnobiology can contribute to a conversation skeptical of unfettered economic growth while cautioning against anti-growth traps like ecofascism or unequal austerity. Many ethnobiologists show how neoliberal capitalist growth reforms socioecological relations. But more interestingly, ethnobiologists have meticulously documented already-existing diverse economies and pathways of social reproduction: systems of socio-ecological and economic exchange that decenter growth as an economic truth. None of this necessarily means doing less. Ethnobiological attention to highly specialized local knowledge across time and place has shown that many systems can be productive and stable – they are just not scalable or easily transposed to a new context. Although we rarely frame our research as such, ethnobiologists have a unique, data-rich perspective on growth skepticism that is crucial to a 21^st century marked by rising temperatures, inequality, and authoritarianism.

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There is growing recognition within settler scientific institutions of the importance of building meaningful, mutually beneficial research partnerships with Indigenous Peoples. Boundary spanners, or individuals who can function on both sides of a social or political divide, may be key to making this work possible. However, the currencies of scientific career progression may present challenges for scientists seeking to boundary span. We critically examine how environmental researchers are supported or impeded by mainstream scientific institutions while attempting to do boundary spanning work with Indigenous communities. Using interviews, surveys and a mixed methods analysis we find in our preliminary results that size, scale, and mission of the institution are highly influential on the type of support or barriers that researchers are encountering in their work. Furthermore, we found profound differences in funding and promotional structures between Canada and the United States that facilitate or impede researchers seeking to boundary span.