1Over the past few years, a new product has appeared in some of the stores on Reunion Island: packs filled with loose leaf or tea bags of local medicinal plants for making herbal teas. These standardized herbal preparations are sold mainly in pharmacies, supermarkets and stores specialized in local products.
- 1 I prefer to use the expression “herbal tea practitioner” rather than the local term “herbalist” (ti (...)
2In the framework of an ethnographic study of the evolution of medicinal plant usage and its implications, I observed that the appearance of these industrial herbal teas has given rise to forms of disapproval and recrimination, particularly among herbal tea practitioners.1 The complaints that have arisen from the commercial exploitation of a practice based on popular knowledge reveal a form of unequal cultural exchange between herbal tea practitioners who possess ethnobotanical knowledge and industrial herbal tea manufacturers who commercialize this knowledge as part of economic development projects. The discourse condemning these new phytotherapeutic products is combined with criticism of a shifting dominant social group (“them”) whose members are claimed to have unfairly appropriated the production and trade of herbal teas. This discourse has resonated with qualifications of cultural borrowing as a theft, which can also be found in use of the concept of cultural appropriation.
3However, the case of herbal-tea practitioners is atypical because it occurs in a specific context: that of a “Creole” society, a term widely used to designate a hybridation process. In socio-anthropological theory, the qualifier “Creole” and the process that leads to it (“creolization”) are used to describe social environments marked by a specific historical process (Chaudenson 1992, Bonniol 2006, Benoist 2012) that involves an interplay of cultural appropriation and dissemination.
4Creolization can be defined as a process in which “cultural models are blended leading to a compromise between them and a new, more or less syncretic form” (Ghasarian 2002: 663). This creolization process has been observed with respect to ethnobotanical knowledge and “traditional folk medicine”:
All those who arrived bearing knowledge, medical traditions and a relationship with nature specific to their region of origin were faced on the island with endemic or imported plants. Malagasy and East African newcomers already knew and used many these plants. When they did not, their approach was more pragmatic: unknown plants were tested and, depending on their efficacy, included in the pharmacopoeia. Those of Indian origin brought with them village knowledge of Ayurvedic medicine, which draws from a wide variety of plants and spices. In a context marked by slavery and then by indentured servitude, contacts were made, and solidarity was born. Knowledge held by some was shared with the others. (Pourchez 2011: 11)
- 2 Local & Indigenous Knowledge Series.
5This explanation, taken from an anthropological book published by UNESCO in the LINKS2 collection clearly shows that plant knowledge is itself the result of processes of appropriation and reappropriation by social groups who migrated to the region over centuries of settlement and colonization. An examination of the vernacular names of plants on the island suggests this idea (Kull, Alpers and Tassin 2015). Reunion’s ethnobotanical terminology is full of Malagasy names that have been “Frenchified” to some extent and thus become Creole and of French names applied to tropical plants that are not found in Europe.
6Thus, in the Creole context, we must recognize that it is impossible and futile to untangle the threads of the different contributions and to characterize historically what and who has led to a new culture and thus to Creole knowledge. As noted by Carpanin Marimoutou (2013), it remains partly unknown how the culture of Creole societies achieved a new commonality, because “the moment of encounter, appropriation and exchange remains a mystery”.
7Thus, the aim of this article is not, of course, to determine whether this new type of industrial herbal product on Reunion Island is a case of cultural appropriation. Rather, it seeks to trace the process by which a practical knowledge took on a symbolic meaning as a cultural object and to open the debate on the legitimacy of its use by different persons.
8In the first part, I examine the contemporary evolution of knowledge regarding the use of medicinal plants in herbal teas on Reunion Island. I show that, over the last five decades, ethnobotanical folk knowledge has gained (new) status as a tradition belonging to a local heritage and a Creole identity. This has been the work of people from different backgrounds (academics, cultural institutions and non-profit organizations). In the second part, I trace the ways in which this knowledge began to be commercialized and gave rise to economic development projects that attracted the support of public authorities in the early 2000s. Finally, in a third section, I present the current discourse of practitioners who denounce the abusive appropriation of herbal tea practices and knowledge, and I attempt to explain how these commercialization dynamics have given rise to conflicts of legitimacy and opened an ethical debate that has not been resolved.
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Methodology
This article is based on data that originates from field research that began at the end of 2018. This socio-anthropological inquiry, in the sense proposed by Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (2008: 46-76), is “fundamentally polymorphic” (Olivier de Sardan 2008: 72), because based on a large corpus of data. In this methodological approach, the material is the result of prolonged immersion in an environment, which gave rise to interviews, observations and reports, and the examination of written and audiovisual sources.
In my case, immersion was achieved notably by long-term participant observation of a well-known herbal tea practitioner and by monitoring the development of an ethnopharmacology non-profit organization working to promote “traditional” knowledge of medicinal plants. As regards written and audiovisual sources, research involved studying a corpus of contemporary grey literature and historical texts from the 19th and 20th centuries dealing with medicinal plants and viewing and listening to many contemporary radio and television productions on the subject.
