Medicinal Plants in the Serbian Digital Space: Vernacular Knowledge, Authority, and Tradition on Instagram
Keywords:
medicinal plants, digital ethnobotany, vernacular knowledge, vernacular authority, Instagram, digital folklore studies, folk medicineAbstract
This paper examines how traditional knowledge of medicinal plants is represented and transmitted within the Serbian digital space. Drawing on an analysis of Instagram posts collected through hashtag ethnography, it proposes a working typology of user-generated content on medicinal plants. It identifies three characteristic patterns in the representation of ethnobotanical knowledge: appeals to tradition, notions of naturalness and vitalism, and commodification. On Instagram, ethnobotanical knowledge is transmitted through a range of visual, audiovisual, and textual forms. The typology proposed here serves as an initial working framework for further research into digital ethnobotany in the local context.
References
Anez, Savannah, Eric Burkhart, and Joshua Kellogg. 2025. „Ghost Pipe Then and Now: The Influence of Digital Media on the Medicinal Use of Monotropa uniflora in the United States.“ Economic Botany 79(4): 460–477. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12231-025–09637–1
Antonijević, Momčilo. 2025. Narodni travar. Beograd: Harmonija knjige.
Balick, Michael and Paul Alan Cox. 2020. Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003049074
Bauzinger, Herman. 2002. Etnologija. Beograd: XX vek.
Bitcon, Clara, Sue Evans and Cathy Avila. 2016. „The Re-emergence of Grassroots Herbalism: An Analysis through the Blogosphere.“ Health Sociology Review 25(1): 108–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2015.1086956
Blank, Trevor. 2009. Toward a Conceptual Framework for the Study of Folklore and the Internet. In Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, edited by Blank, Trevor, 1–21. Logan: Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt4cgrx5.4
Blank, Trevor. 2013. „Hybridizing Folk Culture: Toward a Theory of New Media and Vernacular Discourse.“ Western Folklore 72(2): 105–130. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24551663
Boke, Charis. 2019. „Plant Listening: How North American Herbalists Learn to Pay Attention to Plants.“ Anthropology Today 35(2): 23–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467–8322.12496
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. „#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.“ American Ethnologist 42(1): 4–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12112
Bronner, Simon. 2013. „The ‘Handiness’ of Tradition.“ In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present, edited by Trevor Blank and Robert Glenn Howard, 186–218. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Čajkanović, Veselin. 2022. Rečnik srpskih narodnih verovanja o biljkama. Niš: Talija izdavaštvo.
Caliandro, Alessandro and James Graham. 2020. „Studying Instagram Beyond Selfies.“ Social Media + Society 6(2): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120924779
Caliandro, Alessandro. 2018. „Digital Methods for Ethnography: Analytical Concepts for Ethnographers Exploring Social Media Environments.“ Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 47(5): 551–578. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891241617702960
De Meyer, Emiel and Melissa Ceuterick. 2022. „Digital Ethnobiology: Exploring the Digisphere in Search of Traditional and Indigenous Knowledge and Practices.“ Ethnobotany Research and Applications 24(37): 1–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.32859/era.24.37.1–8
Duarte, Luiz Fernando Dias. 2021. „The Vitality of Vitalism in Contemporary Anthropology: Longing for an Ever Green Tree of Life.“ Anthropological Theory 21(4): 397–419. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499620923546
Evans, Sue. 2008. „Changing the Knowledge Base of Western Herbal Medicine.“ Social Science & Medicine 67(12): 2098–2106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.09.046
Gibbs, Martin, James Meese, Michael Arnold, Bjorn Nansen, and Marcus Carter. 2015. „#Funeral and Instagram: Death, Social Media, and Platform Vernacular.“ Information, Communication & Society 18 (3): 255–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2014.987152
Grubišić, Ivana. 2006. „Etnobotanika – nova disciplina.“ Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 54: 415–431. https://doi.org/10.2298/GEI0654415G
Handler, Richard and Jocelyn Linnekin. 1984. „Tradition, Genuine or Spurious.“ The Journal of American Folklore 97(385): 273–290. https://doi.org/10.2307/540610
Hefferon, Kathleen. 2012. Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine: Plants and Modern Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press.
