Wade Davis (anthropologist)

Wade Davis

Davis at home in 2008
Born E. Wade Davis
(1953-12-14) December 14, 1953
West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Nationality Canadian
Citizenship Canada
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation Anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, educator, lecturer
Known for The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Wayfinders, El Rio
Spouse(s) Gail Percy
Children 2 daughters
Website www.daviswade.com

E.[1] Wade Davis (born December 14, 1953) CM is a Canadian anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer whose work has focused on worldwide indigenous cultures, especially in North and South America and particularly involving the traditional uses and beliefs associated with psychoactive plants. Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. Davis is Professor of Anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.

Davis has published popular articles in Outside, National Geographic, Fortune, and Condé Nast Traveler.

Davis is an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society. Named by the NGS as one of the Explorers for the Millennium, he has been described as “a rare combination of scientist, scholar, poet and passionate defender of all of life’s diversity.” His work has taken him to East Africa, Borneo, Nepal, Peru, Polynesia, Tibet, Mali, Benin, Togo, New Guinea, Australia, Colombia, Vanuatu, Mongolia, and the high Arctic of Nunavut and Greenland.

Early life, family and education

Davis was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.[2]

He holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his PhD in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University.[2][3]

In 1974, at the age of 20, he crossed the Darien Gap on foot in the company of the celebrated English author and amateur explorer, Sebastian Snow.[4]

Career

Davis is not only an ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker. He is a licensed river guide and has worked as park ranger and a forestry engineer.

Anthropology and ethnobotany

Mostly through the Harvard Botanical Museum, he spent over three years in the Amazon and Andes as a plant explorer, living among fifteen indigenous groups in eight Latin American nations while making some 6,000 botanical collections.[3] He also conducted ethnographic fieldwork among several indigenous societies of northern Canada. His work later took him to Haiti to investigate folk preparations implicated in the creation of zombies, an assignment that led to his writing Passage of Darkness (1988) and The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), an international bestseller. The book was loosely used as the basis of a Wes Craven horror film, The Serpent and the Rainbow.

Other books by Davis include Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rain Forest (1990), Shadows in the Sun (1993), Nomads of the Dawn (1995), The Clouded Leopard (1998), Rainforest (1998), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004), Grand Canyon (2008), Book of Peoples of the World (ed. 2008) and One River (1996), which was nominated for the 1997 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. His books have been translated into fourteen languages, including Basque, Serbian, Japanese and Malay.

He has published 180 scientific and popular articles on subjects ranging from Haitian vodoun and Amazonian myth and religion to the global biodiversity crisis, the traditional use of psychotropic drugs, and the ethnobotany of South American Indians. Davis has written for National Geographic, Newsweek, Premiere, Outside, Omni, Harpers, Fortune, Men's Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, Natural History, Scientific American, National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, and numerous other international publications. Davis is a Fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP)

Photography

His photographs have appeared in some 20 books and more than 80 magazines, journals and newspapers, including National Geographic, Time, GEO, People, Men’s Journal, Outside, and National Geographic Adventure. They have been exhibited at the International Center of Photography (ICP), the Marsha Ralls Gallery (Washington, DC), the United Nations (Cultures on the Edge exhibition 2004), the Carpenter Center of Harvard University, and the Utama Center (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Select images are part of the permanent collection of the U.S. State Department, Africa and Latin America Bureaus. Davis is the co-curator of The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes, first exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and currently touring Latin America. A first collection of Davis’s photographs, Light at the Edge of the World, appeared in 2001 published by National Geographic Books, Bloomsbury and Douglas & McIntyre. A second collection was under contract for 2013 publication with Douglas & McIntyre as well.[3]

Lectures and education

Davis’s research has been the subject of more than 900 media reports and interviews in Europe, North and South America and the Far East, and has inspired numerous documentary films as well as three episodes of the television series The X-Files.[3]

Davis has been lecturing since the 1990s at places including the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, California Academy of Sciences, Missouri Botanical Garden, Field Museum of Natural History, New York Botanical Garden, National Geographic Society, Royal Ontario Museum, the Explorer's Club, the Royal Geographical Society, the Oriental Institute, the Chattauqua Institute, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank as well as some 400 renowned educational institutions, including Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, Duke, Vanderbilt, University of Pennsylvania, Tulane, Georgetown, and St. George's School.

