Welcome to Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine

Ethnobiology is a multidisciplinary field of study that draws on approaches and methods from both the social and biological sciences. Ethnobiology aims at investigating culturally based biological and environmental knowledge, cultural perception and cognition of the natural world, and associated behaviours and practices. Ethnomedicine is concerned with the cultural interpretations of health, disease and illness and also addresses the health care seeking process and healing practices. Research interest and activities in the areas of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine have increased tremendously in the last decade. Since the inception of the disciplines, scientific research in ethnobiology and ethnomedicine has made important contributions to understanding traditional subsistence and medical knowledge and practice. The Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (JEE) invites manuscripts and reviews based on original interdisciplinary research from around the world on the inextricable relationships between human cultures and nature, on Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK), folk and traditional medical knowledge, as well as on the relevance of the above for Primary Health Care (PHC) policies in developing countries. Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine Ethnobiology is a multidisciplinary field of study that draws on approaches and methods from both the social and biological sciences. "Ethnobiology" has proven a rather difficult term to define since the scope of ethnobiological studies has changed considerably throughout history. One of its more recent definitions refers to the study of the reciprocal relationships between human cultures and the natural world [1]. Reciprocal relationships here refer to the human perception of the biological environment, which will ultimately influence man's behaviour, while human behaviour in turn influences – or shapes – the biological environment. This broad definition of ethnobiology encompasses ethnotaxonomy (study of the classification principles of animals, plants, soils, and ecosystems according to local peoples), ethnomedicine (study of the cultural concepts of health, disease and illness, and of the nature of local healing systems), ethnoecology (study of traditional environmental knowledge and of anthropogenic effects on the environment), ethnoagronomy (study of subsistence economies and resource management), and material culture (study of biological resources used in art and technology). Ethnobiology aims at investigating culturally-based biological and environmental knowledge, cultural perception and cognition of the natural world, and associated behaviours and practices. Published: 29 July 2005 Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2005, 1:1 doi:10.1186/1746-4269-11 Received: 11 July 2005 Accepted: 29 July 2005 This article is available from: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/1/1/1 © 2005 Pieroni et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.