Beyond Nature and Culture

Synopsis

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 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 Than Nature, Which Is Portrayed As A Collective Of The Nonhuman World, Of Plants, Animals, Geology, And Natural Forces. Descola Shows This Essential Difference To Be, However, Not Only A Specifically 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 Nothing Short Of A Fundamental Reformulation By Which Anthropologists And Philosophers Can See The World Afresh--provided By Publisher. Trompe-l'oeil Nature. Configurations Of Continuity ; The Wild And The Domesticated ; The Great Divide -- The Structures Of Experience. The Schemas Of Practice ; Relations With The Self And Relations With Others -- The Dispositions Of Being. Animism Restored ; Totemism As An Ontology ; The Certainties Of Naturalism ; The Dizzying Prospects Of Analogy ; Terms, Relations, Categories -- The Ways Of The World. The Institution Of Collectives ; Metaphysics Of Morals -- An Ecology Of Relations. Forms Of Attachment ; The Traffic Of Souls ; Histories Of Structures -- Epilogue : The Spectrum Of Possibilities. Philippe Descola ; Translated By Janet Lloyd ; Foreword By Marshall Sahlins. Originally Published As Philippe Descola, Par-delà Nature Et Culture (paris: Editions Gallimard, 2005) © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2005--title Page Verso. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.