Darrell Addison Posey (March 14, 1947 – March 6, 2001) was an American anthropologist and biologist who vitalized the study of traditional knowledge of indigenous and folk populations in Brazil and other countries. He called his approach ethnobiology and combined research with respect for other cultures, especially indigenous intellectual property rights.
An obituary described him as an "anthropologist who gave up scholarly detachment to fight for the rights of native peoples." He never married and was survived by his parents and brother. He died of a brain tumor, at 53 years of age, in Oxford, England, where he made his home after 1992.
Early life
Darrell A. Posey was born on March 14, 1947, son of Henry and Pearl Posey, in rural Henderson, Kentucky. From an early age he was a member of the Anglican Church. Educated at Henderson County High School, he had a biology teacher, Mr. Ned Barra, who encouraged his interest in insects.
University studies
In 1970, Posey was graduated with a B.Sc. in Entomology, by the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He obtained a M.A. in Anthropology, in 1974, also at the Louisiana State University, with the thesis The Fifth Ward Settlement: A Tri Racial Marginal Group. He obtained a Ph.D. in anthropology, in 1979, at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, with the thesis Ethnoentomology of the Gorotire Kayapó of Central Brazil.
Posey's switch from entomology to anthropology was due to his friendship with anthropology professor William G. Haag at Louisiana State University. This is explained in a memorial by Posey.
Even after his move to anthropology, Posey did not cut his ties with entomology. At the University of Georgia, he was a close associate of entomology professor Murray S. Blum. Years afterward, he continued to research the ethnobiology of insects, a field he termed "ethnoentomology" in his 1979 doctoral thesis.
Kayapó studies
Arriving in Brazil in 1976, Posey made lasting friendships with researchers at the Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, in Belém, and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, in Manaus.
After his graduate studies, Posey returned to Brazil in 1982, as a professor in the Department of Biology at the Federal University of Maranhão in São Luís, then reorganized under the chairmanship of geneticist Dr. Warwick E. Kerr. He mounted an interdisciplinary ethnobiological research project, called the Kayapó Project, that would eventually involve over 30 specialists in fields such as agronomy, botany, entomology, plant genetics, astronomy, soil sciences, human geography, anthropology, and linguistics. To document the extensive traditional biological knowledge of the Kayapó Indians, Posey and collaborators spent months in the field with Kayapó specialists such as chiefs Uté, Toto-i, Kanhunk, and Paulinho Paiakan. Pajés Beptopup and Kwyre-ka also offered their experience. Many conferences with scientific and indigenous project participants served to disseminate project results, especially at Brazilian scientific conclaves.
The Kayapó Project continued when Posey relocated in 1986 to the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil, at the invitation of museum director Dr. Guilherme M. de La Penha. In 1988 he organized the First International Congress of Ethnobiology, in Belém, during which the Kayapó Project and its results were highlighted.
Ethnobiological research
Although the term "ethnobiology" had been used in the past for a different idea, Posey adopted this for his study of indigenous and folk knowledge about plants, animals, and ecosystems. To designate other areas of indigenous and folk knowledge, the term "ethnoscience" can be used in an analogous manner.
In the past, anthropology had been wed to biology in the unholy union of biological determinism, in which Man is treated wholly without culture or the ability to learn. Posey repudiated this view and dared to see indigenous and folk societies as the inheritors of a vast corpus of useful knowledge for the sustainable utilization and management of natural resources. As can be seen in his review of Diamond's best-seller Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies in 1999, Posey would have biological determinism laid to rest. After all, where can one find human groups without culture?
Posey's concept
For ethnobiology to be scientific, testable hypotheses are generated from information offered by indigenous and folk informants. The emic-etic filter has to be respected, and a decoding of traditional knowledge is necessary to bridge the two cultures.