In the Society of Nature
In the Society of Nature
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GBPThe 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.
- Author is one of the leading of the younger generation of anthropologists in France
- Covers topical issues of ecology; destruction of jungles and forested areas of Latin America
- Provides unique native view of environment - combining ecological and cosmological understandings
Reviews & endorsements
' … an historical and ethnographic contribution to the study of a particularly important area of the New World, at the hinge of Amazonian and Andean high cultures. It is also … of undoubted theoretical and methodological value, one that directs anthropological thought in new directions.' Claude Levi-Strauss
Product details
August 1996Paperback
9780521574679
396 pages
228 × 151 × 26 mm
0.655kg
52 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- General introduction
- Part I. The Sphere of Nature:
- 1. The territorial space
- 2. Landscape and cosmos
- 3. Nature's beings
- Part II. On the Proper Use of Nature:
- 4. The world of the house
- 5. The world of gardens
- 6. The world of the forest
- 7. The world of the river
- 8. Categories of practice
- 9. The good life
- Conclusion.
