A Linguistic Ethnography of the Global Trade in Indigenous Plants

这个项目是一个语言民族志，研究人、词和事物之间的联系如何共同塑造全球本土植物贸易。这项研究以墨西哥瓦哈卡州为背景，这是世界上生物多样性最丰富的地区之一；它也是语言最多样化的地区之一，有16种语言类别和100多种语言变体，占据的区域大小大致相当于印第安纳州。几个世纪以来，该州的土著人民在宗教医药仪式中使用了该地区的许多植物。其中一些最近在全球范围内广泛销售，由网络和其他供应商在世界各地销售。在大多数国家，销售和使用这些植物仍然是合法的，一些最受欢迎的植物现在通过数千个记录用户体验的在线视频进行广告宣传。尽管生物医学研究人员对这种植物的制药和医疗潜力很感兴趣，但由于它们表面上的副作用，一些植物也越来越多地被定为刑事犯罪。虽然对这种植物的科学研究还处于初级阶段，但流行的和新闻媒体对其中一些植物的讨论已经将它们牵涉到一些社会弊病中，如对“烈性毒品”的上瘾、自杀和杀人。这项由美国国家科学基金会资助的研究项目分析了这一新的全球贸易，重点是人们用来与这些植物互动的不同做法和话语如何使它们淹没在相互冲突的价值形式中。在方法上，该项目结合了对涉及植物的相互作用中使用的语言使用和其他形式的符号表示的密切分析，以及对这些新兴全球商品链的历史和政治经济的人类学研究。这项研究对其他许多情况也有影响，在这些情况下，正式的地方“事物”处于相互竞争的社会议程的交叉点。此外，随着全国各州就禁止这些植物和其他新的植物物质展开辩论，这项研究具有重大的政策意义，因为它是对围绕这些植物的使用和销售而涌现的社区进行的第一项社会科学研究。

This project is a linguistic ethnography of how connections among people, words, and things collectively shape global trade in indigenous plants. The research is set in Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the most bio-diverse regions in the world; it is also among the most linguistically diverse, with 16 language groupings and more than a hundred linguistic variants occupying a region roughly the size of the state of Indiana. Many of the region's plants have been used for centuries by the state's indigenous peoples during religious medicinal rituals. Some have recently become widely available on a global basis, sold worldwide by cyber and other vendors. In most countries the sale and use of these plants remains legal, and some of the most popular are now advertised by thousands of online videos documenting users' experiences. Though biomedical researchers are interested in the pharmaceutical and medical potential of such plants, some are also increasingly criminalized due their ostensible side effects. While scientific research on such plants is in its infancy, popular and journalistic discussion of some have implicated them in such social ills as addiction to "harder drugs," suicide, and homicide. This NSF-funded research project analyzes this new global trade, focusing on how the different practices and discourses people use to interact with these plant saturate them with conflicting forms of value. Methodologically, this project joins close analysis of both language use and other forms of semiotic representation deployed in interactions involving the plant with anthropological study of the history and political economy of these emerging global commodity chains. This research has implications for a wide range of other cases where formally local "things" sit at the intersection of competing social agendas. In addition, as states around the country debate banning these plants and other new botanical substances, this research has significant policy implications as the first social scientific study of the communities that have sprung up around these plants' use and sale.