Abstract

‘Ethno-Science’ is a reading group dedicated to programmatic and critical texts on the changing relationship between scientific knowledge and what is variously called local, ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’ knowledges. Our starting point is the eighteenth-century travel instructions that asked naturalists to routinely record indigenous names and knowledge. We explore economic botany, zoology, ethnography, and other strands of nineteenth-century natural history relying on systematic surveys of national and colonial territories, and the eventual consolidation of ethno-disciplines in the twentieth century. The aim is to understand the relationship between reifications and reinterpretations of ‘savage’, ‘indigenous’, ‘native’ or ‘primitive’ knowledge and corresponding field practices of interrogation and interaction with local informants. We are interested in the putative shifts towards increasingly global awareness and calls for the incorporation of ‘traditional’ knowledge in political and scientific discourses.

The meetings take place monthly, on Wednesdays from 3 to 4pm in 2021-22 academic year (7 meetings). All welcome.

Please email Dr. Raphael Uchôa (ru224@cam.ac.uk) or Dr. Staffan Müller-Wille (sewm3@cam.ac.uk) if you’re interested in joining. Zoom links to follow via email.

Session Two: 24 November 2021 Economic botany in the Nineteenth Century

Nau, Eugène. ‘Flore indienne d’Haïti’, in Émile Nau. Histoire des Caciques d’Haïti, (Paris: Gustave Guérin et cie, Éditeurs, 1894).

Reyes, Michael. ‘Caribbean ethnobotany before Roumain: Eugène Nau’s nineteenth-century contribution to an understanding of the “indian flora of haiti”’, Caribbean Quarterly 63(4) (2017), 467-483.

gloknos is initially funded for 5 years by the European Research Council through a Consolidator Grant awarded to Dr Inanna Hamati-Ataya for her project ARTEFACT (2017-2022) ERC grant no. 724451.