Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication (Explorations in Anthropology)

Description

- How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Page Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Colour Plates Preface 1 Introduction Part I Nature as a Cultural Concept 2 Human Dimensions in the Sound Universe 3 A Poetics of Place: Ecological and Aesthetic Co-evolution in a Papua New Guinea Rainforest Community 4 A Church Too Far Near a Bridge Oddly Placed: The Cultural Construction of the Norfolk Countryside 5 Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment 6 The Invention of Nature 7 The Concept of Vital Energy Among Andean Pastoralists Part II Relations Between Specific Domesticates and Human Populations 8 Glutinous-Endosperm Starch Food Culture Specific to Eastern and Southeastern Asia 9 Creating Landrace Diversity: The Case of the Ari People and Ensete (Ensete ventricosum) in Ethiopia 10 Human Cognition as a Product and Agent of Evolution 11 Agrarian Creolization: The Ethnobiology, History, Culture and Politics of West African Rice 12 Co-evolution Between Humans and Domesticates: The Cultural Selection of Animal Coat-Colour Diversity Among the Bodi 13 Domestic Animal as Serf: Ideologies of Nature in the Mediterranean and the Middle East 14 Crops, Techniques, and Affordances 15 Domesticatory Relationships of People, Plants and Animals Part III Nature, Co-evolution and the Problem of Cultural Adaptation 16 The Co-existence of Man and Nature in the African Rain Forest 17 Image and Reality at Sea: Fish and Cognitive Mapping in Carolinean Navigational Knowledge 18 Long-term Adaptation of the Gidra-Speaking Population of Papua New Guinea 19 Nurturing the Forest: Strategies of Native Amazonians 20 Process Versus Product in Bornean Augury: A Traditional Knowledge System's Solution to the Problem of Knowing 21 Individual Strategy and Cultural Regulation in Nuaulu Hunting Notes on Contributors Index Subject Index