In Amazonia (eBook)

A Natural History

Hugh Raffles (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2014
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-6527-7 (ISBN)

Infos

RafflesHugh:

Hugh Raffles is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Hugh Raffles is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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The Amazon is not what it seems. As Hugh Raffles shows us in this captivating and innovative book, the world's last great wilderness has been transformed again and again by human activity. In Amazonia brings to life an Amazon whose allure and reality lie as much, or more, in what people have made of it as in what nature has wrought. It casts new light on centuries of encounter while describing the dramatic remaking of a sweeping landscape by residents of one small community in the Brazilian Amazon. Combining richly textured ethnographic research and lively historical analysis, Raffles weaves a fascinating story that changes our understanding of this region and challenges us to rethink what we mean by "e;nature."e; Raffles draws from a wide range of material to demonstrate--in contrast to the tendency to downplay human agency in the Amazon--that the region is an outcome of the intimately intertwined histories of humans and nonhumans. He moves between a detailed narrative that analyzes the production of scientific knowledge about Amazonia over the centuries and an absorbing account of the extraordinary transformations to the fluvial landscape carried out over the past forty years by the inhabitants of Igarape Guariba, four hours downstream from the nearest city. Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, and vividly illustrated, the book introduces a diverse range of characters--from sixteenth-century explorers and their native rivals to nineteenth-century naturalists and contemporary ecologists, logging company executives, and river-traders. A natural history of a different kind, In Amazonia shows how humans, animals, rivers, and forests all participate in the making of a region that remains today at the center of debates in environmental politics.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.9.2014
• Zusatzinfo: 23 halftones. 3 maps.
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Natur / Ökologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: Agriculture • Alfred Russel Wallace • Amazons • Ambivalence • American Council of Learned Societies • Amita Baviskar • Ann Laura Stoler • Arthur Barlowe • biodiversity • biologist • Biology • Bruno Latour • Cabanagem • caboclo • Calculation • Cambridge University Press • carambola • Career • Cartography • cattle • Collecting • Colonialism • Cultural Capital • Darwinism • debt • disaster • Doreen Massey (geographer) • Dry season • Ecology • Economic Botany • ecosystem • engraving • Entomology • environmental determinism • E. P. Thompson • estuary • Ethnology • Everyday life • exploration • floodplain • forestry • Generosity • Gratitude • Handbook • Harvard University Press • Henry Walter Bates • hyperbole • Indigenous peoples • indigenous peoples in brazil • insect • Julian Steward • Logging • Manaus • Michael Watts • Mikhail Bakhtin • Modernity • narrative • National Science Foundation • Natural History • Natural Philosophy • Nature and culture • non-human • North Carolina Museum of Art • Oxbridge • pasture • Peter Kropotkin • Political Economy • Politics • Pre-Columbian era • Ranch • reductionism • Retail • rhetoric • river • Routledge • Royal Geographical Society • sensibility • slash-and-burn • Slavery • Social Science • Social Theory • South America • Stephen Greenblatt • Symbolic Capital • Technology • Terra Preta • the Guianas • The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Theodor de Bry • Travels (book) • Uncertainty • University of California Press • University of Delhi • Vegetation • Viega • Walter Benjamin • Wealth • Writing • Yale University • Zoology
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-6527-1 / 1400865271
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-6527-7 / 9781400865277