In addition, this investigation was enriched by a series of interviews with a wide panel of persons with activities related to herbal teas, including 16 encounters with herbal tea practitioners active in the public space between September 2020 and January 2021. They ranged in age between 35 and 75. The wide majority (11 out of 16) were between 45 and 55 years old. It is worth noting that only four of them were women. This male predominance is a salient feature of this environment today, and can be explained by the fact that “mediation [of the practice in the public space] is mainly carried out by men” (Alendroit 2023: 157).
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- 3 With one exception, discussed below, this heritage is perceived to be more masculine than feminine. (...)
9We need to start our analysis of knowledge about medicinal plants on Reunion Island by providing the context. Over the past forty years, different initiatives undertaken in various arenas have contributed to anchor this knowledge in the local heritage3 and Creole identity, and have established a link, now inextricable, between herbal teas and tradition.
10One of the spaces that has contributed in its own way to traditionalize the practice and knowledge of herbal teas has been the academic world. At the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, research in the humanities and social sciences, but also in the material and life sciences, took hold of this object and qualified it as a tradition.
- 4 Note: In his 1993 text, Jean Benoist urged caution when speaking of traditional “knowledge”, since (...)
11In the humanities, the association between tradition and herbal teas goes back to Jean Benoist's medical anthropological research (1975, 1993). He demonstrated that Reunionese society had a “traditional Creole medicine”.4 One of the characteristics of this folk medicine is the central role given to the use of medicinal plants. Jean Benoist explains that “the sick mostly call on ‘herbalists’ (tisaneurs or simples)” who are the “keepers of medicinal plant knowledge” (Benoist 1975: 50).
- 5 No dictionary of Reunionese Creole language published to date lists the word tisanerie in the sense (...)
12The figure of herbalists who heal by providing herbal teas has been examined at length by another researcher, this time in the natural sciences: Roger Lavergne. In his thesis on tropical botany, he refers to them as “traditional practitioners” (tradipraticiens). He claims that they are “the pillars of the island’s folk and traditional medicine” (Lavergne 1989: 6) and describes close to thirty of them. Defended in 1989 and published the following year, his thesis is a milestone that remains a best-seller to this day, unrivaled on the island. It was first entitled Plantes médicinales indigènes: tisanerie et tisaneurs de la Réunion (1989) (Indigenous Medicinal Plants: Herbalists of Reunion Island) and later Le grand livre des Tisaneurs et plantes médicinales indigènes de l’île de la Réunion (The Great Book of Herbalists and Indiginous Medicinal Plants of Runion Island) in its edited version (1990). Roger Lavergne uses the term tisanerie to conceptually describe medicinal herb tea practices on Reunion Island. The word is a neologism he coined in 1982 with Marie-Josée Hubert Delisle in a previous encyclopedic work for the general public (Hubert Delisle and Lavergne 1982). It was a word they invented to account for their observations. The expression became popular in the following decades and greatly contributed to making herbal teas, and therefore the ethnobotanical knowledge that underpins the practice, a Reunionese cultural pillar. To the extent that today, the term tisanerie is commonly used to designate “the art of herbal teas”.5
13In addition, we note that by using the notion of “folk pharmacopoeia” (Benoist 1987) or “traditional pharmacopoeia” (Lavergne and Véra 1989), the two researchers have contributed to establish the presence of a body of empirical knowledge on the use of medicinal plants on the island, which subsequently became the object of much scientific investigation.
14Along with these academic studies, non-profit organizations have also contributed to tradition-building initiatives. On this more militant scene, public figures such as Franswa Sintomer and Raymond Lucas have defended herbal tea practices since the 1990s as a cultural tradition to be valued out of fear of seeing it disappear with modern habits. Both have communicated on different platforms (radio, press, television) where they have sought to (re)introduce and disseminate knowledge about plants. Raymond Lucas has published different books with the organization Les Amis des Plantes et de la Nature (APN) with the aim of “raising awareness (…) of the historical importance of plants in the lives of the Reunionese population” (Lucas 2017).
15Alongside these cultural and environmental organizations with an interest among others in ethnobotanical knowledge, a “multi-disciplinary organization administered by volunteers from the medical, academic, industrial and agricultural sectors”6 was set up in 1999: the Association Plantes Aromatiques et Médicinales de la Réunion (APLAMEDOM). This organization, which focuses specifically on the knowledge and use of aromatic and medicinal plants (PAPAM) has a wide range of activities. Some have an agribusiness or developmental purpose, as we will see in part 3, while others are more heritage-based. This is notably the case for the school program: Zerbaz péi. Introduced some fifteen years ago, this initiative that includes teaching how to collect ethnobotanical knowledge in an herbarium, is an archetypal example of the traditionalization movement.7
16Descriptions of the program explain that its purpose is to protect traditional knowledge: “The aim of the competition, which is open to volunteer teachers from all the island’s primary and secondary schools, is to promote and preserve traditional knowledge of the medicinal plants of Reunion Island.”8 The heritage aspect is reflected in the event's slogan: “It’s a page of our history; let’s all work together to preserve our culture!”