He has spoken at the Aspen Institute, Bohemian Grove and on numerous occasions for the Young Presidents' Organization and at the TED Conference. His clients have included amongst others Microsoft, Shell, Hallmark, Fidelity Investments, Bank of Nova Scotia, Mackenzie Financial, Healthcare Association of Southern California, National Science Teachers Association, NDMA (Non-prescriptive Drug Manufacturers Association), International Baccalaureate, European Council of International Schools, Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, Canadian Association of Exploration Geophysicists, American Trial Lawyer’s Association, American Judges Association, American Bankers Association, Centaur Technology, Canadian Association of Actuaries, Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, as well as several leading pharmaceutical companies including Warner-Lambert, Bayer, Miles, Bristol-Myers, and Abbott Laboratories.

In late 2013, it was announced that Davis would join the University of British Columbia as a professor of anthropology in the summer of 2014.[2]

Filmmaking and other media involvement

Davis was the series creator, host and co-writer of Light at the Edge of the World, a four-hour ethnographic documentary series, shot in Rapa Nui, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Nunavut, Greenland, Nepal and Peru, which is currently airing in 165 countries on the National Geographic Channel and in the USA on Smithsonian Networks.

He is featured in the MacGillivray Freeman IMAX film Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk, released in the spring of 2008. Other television credits include the award winning documentaries Spirit of the Mask, Cry of the Forgotten People, Forests Forever, and Earthguide, a 13-part television series on the environment which aired on the Discovery Channel in 1990. His four-hour series with National Geographic, Ancient Voices/Modern World, was shot in Australia, Mongolia, and Colombia. It has been broadcast worldwide on the National Geographic Channel as part of the second season of Light at the Edge of the World.

Advisory work

An Honorary Research Associate of the Institute of Economic Botany of the New York Botanical Garden, he is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, Fellow of the Explorer's Club, and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Davis was a founding board member of the David Suzuki Foundation and completed a six-year term on the board of the Banff Centre, Canada’s leading institution for the arts. He has served on the Board of Directors since 2009 for the Amazon Conservation Association, whose mission is to conserve the biological diversity of the Amazon.[5] In 2009 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, Canada’s most prestigious public intellectual forum.

He is a member of the International Advisory Board, Hunt Consolidated, PLNG, and has also been engaged in Journey to Zero, a three-year campaign sponsored by Nissan and TBWA to support zero emission vehicles.[6]

Criticisms of work in Haiti

In 1983, Davis first advanced his hypothesis that tetrodotoxin (TTX) poisoning could explain the existence of Haitian zombies.[7] This idea has been controversial and his popular 1985 follow up book (The Serpent and the Rainbow) elaborating upon this claim has been criticized for a number of scientific inaccuracies.[8] One of these is the suggestion that Haitian witchdoctors can keep “zombies” in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[9] As part of his Haitian investigations, Davis commissioned the exhumation of a recently buried child.[10][11] (Dead human tissue is supposed to be a part of the “zombie powder” used by witchdoctors to produce zombies.) This has been criticized in the professional literature as a breach of ethics.[9][12]

The strictly scientific criticism of Davis’s zombie project has focused on the claims about the chemical composition of the “zombie powder”. Several samples of the powder were analyzed for TTX levels by experts in 1986. They reported[13] that only “insignificant traces of tetrodotoxin [were found] in the samples of ‘zombie powder’ which were supplied for analysis by Davis” and that “it can be concluded that the widely circulated claim in the lay press to the effect that tetrodotoxin is the causal agent in the initial zombification process is without factual foundation”. Davis’s claims were subsequently defended by other scientists doing further analyses[14] and these findings were criticized in turn for poor methodology and technique by the original skeptics.[15] Aside from the question of whether or not “zombie powder” contains significant amounts of TTX, the underlying concept of “tetrodotoxin zombification” has also been questioned more directly on a physiological basis.[8] TTX, which blocks sodium channels on the neural membrane, produces numbness, slurred speech, and possibly paralysis or even respiratory failure and death in severe cases. As an isolated pharmacological agent, it is not known to produce the trance-like or “mental slave” state typical of the zombies of Haitian mythology, or of Davis’s descriptions.

