Ethnobiology and Food Scouting

Professors: Andrea Pieroni| ECTS: 6

Objectives

The “Ethnobiology and Food Scouting” course will prepare students to carry out professional roles relating to the documentation and promotion of traditional local food products at risk of extinction and to work in consultancy, education and training in gastronomic sciences, cultures and policies at institutions and private entities.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• understand and add value to the ethnobiological (i.e. ethnobotanical, ethnozoological and ethnoecological) practices of human cultures and populations. • understand the complex relationships that exist between human cultures and the surrounding environments. • carry out ethnobiological and food scouting research. • understand the history, principles and conceptualizations underlying the complex relationships between the environment and human societies, with a focus on food systems. • be familiar with the methods for studying these interactions in the field. • develop and carry out a group research project with fieldwork on topics relating to ethnobiology and food scouting.

Prerequisites

Students taking this course will already have a basic knowledge of biology and anthropology from their first-year studies.

Contents

Program

Across history, different human populations and cultures have developed practices, knowledge and social systems that have adapted to the surrounding natural world and co-evolved with it. The discipline of ethnobiology studies these interconnections, while food scouting is concerned with documenting food biodiversity in the field. This course is therefore based on the study of the inextricable link between humans and the natural world and on the study of traditional systems of knowledge related to food, which include the recognition, naming, categorization, use and management of different “natural entities” and “environmental systems.” In doing this, the course addresses the potential relevance of ethnobiology for local communities and their sustainable rural development, as well as for small-scale food and herbal markets and biodiversity preservation and promotion strategies. The students will have to plan an ethnobiological and food scouting study in an area or community of their choice, with the specific aim of studying trajectories of change in the perceptions, traditional knowledge and practices associated with one or more ingredients at risk of extinction and to reflect on the results obtained in light of the scientific literature and theoretical ethnoecological and ethnobiological conceptualizations.

Teaching method

Lectures, workshops, presentation of research projects in class, tutorials during the project.

Criteria, rules and procedures for the exam

The exam will ascertain the acquired knowledge and skills (learning results) with an individual paper of about 5,000 to 10,000 words that explains the objectives, methods and results of the fieldwork project and includes a discussion (with recommendations) of the results, with detailed academic references (at least 20).

Texts

For this course, teaching material has been developed that does not coincide with available texts. The material consists of the PowerPoint presentations of the course. Students will use PDFs that they will receive from the lecturers, based on the few texts on ethnobiology/ethnoecology available on the international market and on scientific articles published in recent years.

Recommended reading (available from the UNISG Library):

 Anderson et al. (eds.), Ethnobiology, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011  Albuquerque & Alves, Introduction to Ethnobiology, Springer, 2016  Newing, Conducting Research in Conservation: A social science approach, Routledge, 2011

Lessons: The material relating to lessons will be made available to the students in advance on Blackboard.