A Linguistic Ethnography of the Global Trade in Indigenous Plants

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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.