Books by Philippe Descola

Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, the author formulates a sophisticated new framework, the "four ontologies" - animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism - to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature.

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the division between nature and culture has been fundamental to Western thought. In this work, the author seeks to break down this divide, arguing for a departure from the anthropocentric model and its rigid dualistic conception of nature and culture as distinct phenomena.