Paper short abstract:

Ethno-botanical and ethno-pharmacological research often aimed at (re)constructing native 'knowledge' systems. I will show how Austrians build up eclectic, pragmatic personal 'knowing' by validating, through bodily experience, pieces taken from a pool of available oral and written knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

During research in an Austrian Alpine region, I asked people about their herbal knowledge, how they learned what they knew, and about the sources of their knowledge.

Apparently, my informants are little interested in systematizing. Their approach to herbal knowledge is eclectic and pragmatic: from a pool of available information (trans-local, mainly transmitted through media), they take what best helps them to cure illness and alleviate pain.

As Robert Borofsky suggests (1994), it would be advantageous to "conceive of a continuum between knowledge (i.e. understanding that is definite and delineated), and knowing (i.e. understanding that is more fluid and flexible in character)", between a more declarative and a more procedural knowledge.

Borofsky's approach helps us to understand why actors do not need to change their habit when incorporating pieces of "foreign" knowledge into their knowing, in my case by validating it through personal experience, by testing it on their own bodies.