Plants and Health

Elizabeth Anne Olson is an assistant professor of Anthropology at Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. Her anthropological research has looked at traditional and non-biomedical healing systems in Mexico, Utah, the Bolivian Amazon, and Western Europe. Her work with traditional healing systems has led to a focus on the intersections among health, environments, economic markets, and community development. Her past work has focused on Indigenous medicinal plant knowledge, and she is currently studying the ways that globalization influences the transmission of medicinal plant knowledge and use. Dr. Olson’s current research concerns the globalization of medicinal plant knowledge and the relationships between Indigenous, professional, and lay uses of medicinal plant knowledge across various ethnomedical systems. Her work connects to topics including the health sovereignty movement, as well as other social justice and community-based conservation initiatives. She frequently collaborates with community-based social justice projects in Mexico and the USA. Dr. Olson serves on the Board of Directors of the Culture and Agriculture section of the American Anthropological Association, and is the Conference & Awards Coordinator for the Society of Ethnobiology. She is co-editor along with Cynthia Fowler of the monograph series “Global Change/Global Health” for the University of Arizona Press.John Richard Stepp is a professor at the University of Florida in the Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development program. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy and was in residence at the University of Hawai'i as the Wilder Professor of Botany. He has conducted biocultural conservation research over the last two decades throughout the tropics, especially in the Maya Forest and in the Greater Mekong Region of Southeast Asia. His research explores persistence, change and variation of traditional ecological knowledge and ethnobiology. Much of this work has focused on wild food plants and medicinal plants. His work has also focused on patterns and causes in the distribution of biological and cultural diversity (biocultural diversity) on both regional and global scales. Other interests include the anthropology of food, medical anthropology, visual anthropology, social science research methods, GIS and land use change and the anthropology of climate change. He is also involved in documentary and ethnographic film production on topics both related and unrelated to his primary research. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Ecological Anthropology and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethnobiology. Along with Robert Voeks, he serves as Ethnobiology series editor for Springer. <

“This volume positions ethnobiology as a rich realm for leading edge anthropological inquiry in cultural interchange, ontology, and political economy. The complimentary expertise of Olson and Stepp enhance the volume and the lively, diverse offerings of the chapters are stimulating both individually and taken together as a complete work. Each chapter adds nuance and challenge to monolithic concepts in ethnomedicine and global health, portending a dozen future lines of inquiry for anthropological ethnobotany.” (Alex McAlvay, Ethnobiology Letters, Vol. 8 (1), 2017)

• Introduction: Some Key Theoretical and Methodological Attributes of Medicinal Plant Studies in Ethnobiology.- Jamu becomings on the Island of Java, Indonesia.- Plants are Good to Live With: Coast Salish Food Sovereignty, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and People-Plant Becomings.- Medicinal Plants of Tecopatlán, Jalisco, Mexico: Description of the Uses and Environmental Availability.- Plant Biodiversity Conservation as Human Mental-Health Intervention? More than Human Communication, Affect, and Civic Environmentalism at the Bristol Zoo Gardens.- Medicinal Plants in Bangladesh: Planting Seeds of Care in the Weeds of Neoliberalism.- Medicinal Plants and Resisting Violence in Amazonian Ecuador.- Some Characteristics of Ethnomedical Practices in Semi-Rural Mexico.- What is plant medicine?  States of emergence in botanical movements across cultural, conceptual and translocal landscapes.