Use of cultivated plants and non-plant remedies for human and animal home-medication in Liuban district, Belarus

Background: To use any domestic remedy, specific knowledge and skills are required. Simple logic dictates that the use of wild plants in the context of limited interaction with nature requires prior identification, while in the case of non-plant remedies and cultivated plants this step can be omitted. This paper aims to document the current and past uses of non-plant remedies and cultivated plants in the study region for human/animal medication; to analyze the human medicinal and veterinary use areas in the context of the remedy groups; to qualitatively compare the results with relevant historical publications; and to compare the intensity and purpose of use between the remedy groups. Methods: During field studies 134 semi-structured interviews were conducted with locals from 11 villages in the LiubaÅ\u84 district of Belarus. Currently used home-remedies as well as those used in the past were documented by employing the folk history method. The subject was approached through health-related uses, not by way of remedies. Interview records were digitalized and structured in Detailed Use Records in order to ascertain local perceptions. An Informant Consensus Factor (FIC) was calculated for remedy groups as well as for different use categories. Results: In the human medication area the use of nearby remedies was neither very diverse nor numerous: 266 DUR for 45 taxa belonging to 27 families were recorded for cultivated plants along with 188 DUR for 58 different non-plant remedies. The FIC values for both remedy groups were lower than for wild plants. In the ethnoveterinary medicine use area there were 48 DUR referring to the use of 14 cultivated plant taxa from 12 families and 72 DUR referring to the use of 31 non-plant remedies. The FIC value for the whole veterinary use area of cultivated plants was relatively low, yet similar to the FIC of wild plants. Conclusions: Differences between remedy groups were pronounced, indicating that in domestic human medicine cultivated plants and non-plant remedies are either remarkably less important than wild ones or not considered worth talking about. In ethnoveterinary medicine non-plant remedies are almost equally important as wild plants, while cultivated plants are the least used. People in study area seem to still more often rely on, or are more willing to talk to strangers about, wild plants, as promoted by both official medicine and popular literature

Belarusian social and cultural anthropology in times of catastrophes and drastic changes : a roundtable

The last two years in Belarus were marked by a string of catastrophic events and profound changes: protests of 2020, unprecedented political repressions and involuntary emigration on a mass level, the refugee crisis of 2021 at the Belarus — EU border, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Belarus partakes. Those events fundamentally reshape the lives and professional practices of social anthropologists and ethnologists. The aim of the roundtable in Kaunas at the 10th Congress of Belarusian studies was to voice the experiences of anthropologists as practicing researchers and private persons. The general directions of reflection included the problematic nature of the ethnographic method in terms of access to the field in Belarus; validity of professional expertise and engagement; researcher’s positionality within the unfolding calamity; the matters of disciplinary reproduction along the lines of geopolitical fissures

BELARUSIAN SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN TIMES OF CATASTROPHES AND DRASTIC CHANGES : A ROUNDTABLE

The last two years in Belarus were marked by a string of cata-strophic events and profound changes: protests of 2020, unprecedented political repressions and involuntary emigration on a mass level, the refu-gee crisis of 2021 at the Belarus — EU border, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which Belarus partakes. Those events fundamentally reshape the lives and professional practices of social anthropologists and ethnolo-gists. The aim of the rountable in Kaunas at the 10th Congress of Belaru-sian studies was to voice the experiences of anthropologists as practicing researches and private persons. The general directions of reflection in-cluded the problematic nature of ethnographic method in terms of access to the field in Belarus; validity of professional expertise and engagement; researcher’s positionality within the unfolding calamity; the matters of disciplinary reproduction along the lines of geopolitical fissures.Peer reviewe