Free Download How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

Free Download How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

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How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

Free Download How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

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Review

"What’s so welcome about Kohn’s approach is that he walks a tightrope with perfect balance: never losing sight of the unique aspects of being human, while refusing to force those aspects into separating us from the rest of the abundantly thinking world." (The Times Literary Supplement 2014-04-23)"How Forests Think” is an important book that provides a viable way for people educated in Western philosophy to approach indigenous animism without being credulous or inauthentic. It is refreshing to read a book of this intellectual caliber that takes Runa stories seriously and enters into dialogue with their claims using the tools of Western philosophy." (Anthropos 2016-04-20)

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From the Inside Flap

“A thinking forest is not a metaphor. Rooted in richly composted, other-than-symbolic semiotic worldings, this book teaches the reader how other-than-human encounters open possibilities for the emergent realization of worlds, not just worldviews. The semiotics in this well-wrought book are technical, worked, demanding, tuned to form and modality, alert to emergent properties, multinaturally and ethnographically precise. Thinking with the other-than-human world shows that what humans share with all living beings is the fact that we all live with and through signs. Life is constitutively semiotic. Besides all that, this book is a powerfully good read, one that changed my dreams and reworked my settled habits of interpretation, even the multispecies ones.” -- Donna Haraway, UC Santa Cruz “I can only call this thought-leaping in the most creative sense. A supreme artifact of the human skill in symbolic thinking, this work takes us to the other side of signification―itself doubly manifest in what gets noticed and not noticed―where it is possible to imagine all life as thoughtful life. It has been done hand in hand with the Runa. It could not have been done without the delicacy of Kohn’s ethnographic attentiveness. However far along the track you want to travel with Kohn, you will see that the anthropological landscape has already changed.” -- Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge “...A work of art... [and] an immensely refreshing alternative [for] philosophical anthropology.” ― Bruno Latour, Sciences Po “Radically innovative and original [and] beautifully written.” ― Anna Tsing, UC Santa Cruz “A remarkable aspect of [this book] is the complex – and often beautifully written – intermingling of subtle theoretical propositions with an even subtler ethnography.” ― Philippe Descola, Collège de France “[Kohn] means to attach us again to the world we thought our thinking removed us from by showing us that the world too thinks. … I know dancers and painters who would groove to Kohn's expansion of self and thought and living, and I want to see the dances, paintings, films, buildings that come out of dreaming over this book.” ― Bookslut Â

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Product details

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: University of California Press; First edition (August 10, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780520276116

ISBN-13: 978-0520276116

ASIN: 0520276116

Product Dimensions:

6 x 0.7 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.2 out of 5 stars

18 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#175,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

