The Cultural Relations of Classification: An Analysis of Nuaulu Animal Categories from Central Seram (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)
(Book #91 in the Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology Series)
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Book Overview
Ethnobiology is concerned with the social and cultural transformation of biological knowledge. Roy Ellen, who has worked among the Nuaulu people of eastern Indonesia for more than twenty years, argues here that ethnobiology is a key theoretical area of anthropological enquiry, because it relies on accessible ethnography to explain the interrelationship between collective representations and cognitive processes. He demonstrates this through a detailed analysis of Nuaulu classification of animal knowledge: the relationship between animal words and animal categories; the construction of different categories and their relationship to one another, and the actual language of classification. The classifications are shown to be context-bound and socially embedded, of practical importance to their users, and to reflect an interaction between culture, cognitive processes and the material world. This is an innovative study, which takes our understanding beyond the taxonomic abstraction characteristic of earlier work in the field.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0521025737
ISBN13:9780521025737
Release Date:April 2006
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Length:344 Pages
Weight:1.20 lbs.
Dimensions:0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"
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