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Costa Rican Traditional Knowledge According to Local Experiences

Plants, Animals, Medicine and Music

  • Offers a multifaceted insight into the culture and traditional knowledge of Costa Rica
  • Explores traditional knowledge relating to agriculture, botany, pharmacy and the arts
  • Offers expert local insights from Costa Rican anthropologists

Part of the book series: Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science (SACH, volume 8)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
  2. Medicinal Plants in Costa Rica: Myth and Reality

    • Mildred García González
    Pages 1-16
  3. Patrimonial Botanical Knowledge in Costa Rica

    • Luis Poveda Álvarez
    Pages 17-26
  4. Ritual Singing and Poetry Among the Bribri

    • Adolfo Constenla Umaña
    Pages 113-126
  5. Bribri Kinship Relations: The Social Implications of a Matrilineal System

    • Ana Rosa Ruiz Fernández, David Arias Hidalgo, Jorge Solano Brenes
    Pages 127-141
  6. Education Tensions Among the Bribri

    • Alí García Segura
    Pages 143-158
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 159-161

About this book

This book offers ten chapters dealing with Costa Rican traditional knowledge. Each chapter presents a transcription from a talk given to an interdisciplinary audience at Universidad de Costa Rica.  The chapters address the links between knowledge and culture in a variety of cases, including black, indigenous and "white" knowledge in both rural and city contexts, with an emphasis on gender issues.

This book is the first of its class and its transcriptions have been annotated for easier reading.

All social scientists interested in Latin American culture or in cognitive topics in general will benefit from reading it.


Editors and Affiliations

  • Physics Department, Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Manuel Ortega-Rodríguez, Hugo Solís-Sánchez

About the editors

Manuel Ortega-Rodríguez is Professor of Physics at Universidad de Costa Rica, where he has also held courtesy appointments in the Music, Literature and Architecture Departments.  He lectures on History of Science, Ethnoastronomy, the Physics of Music and Language, Visual Intelligence for Physicists, and Complexity. He has co-authored a novel that explores the intersections of Art and Physics.

Hugo Solis is an assistant professor in the Physics Department at University of Costa Rica where he teaches the course in History of Science. His current research interests are computational cosmology, complexity and the cultural studies of scientific knowledge. He is a member of the Free Software Foundation where he has contributed code to some free software projects and is the author of the Kivy Cookbook from Packt Publishing. Currently, He is in charge of the IFT, a Costa Rican scientific non-profit organization for the multidisciplinary practice of physics. 

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Costa Rican Traditional Knowledge According to Local Experiences

  • Book Subtitle: Plants, Animals, Medicine and Music

  • Editors: Manuel Ortega-Rodríguez, Hugo Solís-Sánchez

  • Series Title: Science Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Science

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06146-3

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-06145-6Published: 24 April 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-06146-3Published: 10 April 2019

  • Series ISSN: 1568-2145

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-1761

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XX, 161

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Anthropology, Latin American Culture

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access