Fig 28 - uploaded by Gabriele Volpato
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... leche e inhaladas, las partes aéreas e inflorescencias sirven para tratar la sinusitis (shghiga). A pesar del olor agradable, esta planta tiene un sabor amargo en decocción, y amarga la leche de las camellas que hayan pastado de ella. Cymbopogon schoenanthus (L.) Spreng. (Poaceae) Liedkhir Planta herbácea de tallos numerosos y penachos densos (Fig. 28) que emana un olor agradable, sobretodo cuando seca. Común en todo el Sahara, se en- cuentra en muchos lugares del territorio del Sahara Occidental, incluyendo los territorios liberados, donde los refugiados que viajan ahí la recolectan por sus propiedades medicinales. Las partes aéreas son trituradas, hervidas y tomadas para los ...
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Essa é uma tradução da parte menos divulgada do famoso artigo de 1865 onde Mendel descreve os experimentos com cruzamento de ervilhas. Nessa outra parte Mendel descreve fenômenos da hereditariedade evidenciados com cruzamentos com outros vegetais que somente seriam desvendados muitas décadas depois, mas como Mendel já adiantara, poderiam também ser...
Citations
... Also of importance to the current study,Herz (2013)described the physical changes that Sahrawi refugee camps have experienced over time,Dedenis (2005Dedenis ( , 2006) investigated the mobility and territoriality of Sahrawi refugees while also critically addressing the role of the liberated territories and pastoral practices occurring therein, and Cozza (2010) addressed the relation between food and identity in Sahrawi refugee camps. Furthermore, two books have been written about Sahrawi refugees' use of (mostly medicinal) plants (Barrera, Ron et al. 2007;Volpato 2008) and a photographic book (in Spanish) is being published that introduces the life of the Sahrawi nomads in the liberated territories and their engagement with the local environment (Volpato and Rossi 2014). The present study constitutes part of this latter line of research about the historical and contemporary relationships between Sahrawi refugees and nomads and the Sahara desert environment, focusing specifically on the process of Sahrawi re-engagement with the local environment and of traditional Sahrawi knowledge that underpins this engagement, and thus providing primary data on an under-studied region and population. ...
... With the end of military confrontations about 20 years ago, a window of opportunity for fieldwork has opened as logistical conditions have become more favourable, and some scholars have begun to carry out anthropological research among Sahrawi refugees and nomads. For example,Volpato et al. (2007Volpato et al. ( , 2008) investigated refugees' use and procurement of medicinal plants, and Cozza (2010) addressed the significance of food for Sahrawi refugees' cultural identity. There is very little published on the Sahrawi's use of plants for skin healing, cosmetic and perfuming purposes. ...
... This tiny fruit, called 'afatash' (which means 'the one who searches' because of its medicinal use) is applied to the eyes at night before sleeping, so it can 'clean' the eyes from sand and other unsanitary material. Scientific literature shows that it creates a mucilaginous coating and has the ca-pacity to agglutinate these residues to its surface (Alfayate,Barrera et al. 2008;Volpato 2008). Some refugees report the same medicinal use for the seeds of Lepidium sativum, which are then also called afatash. ...
The study of how people adapt to social and environmental change is central to current theoretical understandings of human-nature relationships. There are recurrent cases in human history in which entire populations have been uprooted from the environments in which they live, where it becomes exceedingly difficult for them to maintain their ways of life including their modes of subsistence, social and ecological relations, knowledge, and culture. The ways in which such people exercise their collective and individual agency to recover and adapt their relations with nature and with each other must be addressed as the planet rapidly changes, given current prognoses about the emergence of environmental refugee populations on a massive scale. Refugees who have been forced to live in camps for long periods present important case studies of human agency and adaptation under such conditions. Refugee camps are places where people must engage with whatever limited resources are available, and where people confront major complex problems when attempting to establish new relations with their camp environments and maintain or revive relations with their homelands. If they succeed, refugees can partly free themselves from dependence on food aid and take their lives back into their own hands. The general objective of the study was to advance the understanding of humannature relationships in contexts of forced displacement and encampment by investigating the ways people living in refugee camps struggle to recover preexile subsistence practices and associated knowledge, while in the process adapting to new environmental conditions and social relations arising from their experience as refugees. It also sought to provide a preliminary theoretical framework for studying the human ecology and ethnobiology of refugees living in camps. Fieldwork was conducted among Sahrawi refugees in western Algeria, and involved collecting data on Sahrawi refugees’ agency toward the recovery and adaptation of traditional subsistence and other related material and cultural practices, as well as to understand associated changes in their ecological and social relations, and culture. Five case studies were selected: a general study of camel husbandry, culture and livelihoods, an ethnobiological study of traditional medicinal remedies and cosmetics, an ethnomedicinal study of the conceptualization of illness and change in related health beliefs, an ethnobotanical and cultural domain study of camel forage plants, and an ethnomycological and commodity study of desert truffles.
