Renata Soukand - between disciplines

Renata Soukand made of her very own nature, a flourishing career.

I am thrilled to have interviewed Renata Soukand because she is an inspiring woman and she’s here to tell us why ethnobotany is more critical than ever. Today, Renata is an associate professor at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice - where she leads the Biocultural Diversity Lab at the Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics, and Statistics.

In this interview, Renata highlighted the complexity of her being … which she uses as a tool for reading and understanding the world as a scientist and human. 

Who is Renata Soukand?

I don’t know what to answer because it depends on the day, on my mood… on so many things. I’m a mom, a scientist - and I’m not sure which one I’m first, sometimes I’m first a scientist, and other times I’m first a mom. Sometimes I’m a friend. …

Aren’t we all many things? We’re everything… but not everything all at once. There’s a right time for every part of you to come out.

Exactly. Now I’m having the last few days of being myself, then I will go back to Estonia and I will be a mom again. Actually, I am mistaken, I am not really myself as I was in meetings from early morning… therefore I’ve been in scientist mode.

Does being “yourself” imply being alone? How do you describe “yourself”?

I don’t think much changes, at least not in the current stage of my life because I always find things to keep me busy.

However, “I as myself” would definitely spend more time practicing taiji, which is the thing I miss the most from pre-academy life and the time in my life when I didn’t have all the responsibilities I have now. 

I’ve known you as an ethnobotanist but you are so much more. It seems to me ethnobotany came later, whereas before you were embarked onto another scientific journey…. 

Ethnobotany is only one part of me - the fascinating part which keeps me motivated to stay in science. However, there are also other parts of me: the semiotician, the folklorist, the historical researcher, and the (environmental) educator. 

I’d love to know where you’re from and what was your first academic choice…

This is again a difficult question, I was born in Estonia to a Ukrainian mother. I’ve lived in Ukraine and in Russia for a few years as a child. Then we returned to Estonia, where I’d spent the biggest part of my life until now. 

When I was finishing high school, my first choice was to go to medical school but at the last minute, I handed in the documents for the pharmacy department. After I graduated from pharmacy, I didn’t know what to do with my life. My mom passed away while I was still studying, and I was quite wild to accept other people's guidance. I just knew I didn’t want to continue pharmacy because it was too commercial, I had applied thinking of it as a manual discipline of working in the lab creating medicine… In fact, my favorite subject was pharmaceutical technology in which we made medicine by hand. The reality of a pharmacist was very different and, as I said before, very commercial. 

So, I took a gap year. I spent 6 months in Washington DC studying taiji and supported myself by doing some occasional work. Once while painting ceilings I thought to myself “I’ve studied 5 years, I return to my studies.” So I got back to Estonia and enrolled in a Masters in Environmental Sciences and at the same time I was starting to be seriously interested in folklore. Although to be honest, already during my pharmacy studies I was captivated by the course on the history of medicine and the folklore, especially the medicinal plant lore. Moreover, my mother, a chemist, was a gifted self-taught herbalist and I remember going around with a book looking for specific plants because it wasn’t a tradition in our family. Everywhere she went she attracted people who needed help, and she could help them through plants. So I believe that interest has stuck with me ever since, popping up here and there until I committed to it… Which is after my Ph.D., because I decided to take on semiotics for my Ph.D. However, unbeknownst to me, even though the direction of my doctoral studies was semiotics, my research was in ethnobotany as I was building a database on the folklore records on plant use which ended with the definition of the herbal landscape and the perception of the environment as a source of medicinal plants. 

So I kind of combined my pharmaceutical education with semiotics. One of the reproaches I’ve received is for using semiotics as a method and not as semiotics itself. And it’s true, I wasn’t interested in discussing concepts in a sophisticated manner. That’s not my thing, I’m more practical, I like things you can touch, things you can change. 

Meanwhile, I worked as a researcher at the Estonian Literary Museum and I stayed for quite a few years.

I was always in between the disciplines and not really appreciated because ethnobotany was at the crossroads of multiple fixed disciplines. Things changed after I got the ERC Starting grant.

Do you think your interest in collecting knowledge came from observing your mother and particularly noticing how that knowledge helped people? What drives you?

Throughout all that time, I was doing what I considered right and interesting for me, without letting the comments of others distract me from my choices. Most probably this was the seed planted by my mum.

