Redefining Nature

Ecology, Culture and Domestication

By: Roy Ellen (Editor), Katsuyoshi Fukui (Editor)

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Paperback | 1 April 1996 | Edition Number 1

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692 Pages

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21.6 x 13.8 x 3.53

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- 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.

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'The book is the result of a symposium held in Kyoto and Atami during March 1992. Consequently several of the authors summarize mostly their own work [...]. Since a large portion of these publications by the Japanese authors were originally in Japanese, the book also makes the current research in the field of ethnobiology in Japan available to European and American readers. [...] The book is a very interesting and multi-facet contribution to ethnobiology, and cultural anthropology/ethnology and is of interest to all scholars concerned with the nature/culture debate, with cognitive anthropology, and with biological (including ecological) approaches in the field.' Anthropos 'Redefining Nature therefore provides a thorough examination of issues that are central to environmental anthroplogy and makes a substantial contribution to the debates on them...Nature is a thoughtful, in-depth attempt to reconcile cultural and cognitive issues and their agency in the co-evolution of humans and other species. Its detailed and wide-ranging case-studies underscore the complexities of this interaction and provide the reader with some genuine insights into the dynamics of the relationship between humans and the environment.' Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO)

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