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This contribution aims to share some experiences and methodological considerations that arose during an ethnobotanical research project with an Afro-Brazilian religious community in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. By presenting ontological features of plants used in religious practices, and the ways relations are created within this religious cosmology, this work opens a discussion about the political commitments of doing contemporary ethnobotanical science. When the ways of being and living in communities considered “traditional”—here referring to Afro-Brazilian religious communities, and specifically to the Umbanda Afro-Brazilian religion—are treated as equally valid, questions arise about the reaches of our own scientific practices, creating possibilities to construct practices and policies that preserve these communities’ vitality in the face of the overwhelming imposition of colonialism. In this sense, ethnobotanical research is at an analytical crossroads that can give the field an advantage over the political paralysis of the sciences and over the clandestine politicization of science as the spokesperson for a singular nature. These considerations lead to self-reflection on scientific expertise and democratic ways of producing knowledge about plants in plural cultural contexts.

Since the end of 1970, the World Health Organization has encouraged the development of public policies that expand the approach to care and the therapeutic possibilities offered by its member states beyond technoscientific health care. In Brazil, the institutionalization of this approach is related to the promotion of popular and traditional knowledge associated with the usage of medicinal plants. With this convergence as an argumentative horizon, in this ethnography we examine the institutionalization of pharmaceutical services that have become known in Brazilian public health policy as living pharmacies. This term has been mobilized throughout the history of phytotherapy in Brazil and refers to the possibility of instituting the use of medications that expand care approaches and problem resolution possibilities beyond the domain of the biomedical sciences, evoking alliances with so-called traditional and popular knowledge and practices. For this, we propose and discuss the concept of neo-traditional medicines as a comprehensive-interpretative category, verifying the approximation and distancing points assigned to it in contemporaneous anthropological literature. Beyond the domain of science over other fields of knowledge, we argue in favour of this category in order to present new arrangements and social dynamics that define Brazil’s medication policies.

Resumo A partir de um trabalho de campo de caráter etnográfico realizado em um terreiro de umbanda da capital paulista, este artigo analisa o processo de ‘tornar-se médium’ através do engajamento, contato e contágio que os adeptos estabelecem com as plantas. A narrativa se constrói com relatos de membros iniciantes – chamados ‘médiuns em desenvolvimento’ –, mães e pais-de-santo e suas experiências de sentir, perceber e permitir a ação das plantas na composição de seus estados e modos de ser. Os relatos compartilhados nesta etnografia indicam que, ao passo que os umbandistas coletam, rezam e preparam as plantas para uso em suas práticas cotidianas, como forma também de se elaborarem (ou, numa linguagem mais próxima do terreiro, de ‘se desenvolverem’), as plantas igualmente se desenvolvem através dos homens: promovem encontros e construções a partir de suas próprias (e autônomas) habilidades. Neste processo, cabe aos humanos aceitar e ensinar aos mais novos certa percepção dos afetos promovidos pelas plantas na composição daquilo que são. Abstract This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, carried out in an Umbanda temple placed in São Paulo city (Brazil). It analyzes the process of ‘becoming religious’ through engagement, contact and contagion that Umbanda followers set up with plants. The argument is built on reports of beginners—called ‘developing mediums’—mães and pais-de-santo and their experiences of feeling, perceiving and allowing the action of plants in the composition of their states and ways of being. The reports shared in this ethnography seek to show that, while the Umbanda followers collect, pray and prepare their plants to be used in their daily practices, as a way of self-elaboration (or, closer to the Umbanda temple language, to ‘self-develop’), the plants also develop themselves through humans: they promote meetings and constructions from their own (and autonomous) skills. In this process, it is up to humans to accept and teach the younger people a certain education and perception of affection caused by plants in the composition of what they are.

Nao so humanos participam da construcao das religioes. Pelo contrario. Nessa seara diversos seres se enfeixam para compor a vida cotidiana e a manutencao de cultos e praticas diversas. Agua benta, santinhos de calendario, figas, fitas, arrudas para o mau-olhado. Nao e novo dizer que as coisas – deste e de outros mundos (para me referir a tudo aquilo que esta para alem do humano) – agenciam relacoes que dao cabo de enunciar os proprios predicativos da fe. Contudo, colocar-se a descreve-las enq...