Guidelines For Using Video to Document Plant Practices

Abstract

Video has been identified as a valuable tool in the provision of ethnobotanical data. One of the principal uses of video in ethnobotanical research is in documenting plant practices. The main benefit of using video to record this type of ethnobotanical data is the ability to record the practice in its entirety. Another benefit is the ability for the footage to be revisited at a later date, allowing for further interpretation of the plant practice. Along with the benefits, there are also ethical and practical considerations when applying video as a documenting tool. This paper outlines some of these considerations while providing guidelines on the pre-production, production and post-production stages of video creation with a focus on documenting plant practices. Taking into consideration these benefits and the practical implications of applying video it is suggested that video be considered a valuable tool in documenting ethnobotanical research. IntroductionSince the earliest ethnographic film in 1895 capturing cultural practices using film, and more recently video, has become a well-established practice in anthropology and ethnography (de Brigard 1995). From these early beginnings visual anthropology has expanded to incorporate the study of visual forms and visual systems in their cultural context (Bank 1998). Many films have been produced in the past including the well known examples by John Marshall on the Kalahari bushmen, Timothy Asch working with the Yanomamo Indians, and Margaret Mead who studied Samoan youth (Hockings 1995).Although the focus of visual anthropological film and video is on the people, they are likely to contain images of plant use as well. For example, films in the Asch-Chagnon series on the Yanomamo Indians, produced in the 1970s, show the day to day agricultural practices associated with traditional crops of plantain and manioc (Asch & Chagnon 1974). In comparison to the wealth of ethnographic film there are relatively few ethnobotanical videos that describe aspects of plant knowledge, such as plant classification and ecology. This is surprising since video has been identified as a valuable tool in the provision of ethnobotanical data at least since 1994 (Given & Harris 1994).Videos that describe the relationships between people and plants can be found in a number of disciplines with varying audiences. Examples of ethnobotanical videos can be organized into three main groups based on their general audiences. The first group are educational ethnobotanical videos aimed at people working with communities in fields such as ethnoecology and conservation, or in teaching ethnobotany (Cunningham 2003, Peters 2003a, 2003b . The last group of videos has been produced with the community as the target audience. One of the main aims of these videos is to encourage the retention of ethnobotanical knowledge within the community (Galileo Educational Network 2002-2007.The examples presented above indicate videos are being used to disseminate ethnobotanical data effectively to a range of audiences...

Children as ethnobotanists: methods and local impact of a participatory research project with children on wild plant gathering in the Grosses Walsertal Biosphere Reserve, Austria

“…This is also true for participatory videos in ethnobiology and ethnobotany and literally no scientific publications describing, discussing or analyzing in detail the process of development or resulting participatory videos are to be found in ethnobotanical journals. Rather than scientific outputs, ethnobotanical videos were intended as educational ethnobotanical videos for ethnobotany teachers and learners, ethnographic videos for broader audiences and local ethnobotanical videos for community members [ 64 ]. Such lack of scientific outputs from videos was suggested to be the case because visual accounts of cultural practices hardly fit to the text-based academic institutional practices [ 63 ], but also because of funders’ reluctance of supporting process oriented research [ 4 , 61 ].…”