Beyond Nature And Culture

Author : Philippe Descola
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022614500X
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Nature and Culture written by Philippe Descola and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-08-01 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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

Author : Philippe Descola
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226212364
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.6X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Nature and Culture written by Philippe Descola and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 from 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.

Author : Jesse J. Prinz
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 1846145724
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Human Nature written by Jesse J. Prinz and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative, revelatory tour de force, Jesse Prinz reveals how the cultures we live in - not biology - determine how we think and feel. He examines all aspects of our behaviour, looking at everything from our intellects and emotions, to love and sex, morality and even madness. This book seeks to go beyond traditional debates of nature and nurture. He is not interested in finding universal laws but, rather, in understanding, explaining and celebrating our differences. Why do people raised in Western countries tend to see the trees before the forest, while people from East Asia see the forest before the trees? Why, in South East Asia, is there a common form of mental illness, unheard of in the West, in which people go into a trancelike state after being startled? Compared to Northerners, why are people in the American South more than twice as likely to kill someone over an argument? And, above all, just how malleable are we? Prinz shows that the vast diversity of our behaviour is not engrained. He picks up where biological explanations leave off. He tells us the human story.

Author : Prof. Alan H. Goodman
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520929977
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Genetic Nature/Culture written by Prof. Alan H. Goodman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-11-06 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so-called science wars pit science against culture, and nowhere is the struggle more contentious—or more fraught with paradox—than in the burgeoning realm of genetics. A constructive response, and a welcome intervention, this volume brings together biological and cultural anthropologists to conduct an interdisciplinary dialogue that provokes and instructs even as it bridges the science/culture divide. Individual essays address issues raised by the science, politics, and history of race, evolution, and identity; genetically modified organisms and genetic diseases; gene work and ethics; and the boundary between humans and animals. The result is an entree to the complicated nexus of questions prompted by the power and importance of genetics and genetic thinking, and the dynamic connections linking culture, biology, nature, and technoscience. The volume offers critical perspectives on science and culture, with contributions that span disciplinary divisions and arguments grounded in both biological perspectives and cultural analysis. An invaluable resource and a provocative introduction to new research and thinking on the uses and study of genetics, Genetic Nature/Culture is a model of fruitful dialogue, presenting the quandaries faced by scholars on both sides of the two-cultures debate.

Author : Jean-Pierre Briffaut
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1394297467
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.67/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Complexities 2 written by Jean-Pierre Briffaut and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-05-29 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awareness of complexity in science and technology dates back to the 1970s. However, all social systems tend to develop structures that become more complex over time, be it within families, tribes, cities, states, or societal and economic organizations. Complexities 2 covers a broad array of fields, from justice and linguistics to education and organizational management. The aim of this book is to show, without aiming to provide a comprehensive overview, the diversity of approaches and behaviors towards the obstacle of complexity in understanding and achieving human actions. When we see complexity as the incompleteness of knowledge and the uncertainty of the future, we realize that simplifying is not an adequate approach to complexity, even in the humanities and social sciences. This book explores the relationship between order and disorder in this field of knowledge.

Author : Philippe Descola
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.31/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Nature and Culture written by Philippe Descola and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317937295
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Culture and Conservation written by Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, there is growing interest in conservation and anthropologists have an important role to play in helping conservation succeed for the sake of humanity and for the sake of other species. Equally important, however, is the fact that we, as the species that causes extinctions, have a moral responsibility to those whose evolutionary unfolding and very future we threaten. This volume is an examination of the relationship between conservation and the social sciences, particularly anthropology. It calls for increased collaboration between anthropologists, conservationists and environmental scientists, and advocates for a shift towards an environmentally focused perspective that embraces not only cultural values and human rights, but also the intrinsic value and rights to life of nonhuman species. This book demonstrates that cultural and biological diversity are intimately interlinked, and equally threatened by the industrialism that endangers the planet's life-giving processes. The consideration of ecological data, as well as an expansion of ethics that embraces more than one species, is essential to a well-rounded understanding of the connections between human behavior and environmental wellbeing. This book gives students and researchers in anthropology, conservation, environmental ethics and across the social sciences an invaluable insight into how innovative and intensive new interdisciplinary approaches, questions, ethics and subject pools can close the gap between culture and conservation.

Author : Karla Armbruster
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813920146
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Nature Writing written by Karla Armbruster and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together, their work signals a new direction in the field and offers refreshingly original insights into a broad spectrum of texts.

Author : Nancy C. Unger
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199735077
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.75/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Beyond Nature's Housekeepers written by Nancy C. Unger and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights the unique and complex role women have played in the shaping of the American environment from pre-Columbian Native Americans to present day environmental justice activists.

Author : Philippe Descola
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780984201020
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.25/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Ecology of Others written by Philippe Descola and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been a fundamental characteristic of Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, Philippe Descola seeks to break down the divide between nature and culture, arguing for an anthropology freed from its anthropocentrism and this dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct realms of phenomena. In its stead, Descola envisions a radically novel worldview, in which beings and objects, humans and nonhumans, are analyzed by the relationships that they possess between each another"--P. [4] of cover.