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  • Phytotherapy in the Era of Post-Industrial Metabolism: A Biosocial Study of Foraging, Circulation, and the Use of Medicinal Plants in the Czech Republic

Project Duration: 2025 - 2026

Category: Projects

The project builds on research that examines the relationship between alternative and conventional medicine in the Czech Republic and the post-socialist space (Klepal and Stöckelová, 2018; Jasarevic, 2015; Stöckelová and Trnka, 2019). It focuses on the field of phytotherapy, which involves medicinal plants and the preparations derived from them, with the aim of analyzing the synergies and conflicts between various forms of treatment. The use of medicinal herbs has a long tradition in the Czech area, and today, phytotherapy is practiced in various forms in the Czech Republic: it is a domestic activity, a profitable business, part of both alternative and conventional medicine, an object of professionalized research, and a form of "citizen expertise" (Krick, 2022).

The project focuses on different forms of phytotherapy using the conceptual perspective of "biosocial metabolism," proposed by Stöckelová (2023), building on social science and historical studies of the circulation of materials and energies and their metabolic transformations connecting bodies beyond taxonomic categories (Landecker, 2019). The concept of "biosociality" emphasizes that it is analytically unproductive to divide metabolic processes and transformations into ontologically incommensurable categories of the "social" and the "biological." The emphasis on the biosocial character of metabolism also directs attention to how the stressors of industrialization permeate the soft tissues of organisms. The research focuses on the impact of anthropogenic changes on phytotherapeutic activities in the Czech Republic, and on how phytotherapy adapts to industrial transformations and works with both the healing and toxic potential of plants.

These processes are explored through three main areas of research: 1) Phytotherapy as situated citizen expertise; 2) The circulation of knowledge and practices between phytotherapy and conventional medicine; 3) The transformation of knowledge about medicinal plants in the post-industrial landscapes of the Czech Republic.

Principal Investigator:

Topics:

Sociology of Sciences, Public health, Environment

Contracting authority:

Czech Academy of Sciences

Department:

National Contact Centre for Gender & Science

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