The Composition of Worlds

In this autobiographical reflection, the distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola looks back on his intellectual career and examines both the central themes of his work and the key questions that have shaped anthropological debates over the past forty years.

A student of Lévi-Strauss, Descola conducted ethnographic research among the Achuar of the upper Amazon in the late 1970s, focusing on how native societies relate to their environment. In this book he sheds fresh light on the evolution of his thinking from structuralism to an anthropology beyond the human, on the critique of the modern separation between nature and society, and above all on the genesis and scope of his major work Beyond Nature and Culture. This synthesis of the ways in which humans view their relationships with non-humans proposes four schemas for the ‘composition of worlds’ (animism, naturalism, totemism, analogism) that characterize our ways of inhabiting the earth.

Presented in the form of an extended conversation with Pierre Charbonnier, this book is both a lucid introduction to the work of one of the most original anthropologists writing today and an impassioned plea for ontologies that are more accommodating of the diversity of bei