... The most widely reported products used to treat wounds are the resin of Acacia tortilis (el elk) and red hematite, which are also used in combination. El elk is collected during the hottest months from the trunks of A. tortilis; it is then dried and used for a variety of food and medicinal purposes [11,13,14]. The use of gum collected from Acacia species in topical application to treat skin infections and burns is reported among other African populations as well as in India [23]. ...
... This tiny fruit, called ‘afatash’ (which means ‘the one who searches’ because of its medicinal use) is applied to the eyes at night before sleeping, so it can ‘clean’ the eyes from sand and other unsanitary material. Scientific literature shows that it creates a mucilaginous coating and has the capacity to agglutinate these residues to its surface [11,47]. Some refugees report the same medicinal use for the seeds of Lepidium sativum, which are then also called afatash. ...
... With the end of military confrontations about 20 years ago, a window of opportunity for fieldwork has opened as logistical conditions have become more favourable, and some scholars have begun to carry out anthropological research among Sahrawi refugees and nomads. For example, Volpato et al. [10,11] investigated refugees’ use and procurement of medicinal plants, and Cozza [12] addressed the significance of food for Sahrawi refugees’ cultural identity. There is very little published on the Sahrawi’s use of plants for skin healing, cosmetic and perfuming purposes. ...
Background:
Over the past decade, there has been growing interest within ethnobiology in the knowledge and practices of migrating people. Within this, scholars have given relatively less attention to displaced people and refugees: to the loss, maintenance, and adaptation of refugees' ethnobiological knowledge, and to its significance for refugees' wellbeing. This study focuses on cosmetics and remedies used to heal skin afflictions that are traditionally used by Sahrawi refugees displaced in South Western Algerian refugee camps.
Methods:
The research methods included a structured survey carried out with 37 refugee households, semi-structured interviews with 77 refugees, 24 retrospective interviews with refugees and other knowledgeable informants, and a voucher specimen collection of the plants and products cited.
Results:
We recorded the use of 55 plant species, nine animal species, and six mineral products used within the three main use categories discussed in this paper: 1) Remedies for health issues that are typical of the desert environment where the Sahrawi once lived as nomads and now live as refugees (e.g. eye afflictions); 2) Remedies for wounds that are influenced by the Sahrawi's recent history of guerrilla warfare; and 3) Cosmetics and products used for body care, decoration and perfuming (e.g. hair care, teeth cleansing, henna use) and for aromatizing the air inside of tents and which are widely used in everyday life and social practices.
Conclusions:
We discuss the changes that have occurred in the patterns of use and procurement of these products with exile and sedentarization in refugee camps, and conclude that refugees are not simply passive recipients of national and international aid, but rather struggle to maintain and recover their traditional ethnobiological practices in exile. Finally, we suggest further research into the ethnobiological practices and knowledge of displaced populations.
This article focuses on the region called Western Sahara (former Spanish Sahara) and directly related to dialectology and folk traditions, we provide a study on the culinary equipment and instruments used once (although much of it remains today) by the indigenous inhabitants of the region. To this end, we address key issues such as Hassaniya dialect; cooking and food preparation in the traditional survey area; instruments and vessels for the treatment of milk; tools for treatment of grain or the use and utilization of shrubs for obtaining wood, since the vast majority of wooden containers were made of some of the most representative woody species in the area. The approach is basically anthropological, with obvious semantic component, reflected in the generous use of Arab-Hassaniya terminology, with its equivalent in Spanish.En este artículo, centrado en la región denominada Sáhara Occidental (antiguo Sáhara Español), y directamente relacionado con la dialectología y las tradiciones populares, ofrecemos un estudio sobre el material y los instrumentos culinarios utilizados tradicionalmente (aunque mucho de ello se conserva hoy en día) por los habitantes autóctonos de dicha región. Para ello, abordamos cuestiones principales tales como el dialecto ḥassā-niya; la cocción y preparación tradicional de los alimentos en la zona objeto de estudio; los instrumentos y vasijas para el tratamiento de la leche; los instrumentos para el tratamiento del grano o el uso y aprovechamiento de arbustos para la obtención de la madera, ya que la inmensa mayoría de los recipientes de madera se fabricaban a partir de algunas de las especies leñosas más representativas del entorno. El enfoque es, básicamente, antropológico, con un evidente componente semántico, reflejado en el uso abundante de terminología árabe ḥassā-niya, con su equivalente castellano.