17On a more institutional level, in the early 2000s, the regional government led by Paul Vergès, leader of the Reunionese Communist Party (PCR), launched an ambitious museographic project, Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise (MCUR “House of Civilizations and Reunion Unity”), which promoted herbal teas as a pillar of island culture. Although this cultural project never materialized due to a change in government in 2010, a few heritage initiatives were carried out as part of the project, including an honorary prize: Zarboutan Nout Kiltir (literally: “pillar of our culture”).
- 9 Analytically, it seems pertinent to note that this is the only time the practice is associated with (...)
18It was awarded every year between 2004 and 2009 to “a Reunionese who has worked for the preservation, transmission and creation of Reunion's living cultural heritage” (MCUR 2006: 3). In 2007, the prize honored female herbal tea practitioners (tisaneuses).9 The text of the booklet distributed for the occasion, signed by the director Françoise Vergès and the scientific director Carpanin Marimoutou, presents herbal tea knowledge as follows:
The knowledge and practices of Reunion Island's tisaneuses have deep roots in the long history of the island's settlement and in its links with the societies and civilizations from which the Reunionese originate: Africa, Asia, Europe and Indian Ocean islands. These different strands of knowledge and know-how merged and creolized here, equally nourished by contributions and encounters. They were also transformed by what nature itself could offer; and they are constantly being transformed to offer new remedies for emerging diseases and an alternative to chemical therapies. (MCUR 2006: 23)
19This excerpt emphasizes the uniqueness of knowledge and know-how relating to medicinal plants and places them within a process of creolization specific to the island.
20Also, as part of institutional cultural efforts, it is worth noting that recently, within the local department of the national inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage managed by the Ministry of Culture, a file entitled “Know-how and practices of herbalists on Reunion Island” (“Les savoir-faire et la pratique des simples à la Réunion”) was added in 2018. The addition of this file is an action that confirms the desire to recognize the island's knowledge of herbal teas as part of its cultural heritage.
- 10 The CCEE is an advisory body to the Region. It was established in 1984 in the overseas territories (...)
- 11 The day was established by UNESCO in 2001 after it adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Di (...)
21Even more recently, in May 2023, the Council for Culture, Education and the Environment (CCEE)10 decided for the second time to celebrate the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development11 and organize an event featuring conferences and debates around herbal tea practices. After focusing on language, food and music for the first edition in 2022, the CCEE decided to showcase the herbal tea practices believed to be an essential component of the region’s cultural foundation and identity:
New year, new theme. Last year, our desire was to highlight and promote the shared markers of our cultural diversity: food, the Creole language and music, and to show how they have contributed and continue to contribute to establishing and strengthening the foundations of Reunionese society and all its cultural components.
This year, our “common ground” is based on another element of Reunionese identity: our relationship with herbalists (or tizane), their role in society and the kréol imaginary and beliefs associated with them.
Between traditional pharmacopoeia and ritual element lies a whole range of uses, meanings and symbols.
(Excerpt from the presentation at the event “Kroyans dann zerbaz partou, tizane larenyon / Les simples à La Réunion: croyances et pratiques partagées” organized by the CCEE on May 20, 2023, in Montgaillard)
- 12 They defined themselves as “natives”, as opposed to academics from Europe or North America. See Cha (...)
22When we take an interest in the meaning that knowledge of medicinal plants has acquired in Reunionese society, we notice that it can serve to display a form of Creole identity (creolité). When investigating all the spaces where herbal teas appear, I discovered that they were frequently found in different spaces celebrating local identity. The most eloquent example is of course “Creole Week” which usually takes place the last week of October. This event, increasingly celebrated by cultural institutions, draws its origin from the third colloquium of the Comité International des Études Créole (CIEC) held in 1981 on the island of Saint Lucia in the West Indies. At that colloquium, academics formed a pan-Creole movement called “Bannzil kréol”12 to celebrate Creole identity. A day of celebration was subsequently organized by the Seychelles government and transformed into a whole week.
23The Reunionese Creole Week is part of this Creole movement, which is both global, since “pan”, but has local features specific to each Creole territory. The intellectual movement began in the French West Indies in the 1980s led by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant, authors of a seminal work entitled L’Éloge de la Créolité published in 1988. As one of the authors explains, twenty years later, the notion of créolité “enshrines the exaltation of a minoritized anthropological reality (…) [and] constitutes an operation to ascribe new value to a devalued culture” (Bernabé 2012: 21).
