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Medicinal Plants and Cultural Variation across Dominican Rural, Urban, and Transnational Landscapes

Publication Type  Book Chapter
Authors  Andreana L. Ososki; Michael J. Balick; Douglas C. Daly
Year of Publication  2007
Editor  Andrea Pieroni; Ina Vandebroek
Book Title  Traveling Cultures and Plants: The Ethnobiology and Ethnopharmacy of Migrations
City  Oxford
Publisher  Berghahn Books
Pages  14-38
Chapter  1
Language  English
Key Words  Dominican Republic; medicinal plant knowledge; New York City; rural; transnational; urban
Notes   Citing its importance to health care initiatives and conservation efforts, Ososki, Balick, and Daly compared the medicinal plant knowledge among Dominicans living in New York City (NYC) and in their home country, as well as that of rural and urban inhabitants of the Dominican Republic (DR). Their work shows the variation in such knowledge that can exist among a single given ethnic group across different geographic locations. The NYC data was gathered during the ongoing Urban Ethnobotany Project begun in 1996, and fieldwork in the DR took place from September 2000 to August 2001. In NYC, multiple patients of six different Dominican healers were interviewed on numerous occasions about their female health conditions. Relevant medicinal plant samples were collected from local NYC herbal shops. A comparative literature review on Dominican plants for women's health conditions pointed up the need for further research on ten particular women's conditions to be conducted in the DR itself. There, research with 11 healers provided a data set for transnational comparison. In addition, 226 women in two rural settings and two cities of the DR were surveyed to elucidate variation among rural and urban knowledge holders. Prior informed consent was obtained and semi-structured interviewsi yielded sociodemographic and socioeconomic data and free-lists of medicinal plants in general and plants used for the health conditions central to the inquiry. Detailed information was elicited about the remedies. Within the DR, rural women named a greater number of medicinal plant species than urban women. Also, it was found that a greater percentage of rural women reported plant-based remedies for the ten health conditions than urban women, in all cases but one. Uterine fibroids was the only condition that urban women in the DR and in NYC had more knowledge for how to treat with plants; the chapter discusses this finding in greater detail. While there were only three common conditions featured as part of the research question on remedies in both countries, for two out of the three conditions, healers in the DR could name at least four times as many medicinal plant species for treatment than their NYC counterparts. Closer contact with nature and high costs of transportation and medicine are thought to be factors leading to rural women's greater reliance on plants for health care. For urban women, higher access to biomedicine and educational and social pressures are hypothesized to diminish the role of plant medicine in their lives. Nevertheless, this research shows that natural health care knowledge is still transmitted and utilized in urban and transnational settings. Prepared by Megan Glore

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