Introduction

This introduction to the volume argues for the central and integrating role of the subject matter of ethnobiological research in anthropology understood in its widest sense: in its biological, archaeo-historical, and socio-cultural dimensions. The background and current status of ethnobiology are assessed, and its contribution to anthropological issues considered under the following headings: the foundational paradigm of taxonomic orthodoxy; language and the translation of knowledge systems; cognition and culture; the social organization and transmission of knowledge; medical ethnobiology; the applied practice of ethnobiology; and – the meta-theory which binds all this together – the co-evolutionary paradigm as part of a wider 'biocultural synthesis'. The way in which the collected papers exemplify these themes is discussed.     

Introduction

The introduction contextualizes the historical, ethnographic, and theoretical accounts of wind in the following papers, all of which deal with how wind the 'natural' phenomenon relates to human life and culture. It draws attention to the diversity of relationships with wind whilst also addressing why it is that similar patterns of ideas surrounding wind exist across cultures. It explores the notion that human/wind relationships are tightly bound to the sensuous qualities of wind, which in turn reflect the embedded unfolding of human life as an aspect of environment, and drawing on phenomenology as a particularly apposite hermeneutic approach to understanding the relationship.