Beyond Nature and Culture“Gives to anthropological reflection a new starting point and will become the compulsory reference for all our debates in the years to come.” —Claude Lévi-Strauss, on the French edition Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Philippe Descola shows this essential difference to be not only a Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies” —animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. “A compelling and original account of where the nature-culture binary has come from, where it might go—and what we might imagine in its place.” —Somatosphere “The most important book coming from French anthropology since Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie Structurale.” —Bruno Latour, author of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence “Descola’s challenging new worldview should be of special interest to a wide range of scientific and academic disciplines from anthropology to zoology . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice |
From inside the book
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Page xv
... established its grip, a nature that human beings strove to interpret more or less plausibly and from which they endeavored to profit, with varying degrees of success. Their widely diverse conventions and customs could now make sense ...
... established its grip, a nature that human beings strove to interpret more or less plausibly and from which they endeavored to profit, with varying degrees of success. Their widely diverse conventions and customs could now make sense ...
Page xvii
... establish their modes of compatibility and incompatibility, and examine how they take shape in their patently distinctive ways of being in the world. If such an undertaking is to be successful, anthropology must shed its essential ...
... establish their modes of compatibility and incompatibility, and examine how they take shape in their patently distinctive ways of being in the world. If such an undertaking is to be successful, anthropology must shed its essential ...
Page xviii
... establish between one another and with nonhumans cannot be based upon a cosmology and an ontology that are as closely bound as ours are to one particular context. To this end, we need first to show that the opposition between nature and ...
... establish between one another and with nonhumans cannot be based upon a cosmology and an ontology that are as closely bound as ours are to one particular context. To this end, we need first to show that the opposition between nature and ...
Page 5
... establish with many different interlocutors, both human and nonhuman—relations that ensure that these others are well disposed to them, thanks to the power of their anent. For the Achuar, technical know-how is indissociable from an ...
... establish with many different interlocutors, both human and nonhuman—relations that ensure that these others are well disposed to them, thanks to the power of their anent. For the Achuar, technical know-how is indissociable from an ...
Page 15
... established with this new species would be irrevocably shattered if he did not show such restraint, and his prey's fellows would in future conceal themselves at his approach. Among the Ojibwa of Ontario, the same principle appears to ...
... established with this new species would be irrevocably shattered if he did not show such restraint, and his prey's fellows would in future conceal themselves at his approach. Among the Ojibwa of Ontario, the same principle appears to ...
Contents
| 1 | |
II The Structures of Experience | 89 |
III The Dispositions of Being | 127 |
IV The Ways of the World | 245 |
V An Ecology of Relations | 307 |
The Spectrum of Possibilities | 391 |
Notes | 407 |
Bibliography | 429 |
Index | 451 |
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Common terms and phrases
according Achuar Amazonia Amerindian analogical ancestors animals animist anthropology attributes Australia become behavior body characteristics Chewong child-souls Chipaya clan cognitive collective common concept constitute contrast cosmologies cosmos culture defined deities Desana differentiated discontinuity distinctive domain domesticated Dream-being dualism elements entities environment established example exchange existing exogamous expression fact forest function hierarchy humans and nonhumans hunter hunter-gatherers hunting hypostases Ibid idea identity individual interactions interiority Jivaro kind Lévi-Strauss living Makuna means Mesoamerica metonymic mode of identification moiety moral nagual Nahuas nature objectivization objects ofthe one’s ontological organization particular patrilinear peccaries person physical plants and animals point of view possess possible predation present principle production properties reciprocity recognized regard reindeer relationship ritual schemas segments shaman share Siberia singular social societies souls species spirits stem structure things tion totemic group tribes Tukanos Viveiros Viveiros de Castro wild Yukuna