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Ethnobiological classification – Folk Taxonomy

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1 Ethnobiological classification – Folk Taxonomy
Debates about utilitarianism vs. intellectualism Eugene Hunn Brent Berlin Universality of ranks Unnamed categories Similarity between scientific and folk classification

2 Concepts and debates in ethnobiological classification
Discerning order vs. constructing order Hierarchical classification universality No more than 5 or 6 ranks (Berlin) Cultural significance  depth of taxonomy “Primacy of Generic Taxa” Unnamed taxa – covert categories Cultivating cultures have more names?

3 Ethnobiological categories
Unique beginner (≈ Kingdom, rarely named) Life form (tree, herb, grass) Intermediate (often covert category) Folk generic Folk specific Folk varietal Berlin, Breedlove & Raven (1973) General Principles of Classification and Nomenclature in Folk Biology

4 “Primacy of Generic Taxa”
~500 Genera typical (fewer if non-cultivators?) basic building blocks of folk taxonomies primary names may be simple or complex simple names non-decomposable, cannot be broken down oak, robin, corn, louse, frog, pine, orchid, whale productive complex primary names tuliptree, pipevine, catfish, bluebird, bullfrog unproductive complex primary names beggars ticks, prairie dog, silverfish, buckeye, earwig

5 Comparison between folk and scientific classifications
underdifferentiation, one-to-correspondence, and overdifferentiation terms give primacy to scientific classification trend: more culturally important plant groups more overdifferentiated (more differentiated)

6 Maluma and Takete, Experiment of Wolfgang Köhler 1929

7 Maluma and Takete, cont. Source: Beau Sievers Masters Thesis, Dartmouth

8 Cultural significance or salience related to:
monotypic vs. polytypic folk genera most folk subgeneric names less culturally significant plants semantically opaque vs. transparent labels unanalyzable vs. descriptive highly salient plants Culturally significant plants (cultivated or protected) ↑ consistency ↑ cognates (see example comparing Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya) ↓ linguistic variation (see handouts from Cotton text, pages )

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13 Hunn 1982 read to focus on: what he means by general purpose vs. special purpose classification “empty taxonomic space” residual categories “just a grass” “just a flower”


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