Philippe Descola: Beyond Nature and Culture (2005–)

“Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture?

Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a new framework, the “four ontologies”— animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature.”

First published as Par-delà nature et culture, Gallimard, Paris, 2005.

Translated by Janet Lloyd
Foreword by Marshall Sahlins
Publisher University of Chicago Press, 2013
ISBN 0226144453, 9780226144450
xxii+463 pages

Reviews: David Berliner (Anthropological Quarterly, 2010), Des Fitzgerald (Somatosphere, 2013), Gildas Salmon & Pierre Charbonnier (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2014), Céline Grandjou (Humanimalia, 2014), Tim Frandy (Journal of Folklore Research, 2014), Michael W. Scott (Anthropology of This Century, 2014), Voytek Lapinski (n.d.).

Book symposium: Lenclud, Helmreich, Feuchtwang, Kapferer, Toren, Lambek, Coelho de Souza, Descola (Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2014, pp 363-443).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF
ARG

More from Descola.

Henri Lefebvre: Right to the City (1968–) [FR, ES, EN, BR-PT]

Lefebvre’s highly polemical book on the city was completed in 1967 to commemorate the centenary of the publication of Marx’s Das Kapital, and came out before the events of 1968.

David Harvey wrote about its central thesis: “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends upon the exercise of a collective power to reshape the processes of urbanization. The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is … one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.” (Source)

First published in book form as Le droit à la ville, Anthropos, Paris, 1968.

English edition
Translated and Introduced by Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas
Chapter in Writings on Cities
Publisher Blackwell, 1996
ISBN 0631191879
pages 61-181

Wikipedia (EN)

Commentary: Notbored.org (2006).

Le droit à la ville (French, one chapter only, 1967)
El derecho a la ciudad (Spanish, trans. J. Gonzalez-Pueyo, 4th ed., 1969/1978, 38 MB)
Right to the City, in Writings on Cities (English, trans. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas, 1996, ARG)
O direito à cidade (Brazilian Portuguese, trans. Rubens Eduardo Frias, 5th ed., 2001/2008, 5 MB)

For more from Lefebvre see Monoskop wiki.

Adrian Frutiger: Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning (1978–) [EN, FR, BR-PT]

“Universally-recognized signs and symbols have always been among the most important elements of communication. By why is it that certain configurations of dot and line, and certain primary shapes, are perceived and remembered more easily than others? Taking the six faces of dice as his starting point, Frutiger writes about signs and symbols in general and the development of writing in particular. Throughout, he relates the basic principles and components of graphics to a wide range of historical, physical, linguistic and practical considerations. He embraces everything from Egyptian hieroglyphics to modern company logos in his intriguing analysis of the way that humans have always tried to express thought and communication through graphic means. This standard work is aimed at all those concerned with graphics, design, ornament and communication in general.”

Originally published as Der Mensch und seine Zeichen, 3 vols., Weiss Verlag, Dreieich, 1978-81.

English edition
Translated by Andrew Bluhm
Publisher Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1989
ISBN 0442239181
360 pages

WorldCat (EN)

Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning (English, trans. Andrew Bluhm, 1989, low res, 39 MB)
L’Homme et ses signes: signes, symboles, signaux (French, trans. Danielle Perret, 2nd ed., 1999/2014, 5 MB)
Sinais e símbolos: desenho, projeto e significado (BR-Portuguese, trans. Karina Jannini, 2nd ed., 1999/2007, 59 MB, added 2016-8-3)

See also Frutiger’s Type Sign Symbol, 1980.