The Spears of Twilight

Life and Death in the Amazon Jungle

Philippe Descola

paperback

$24.95

"A massive classic of modern anthropology...that reads better than most fiction" (The Guardian, London). A Choice Ourstanding Academic Book.
Philippe Descola writes in the tradition of Tristes Tropiques. . . [with] a similar ambitious intellect and elegance of style. . . [However], Descola diverges from the global pessimism of Tristes Tropiques and recognizes a more ambivalent process of cultural invention as well as loss.
-- New York Times Book Review
The Spears of Twilight chronicles the extraordinary experiences of Philippe Descola, Student of Claude Lévi-Strauss, among the legendary Achuar Indians of South America.  Combining ethnographic observation, travelogue, and personal meditation, The Spears of Twilight is an engrossing account of the resilient and complex Achuar people, as well as an intimate and often poetic account of Descola's experiences among them.

Philippe Descola was born in Paris in 1949.  He obtained a master's degree in philosophy before studying anthropology under the supervision of Claude Lévi-Strauss.  In 1983, he received his doctorate from the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes.  He has lectured at the universities of Cambridge, Oslo, Vienna, São Paulo, Quito, and Oxford, among others.  He has published extensively on cultural ecology, contributing an original approach to the study of the social construction of nature.  He is presently a professor of anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Anthropology
Spring 1998
paperback
6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 464 pages
978-1-56584-438-4

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