Abstract

Philippe Descola is one of the most important living anthropologists. He is noted for his studies on the Achuar, a people of the Amazonian region. In this interview, he criticizes the dualistic opposition between nature and human society, which lies at the basis of anthropologist theories and the modern Western view of the world. He explains the four conceptions of the relationships between society, things and animals (the ontologies): animism, naturalism, totemism and analogism. At the end he suggests the different political practices and ideas linked to these conceptions.