The Practice of Forgetting: The Transformation of Traditional Wild Plant Use in China

What is happening to traditional knowledge and practices related to wild plant use in China? This paper draws on ethnographic research in China's Fujian Province to address this question, focusing on the ecological, economic, political, and sociocultural bases underlying shifts in wild botanical knowledge and practice. In particular, the roles of centralization, commodification, and standardization of botanical knowledge are examined. Finally, do changing values and practices reflect a wilful agency to forget on the part of Chinese citizens, or are they more properly understood as a "politics of disappearance"?