When is it Appropriate to Reference Identities, Relationships of Belonging, or Knowledge Lineages in Ethnobiological Scholarship?

Abstract

racialized categories. This historical context of the term is particular to resistance movements in North America, however. In other contexts, and particularly in Latin America, the term ‘color’ and indeed any racializing may be read as offensive, xenophobic, or otherwise Other-ing. These differences in terminology reflect the different histories of settler colonialism and solidarity against oppression that communities have lived through in these different places. Importantly for us as editors and thus gatekeepers in academic publishing, the bigger context is a classic anthropological one in which the parochialisms and genre of the editors go unquestioned, even though terms have variable meaning depending on their context and history. As editors, we are responsible for making our journal a platform for rigorous discussions of the intersections of cultural and biological life that does not discriminate against the very people whom we have invited to voice their thoughts.