Moving beyond naturalism and toward a new humanism
There is nothing universal in the nature/culture opposition in which anthropology originated, explains Philippe Descola in Par-delà nature et culture. Outside the West, this naturalist cosmology has never been relevant. While anthropology must aim at the universal, it must also ask whether it is not in fact time to free itself from this opposition, or, to put it in Descola’s words, whether anthropology of culture should not in fact « develop and couple up with an anthropology of nature ».