Do not fear the supernatural! The relevance of ritual plant use for traditional culture, nature conservation, and human health in western Africa

One of the obstructive features of Western intellectual tradition in the study of human-nature relations is that salient aspects of natural resource use are treated as religious when their causality is attributed to non-human and non-physical agents (e.g. natural resources set apart as symbols, totems, or taboos). The same aspects are considered non-religious when material agency is involved, for instance, the use of natural resources as medicine, weapons, or food (Tuladhar-Douglas, 2010). A conflict arises when considering that the definition of science (i.e. the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation) implies that pursuing perceptions regarding the supernatural world is unscientific (Stepp, 2012). The problem of mutual exclusivity posed by the dichotomy natural/supernatural in Western science is best illustrated in the context of African ethnobotany. Plants do not only play an overriding role in African traditional medicine (Elujoba et al., 2005), large sectors of the continent’s population prefer, or considerably rely on, herbal treatments as their primary source of health care (Antwi-Baffour et al., 2014; Osemene et al., 2011; Towns, 2014; Williams et al., 2013). Traditional medicine, which is defined as the sum of knowledge, skills, and practices used in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases (WHO, 2000), involves consultation with spiritual healers and diviners (Antwi-Baffour et al., 2014; Elujoba et al., 2005). At the same time, African religious traditions and the rites that are related to their practice are grouped into the “obscure” (Okon, 2013) and considered unscientific (p’Bitek, 2011). One might ask: Is science missing out by dismissing the supernatural? This thesis explores this question in the context of western African ethnobotany.