- 13 Translation: “mix of traditions” (metaphor based on a Reunionese dish).
24Creole Week is now a thematic opportunity for the events industry, but it retains its strength as a celebration of cultural identity. One of the recurring themes emphasized during the week on Reunion Island is herbal tea knowledge and practices. For example, in 2015, the Aimé Césaire media library in the town of Sainte-Suzanne, led by the communist party featured a Zambrokal Tradisyon.13 A poster in the colors of Reunion’s flags (yellow, red, green and orange) advertised slam and poetry workshops, concerts, theatrical performances, a plant cuttings workshop and, most importantly, an “aromatic and medicinal plant awareness and discovery” session led by a tisaneur and a lecture by the president of APLAMEDOM. The same year, on the other side of the island in the town of L’Étang-Salé, led by a right-wing government, the Liberté Métisse festival featured a “conference on Zerbaz péi” by another tisaneur and the APLAMEDOM research officer. We observe that, despite the political differences between these town’s officials, typical of the second half of the 20th century on Reunion Island, the practice of herbal teas has a shared meaning and celebrates a Creole identity, a Creolité.
25On a more personal level, from the patients’ point of view, it appears that the use of herbal teas in Reunion Island has several meanings. In addition to challenging the medical establishment and offering a “natural” medical treatment, it is also a marker of identity. During my ethnographic studies on open-air markets with herbal tea sellers, customers often linked the use of herbal teas with the idea of using a “local”, “traditional” or “authentically Reunionese” medical treatment. When observing the therapeutic path and choices patients make, the use of herbal teas is not a neutral option. In discussions between herbal tea sellers and their customers on the markets, the emotional attachment to this type of treatment was mentioned as a rationale for choosing this type of therapy. The fact that herbal teas are associated with a Reunionese tradition often motivated women and men to use them. Patients acknowledged that their interest in this type of treatment was part of a “return to their roots” and often mentioned that their ancestors had mastered this knowledge. A study on the use of herbal teas for cancer on Reunion Island also confirms this observation (Desprès 2011).
26These elements illustrate how the use of herbal tea as medical treatment is an identity marker. Similarly to Creole food (Tibère 2006), Creole medicine using herbal teas is a practice that serves the purpose of identification and differentiation, and provides a sense of belonging to a Reunionese/Creole group. In this sense, we could say that herbal tea practices using traditional ethnobotanical knowledge contribute to a form of “ostentatious reinvention” (Ghasarian 2002) as part of the resurgence of local identity in response to the logic of assimilation to mainland France, which increased when the island became a French department.
27Moreover, it should be noted that the mention and use of medicinal plants also sometimes serves to display a resistance identity in overseas France, expressed notably by participating in “movements to promote traditional medicinal know-how” (Mulot 2021) associated with a specific interpretation of colonial-slavery history.
28This became apparent in the mid-2000s when organizations in the French overseas territories called for a legislative amendment to make it possible for plants from these territories to be listed in the French Pharmacopoeia. This action was presented as reparation for an injustice dating back to the slave era, and as recognition for knowledge that had been suppressed in the colonial past.
- 14 I use the word “apparently” because this explanation, which became accepted as the truth, is unfoun (...)
29These organizations, including APLAMEDOM on Reunion Island, approached their political representatives during the 2009 legislative debates on the Law for the Economic Development of Overseas France (LODEOM) to advocate for a change in the definition of French pharmaceutical plants to allow the inclusion of plants from the French overseas territories. In their view, these plants could not be included because the authorities in the 18th and 19th centuries apparently had excluded them.14 On April 8, 2009, deputy Victorin Lurel used this rationale before the French National Assembly’s Finance Committee:
Since recognition of West Indian pharmacopoeia has been a long-standing battle, this is an opportunity for me to reiterate certain points to enlighten the opinion of our colleagues in mainland France. The French codex was established in 1818, well before the definitive abolition of slavery in 1848 – as you know, the first abolition, on 16 pluviôse an II, i.e., February 4, 1794, was only provisional. Slaves and “free negroes” were forbidden to use medicinal plants because the colonists feared poisoning. Since then, this provision has never been revised. Our plants nevertheless belong in the French pharmacopoeia […] (emphasis added).15
30Once this was enshrined in law and implemented in 2013 in the editorial of APLAMEDOM’s newsletter no. 13 (page 2), the organization’s president expressed satisfaction with the outcome of their action:
Official listing in the French pharmacopoeia, on August 1, 2013, of 16 medicinal plants from Reunion Island ensures official recognition of the traditional know-how of medicinal plants on Reunion Island and its recognition as a cultural heritage. Along with 16 plants from Martinique and 15 plants from Guadeloupe, this inclusion of medicinal plants from the French overseas territories represents the first reparation of an injustice dating back to the Code Noir (1685) and slavery in favor of the French overseas territories. (emphasis added)
31Thus, the discourse that has emerged around this request for legislative change clearly shows that the knowledge of medicinal plants mentioned in this article is a cultural marker in the struggle for reparation for slavery and holds a specific symbolism in the context of the French overseas territories.