Highfield, Tim, and Tama Leaver. 2015. „A Methodology for Mapping Instagram Hashtags.“ First Monday 20 (1) https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5563/4195 https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v20i1.5563
Howard, Robert Glenn. 2013. „Vernacular Authority: Critically Engaging Tradition.“ In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present, edited by Trevor Blank and Robert Glenn Howard, 72–99. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Hsu, Elisabeth. 2010. „Introduction. Plants in Medical Practice and Common Sense: On the Interface of Ethnobotany and Medical Anthropology.“ In Plants, Health and Healing: On the Interface of Ethnobotany and Medical Anthropology, edited by Elisabeth Hsu and Stephen Harris, 1–48. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845458218–003
Hufford, David. 1997. „Folk Medicine and Health Culture in Contemporary Society.“ Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice 24(4): 723–741. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095–4543(05)70307–9
Hufford, David. 2003. „Evaluating complementary and alternative medicine: the limits of science and of scientists.“ The Journal of law, medicine & ethics: a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics 31(2): 198–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748–720X.2003.tb00081.x
Jagtenberg, Tom and Sue Evans. 2003. „Global Herbal Medicine: A Critique.“ Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 9(2): 321–329. https://doi.org/10.1089/10755530360623437
Karanović, Zoja i Jasmina Dražić, ur. 2016. Gora ljiljanova: biljni svet u tradicionalnoj kulturi Srba: zbornik radova. Beograd: Udruženje folklorista Srbije; Univerzitetska biblioteka „Svetozar Marković“.
Karanović, Zoja i Jasmina Jokić, ur. 2013. Bilje u tradicionalnoj kulturi Srba: priručnik folklorne botanike. Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet, Univerzitet u Novom Sadu.
Karanović, Zoja ur. 2014. Bilje u tradicionalnoj kulturi Srba: priručnik folklorne botanike 2. Novi Sad: Filozofski fakultet.
Karanović, Zoja, ur. 2017. Gora božurova: biljni svet u tradicionalnoj kulturi Slovena. Beograd: Univerzitetska biblioteka „Svetozar Marković“; Udruženje folklorista Srbije.
Karanović, Zoja, ur. 2019. Gora kalinova: biljni svet u tradicionalnoj kulturi Slovena: zbornik radova. Beograd: Udruženje folklorista Srbije; Univerzitetska biblioteka „Svetozar Marković“; Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.
Kitta, Andrea. 2019. „American Folk Medicine and Health Practices“ In The Oxford Handbook of American Folklore and Folklife Studies, ed. Simon Bronner. Oxford Handbooks. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190840617.013.22
Knežević, Srebrica. 2004. „Lekovito bilje i vegetacija u narodnim shvatanjima.“ Timočki medicinski glasnik, Glasilo podružnice srpskog lekarskog društva Zaječar, 29(1):44–48. https://www.tmg.org.rs/v290109.htm
Lazić, Aleksandra, Marija Petrović, Marija Branković and Iris Žeželj. 2023. „Quick Natural Cure-Alls: Portrayal of Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicine in Serbian Online Media.“ Collabra: Psychology 9 (1): 82189. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.82189
Leaver, Tama, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin. 2020. Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Marković, Marija, Biljana Nikolić, Ljubinko Rakonjac, Vesna Stankov Jovanović 2024. Etnobotanika. Beograd: Institut za šumarstvo.
Milanović, Nevena. 2021. „Imperativ ‘brige o sebi’ tokom pandemije kovida 19: prakse postizanja emotivnog i fizičkog blagostanja“. U Kovid 19 u Srbiji 20, ur. Bojan Žikić, 127–140. Beograd: Univerzit u Beogradu, Filozofski fakultet.
Miller, Montana. 2012. „Face-to-Face with the Digital Folk: The Ethics of Fieldwork on Facebook.“ In Folk Culture in the Digital Age: The Emergent Dynamics of Human Interaction, ed. Trevor Blank, 212–232. Logan: Utah State University Press.
O’Connor, Bonnie and David Hufford. 2001. „Understanding Folk Medicine.“ In Healing Logics: Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems, ed. Erika Brady, 13–35. Logan: Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/10.7330/9780874214543.c003
Pišev, Marko i Mladen Stajić. 2021. „Čajkanovićeva proučavanja narodnih verovanja o bilju u svetlu kognitivnih etnobotaničkih istraživanja.“ Književna istorija 53(174): 67–94. https://doi.org/10.18485/kis.2021.53.174.3
Schmitt, Casey. 2013. „Asserting Tradition: Rhetoric of Tradition and the Defense of Chief Illiniwek.“ In Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present, edited by Trevor Blank and Robert Glenn Howard, 100–122. Logan: Utah State University Press.
Tucakov, Jovan. 2014. Lečenje biljem: fitoterapija. Novo, izmenjeno i dopunjeno izdanje. Beograd: Vulkan izdavaštvo.
Valk, Ülo. 2022. „An Introduction to Vernacular Knowledge.“ In Vernacular Knowledge: Contesting Authority, Expressing Belief, eds. Ülo Valk and Marion Bowman, 1–21. Sheffield/Bristol: Equinox Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1558/isbn.9781800502147
Vandebroek, Ina, Victoria Reyes-García, Ulysses de Albuquerque, Rainer Bussmann and Andrea Pieroni. 2011. „Local Knowledge: Who Cares?“ Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 7(35): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746–4269–7–35
ERIH PLUS - European Reference Index for the Humanities
CEEOL - Central and Eastern European Online Library
The DOI Foundation