Objective
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has grown into a global multi-billion-dollar industry, outpacing Western pharmaceutical producers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because 80% of TCM medicines are plant based and consumers prefer wild-sourced plants, the industry faces a tension between demands for standardized, scalable products and the unpredictability of climate-pressured ecologies. MetWilds proposes the first comparative ethnographic study of how imaginaries of “wildness” are scientifically and socially engineered in the TCM industry, with what consequences for global socioecologies. This tension is inspiring innovation in plant metabolic sciences to reverse-engineer wildness, by redefining “wild” to certain metabolic profiles and experimenting with the ecological factors behind them. Around the world, cultivators, entrepreneurs and scientists are now experimenting with “wild simulation”: agricultural and laboratory techniques that reproduce native habitats to yield wild-like approximations.
MetWilds pursues two core objectives: to investigate how imaginaries of wildness are enacted in wild simulation practices across this global industry; and to spearhead an anthropology of plant metabolism that reveals how plants metabolize cultural imaginaries into biochemical substance. It examines how reverse-engineering experiments generate socioecological feedback loops and metabolic pathways. At times, these efforts stabilize historical imaginaries of wildness to replace destabilized Anthropocene ecologies; at other times, they sustain imaginaries through techno-scientific advances, creating novel simulacra that eclipse living plant ecologies in stability, cultural value and medical significance. Through five ethnographic case studies in different countries, MetWilds explores how metabolic wilds are forging new ecologies in real time, and how these artificial environments may become the source of future medicines, biodiversity and plant–human adaptations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences economics and business business and management entrepreneurship
- medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology pandemics
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2026-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
11000 Praha 1
Czechia
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