Personal life

Davis is married. He and his wife Gail Percy have lived in several places, sometimes with concurrent residences in Washington, DC, Vancouver, the Stikine Valley of northern British Columbia and Bowen Island near Vancouver.[2] They have two adult daughters,[2] Tara and Raina.[3]

Awards and accolades

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Publications

As author

Photography books

As editor

Provided introduction, foreword or afterword

Video

Media

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ However, Davis was never actually on staff at Harvard.

References

  1. ↑ Davis, Wade (April 1984). "The Pharmacology of Zombies". Harper's. Retrieved July 24, 2017. Excerpted from an article by E. Wade Davis in the November 1983 issue of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Wade Davis, acclaimed anthropologist and author, joins the University of British Columbia". ubc.ca (Press release). University of British Columbia. December 18, 2013. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Wade Davis, Anthropologist/Ethnobotanist: Explorers Council, Explorer-in-Residence, 2000-2013". NationalGeographic.com. National Geographic Society. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  4. ↑ Snow, Sebastian (1977), The Rucksack Man, London: Sphere Books, pp. 199–244
  5. ↑ "Building the Ark: Annual Report 2009" (PDF). Amazon Conservation Association. 2009. p. 24.
  6. ↑ Abramowitz, Ben. "Nissan & Zero Emissions". cargocollective.com. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  7. ↑ Davis, Wade (1983). "The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie". Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 9: 85–104.
  8. 1 2 Hines, Terrence (May–June 2008). "Zombies and Tetrodotoxin". Skeptical Inquirer. 32 (3): 60–62.
  9. 1 2 Booth, W. (April 15, 1988). "Voodoo Science". Science. 240 (4850): 274–277. doi:10.1126/science.3353722.
  10. ↑ Davis, Wade (1985). The Serpent and the Rainbow. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 92–95.
  11. ↑ Davis, Wade (1988). Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 115–116.
  12. ↑ Anderson, W.H. (1988). "Tetrodotoxin and the Zombie Phenomenon". Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 23: 121–126.
  13. ↑ Kao, C.Y.; Yasumoto, T. (1986). "Tetrodotoxin and the Haitian Zombie". Toxicon. 24: 747–749.
  14. ↑ Benedek, C. and L. Rivier (1989), “Evidence for the presence of tetrodotoxin in a powder used in Haiti for zombification”, Toxicon, 27: 473-480
  15. ↑ Kao, C.Y.; Yasumoto, T. (1990). "Tetrodotoxin in 'Zombie Powder'". Toxicon. 28: 129–132.
  16. ↑ Roy-Sole, Monique. "Gold Medal 2009 Winner - Wade Davis". The Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Retrieved 9 February 2017.
  17. ↑ "CBC Massey Lecture Series". CBC.ca. 2009. Archived from the original on October 13, 2009. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  18. ↑ "Fairchild Award". NTBG.org. National Tropical Botanical Garden.
  19. ↑ "Annual Report 2012" (PDF). National Tropical Botanical Garden. 2012. p. 9. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  20. ↑ Flood, Alison (12 November 2012). "Into the Silence author Wade Davis wins Samuel Johnson award". The Guardian. Retrieved November 13, 2012.
  21. ↑ "Shortlist 2012". boardmantasker.com. Archived from the original on September 16, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  22. ↑ Thomson, Stephen (October 2, 2012). "Six B.C. writers shortlisted for 2012 Governor General’s awards". straight.com. Vancouver Free Press. Archived from the original on November 1, 2012. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  23. ↑ "2012 Banff Mountain Book Competition – Finalists". banffcentre.ca. The Banff Center. Archived from the original on August 17, 2013. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  24. ↑ "Order of Canada Appointments". The Governor General of Canada His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston. Governor General of Canada. Retrieved 31 December 2015.
  25. ↑ Bass, Joby (2000). "Review of One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest by Wade Davis". Yearbook. Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers. 26: 157–159. JSTOR 25765894.
  26. ↑ Shechet Epstein, Sonia (April 7, 2016). "Science Goes to the Movies: Zombies". scienceandfilm.org. Museum of the Moving Image. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
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