Philippe Descola

Philippe Descola, FBA (French: [fi.lip de.skɔ.la]; born 19 June 1949) is a French anthropologist noted for studies of the Achuar, one of several Jivaroan peoples, and for his contributions to anthropological theory.

Philippe Descola
Born	(1949-06-19) 19 June 1949 (age 76) France
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy/Social anthropology/Ethnology/Social science
Region	French philosophy
School	Structuralism
Main interests	Anthropology, Epistemology, Ethnology, Ontology
Notable ideas	The four ontologies (animism, totemism, analogism, naturalism)

Background

Descola first graduated in philosophy at the École normale supérieure de Lyon and later turned to anthropology, and became a student of Claude Lévi-Strauss (who had followed the same academic path).^[1]

His ethnographic studies in the Amazon region of Ecuador began in 1976 and were funded by CNRS. He lived with the Achuar from 1976 to 1978.^[2] His reputation largely arises from these studies. As a professor, he has been invited several times to the University of São Paulo, Beijing, Chicago, Montreal, London School of Economics, Cambridge, St. Petersburg, Buenos Aires, Gothenburg, Uppsala and Leuven. He has given lectures in over forty universities and academic institutions abroad, including the Beatrice Blackwood Lecture at Oxford, the George Lurcy Lecture at Chicago, the Munro Lecture at Edinburgh, the Radcliffe-Brown Lecture at the British Academy, the Clifford Geertz Memorial Lecture at Princeton, the Jensen Lecture at Frankfurt and the Victor Goldschmidt Lecture at Heidelberg. He has chaired the Société des Américanistes since 2002 and the scientific committee of the Fondation Fyssen from 2001 to 2009, as well as holding memberships in many other scientific committees.^[3] He has also be elected Honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and received in 2015 the honoris causa doctorate from the University of Montreal, Canada.^[4] From 2000 to 2019, he was chair of anthropology at the Collège de France.

From his 2005 book Beyond Nature and Culture he has turned towards a more theoretical anthropology, reviving his philosophical studies to propose a new anthropological epistemology, influenced by the sociological work of his friend Bruno Latour. This new and controversial trend has been dubbed the "narrow ontological turn",^[5] and has been the subject of a fashion effect between 2014 and 2017, particularly in France.

His wife, Anne-Christine Taylor, is an ethnologist, specialist of Amazonian peoples.

Distinctions

• 1996: CNRS Silver medal^[6]
• 1997: Knight of the French Order of Academic Palms^[7]
• 2004: French National Order of Merit^[8]
• 2006: Foreign Honorary Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[9]
• 2010: Elected as corresponding fellow of the British Academy^[10]
• 2010: Officer in the French Legion of Honor
• 2011: Édouard Bonnefous Prize from Academy of Moral and Political Sciences^[11]
• 2012: CNRS Gold Medal
• 2014: International Cosmos Prize
• 2016: Commander in the French Legion of Honor^[12]
• 2022: Winner of the Principality Prize ^[13]

Partial bibliography

• Descola, Philippe (1994). In the society of nature: a native ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 93. Nora Scott (trans.). Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. OCLC 27974392.
• Descola, Philippe (1996). The spears of twilight: life and death in the Amazon jungle. Janet Lloyd (trans.). New York: New Press. OCLC 34471521.
• Philippe Descola (December 2010). "Cognition, Perception and Worlding". Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 35 (3–4): 334–340. doi:10.1179/030801810X12772143410287. ISSN 0308-0188. Wikidata Q113836660.
• Descola, Philippe (2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. Janet Lloyd (trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 809911095.
• Les Formes du visible, Paris:Seuil, 2021, ISBN 978-2-02-147698-9

Further reading

Main article: List of important publications in anthropology