Cognition, culture and utility: plant classification by Paraguayan immigrant farmers in Misiones, Argentina.

BACKGROUND: This study was conducted in three rural communities of small farmers of Paraguayan origin living in the province of Misiones, Argentina. These Criollos (Mestizos) hail chiefly from departments located in the east of Paraguay, where the climate and flora have similar characteristics as those in Misiones. These ecological features contribute to the continuation and maintenance of knowledge and practices related to the use of plants. METHODS: Fieldwork was conducted between September 2014 and August 2015. Forty five informants from three rural localities situated along the Parana River participated in an ethno-classification task. For the classification event, photographs of 30 medicinal and edible plants were chosen, specifically those yielding the highest frequency of mention among the members of that community (based on data obtained in the first stage of research in 2014). Variation in local plant classifications was examined and compared using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. RESULTS: We found that people classify plants according to application or use (primarily medicinal, to a lesser extent as edible). Morphology is rarely taken into account, even for very similar and closely-related species such as varieties of palms. In light of our findings, we highlight a dominant functionality model at work in the process of plant cognition and classification among farmers of Paraguayan origin. Salient cultural beliefs and practices associated with rural Paraguayan plant-based medicine are described. Additionally, the manner by which residents' concepts of plants articulate with local folk epistemology is discussed. CONCLUSIONS: Culturally constructed use patterns ultimately override morphological variables in rural Paraguayans' ethnobotanical classification.

Medical tourism in the backcountry: alternative health and healing in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Tourists travel to Arkansas' mountain regions to experience, appreciate, and consume multiple aspects of otherness, including sacred sites and pristine and authentic peoples and environments. A largely unexplored aspect of this consumption of authenticity is alternative medicine, provided to tourists and day travelers in search of physical and emotional restoration. Traditional forms of medicine are deeply rooted in women's social roles as community healers in the region and are perpetuated in part because of the lack of readily accessible forms of so-called modern medicine. Contemporary medical tourism in Arkansas has promoted access to folk health systems, preserving them by incorporating them into tourists' health care services, and also has attracted new and dynamic alternative medical practices while encouraging the transformation of existing forms of traditional medicine. Ultimately, the blend of alternative, folk, and conventional medicine in the Arkansas highlands is evidence of globalizing forces at work in a regional culture. It also serves to highlight a renewed appreciation for the historic continuity and the efficacy of traditional knowledge in the upper South.

Ethnophysiology and herbal treatments of intestinal worms in Dominica, West Indies.

In rural Dominican ethnophysiology worms reside in a human organ called the 'worm bag'. Unchecked, worms can cause illness by growing in size and number, spreading out of the worm bag and into other organs. In this study of 'bush medicine', we use a measure of cognitive salience in free-listing tasks, which reveals five plants commonly used to treat intestinal worms. These were Ambrosia hispida (Asteraceae), Aristolochia trilobata (Aristlochiaceae), Chenopodium ambrosioides (Chenopodiaceae), Portulaca oleracea (Portulacaceae), and Artemisia absinthium (Asteraceae). Bioactive compounds appear to be present in all of these plants. The cognitive salience of these plant remedies coupled with evidence of biochemical properties suggest that they provide efficacious treatments for controlling intestinal parasite loads.