Why do you think you’ve been drawn to work between disciplines? What has been the advantage and what has been the disadvantage?

In a way, I represent bio-cultural diversity myself: I have different genes, and I’m from different cultures. I’ve lived in-between since I was born, I didn’t have one home, one country, one language solely. I think you know this feeling. 

When I found ethnobotany, I found there was a name for that very thing I was always working on and it made my day, after years of doing something of great importance to me but that was deemed unimportant by many colleagues. Suddenly there were many people around me working in the same direction with strong motivation and hope for a better future. I started from the historical ethnobotany, but it was Andrea who brought me to the field ethnobotany, although I have done some folkloristic fieldwork before. 

This way of living - not only of studying - gives the advantage of seeing things from multiple angles. Even now, I have the opportunity to meet international students coming from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, enriching my way of seeing things through their eyes and experiences. Staying open even if I’m in the role of educator, helps me to notice what’s missing in my method and what would benefit more the student. 

I have linguistic diversity as well, and I’m never sure which one I master the most: I was raised with the Russian language, because in Estonia there wasn’t use of Ukrainian, then at the moment I learned Estonian we moved to Ukraine so I learned Ukrainian, then I forgot Estonian, and then I had to master my Russian when I was studying in a Russian school. When I came back, I relearned Estonian and I learned English. And now I work and live in Italy so I’m learning Italian. I work in different languages too, it’s not just part of an unused heritage so sometimes all the languages mix up in my head. 

To me, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity have never been a disadvantage - if not in regard to gaining recognition, but I never really cared about that. Although, when you don’t have sufficient income to raise children, you start to doubt your choices. I admit it was a very tough time because in science if you are not recognised you are not getting grants and there’s little possibility to make a living. Just before going to be invited to the ERC interview, I was at the edge of quitting science. I liked it and wanted to continue but I couldn’t. 

What would you say to the new students and people who come into academia struggling to find their own place and voice?

The edge is a tricky position and at the same time, I always tell my students,

if you really believe in what you do try to continue no matter how hard it becomes because eventually someone somewhere somehow will recognize your work. You can do those things that are important for you, and also for others. 

During my brief experience as an ethnobotanist, when I was assisting Prof. Pieroni in his field research in remote villages of Albania (often not even marked on maps!)... I had the impression that ethnobotany was this one scientific discipline where the knowledge of the local people, of the peasants even, came before science. Or that it had the same degree of importance as science. I remember feeling the urgency to record the last pieces of memories of these old people we were interviewing because when they died (and it’s been over 10 years now, so probably most of them did pass away already) that knowledge will be lost forever.
What is ethnobotany and why is it important? 

Well, it’s like having a treasure and throwing it away. Literally throwing it away, it’s not even being lost. There have been many generations of trials and errors, and many people died for errors that we know nothing about. So it would take us many generations to develop the same things.

I’m not saying that everything is beautiful in tradition, there are also things that may be dangerous for health or the environment, but nonetheless major part of traditional communities survived without advanced technology for a very long time, keeping the equilibrium with the environment they lived in.

Ethnobotany to me is not just about documenting, it is also about analyzing and trying to understand the mechanisms in regard to why we select some plants, why we incorporate new ones, what makes us continue, and if we continue what makes us revitalize the earlier existing knowledge.
If you go to a place where basically there is nothing left, and you see a beautiful life, and many tourists and all seems to be fine, but there’s no production, no animals, no traditional knowledge, then you understand how unsustainable this place actually is. And we do have it in humanity this kind of experience, think of the most recent - covid situation when everyone realized they depended on local productions. If you don’t have these local resources anymore, then you are exposed, vulnerable. You’re on your own. This is what traditional societies knew how to deal with, they knew how to be on their own. 

I think we don’t think anymore about this because we were raised amidst an abundance of ready-made food, services on demand, and all the comforts in the world. And perhaps covid showed us something, a warning maybe… but now, almost 4 years later, business went back to usual and our memories are wiped clean. Of course, the people living in villages that are so remote and completely isolated in winter months - I think of Theth in Abania, which I visited - had no choice but to develop skills to survive. 

The skills were developed in the previous centuries when everything was isolated. You had to travel on a horse to get around, it wasn’t easy or for granted. Therefore every little place has its own traditional uses, its own medicines, and its own food - wild food also. 

