Social Theorists
Philippe Descola
Anthropology
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Philippe Descola is a French anthropologist, born in 1949, whose scholarly reputation grew out of fieldwork among the Achuar people of Ecuador's Amazon region from 1976 to 1978, conducted under the supervision of Claude Levi-Strauss. He is best known for proposing a framework of four ontologies, animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism, that challenges the Western distinction between nature and culture, developed across works including In the Society of Nature (1994), The Spears of Twilight (1996) and Beyond Nature and Culture (2005). From 2000 to 2019 he held the chair of anthropology at the College de France and has lectured at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Chicago and Princeton.
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Birth YearSourced to the subject's own account BirthplaceSourced to the subject's own account Defining ContributionSourced to the subject's own accountFramework of four ontologies (animism, totemism, analogism, naturalism) challenging the Western nature/culture divide 1 Notable WorkSourced to the subject's own accountBeyond Nature and Culture (2005) 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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Engaged with and was influenced by Bruno Latours work on nature and culture.
Conducted his Achuar fieldwork under the supervision of Claude Levi-Strauss.
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