The 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.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521574679
Number of pages: 396
Weight: 655 g
Dimensions: 228 x 151 x 26 mm
' … 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
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