A Multivariate Model of Biocultural Conservation of Medicinal, Aromatic and Cosmetic (MAC) Plants in Indonesia

摘要

One of the major contributions of quantitative ethnobotany as a relatively new approach to the study, analysis and interpretation of ethnobotanical field data has been the provision of valuable information on complicated human-plant relationships, particularly relevant for improved policy planning of plant resource management in the tropics. In addition, quantitative ethnobotany has shown to facilitate the truly comparative study of indigenous knowledge and use of plants by different socio-cultural groups and to provide a reliable basis for the assessment of quantitative impacts of human activities on plants and ecosystems. In the light of the current efforts to build bridges with traditional knowledge, another significant, albeit less studied aspect of the application of a quantitative approach in ethnobotany refers to its increased capacity to strengthen the ‘scientific’ value of results for the interpretation, understanding and prediction of patterns and processes in human-plant interactions. As in the related ‘knowledge-behavior-belief’ complex, the latter component still remains problematic for many Western-trained scientists, this paper seeks to further develop a multivariate model of biocultural conservation behavior on the basis of current ongoing research on traditional knowledge and use of MAC pants - jamu - in Sunda, West Java, that could help to bridge the gap. In this model, such ‘subjective’ individual factors of perceptions, cosmologies and belief systems are statistically transformed into ‘objective’ system variables for analysis that eventually will enhance the applicability of the outcome variables for improved biocultural conservation projects in the research area, and as such, advance its ‘scientific’ representation.