The Achuar Indians live in the remote forest reaches of the Upper Amazon and have developed sophisticated strategies of resource management. Philippe Descola, who has gathered material over several years of fieldwork, documents their rich knowledge of the environment. He explains how this technical knowledge of the increasingly threatened Amazonian ecosystems is interwoven with cosmological ideas that endow nature with the characteristics of society. Combining a symbolist approach with an ecological analysis, the book contributes a new theory of the social construction of nature.
The Achuar Indians live in the remote forest reaches of the Upper Amazon and have developed sophisticated strategies of resource management. Philippe Descola, who has gathered material over several years of fieldwork, documents their rich knowledge of the environment. He explains how this technical knowledge of the increasingly threatened Amazonian ecosystems is interwoven with cosmological ideas that endow nature with the characteristics of society. Combining a symbolist approach with an ecological analysis, the book contributes a new theory of the social construction of nature.
Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, renowned anthropologist Philippe Descola seeks to
Stephen Rostain’s book is a culmination of 25 years of research on the extensive human modification of the wetlands environment of Guiana and how it reshapes our thinking of ancient settlement in lowl
Successor to Claude Levi-Strauss at the College de France, Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence
Stephen Rostain’s book is a culmination of 25 years of research on the extensive human modification of the wetlands environment of Guiana and how it reshapes our thinking of ancient settlement in lowl
The contributors to this book focus on the relationship between nature and society from a variety of theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. Their work draws upon recent developments in social theo
Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication
While working in Africa, anthropologist Julien Bonhomme encountered an astonishing phenomenon: people being accused of stealing or shrinking the genitals of strangers on the simple occasion of a hands
As unknown areas have disappeared from maps with increasing speed, "wilderness" has returned in art. Expeditions as an artistic medium, visions of a post-human world or renegotiations of the relations
