Cet article discute la signification du perspectivisme amerindien, c'est-a-dire les idees qui concernent la facon dont les humains, les animaux et les esprits se percoivent eux-memes et se percoivent les uns les autres dans les cosmologies amerindiennes. Ces idees suggerent la possibilite de redefinir les categories classiques de nature, culture et supernature sur la base des concepts de perspective ou de point de vue. L'article soutient plus particulierement que l'antinomie entre deux caracterisations de la pensee indigene - d'une part l'ethnocentrisme selon lequel les attributs de l'humanite seraient refuses aux humains appartenant a d'autres groupes, et d'autre part l'animisme, qui appliquerait ces qualites humaines par extension a des etres appartenant a d'autres especes - peut etre resolue si l'on considere la difference entre les aspects spirituels et corporels des etres.

Additional excerpts

Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters

Cosmological deixis and amerindian perspectivism

List of illustrations Preface 1. The relevance of archaeological history 2. Classical archaeology and antiquarianism 3. The beginnings of scientific archaeology 4. The imperial synthesis 5. Culture-historical archaeology 6. Soviet archaeology 7. Functionalism in Western archaeology 8. Neo-evolutionism and the New Archaeology 9. The explanation of diversity 10. Archaeology and its social context Bibliographical essay References Index.

A History of Archaeological Thought

This paper takes a critical look at the project of "integrating" traditional knowledge and science. The project of integration has been and continues to be the cornerstone of efforts to involve northern aboriginal peoples in processes of resource management and environmental impact assessment over the past 15 years. The idea of integration, however, contains the implicit assumption that the cultural beliefs and practices referred to as "traditional knowledge" con- form to western conceptions about "knowledge." It takes for granted existing power relations be- tween aboriginal people and the state by assuming that traditional knowledge is simply a new form of "data" to be incorporated into existing management bureaucracies and acted upon by scientists and resource managers. As a result, aboriginal people have been forced to express themselves in ways that conform to the institutions and practices of state management rather than to their own beliefs, values, and practices. And, since it is scientists and resource man- agers, rather than aboriginal hunters and trappers, who will be using this new "integrated" knowledge, the project of integration actually serves to concentrate power in administrative centers, rather than in the hands of aboriginal people.

background

The politics of tek: power and the "integration" of knowledge

Successor to Claude Levi-Strauss at the College de France, Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture - as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth - is often seen as essentially different than nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the "four ontologies" - animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism - to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers nothing short of a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh.

/pdf/beyond-nature-and-culture-4yakeshn06.pdf

Beyond Nature and Culture

Objective: To identify issues and concepts to guide the development of culturally appropriate mental health promotion strategies with Aboriginal populations and communities in Canada.Methods: We review recent literature examining the links between the history of colonialism and government interventions (including the residential school system, out-adoption, and centralised bureaucratic control) and the mental health of Canadian Aboriginal peoples.Results: There are high rates of social problems, demoralisation, depression, substance abuse, suicide and other mental health problems in many, though not all, Aboriginal communities. Although direct causal links are difficult to demonstrate with quantitative methods, there is clear and compelling evidence that the long history of cultural oppression and marginalisation has contributed to the high levels of mental health problems found in many communities. There is evidence that strengthening ethnocultural identity, community integration and political empowermen...

http://web.mnstate.edu/robertsb/306/Healing%20traditions%20culture,community%20and%20mental%20health%20promotion%20with%20Canadian%20Aboriginal%20Peoples.pdf

Bringing Home Animals: Religious Ideology and Mode of Production of the Mistassini Cree Hunters

Citations

Cosmological deixis and amerindian perspectivism

A History of Archaeological Thought

The politics of tek: power and the "integration" of knowledge

Beyond Nature and Culture

Healing traditions: culture, community and mental health promotion with Canadian Aboriginal peoples

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