Rhetorical antinomies and radical othering

Recent reflections on responses to an old paper concerning human-animal relations in Amazonia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7100663
AutoresStephen Hugh‐jone (autor de correspondencia), Stephen Hugh-Jone, Stephen Hugh‐Jones (University of Cambridge, autor de correspondencia), Stephen Hugh-Jones
Año2019
Volumen9
Número1
Páginas162-171
Fecha de publicación2019-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHau Journal of Ethnographic Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2049-1115 • E-ISSN: 2575-1433
EditorialHAU-N.E.T (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1086/703873
OpenAlexW2953553837
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas11

Notions of animals as social subjects held by Amazonian Indians have played a central role in anthropology’s ontological turn. Written as a reply to two critical responses to an earlier paper on human-animal relations, this essay explores the complex and often contradictory nature of ideas about animals and attitudes toward them held by both Amerindians and Euro-Americans. It suggests that, alongside mythology and shamanism, a further source of the Amerindians’ ideas about animals as social subjects lies in their everyday interactions with animals, something they share in common with Welsh sheep farmers. This fits uneasily with Philippe Descola’s contrast between animism and naturalism. The essay concludes by querying radical contrasts between “us” and “them.” Such contrasts may have their heuristic, comparative, and rhetorical uses but tend to oversimplify complex ethnographic reality

Aesthetics · Animism · Art · Epistemology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Linguistics · Literature · Mythology · Rhetorical question · Shamanism · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy