Plants, people and health: Three disciplines at work in Namaqualand

Abstract

In Paulshoek, Namaqualand, three research projects focusing on medicinal plants were developed concurrently. The projects were based in the disciplines of anthropology, botany and chemistry. In this paper, we explore how these projects related to one another and describe the conversations that occurred in the process of searching for transdisciplinary knowledge. The projects ostensibly shared a common object of knowledge, but it was through working together that the medicinal plants constituted us as a community of scholars. As our insight into our respective disciplinary relationships with the plants grew, so did our understanding of the limitations of our respective disciplinary positions. The process made possible a 'reimagination' of both the object of study and our relationships to it and to one another. The research project, conceptualised in 2009, engaged current debates on indigenous knowledge and its historical erasures, and offered an approach that has potential to produce new knowledges while respecting the integrity of the disciplines. This approach requires a non-competitive attitude to research and one that acknowledges the contributions that can be made by multiple approaches.

Flowers born to blush unseen?

“…If the orientation to health includes a wider array of toxins and taxonomies that contribute to the experience of having energy or vitality, ...then biochemical research need not necessarily begin with the particular pathway of seeking compounds related to pathogen elimination. 3 Sadly, the paper does not go on to suggest what the other 'particular pathways' might possibly be. While the earlier papers suggested contested notions of indigenous knowledge, this paper leaves the understanding of plants in a rather ambiguous position.…”