Urban Ethnobiology: A Space for Reflection on the Relationships Between People and Their Environment in Multicultural Contexts

This chapter aims to integrate various aspects of ethnobiological studies developed in urban multicultural contexts and to examine the different characteristics of urban ethnobiology. The research carried out corresponds almost exclusively to the field of urban ethnobotany, which studies local botanical knowledge in biocultural systems (biological and cultural diversity), based on concepts such as complexity paradigm, systems theory, communication theory, cybernetics, and mindscapes, among others. We discuss contributions that clearly state the study objectives that motivated the research carried out and the theoretical and methodological approaches utilized. We explore the knowledge generated in studies carried out in different multicultural settings, which led us to generate a set of key questions about ethnobiology in urban areas, e.g., what are the challenges of ethnobiological research in multicultural contexts? How do we characterize the urban botanical knowledge and the actions that it orients and reorients? What theoretical and methodological tools do we use? What are the challenges of the ethnobiological research in multicultural contexts? With these questions, we aim to generate a necessary space of thought about our work and our current challenges. We think that this will be an important contribution to the design of future researchers in the field of urban ethnobiology.