The Composition of Worlds

In this autobiographical reflection, the distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola looks back on his intellectual career and examines both the central themes of his work and the key questions that have shaped anthropological debates over the past forty years.

A student of Lévi-Strauss, Descola conducted ethnographic research among the Achuar of the upper Amazon in the late 1970s, focusing on how native societies relate to their environment. In this book he sheds fresh light on the evolution of his thinking from structuralism to an anthropology beyond the human, on the critique of the modern separation between nature and society, and above all on the genesis and scope of his major work Beyond Nature and Culture. This synthesis of the ways in which humans view their relationships with non-humans proposes four schemas for the ‘composition of worlds’ (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) that characterize our ways of inhabiting the earth.

Presented in the form of an extended conversation with Pierre Charbonnier, this book is both a lucid introduction to the work of one of the most original anthropologists writing today and an impassioned plea for ontologies that are more accommodating of the diversity of beings. Foreword to the English edition

I. A taste for inquiry

Philosophical journeys

Discovering the mind, discovering the world

Among the tribe of anthropologists

Entering the pantheon

II. An Amazonian sojourn and the challenges of ethnography

The world of the forest

Living and working among the Achuar

The trial of return

III. The diversity of natures

The four corners of the world

Methodological questions

Conceptual reform

Forms of figuration

IV. The contemporary world in the light of anthropology

We Moderns

From anthropology to ecology

Political anthropology

The museum

Bibliography

Notes

Index “Charbonnier’s questions have engendered exquisite insights into the essence of Descola’s anthropology. A very welcome translation reveals the prescience with which, long ago, this eminent thinker scaled up his concerns to address some of today’s most urgent problems.”
Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

“What a privilege, to accompany this brilliant anthropologist as he develops and reflects on his meta-ontology against the background of the ethnographic vocation, the Amazonian forest, structuralism, and the distinctiveness of anthropology in France! An instant classic, this exceptionally lucid work will be indispensable for teaching.”
Michael Lambek, University of Toronto Philippe Descola is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the Collège de France and Director of Studies at EHESS, Paris.