In Anglo-European botany, it is customary to think of the vernacular as that which is not a Latin or Latinized scientific plant name. In Unmaking Botany, Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez traces a history of botany in the Philippines during the last decades of Spanish rule and the first decades of US colonization. Through this history, she redefines the vernacular, expanding it to include embodied, cosmological, artistic, and varied taxonomic practices. From the culinary textures of rice and the lyrics crooned to honor a flower to the touch of a skirt woven from banana fiber, she illuminates how vernaculars of plant knowing in the Philippines exposed the philosophical and practical limits of botany. Such vernaculars remained as sovereign forms of knowledge production. Yet, at the same time, they fueled botany’s dominance over other ways of knowing plants. Revealing this tension allows Gutierrez to theorize “sovereign vernaculars,” or insight into plants that made and unmade the science, which serves as a methodological provocation to examine the interplay of different knowledge systems and to study the history of science from multiple vantage points.
Publisher : Duke University Press Books (March 4, 2025) Language : English Paperback : 280 pages ISBN-10 : 1478031484 ISBN-13 : 978-1478031482 Item Weight : 15.7 ounces Dimensions : 6 x 0.63 x 9 inches
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"We do not have an inventory of this title. This title is subject to order. If interested, email us: info@philippinebookshop.com but do not pay for your order first. Upon receipt of your email, we will check with the publisher if the book is still available, what is the new price, and when to expect delivery. This way, we can relay the particulars to you before you pay. Please note that if you pay and then cancel your order for one reason or another, PayPal has a 3.9% plus $0.15 fee that they charge us for every transaction. So, we would appreciate it if you just follow the instructions as stated here. This way, we will not pass on this fee to you should you cancel your order."