ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
REVIEWS
“At the heart of the book is 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.”
— Des Fitzgerald, Somatosphere
“This is without doubt the most important book coming from French anthropology since Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie Structurale. This time, however, the contested notion of structure is put to use to deeply modify the limits of anthropology itself, since it is the very notion of nature that is being shifted from an indisputable resource to a highly local and historical topic of inquiry. Philippe Descola’s ample and classic prose—remarkably captured by the translator Janet Lloyd—manages to revisit simultaneously all the major concepts of the discipline while reinterpreting a bewildering amount of ethnographic knowledge. At the time of the Anthropocene, it is crucial that this masterpiece be read by all those who are looking for a successor to nature and to culture.”
— 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.”
— L. E. Sponsel, Choice
“Few books have the merit to counter the established way of thinking by reformulating great questions on a new basis. . . . it is nevertheless what Descola’s book achieves. . . . an important book which will be received passionately.”
— Le Monde, on the French edition
“Thanks to its richness and its broad scope, this book 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
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
I. Trompe-l’Oeil Nature
1. Configurations of Continuity
2. The Wild and the Domesticated
Nomadic Spaces
The Garden and the Forest
The Field and the Rice Paddy
Ager and Silva
Herdsmen and Hunters
The Roman Landscape, the Hercynian Forest, and Romantic Nature
The Autonomy of the Landscape
The Autonomy of Phusis
The Autonomy of Creation
The Autonomy of Nature
The Autonomy of Culture
The Autonomy of Dualism
The Autonomy of Worlds
II. The Structures of Experience
4. The Schemas of Practice
Structures and Relations
Understanding the Familiar
Schematisms
Differentiation, Stabilization, Analogies
Modes of Identifi cation and Modes of Relation
The Other Is an “I”
III. The Dispositions of Being
6. Animism Restored
Forms and Behavior Patterns
The Variations of Metamorphosis
Animism and Perspectivism
7. Totemism as an Ontology
Dreaming
An Australian Inventory
The Semantics of Taxonomies
Varieties of Hybrids
A Return to Algonquin Totems
8. The Certainties of Naturalism
An Irreducible Humanity?
Animal Cultures and Languages?
Mindless Humans?
The Rights of Nature?
9. The Dizzying Prospects of Analogy
The Chain of Being
A Mexican Ontology
Echoes of Africa
Pairings, Hierarchy, and Sacrifi ce
10. Terms, Relations, Categories
Encompassments and Symmetries
Differences, Resemblances, Classifi cations
IV. The Ways of the World
11. The Institution of Collectives
A Collective for Every Species
Asocial Nature and Exclusive Societies
Hybrid Collectives That Are Both Different and Complementary
A Mixed Collective That Is Both Inclusive and Hierarchical
12. Metaphysics of Morals
An Invasive Self
The Thinking Reed
Representing a Collective
The Signature of Things
V. An Ecology of Relations
13. Forms of Attachment
Giving, Taking, Exchanging
Producing, Protecting, Transmitting
14. The Traffic of Souls
Predators and Prey
The Symmetry of Obligations
The Togetherness of Sharing
The Ethos of Collectives
15. Histories of Structures
From Caribou- Man to Lord Bull
Hunting, Taming, Domesticating
The Genesis of Change
Epilogue: The Spectrum of Possibilities
Notes
Bibliography
Index
