Ethnophysiography

Tongue-twisting neologism of the week: ethnophysiography.

Ethnophysiography is a new field of study that examines the categories that people use when conceptualizing and communicating about the landscape. Ethnophysiography is an ethnoscience, similar in its aims and scope to ethnobotany or ethnozoology (Berlin, 1992; Medin and Atran, 1999). It studies how people conceptualize the natural landscape, especially landforms and water bodies. Ethnophysiography relies heavily on ethnography as a method for obtaining information through interviews, description, and community participation. It focuses on kinds of things in the landscape, and aims to document in detail what things in the world are referred to by each term, and why.

From David M. Mark and Andrew G. Turk’s Ethnophysiography (PDF).

Fascinating stuff.

(Via, or, rather, stolen from Angermann2)

Posted at 4pm on 16/06/05 by Jack Mottram to the art and culture, language, places category.
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