JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY AND ETHNOMEDICINE The relevance of traditional knowledge systems for ethnopharmacological research: theoretical and methodological contributions

Background: Ethnopharmacology is at the intersection of the medical, natural, and social sciences. Despite its interdisciplinary nature, most ethnopharmacological research has been based on the combination of the chemical, biological, and pharmacological sciences. Far less attention has been given to the social sciences, including anthropology and the study of traditional knowledge systems. Methods: I reviewed the literature on traditional knowledge systems highlighting its potential theoretical and methodological contributions to ethnopharmacology. Results: I discuss three potential theoretical contributions of traditional knowledge systems to ethnopharmacological research. First, while many plants used in indigenous pharmacopoeias have active compounds, those compounds do not always act alone in indigenous healing systems. Research highlights the holistic nature of traditional knowledge systems and helps understand plant’s efficacy in its cultural context. Second, research on traditional knowledge systems can improve our understanding of how ethnopharmacological knowledge is distributed in a society, and who benefits from it. Third, research on traditional knowledge systems can enhance the study of the social relations that enable the generation, maintenance, spread, and devolution of cultural traits and innovations, including ethnopharmacological knowledge. At a methodological level, some ethnopharmacologists have used anthropological tools to understand the context of plant use and local meanings of health and disease. I discuss two more potential methodological contributions of research on traditional knowledge systems to ethnopharmacological research. First, traditional knowledge systems research has developed methods that would help ethnopharmacologists understand how people classify illnesses and remedies, a fundamental aspect of folk medicinal plant selection criteria. Second, ethnopharmacologists could also borrow methods derived from cultural consensus theory to have a broader look at intracultural variation and at the analysis of transmission and loss of traditional ethnopharmacological knowledge. Conclusions: Ethical considerations in the ethnopharmacology of the 21st century should go beyond the recognition of the Intellectual Property Rights or the acquisition of research permits, to include considerations on the healthcare of the original holders of ethnopharmacological knowledge. Ethnopharmacology can do more than speed up to recover the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples to make it available for the development of new drugs. Ethnopharmacologists can work with health care providers in the developing world for the local implementation of ethnopharmacological research results. Correspondence: [email protected] ICREA and Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellatera, Barcelona, Spain Reyes-García Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2010, 6:32 http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/6/1/32 JOURNAL OF ETHNOBIOLOGY AND ETHNOMEDICINE © 2010 Reyes-García; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background Ethnopharmacology is, by definition, at the intersection of the medical, natural, and social sciences [1]. Despite the interdisciplinary nature of ethnopharmacology, much of its research has been exclusively based on the combination of the chemical, biological, and pharmacological sciences. Less attention has been given to the potential contributions of the social sciences, including anthropology and the study of traditional knowledge systems (but see, for example, the work of Giovannini and Heinrich [2], Thomas, Vandebroek, and colleagues [3,4], Pieroni and colleagues [5], Albuquerque and Oliveira [6], Pardo-de-Santayana and colleagues [7] among others). When anthropological expertise and tools have been used, the main purpose has been to obtain catalogues of medicinal plant uses, which were often abstracted from their cultural contexts and subject to little analysis or interpretation [8-10]. Furthermore, more often than not -and especially when working among indigenous peoplesthe sole purpose of obtaining those lists and catalogues has been to facilitate the intentional and focused discovery of active compounds. In sum, with some remarkable exceptions and without undervaluing researchers who have catalogued the often threatened knowledge of medicinal plant uses, to date many ethnopharmacologists have limited themselves to document indigenous pharmacopoeias in the search for pharmacologically unique principles that might result in the development of commercial drugs [11] or nutraceuticals [12]. Several reviews of the development of the discipline have warned against the disciplinarily bias in ethnopharmacology. For example, in a review of articles published in one of the flagship journals of the discipline, the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Etkin and Elisabetsky [1] stated: Mission statement notwithstanding, during the first two decades of its existence most of the articles published in the JEP were not interdisciplinary. Two retrospective content analyses of the journal revealed for the periods 1979-1996 and 1996-2000 an increasing number of articles dedicated exclusively or primarily to pharmacology and pharmacognosy. More significant to the present discussion is the consistently small number of multior interdisciplinary articles, 4-6% of the total published (pg 24). Almost a decade later, the situation seem not to have changed much, as the editorial of a 2010 issue of the same journal [13] states that [Since its origins] numerous studies in the Journal dealing with medicinal and other useful plants as well as their bioactive compounds have used a multitude of concepts and methodologies. In many cases these were interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary studies combining such diverse fields as anthropology, pharmacology, pharmacognosy.... pharmaceutical biology, natural product chemistry, toxicology, clinical research, plant physiology and others (see Soejarto, D.D., 2001, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 74: iii). However, many studies still only pay lip service to such interdisciplinary research and there still remains an urgent need to further strengthen the contributions made by anthropology and other social and cultural sciences as well as to explore the political and social implication of our research. That ethnopharmacologists are growing aware of theoretical and methodological biases in the discipline is an important first step. Even more important is that the growing awareness on those biases has paralleled a more fundamental change in the goals of ethnopharmacology. Namely, the initial bias towards the chemical, biological, and pharmacological sciences closely related to the understanding that the overarching goal of ethnopharmacology is the search of biologically active compounds of plants, fungi, animals, and mineral substances used in traditional medicines. But, as this new field of research grows, ethnopharmacologists become more conscious that finding active compounds should only be one of the goals of the discipline. Many ethnopharmacologists have been -and still arepushing for changes in how the goals of ethnopharmacology are conceptualized [14-18]. For instance, in a relatively recent article, Etkin and Elisabetsky argued that the discipline now “strives for a more holistic, theory-driven, and cultureand context sensitive study of the pharmacologic potential of (largely botanical) species used by indigenous peoples for medicine, food, and other purposes” [1]. But ethnopharmacology can not achieve these new goals without simultaneously adopting theoretical and methodological contributions from the social sciences. Here, I aim to contribute to that effort by reviewing the potential theoretical and methodological contributions to ethnopharmacological research of a branch of a social science discipline: research on traditional knowledge systems. Theoretical contributions of the study of traditional knowledge systems to ethnopharmacology I use the terms traditional knowledge and traditional knowledge systems to refer to the knowledge of resource and ecosystem dynamics and associated management practices existing among people of communities that, on a daily basis and over long periods of time, interact for their benefit and livelihood with Reyes-García Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2010, 6:32 http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/6/1/32 Page 3 of 12