Tell me about your research with ERC (you briefly mentioned that it was a study on the effects of the Soviet Union on homogenization so it made everyone similar) and what can you see today with globalization (isn’t it another form of homogenization?)

DiGe (stands for Divided Generations) studied the effect of centralization (actually the effect of a totalitarian regime – but the title was changed in the early stage due to it posing a threat to project partners) on the practical, home-related activities on the example of the use of plants. My initial hypothesis was that the Soviet regime has damaged the local ecological systems, but the results showed that the damage was much stronger than I expected. Especially strongly was the effect of centralization (it is when all the guidelines came down from one source) seen in the case of folk medicine, as the medicinal sphere was highly institutionalized. In free Finland, folk medicine disappeared because the medicinal plants were not supported by the official medicinal system (which is another effect, not positive at all). In Russia and the occupied territories, the nomenclature of the used plants became very unified, following the official medicinal lists. Such knowledge was transmitted to people through books, but also by practicing doctors or pharmacies that were buying medicinal plants. The result was that all the diversity of plant uses existing in pre-occupation time was abandoned and although numerous, the remaining uses are all relegated to the official medicine. We can see it especially well in the example of Estonia, where the historical, pre-occupational, data is well-collected.

How can the ethnobotanical research and gathered knowledge, reach the mainstream? Or if not mainstream, at least get to an audience outside academia. What are your views on that?

I’m not very optimistic that we can make everyone interested in making preserves in winter or go foraging in Spring, because those are some of the ways to keep traditions alive. 

There are several other ways to keep traditions alive, that is through Festivals, or specific days dedicated to wild food and traditional medicine, or just by going to a forest to just observe. Because to really know nature, you need to spend time in nature - this should start from the early years, small children need to be introduced to that. That’s the only way, in our busy life we don’t take this time. And if the older generations still hold some of that, we are not really spending time with them either for this knowledge to be somehow passed on. 

The general public might not have the interest right now, but this interest needs to be cultivated in the education system because education is not neutral, it defines the directions. At the moment it is believed that robotic knowledge is more important than the knowledge of how to differentiate between different plants, which ones are poisonous and which ones you can eat, should there be a need for that. 

What I’m talking about is the basics. I won’t even go into the potential knowledge we have already lost, except for a handful of places in the world where we can find the wild relatives of the crops we are using. They’re so few that if there’s a pest or a disease we are very exposed. 

Notice how the war in Ukraine means hunger for the African countries due to grain shortage. This is the effect of one war. 

It is not an easy question but I think there are many people who are looking for answers right now because this needs to be thought. This is why ethnobotany is getting more and more important. 

How do you see yourself in the next 10 years?

I will continue doing what I’m doing now. Besides research, I’m also devoted to growing the next generation which looks very promising. The young ones have a nerve exposed to the ecological crisis, and after a little bit of explanation, they begin to understand it’s not just ecological rather there are many aspects that need to be addressed. 

Our strength is in diversity.

So every little community here in Italy or wherever else, is entitled to have its own food, own culture, own language. This is all richness that must keep on existing for our strength and for the sake of democracy. 

Why does diversity breed resistance?

I think the answer is coded in the definition of biocultural diversity, which is diversity in all its cultural, linguistic, and ecological aspects.
From an ecological point of view, diversity gives the possibility for continuing life in case of sudden change, as there are always some species that are better adapted to specific changes. When we think wider, on the biocultural diversity level, we have a kind of 3D diversity.
Human communities also form their ecosystems, which, being rich in diversities, have a higher chance to survive the turbulent time. Joint shared experiences strengthen the communities. If we think of the war in Ukraine, the resistance of the country was possible because Ukraine welcomed diversity and citizens simply had experienced freedom. When the occupants came, there were enough people who said: we do not want the dictatorship; we know that an alternative way is possible and our freedom is worth more than our lives.

Biocultural diversity is exactly about seeing life in different ways, this is why communities over the globe have developed such a diversity of languages and cultures in a wide array of environments. When people know the environment they live in and depend on it, they have much more instruments to support themselves in case of turbulent times. Once removed from their supporting environment (also in the case of urbanization, when no one actually grows their own food), people become vulnerable and dependent on external (or governmental) support.

This is why dictatorships have always tried to reduce the independence of their victims, taking from them the freedom of self-definition and self-sustaining. The mechanism for that can function also through economic stimuli, although this seems less brutal, the effect is very similar at the end of the day.