Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Walk in the forest is a method worth of exploration, reflection and systematization. It is a 'natural' method for conducting research among highly mobile forest people like the Ashaninka with whom I worked in Peruvian Amazonia. It enables to explore pre-representational knowledge of interlocutors.

Paper long abstract:

In ethnobotanical manuals "walk in the wood" has been described as an effective technique to collect plant material accompanied by relevant ecological and ethnographic information (Martin 2004). During my research on migrant ethnobotany in Misiones, Argentina, the walk in the forest was one of a few methods I explored, but since I have started working with Indigenous Ashaninka people in the Peruvian Amazonia, it has become an essential form of exploring Ashaninka medicinal and edible flora. Why does walk in the forest work so well in Indigenous Amazonian contexts? According to Laura Rival, this is the most 'natural' condition for conducting ethnobotanical research among highly mobile forest people (Rival 2009). This method has also other important advantages. First, when collecting information and herbarium specimens on particular plants in the forest we evoke to mostly pre-representational knowledge of our interlocutors. Hence we can capture the sensorial way of knowing and relating to plants, apart from the cognitive level. Second, it is in the forest that people are willing to share their stories about the encounters with malevolent spirits and devils, which are rarely told in the village. The trigger for telling the stories are not only plants we meet, but the very being in the forest and sensing it. This method may have potential application in the European context as well, especially in the multispecies ethnography and anthropology of the forest (Konczal 2018). Therefore walk in the forest is worth of further exploration, reflection and systematization as a method.