---
title: "Ethnoscience"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoscience"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:24:19.989526+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Development ==
Ethnoscience is a new term and study that came into anthropological theory in the 1960s. Often referred to as 'indigenous' or 'traditional' knowledge, ethnoscience introduces a perspective based on native perceptions. It is based on a complete emic perspective, which excludes all observations, interpretations and or any personal notions belonging to the ethnographer. The taxonomy and classification of indigenous systems, to name a few, used to categorize plants, animals, religion and life is adapted from a linguistic analysis. The concept of "Native Science" is also related to the understanding the role of the environment intertwined with the meaning humans place upon their lives. Understanding the language and the native people's linguistic system is one method to understand a native people's system of knowledge of organization. Not only is there categorization for things pertaining to nature and culture thought language, but more importantly and complex is the relationship between environment and culture. Ethnoscience looks at the intricacies of the connection between culture and its surrounding environment. There are also potential limitations and shortcomings in interpreting these systems of knowledge as a dictation of culture and behavior.
Since an ethnographer is not able to physically enter inside an indigenous person's mind, it is essential to not only create a setting or question-answer format to understand perspective but to analyze semantics and word order of given answer to derive an emic understanding. The main focus on a particular component of the languages is placed on its lexicon. The terms "etic" and "emic" are derived from the linguistic terms of "phonetic" and "phonemic".
As introduced by Gregory Cajete, some limitations the concept of indigenous knowledge, is the potential to bypass non-indigenous knowledge as pertinent and valuable. The labels of "indigenous" are overly accepted by those who seek more support by outsiders to further their cause. There might also be an unequal distribution of knowledge amongst a tribe or peoples. There is also the idea that culture is bound by environment. Some theorists conclude that indigenous people's culture is not operated by mental concentrations but solely by the earth that surrounds them. Some theorists go the extent to state that biological processes are based upon the availability, of lack thereof, environmental resources. The methods for sustainability are founded through the workings of the land. These techniques are exercised from the basis of tradition. The importance of the combination of ecological process, social structures, environmental ethics and spiritual ecology are crucial to the expression of the true connection between the natural world and "ecological consciousness".
The origin of Ethnoscience began between the years 1960 to 1965; deriving from the concept of "ethno- + science". Ethno- a combining form meaning "race", "culture", "people", used in the formation of compound words: ethnography. The two concepts later emerged into "ethno-science". The origin of the word 'science' involves the empiric observation of measurable quantities and the testing of hypotheses to falsify or support them. 
"Ethnoscience refers to the system of knowledge and cognition typical of a given culture...to put it another way a culture itself amounts to the sum of a given society's folk classifications, all of that society's ethnoscience, its particular ways of classifying its material and social universe" (Sturtevant 1964: 99–100). The aim of ethnoscience is to gain a more complete description of cultural knowledge. Ethnoscience has been successfully used on several studies of given cultures relating to their linguistics, folk taxonomy, and how they classify their foods, animals and plants.

=== Ethnolinguistics ===
Ethnoscience is the examination of the perceptions, knowledge, and classifications of the world as reflected in their use of language, which can help anthropologists understand a given culture. By using an ethnographic approach to studying a culture and learning their lexicon and syntax they are able to gain more knowledge in understanding how a particular culture classifies its material and social universe. In addition, this approach "adopted provides simultaneously a point at which the discipline of linguistics, or at least some of its general attitudes, may sensibly be used in anthropology and as a means of gaining insight not only into the nature of man but also into the nature of culture" (Videbeck and Pia, 1966).
Researchers can use linguistics to study what a given culture considers important in a given situation or unforeseen event, and can rank those potential situations in terms of their likelihood to recur. In addition, "understanding the contingencies is helpful in the task of comprehending folk taxonomies on the one hand, and, on the other, an understanding of the taxonomy is required for a full scale appreciation of criteria considered relevant in a given culture (Videbeck and Pia, 1966).

=== Taxonomy and classification ===
Ethnoscience can be used to analyze the kinship terminology of a given culture, using their language and according to how they view members of their society. Taxonomies "are models of analysis whose purpose is the description of particular types of hierarchical relationships between members of a given set of elements" (Perchonock and Werner, 1969). For example, in our society we classify family groups by giving members the title of father, mother, sister, daughter, brother, son, grandfather, grandmother, etc.