Philippe Descola

Philippe Descola , born in 1949 with Paris, is a Anthropologue French. Philippe Descola devotes himself to the study of the modes of socialization of the nature, from which it draws a comparative anthropological analysis. Its searchs for ground brought it in Amazonia, at Jivaros Achuar. He is married with Anne-Christine Taylor, research director at the CNRS, which is detached since February 2005 with the museum of the Branly quay, where she directs the department of research and teaching.

Biography

Philippe Descola is a former student of the National university of Saint-Cloud. He followed studies of philosophy and ethnology, in particular with the practical École of the high studies (6th section), where he supported a thesis directed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, which announces the premises of a new research field: the comparative anthropology of the modes of socialization of nature.

A few years later, it is named with the École of the High Studies in Social sciences, as university lecturer then as director of studies. In June 2000, it obtains the pulpit of Anthropologie of nature to the Collège de France. In June 1996, Philippe Descola receives the money medal of CNRS for his work on the uses and knowledge of nature in the tribal companies.

Author of several works, he is today director of the laboratory of social anthropology (L.A.S.) and Professor at the Collège de France.

Research orientations

In its research, he intends to exceed the dualism which opposes natural and culture by showing that nature is itself a social production, and that the three modes of identification which he distinguished (totemism, animism and naturalism, that he redefined) have an anthropocentric common reference frame extremely. Thus, the natural opposition/culture does not make any more direction, and he proposes under the terms of these proposals to constitute what he calls a “ecology of the relations”.

It is about a nondualistic anthropology (which does not separate in two distinct ontological fields the human ones and thehuman ones) which is interested in the relations between human and not-human.

Descola distinguishes four “modes from identification” which are the Totémisme, the Animisme, the analogism and the naturalism.

The naturalism, says it, it is “simply the belief which nature exists, in other words that certain entities owe their existence and their development with a foreign principle with the effects of the human will. Typical of Western cosmologies since Plato and Aristote, the naturalism produces a specific ontological field, a place of order or need where nothing occurs without a cause, which this cause is referred to the transcendent authority or which it is immanente with the texture of the world. Insofar as the naturalism is the guiding principle of our own cosmology and that it soaks our common direction and our scientific principle, it became for us one presupposed to some extent “natural” which structure our epistemology and in particular our perception of the other modes of identification”. I.e. our naturalism determines our point of view, our glance on the others and on the world.

The modes of identification are manners of defining borders between oneself and others. If our company is naturalist, others are animists or totemists.

Thus, the Animisme characterizes the companies for which the social attributes of not-human make it possible to categorize relations; thehuman ones are the terms of a relation.

The Totémisme characterizes the companies for which discontinuities between not-human make it possible to think those enter the human ones; for these companies thehuman ones are like signs.

The analogism, as for him is characterized by a discontinuity of interiorities and physicalities of human and the nonhuman ones. The companies where the analogism is present, will be characterized by strongly dualistic systems.

Only the company naturalist (Western) produced this border between oneself and others through the idea of “nature”. Nature would be what does not concern the culture, which does not concern the distinctive features of the mankind, and of the human knowledge and know-how. This Western distinction, recent, result of a particular history are non-existent in certain companies.

Moreover, one can quote like research topics:

Ethnology of the Amerindian companies,
comparative Anthropology of the modes of socialization of nature,
Epistemology and philosophy of social sciences,
cognitive Anthropology,
Ecology symbolic system.

Moreover, it currently coordinates within EHESS the group of research on the reasons of the practice: invariants, universals, diversity .

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