32As seen above, the full implications of the knowledge of medicinal plants cannot be understood without studying the arguments raised by the intellectual elites and by heritage movements that have made this knowledge emblematic. In this second part, we look at how this traditional medicinal knowledge has come to the forefront once again in the last twenty years and been reinvested in commercial practices. First, I will show how herbal teas were commercialized in an unorganized way and how this contributed to establish a business based on this knowledge. Next, I will show how the determination grew to market the products in an organized agricultural value chain to use this knowledge as a means of local development.
33On Reunion Island, as elsewhere in the South, the second half of the 20th century saw the commodification of medicines that had been described as traditional (Gruénais 2002, Sakoyan, Musso and Mulot 2011, Pordié and Simon 2013). Medical practices that were previously based on a gift-for-gift payment system became commercial exchanges.
34On the island, anthropological accounts from the 1980s confirm that herbal teas were not always a commodity. Anthropologist Jacqueline Andoche describes non-cash exchanges in her ethnography of “healing practices”. She explains that in rural areas, therapists of the highlands, usually tisaneurs, maintained a system of “exchanges based on barter or friendly mutual aid” (Andoche 1984: 21-22). In those days, herbal teas were not the object of commercial trade but of reciprocal exchanges within a local system of solidarity. The researcher points out, however, that in urban areas, therapists (of the lowlands) tended to buy medicinal plants from those in rural areas and would resell them to their customers.
35Along with the erosion of a rural way of life and the increase in commercial exchanges, herbal practices became the object of trade. The process was accelerated by erosion of the transmission of oral knowledge. Knowledge of medicinal plants was held by an increasingly small number of people, who came to be regarded as specialists, not always because they knew the most, but because they had forgotten the least. In this article, these specialists are designated as herbal tea practitioners. As observed by Frédéric Le Marcis (2013) in South Africa, the professional activity of selling or recommending medicinal plants has sometimes allowed people in need to find a means for acquiring economic resources.
36The trade in herbal teas takes place in an unorganized, mostly informal way, mainly on open-air markets, in an unprofessional way. It should be noted in addition that sellers of medicinal plants operate without any legal status, because the practice has not been institutionalized.
37Along with the societal transformation that turned herbal teas into a commercial commodity, ethnobotanical and ethnomedical knowledge became the source of a larger-scale economic development project aimed at generating monetary profit.
38The idea gained strength in the late 1990s that medicinal and aromatic plants have a potential that should be exploited by introducing new agricultural activities. In a global context, this can be explained by the emergence of “a current of opinion specific to people in industrialized countries who, skeptical or critical of medical practices and progress […] value other forms of therapy designated, depending on the case, as ‘soft’, ‘parallel’, ‘popular’, ‘natural’, etc.” (Dozon 1987: 11). But it can also be explained by the local context, and the search by the agricultural sector for alternative crops to complement the monoculture of sugar cane that dominates the agricultural economy. The sugar cane sector effectively occupies over 50% of cultivated land and is often described as being in crisis. Questions are regularly raised about the prospects of the sugar cane sector because of its dependence on European subsidies, regularly renegotiated with frequent clashes between growers, manufacturers and the State. The cultivation of medicinal plants thus appears to be an ideal way of supplementing the farmers’ income in line with diversification objectives circulating in the Reunionese agricultural sector.
- 16 Famous member of the Reunionese Socialist Party and former Minister for French Overseas Territories (...)
39Political leaders, who are either in office or aspiring to be, agree across the political divide that agribusiness spin-offs can be expected from PAPAMs. At the last regional elections in June 2021, almost all the candidates of the different parties mentioned developing PAPAMs in their program. The president of APLAMEDOM himself represented civil society on the ticket of Ericka Bareigts’ party16 which came third with 18.48% of votes.
40Thus, in the mid-2000s, a few institutions began to examine the possibility of setting up a filière (economic value chain). The emergence of the French word used (filière) is noteworthy. As explained by Frédéric Lançon and his colleagues in their study of the history of the notion of filière (value or supply chain), the term was used from the 1960s onwards, “when formulating industrial policies, […] to support the transformation of the agricultural sector in the North and guide development policies in the South”, and was “promoted by public authorities to define their modes of intervention” (Lançon, Temple, and Biénabe 2016: 29-30).
- 17 The Institut technique interprofessionnel des plantes à parfum, médicinales, aromatiques et industr (...)
- 18 Elements of these expert reports are available in issue 37 of Ethnopharmacologia. Bulletin de la So (...)
