In the Society of Nature

A study of the Achuar Indians of the Upper Amazon and their relationship with their environment.

The author documents the Achuar Indians of the Upper Amazon knowledge of the environment, and explains how it is interwoven with cosmological ideas that endow nature with the characteristics of society.The Achuar Indians live in the remote forest reaches of the Upper Amazon and have developed sophisticated strategies of resource management. Philippe Descola, who has gathered material over several years of fieldwork, documents their rich knowledge of the environment. He explains how this technical knowledge of the increasingly threatened Amazonian ecosystems is interwoven with cosmological ideas that endow nature with the characteristics of society. Combining a symbolist approach with an ecological analysis, the book contributes a new theory of the social construction of nature.