Beyond Nature and Culture

Born in Paris in 1949, Philippe Descola studied philosophy at the École normale supérieure, and anthropology at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes where he obtained his doctorate in 1983 under the supervision of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Most of his fieldwork was conducted among the Achuar Jivaro of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom he lived from 1976 to 1979 and where he has been returning ever since for shorter periods. Besides his field research, to which he has already devoted two books and many articles, Philippe Descola has published extensively on the anthropology of nature. He holds the chair of anthropology at the Collège de France where he heads the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie sociale and is also a professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.