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Cannibal Metaphysics
The iconoclastic Brazilian anthropologist and theoretician Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, well known in his discipline for helping initiate its \"ontological turn,\" offers a vision of anthropology as \"the practice of the permanent decolonization of thought.\" After showing that Amazonian and other Amerindian groups inhabit a radically different conceptual universe than ours-in which nature and culture, human and nonhuman, subject and object are conceived in terms that reverse our own-he presents the case for anthropology as the study of such \"other\" metaphysical schemes, and as the corresponding critique of the concepts imposed on them by the human sciences. Along the way, he spells out the consequences of this anthropology for thinking in general via a major reassessment of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, arguments for the continued relevance of Deleuze and Guattari, dialogues with the work of Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Marilyn Strathern, and inventive treatments of problems of ontology, translation, and transformation. Bold, unexpected, and profound,Cannibal Metaphysicsis one of the chief works marking anthropology's current return to the theoretical center stage.
eBook
We are all cannibals and other essays
On Christmas Eve 1951, Santa Claus was hanged and then publicly burned outside of the Cathedral of Dijon in France. That same decade, ethnologists began to study the indigenous cultures of central New Guinea, and found men and women affectionately consuming the flesh of the ones they loved. \"Everyone calls what is not their own custom barbarism,\" said Montaigne. In these essays, Claude Lévi-Strauss shows us behavior that is bizarre, shocking, and even revolting to outsiders but consistent with a people's culture and context.
These essays relate meat eating to cannibalism, female circumcision to medically assisted reproduction, and mythic thought to scientific thought. They explore practices of incest and patriarchy, nature worship versus man-made material obsessions, the perceived threat of art in various cultures, and the innovations and limitations of secular thought. Lévi-Strauss measures the short distance between \"complex\" and \"primitive\" societies and finds a shared madness in the ways we enact myth, ritual, and custom. Yet he also locates a pure and persistent ethics that connects the center of Western civilization to far-flung societies and forces a reckoning with outmoded ideas of morality and reason.
eBook
The rituals and customs of the Spring Festival and the thinking structure of ancient Chinese people
On December 4, 2024, the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) was officially inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, signifying international recognition of its cultural value. As the most grand, important, and ceremonious traditional festival in China, the Spring Festival embodies the values, ethics, thinking patterns, behavioral norms, and aesthetic tastes of the Chinese nation, serving as a vital carrier of its culture. This study employs structural analysis to interpret how the conceptual origins of “Yuandan” (Chinese New Year’s Day, now celebrated as the Spring Festival), the series of related folk activities, and the symbolic meanings of traditional Chinese New Year foods together demonstrate the dualistic and dynamic thinking structure centered on “the harmony of Yin and Yang.” Furthermore, by examining sacrificial customs during the Spring Festival such as ancestor worship, deity veneration, and the welcoming of the Wulu Shen (Five-Road Wealth Deities), this study reveals the triadic (Sancai) and pentadic (Wuxing) thinking patterns in ancient Chinese thought. The author posits that these underlying cognitive frameworks and core concepts are manifested across diverse cultural phenomena, including Spring Festival rituals and customs. Therefore, a profound understanding of traditional Chinese culture requires grasping these foundational cognitive frameworks and conceptual cores, which in turn enables a more comprehensive interpretation of the culture and its people.
Journal Article
A way out of the predicament of social sciences in the 20th century: a dialogue with Clifford Geertz’s essay “Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture”(Part II)
Clifford Geertz’s essay, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture” comprehensively explored the basic problems encountered in the theoretical efforts of 20th century social sciences. As a response to his reflection, this paper tries to reveal the methodological roots of the predicament of interpretive anthropology and all social sciences, through an epistemological analysis of social science. In addition, with the Theory of Belief as an analytical tool, it also tries to offer a solution to one of the classic predicaments in social sciences: “what is ethnography”.
Journal Article
Tim Ingold and Object-Oriented Anthropology
Tim Ingold, while extending the radical undertaking of vitalism, with its Nietzschean matrix, puts the decentering undertaken by this philosophical tradition on a more solid foundation, opening up a new space of interobjective relations. Instead of an epistemic plunge into human categories, the goal is to move towards a broader ontological space, including other sites of meaning, such as chairs, spirits, animals, baskets, and many others. Unlike more classical anthropology, with its well-delimited
Anthropos
as an inevitable transcendental horizon, Ingold suggests a world where humans are not protagonists, but rather provisional negotiators within a large mesh of subjectless experiences. The model proposed in this essay distances itself from the plane of (neo)-Kantian speculation, converting its contours into something less orthodox by making room for a possible Object-Oriented Anthropology (O.O.A).
Journal Article
The contributions of historical geography research in the twentieth century to the concept of “Chinese nation”
The Chinese nation has evolved through history and is inextricably linked with geographical factors. Since the inception of the concept of “Chinese nation” in the twentieth century, Chinese scholars have made significant contributions to understanding this concept from a historical geography perspective. This paper undertakes an examination and discussion of these contributions, highlighting three main aspects in which Chinese scholars in the twentieth century have significantly enhanced the concept of “Chinese nation” from a historical geography perspective: firstly, escaping the trap of “China Proper” and comprehensively understanding the Chinese nation from a geographical perspective; secondly, breaking the spatial barrier set up by the Great Wall, endowing the Chinese nation with a complete geographical space; thirdly,
The Historical Atlas of China
clarifying the connection between historical China and modern China, providing a comprehensive geographical basis for understanding the formation and development of the Chinese nation. The paper, contextualized within the historical backdrop, provides an analysis and discourse on these three aspects, indicating that the contributions of scholars in the twentieth century were instrumental in refining the concept of the Chinese nation from a historical geography perspective, illustrating the inseparable connection between nation and geography. Only through the organic integration of history, nation, and geography can we fully grasp the historical trajectory and geographical foundation of the Chinese nation.
Journal Article