41APLAMEDOM’s demands found an echo in various political and administrative circles. At the level of regional authorities, the organization’s requests led to the approval by the Standing Committee in May 2005 of a program of studies to prepare for the launch of a filière. Two strategic studies and an expert appraisal were carried out by ITEIPMAI,17 a private consultant, and by the President of the French Society of Ethnopharmacology.18
- 19 Renamed the “Economic, Social and Environmental Council” (Conseil Économique, Social et Environneme (...)
42In other institutions, recommendations and preparatory studies were also being carried out with a view to establishing a value chain. In 2006, the Reunionese Chamber of Agriculture drew up a sectoral program for the development of a PAPAM industry. In the same year, a national body based in Paris, the Conseil Économique et Social (CES)19 also took hold of the issue. In its report on the Economic Prospects for the Horticultural Sectors (Perspectives économiques des secteurs de l’horticulture), it devoted a special section to PAPAM, particularly in the French overseas territories. A specific section deals with “measures to be taken to give new impetus to the PAPAM value chain in the French overseas territories”. It emphasizes the need to list their plants in the French Pharmacopoeia, because:
Failure to list their plants in the French pharmacopoeia also deprives the overseas departments of major economic development prospects at a time when it is important to diversify and re-establish agriculture (due to the banana and sugar situation). (Viguier 2006: 32)
- 20 A representative of this office attended the “technical day” of the first International Symposium o (...)
43Following this, the Office for the Development of the Overseas Agricultural Economy (Office de Développement de l’Économie Agricole D'Outre-Mer - ODEADOM) decided to also investigate the issue of PAPAM.20 In 2008, ODEADOM drew up a more detailed report on the situation in overseas France to examine the specific issues and challenges faced by PAPAM filières. The introduction states:
It appears to the committee that there is strong potential for PAPAM-based development in the French overseas territories, but that levels and stages of production are heterogeneous and require targeted interventions specifically designed for each filière with a view to local commercialization and sustainable development (ODEADOM 2008: 5).
44It was believed that the prerequisite for making this agricultural value chain a possibility was the listing of “traditional” medicinal plants in the French Pharmacopoeia. To this end, in 2011, ODEADOM financed studies on some forty medicinal plants from the French overseas territories to prepare the monographs needed to apply for listing. This led in 2013 to the inclusion of some fifteen plants found and “traditionally” used on Reunion Island.
45After these legal and sanitary developments, agronomic research was carried out to determine how to grow these plants that had not been cultivated before. Of the 15 plants listed, 14 are trees native or endemic to the forest and therefore usually only picked. The choice to grow these plants is clearly explained by contemporary ambitions to protect natural forest environments and biodiversity. The island’s agricultural technical institute, Armeflhor, then started to conduct experiments to study the agricultural production of these plants in orchards. After producing technical data sheets for propagating some of these plants, the institute proposed several “technical procedures” with technical information for the farmers interested in growing them.
46As a result of these different actions, the island now produces medicinal plants on an industrial scale. The large-scale production of “traditional” medicinal plants has mainly resulted in standardized packs of herbal tea in loose leaf or tea bags, distributed in supermarkets, pharmacies, garden centers and other stores specializing in local products. The packs are produced by companies that use industrial processing techniques involving large-scale machinery (dehydrators, grinders and bagging machines).
47This is a real novelty, because until now these plants had not undergone any industrial processing or been the object of structured trade. Plants used for medicinal purposes tended to be self-grown or picked. Their trade was limited to vendors on open-air markets. The product was usually delivered unprocessed in the form of leaves, twigs, branches or bark, wrapped by hand according to demand.
- 21 By pathway and development path, I mean the singularity of the development trajectory followed, whi (...)
48Thus, the pathway21 undertaken on the island led to the establishment of a PAPAM value chain and to listing in the French Pharmacopoeia of medicinal plants typically associated with a Reunionese “culture” and “tradition”. New commercial activities linked to medicinal herbal teas on the island developed. After presenting the dynamics of the commercialization of medicinal plant knowledge, this final section looks at how this development path has generated controversy among herbal practitioners.
49The first criticism against the way in which medicinal plant knowledge is commercialized concerns the sale of herbal teas in pharmacies and their potential prescription by doctors based on their listing in the official French Pharmacopoeia.
- 22 Before becoming a source of pride as part of a reaffirmation of identity, as mentioned above, herba (...)
50These recriminations can be explained by the fact that, until recently, herbal tea practices were considered backward health care practices and an archaic survival from an era marked by poverty. Herbal teas did not have the same attraction (hype) that we notice today, and which has resulted from the emblematization process described above. Until recently, it was considered that traditional plants were losing ground in health care while the island was modernizing and developing in the hope of catching up with the metropolis.22
51As a result, the practice was marginalized, considered inferior because belonging to the realm of superstition and other backward pre-modern customs. It was expected to be replaced by pharmaceutical drugs. Surprisingly, it is now recognized as valuable by the modern health sector, which has taken hold of it. These remedies can now be found in the medical temple from which they were previously excluded: the pharmacy. A practitioner who was older than 70 and defined himself as a tisaneur explained things this way in a formal interview in November 2020:
- 23 This comment, and all the following ones quoted in this article, were translated from Reunionese Cr (...)
