Nature and society : anthropological perspectives / / edited by Philippe Descola and Gsli Plsson

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910170976803321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: London ; ; New York, : Routledge, 1996
• ISBN: 1-134-82715-6; 0-203-45956-3; 1-134-82716-4; 1-280-06750-0; 0-203-45106-6
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (321 p.)
• Collana: European Association of Social Anthropologists
• Altri autori (Persone): DescolaPhilippe; Gisli Palsson <1949->
• Disciplina: 304.2
• Soggetti: Nature - Effect of human beings on; Human ecology; Ethnology; Anthropology
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: " ... revised versions of papers that were presented at the Third Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists in Oslo in June 1994." -- Editor's preface.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
• Nota di contenuto: Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Editors' preface; 1 Introduction; Part I Contested domains and boundaries; 2 The optimal forager and economic man; 3 Ecology as semiotics: outlines of a contextualist paradigm for human ecology; 4 Human-environmental relations: orientalism, paternalism and communalism; 5 Constructing natures: symbolic ecology and social practice; 6 The cognitive geometry of nature: a contextual approach; Part II Sociologies of nature; 7 Nature in culture or culture in nature? Chewong ideas of 'humans' and other species; 8 Blowpipes and spears: the social significance of Huaorani technological choices9 Nature, culture, magic, science: on meta-languages for comparison in cultural ecology; 10 The cosmic food web: human-nature relatedness in the Northwest Amazon; 11 Enraged ; hunters: the domain of the wild in north-western Europe; Part III Nature, society and artefact; 12 When timber grows wild: the desocialisation of Japanese mountain forests; 13 Xenotransplantation and transgenesis: im-moral stories about human-animal relations in the West; 14 The reproduction of nature in contemporary high-energy physics; 15 New tools for conviviality: society and biotechnologyName index; Subject index
• Sommario/riassunto: The contributors to this book focus on the relationship between nature and society from a variety of theoretical and ethnographic perspectives. Their work draws upon recent developments in social theory, biology, ethnobiology, epistemology, sociology of science, and a wide array of ethnographic case studies -- from Amazonia, the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, the Mollucan Islands, rural comunities from Japan and north-west Europe, urban Greece, and laboratories of molecular biology and high-energy physics. The discussion is divided into three parts, emphasising the problems posed by the nature-cul