The Ecology of Others

by Philippe Descola, Geneviève Godbout (Translator), Benjamin P. Luley (Translator)

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this groundbreaking work, renowned anthropologist Philippe Descola seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure from the anthropocentric model and its rigid dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct phenomena. In its stead, Descola proposes a radical new worldview, in which beings and objects, human and nonhuman, are understood through the complex relationships that they possess with one another. 
The Ecology of Others presents a compelling challenge to anthropologists, ecologists, and environmental studies scholars to rethink the way we conceive of humans, objects, and the environment. Thought-provoking and engagingly written, it will be required reading for all those interested in moving beyond the moving beyond the confines of this fascinating debate. 

Genres: Anthropology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Ecology, Native American, Environment

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although a tiny book, this hits hard.

Through the field of anthropology, Descola notes the duality of nature and culture in ecology, anthropology and biology. Hard anthropology was to establish the unity of humankind. Social anthropology is meant to explain the variation within unity. This invariant cut aligns these sciences by pre-supposing an etic paradigm reflexive of a continuum of mind-body duality.

Thus, cultural is either natured by material geography or material geography is natured by culture. Either way, nature becomes a container for the limits of the study of cultural variation, either as the generator or as the mirror.

In this way, the very study of anthropology imposes a search for an invariant ontology within all cultures. For the former (cultural materialism) we look for a master generator of material reality on a soft cultural milieu. On the latter (like the idealism of Claude Levi-Strauss) we seek a master grammar of cultural semiology. Descola points out that this structuration imposes a transcendental cut that acts as a transducer. We eliminate the internal agency of the cultures that are examined, even if the ethnography is emic in search of an invariant generator that would match the hard anthropological unity that limits the study of cultural anthropology.

As a result, this duality misses the deeper implication that all cultural ageis is expressive of a human agency that operates internal to a culture, one that serves only to reproduce itself as humans reproduce ourselves. Our desire to standardize all studies is also a desire to impose our form of agency (power) on others. His suggestion then, is to study these fields as separate cuts on their own, without looking for a hard biology/material/geography or a hard idealism to calibrate variance to. In this way, he suggests we look for rules within each culture to as determining their own values and topography. In essence, he seeks the fragmentation of the field further, to find the character of each, risking our inability to speak to one another, but at the same time, discarding the value judgement we make when we attempt to normalize the difference of the other, through generative theory.

In some ways, this is expressive of a schizoanalysis (from Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze), to make a hetergeneology of anthropology rather than following a structuralist superstructure-account. While Descola does not go on this bend, or connect explicitly with these thinkers, his suggestion is very much to quantize anthropology, to atomize according to agency, rather than atomizing to qualities based on a supra-transcendental field of a virtual cultural generator. I do look forward to reading more of his work.

[Joana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bastante esclarecedor sobre aquela que é uma das maiores problemáticas epistemológicas na antropologia, a relação entre humanos e natureza, dando uma profundidade detalhada de alguns debates por exemplo entre Lévi-Strauss e Marvin Harris, entre os estruralistas e os materialistas, e ideias à volta daquela que deve ser a perspectiva mais neutra e simétrica possível para aprender as formas como diferentes organismos habitam o mundo.

[Jennifer J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

In which Descola cites The Golden Bough as relevant, calls Malinowski a "too good ethnographer," discovers the ontological turn about 30 years after the fact, and then still manages to offend with perpetual, odor-blind reference to "non-moderns." Nevertheless intelligent and playful, this is a fine contribution to that social scientific literature in which white men from Western Europe and/or Chicago and nearing retirement continue to cite only each other--sometimes with passionate abandon.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel kind of disappointed, honestly. I usually like Descola, even if sometimes he has a master's ability to bore me... but this text was plainly unnecessary. I've read some of his books, watched him on YouTube, and at this point I just feel like he's going over and over the same topic. Of course, in this tiny book he uses a more distinguished language, but it doesn't really make a difference. I was expecting a treaty on the Other as a concept, and I found myself once again on the Great Divide and a criticism to anthropology. Stop it, Philippe.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

"At one end of the spectrum, some will affirm that culture is a product of nature, a convenient umbrella term under which one can gather pell-mell cognitive universals, genetic determinations, physiological needs, or geographical constraints. At the opposite end, others will forcefully claim that, if left to itself, nature is always mute, even unknowable in itself; that it comes into existence as a relevant reality only when translated into the signs and symbols that culture attaches to it.:

[Bryn Hammond]

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/b...

[Niall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anthropology beyond dualism. Lecture delivered to a non-specialist, captive audience.