A Linguistic Ethnography of the Global Trade in Indigenous Plants

这个项目是一个语言民族志，展示人、词和事物之间的联系如何共同塑造土著植物的全球贸易。这项研究的背景是墨西哥的瓦哈卡，这是世界上生物多样性最丰富的地区之一;它也是语言最多样的地区之一，有16个语言群和100多个语言变体，占据了一个面积大致相当于印第安纳州的地区。该地区的许多植物几个世纪以来一直被该州的土著人民在宗教医学仪式中使用。有些最近在全球范围内广泛使用，由网络和其他供应商在全球范围内销售。在大多数国家，这些植物的销售和使用仍然是法律的，其中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宣传。虽然生物医学研究人员对这些植物的制药和医疗潜力感兴趣，但由于其表面上的副作用，一些植物也越来越多地被视为犯罪。虽然对这类植物的科学研究还处于起步阶段，但大众和新闻界对其中一些植物的讨论表明，它们与社会弊病有关，如对“更难的毒品”上瘾、自杀和杀人。这个由NSF资助的研究项目分析了这种新的全球贸易，重点关注人们与这些植物互动的不同实践和话语如何使它们充满相互冲突的价值形式。从方法上讲，该项目结合了对语言使用和其他形式的符号表示的密切分析，这些符号表示在涉及这些新兴全球商品链的历史和政治经济的人类学研究的植物的相互作用中部署。这项研究对其他广泛的情况下，正式的地方“的东西”坐在竞争的社会议程的交叉点的影响。此外，由于全国各地正在讨论禁止这些植物和其他新的植物物质，这项研究具有重大的政策意义，因为它是围绕这些植物的使用和销售而兴起的社区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.