There was a time when herbal teas didn’t exist in pharmacies! What we call medicinal plants didn’t exist in pharmacies, it was forbidden [he insists on the word] to talk about medicinal plants in the pharmacy! […] The doctors didn’t want to hear about it.23
- 24 It was forbidden in the moral sense: the practice was not legally banned but was disapproved and de (...)
52While the practice was forbidden24 according to him, and could not even be mentioned in the biomedical environment (the general practitioner’s office or pharmacy), it is now completely a part of it, and has even become a source of business for pharmacies. For him, it is shocking to see professionals who for decades condemned ethnobotanical medical knowledge based on arguments of scientific authority, who are now making a profit from it.
53After being contacted to carry out the ethnopharmacological studies required for the monographs for listing in the French Pharmacopoeia, this herbal tea practitioner thought that his participation would allow him to be recognized as a tisaneur and that he would obtain an official status. The feeling of spoliation was strong for this practitioner, who felt that he had been exploited because “they’ve done things in such a way that we [herbal tea practitioners] no longer have the right to use them”.
- 25 Because it was previously impossible for pharmacies to sell these plants. For more details, see the (...)
54“Traditional” plants listed in the French Pharmacopoeia are effectively now subject to a pharmaceutical monopoly, and it is forbidden to sell them anywhere else than in pharmacies with therapeutic indications. Faced with these accusations of monopolizing the plants, the pharmacists behind the association that pushed for their listing deny having acted with these motivations (of seizing popular practices to monopolize their commercialization).25 They explain that they advocated for listing in the French Pharmacopoeia to gain recognition and ensure medical safety by guaranteeing that the plants had a certain efficacy and were non-toxic.
- 26 French General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (Direction Générale (...)
55Moreover, according to them, a legal exception granting tolerance towards herbal tea practitioners applies in the French overseas territories. I have effectively not recorded a single court case against anyone who has sold plants now listed in the French Pharmacopoeia on the market or in their store and claimed they had medicinal virtues. On the contrary, the listing seems to have brought legitimacy to the practice in general, and has thus allowed sellers of medicinal plants who had previously been ignored, to be visible in public, notably in open-air markets. The only legal constraint I observed is that practitioners were not allowed to provide therapeutic indications. On open-air markets, the DGCCRF26 ensures that no therapeutic information is written on herbal tea bags.
56But tensions are still strong among herbal tea practitioners regarding their capacity to sell the plants sustainably. In June 2022, a meeting was held by APLAMEDOM, assisted by the consultant firm in charge of monitoring the progress of the Department’s PAPAM development plan, with the aim of drawing up a new list of plants for inclusion in the French Pharmacopoeia. A herbal tea practitioner spoke up and asked what he and his colleagues could benefit from this procedure. He was concerned about the lack of certainty over their ability to sell plants in the future, because a rigorous application of the law could prohibit their activity. APLAMEDOM’s pharmacist-president responded by saying that a coordinated lobbying effort would need to be undertaken with overseas members of parliament to abrogate the pharmacists’ monopoly on these plants, which would allow them to be sold freely as is the case for a list27 of plants which are not subject to the monopoly and can be sold over the counter outside the pharmaceutical circuit.28
57More than simply criticizing new stakeholders who commercialize objects based on knowledge they had previously undermined, some condemn the entire development trajectory chosen. Taking the example of a plant, a 50-year-old practitioner, describing himself as a tisanier, complained about the situation as follows in a formal interview in January 2021:
The hopbush is planted by workers, by technicians, whose part-time position is financed by the Department or the Region, the same Department that gives these same people hundreds of thousands of euros to organize their business. So, the Department refinances these jobs. These organizations sell to [XXX] or to other groups, and they sell for €3 per kilo (…) and in pharmacies, what do you find? How much does it cost? €300! And when they get the product to clean it, they not only earn money to run their company, their organization, they don't have any labor, because this labor is paid for by the local authorities, in other words your taxes, my taxes, and above all that, they buy at a lower cost. That’s called exploitation. For €3 per kilo, it is resold for €200 on Reunion Island and €450 in France, in Europe. And so, they’re not only taking our money to do it, but they've also taken our knowledge to exploit us even more.
