Redefining Nature Ecology, Culture and Domestication

- 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.

List of Figures, List of Tables, List of Colour Plates, Preface, 1. Introduction, Part I: Nature as a Cultural Concept, 2. Human Dimensions in the Sound Universe, 3. A Poetics of Place: Ecological and Aesthetic Co-evolution in a Papua New Guinea Rainforest Community, 4. A Church Too Far Near a Bridge Oddly Placed: The Cultural Construction of the Norfolk Countryside, 5. Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment, 6. The Invention of Nature, 7. The Concept of Vital Energy Among Andean Pastoralists, Part II: Relations Between Specific Domesticates and Human Populations, 8. Glutinous-Endosperm Starch Food Culture Specific to Eastern and Southeastern Asia, 9. Creating Landrace Diversity: The Case of the Ari People and Ensete (Ensete ventricosum) in Ethiopia, 10. Human Cognition as a Product and Agent of Evolution, 11. Agrarian Creolization: The Ethnobiology, History, Culture and Politics of West African Rice, 12. Co-evolution Between Humans and Domesticates: The Cultural Selection of Animal Coat-Colour Diversity Among the Bodi, 13. Domestic Animal as Serf: Ideologies of Nature in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 14. Crops, Techniques, and Affordances, 15. Domesticatory Relationships of People, Plants and Animals, Part III: Nature, Co-evolution and the Problem of Cultural Adaptation, 16. The Co-existence of Man and Nature in the African Rain Forest, 17. Image and Reality at Sea: Fish and Cognitive Mapping in Carolinean Navigational Knowledge, 18. Long-term Adaptation of the Gidra-Speaking Population of Papua New Guinea, 19. Nurturing the Forest: Strategies of Native Amazonians, 20. Process Versus Product in Bomean Augury: A 'Ii'aditional Knowledge System's Solution to the Problem of Knowing, 21. Individual Strategy and Cultural Regulation in Nuaulu Hunting, Notes on Contributors, Index

Roy Ellen Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology,University of Kent at Canterbury Katsuyoshi Fukui Professor of Anthropology, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan