Dissertation Research: Ethnobotanical Knowledge Variation in Missouri's Little Dixie

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9903983Pearsall / Nolan This project supports the dissertation research of an anthropology student from the University of Missouri, studying how ecological, socio-demographic and cultural factors affect the acquisition and organization of ethnobotanical knowledge in central Missouri. How people know what they know about plant resources and how plant knowledge is organized will be studied by interviewing twenty local plant experts and twenty non-experts in "Little Dixie", a well-defined cultural region of central Missouri. Various cognitive procedures will be used to distinguish experts from non-experts. By examining the ethnobotany of this region through cultural and ethno-ecological techniques, the student will discover how and why plant knowledge varies among individuals and how the factors associated with ethnobotanical knowledge affect patterns of plant use and classification. The research promises to safeguard a valuable body of ethnobotanical information from a little-studied U.S. vernacular region. In addition the project supports the training of a young social scientist.