58This practitioner’s account of the commercialization of plant knowledge is a good illustration of the indignation felt regarding the agricultural and industrial production of herbal tea. First, he criticizes the way in which local authorities allocate subsidies, which are seen as handouts to industrial companies that make substantial profits. While the purchase price of non-dried plants is approximately less than ten euros per kilo, the price of dried, commercially packaged plants reaches several hundred euros (a small 40-gram tea bag usually costs around €7 to 10). He also points out that this is only possible with the help of “our knowledge”, i.e., ancestral folk usage, and that this is a form of exploitation. The plural possessive pronoun, “our”, emphasizes the opposition with “them” clarified in his next words:
- 29 The terms in brackets are the ethno-racial categorizations used in the interviewee’s discourse in R (...)
They decide to take and get rich with it, with the same knowledge. Well, that ends up being a system of exploitation, not slavery, but not far from it actually, don’t you see? […] And the next question is: who's working there again? In other words, who’s in charge? And who ends up planting, working the soil, putting in… etc.? It’s always the same society. It means that the one at the bottom is the African descendant (lo kaf), the mixed race (lo métis), sometimes the Indian descendant (lo malbar), sometimes the poor whites (lo yab), but it’s always the same part of society, always the same organization.29
- 30 Reunionese Creole term synonymous with “mainland French” (métropolitain). It refers to people, most (...)
59Contrasting with the socially and racially qualified “we”, “they” implicitly designates people from the dominant classes who benefit from white privilege. As a matter of fact, the companies seeking to develop herbal teas on an industrial scale tend to be headed by Reunionese people from the white bourgeoisie and zorèy.30 Because of their social position, these groups can take advantage of their financial capital and networks to develop commercial activities based on ethnobotanical knowledge. They are also more likely to meet the requirements of calls for proposals and other public subsidy schemes.
- 31 Although the sample of people surveyed is small, it is still possible to observe a nuance. The thre (...)
60It should be mentioned that the idea of creating economic activities around this knowledge is not always contested in principle by herbal tea practitioners who denounce the capture by industrial entrepreneurs of the value derived from plant knowledge.31 The idea that commercial activities developed around herbal teas could create jobs is not controversial and is regarded positively. The practitioner formally interviewed in January 2021, and previously quoted, explains it this way:
Why don’t we just say that we're doing economic development around this, but when will there be a payback for Reunion Island? When will there be a payback for Reunion’s environment? When will they say, “well okay, out of the millions of euros, there’s a share that goes back to Reunion Island through different projects”. It could be the funding of environmental projects, etc. Nothing!
61Here, the practitioner expresses the importance of “payback”, meaning more fairness in the balance, to keep the scale from being tipped to one side. The people who have decided to reveal their (technical) knowledge of plants and more generally the whole territory should have something to gain. The idea is to call for a better distribution of value to make sure that these new activities do not further exacerbate an already unfair situation.
62These debates call into question the very possibility of trading traditional knowledge. Is it possible to “modernize” a “tradition” with contemporary industrial devices and technical tools, while ensuring fair distribution of the newly produced wealth? Can we imagine a development trajectory that would be perceived as fair by “traditional” herbal tea practitioners? How can we engage, include or at the very least compensate those who have the knowledge but are overwhelmed by new developments?
63This article focuses on an emblematic cultural item of Reunion Island: herbal teas. It seeks to explain why folk herbal tea practitioners consider the current transformations of this object controversial. This was achieved by reviewing the history of different dynamics relating to ancestral popular ethnobotanical knowledge. It was observed that the current situation raises fundamental questions about the fair way to market this type of cultural item, which are questions that remain unanswered to this day.
64In this case study, we see a combination of factors that support the accusation of illegitimate appropriation. First, an economic factor, because it is the capture of the new value generated by the trade of this cultural item that is being denounced. But it is combined with a political factor, because this monopolization is considered to benefit (already) dominant social groups, and thus to perpetuate inequalities. The industrialization and “pharmacization” of herbal teas seem to reproduce a classification with the same populations at the top and bottom of the social ladder as in colonial times.
65The controversy suggests that it is less legitimate for some groups than others to develop commercial activities around medicinal plants because these plants are only used because certain populations know how to use them. It is only when people categorized as belonging to the dominant groups (gro blan, zorèy) engage in the production and marketing of medicinal plants that criticism emerges. This criticism is not entirely based on ethno-racial categorization. The recriminations are also directed at a corporation: pharmacists, i.e., a professional group with business activities in the modern medical sector and a group that represents Western medicine.
66It may be hypothesized that in the process of cultural valorization by which herbal teas have become an emblem of Creole culture, the power relations surrounding this object have been overlooked. The social aspects of herbal tea practices in terms of class, race/ethnicity, and to a lesser extent gender, were not sufficiently considered when medicinal plants came to be considered a cultural heritage. It was only later that some of these aspects rose to the surface, when the commercialization process, which came slightly later, caused divisions to reappear. Today, the controversy over the legitimacy of engaging in herbal tea practices for people from social groups categorized as white and affluent and health professionals in the biomedical sector is a reminder that creolization and Creole cultural objects are not free from conflictual relationships.
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