In 'How Forests Think,' the author, Eduardo Kohn, has undertaken an ambitious project, challenging anthropology to be inclusive of non-human life. To carry out this project, Mr. Kohn has employed 4 perspectives; ecology, colonial history, semiotics, and the Runa, an indigenous group in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador. He seeks to weave each perspective together symbiotically in order to gain a deeper understanding of the context the Runa participate in, and through the eyes of the Runa, a different viewpoint on how we can relate to the non-human world.For a reader, the challenge is to pull apart the strands of thought which he has weaved together, in order to contemplate his main ideas. There is much to contemplate which I doubt I can give justice to in this short review. Therefore, I will highlight a few key thoughts.The biodiversity of the rainforest is set up as the stage for this ethnography. Through the rainforest, Mr. Kohn contemplates the continuity and dynamics of form. Two examples he provides are the characteristics of amazon whirlpools, and the evolution of the walking stick insect. Insinuating that a certain geometry is inherent to both life and non-life, he feels it is this geometry that propels life forward into its manifold aspects. To me, it sounds like he is proposing something similar to the idea of the 'elan vital' introduced by Henri Bergson.The work of Charles S Peirce, a semiotician, provides Mr. Kohn with his next main theme. Semiotics is the study of meaning making, and is the study of signs. Mr. Kohn believes that not only is life inherently geometric, but it also is communicating and thinking to itself in it's diverse aspects through signs.This perspective also informs the Runa, a group of hunter gatherers that practice animism, or a belief that the natural world is animated by spirit. Interestingly enough, the Runa have been in contact with the outside world for centuries and have been acculturated to the extent that their beliefs bear the trappings of a cargo cult. Yet, despite the outward form of their belief system and practices there has been continuity of their animistic beliefs since they were first 'discovered.' Through the eyes of the Runa, a reader can get a picture of life and its forms as not only symbolic, but enchanted.Here, I think Mr. Kohn is attempting to say that we don't have to perceive life in the same way as the Runa or ascribe to their meaning-making system. Their symbol system merely provides a case study of what an anthropology beyond the human could look like. Yet, we do need to subscribe to a view that sees life as inherently symbolic, sentient, and made up of a multitude of selves that an anthropology beyond the human needs to recognize.He also seems to be saying that we need to recognize that life has some type of animating presence propelling it forward, whether we recognize this animating presence as spirit informing matter or some kind of intrinsic geometric sign system is up to us, but an anthropology beyond the human cannot move forward without adopting a viewpoint similar to this, because an anthropology beyond the human would have to honor life in all of its diverse aspects.As a reader it is challenging to mine the gems that are in this book and it may take more than one reading and some reflection to understand everything that Mr. Kohn says, since there is so much set on the feast table. Even my interpretation may not capture all of what Mr. Kohn is trying to say. If there is a critique, it is here. Possibly, a reader may feel that Mr. Kohn is developing too many themes and is inadequately synthesizing them together.Yet, if one is to adopt a systemic perspective, as Mr. Kohn attempts to do, I am not sure how else one could write a book like this because Mr. Kohn seeks nothing less than a revolution in our way of thinking. He strives to achieve this by exposing us through the eyes of the Runa shamans, and the shape shifting jaguars that participate in the life of the Amazon. It is due to the challenge that Mr. Kohn raises and his method of delivery that makes this a compelling read..

Anthropology beyond the human is a proposition for an ontological paradigm shift from one that fundamentally separates human and non-human realities to one that views all living beings as existing in continuities. Anthropologists are encouraged to extend their studies beyond human material practices to include interactions with other beings that are not human. The idea is that human constructions such as language, which constitute the main forms of knowing and representation by humans, derive from, and relate to, a broader form of existence – the nonhuman world. Hence, without abandoning language, humans can endeavor for a more extensive representation of the world through signs that are shared by both human and non-human living things.Eduado Kohn, in his book How Forests Think: Towards an Anthropology Beyond the Human, argues that symbols are human constructions and, therefore, derive their meaning from the particular cultural context that they are used. Hence, symbols are not synonymous with sings – there are other ways of learning relationships using signs that are not symbols. For instance, one did not have to understand the language of the Runa people in order to understand the meaning of pu’oh – a falling tree – that is also understood by other non-human creatures such as monkeys. The relationship among humans, monkeys and trees in the forest ecology becomes more apparent. Borrowing from 19th century American philosopher Charles Saunders Peirce, Kohn describes these signs as index and icons.Human over reliance on symbols while neglecting other signs that are not captured in language or symbols denies us the opportunity of seeing the world beyond human constructions. This viewpoint gives agency and consciousness to non-human living beings. For this reason, other living beings that we humans coexist with in space could be speaking with us but our failure to relate with them in a common ‘language’ could hinder our harmonious coexistence with them. Kohn demonstrates this point with the Runa people of the Amazon forest by tracing how they had to recognize cues from non-human beings in the forest in which they lived to enhance their hunting prowess – their main source of livelihood.Anthropology beyond the human is a path to the annihilation of the nature/society dualism. There has been a long-standing tendency by humans to view nature and society as two separate entities. This dualism has often led to the maltreatment of non-human beings by humans – a view of the non-human aspects of nature as resources for human gratification. Even with the recognition of the interwoven nature of the nature/society relationship, it is often difficult for humans to gain knowledge of, and represent, that which is not human. However, as suggested by Kohn, the search for signs that link human and non-human representations will make the nature/society continuities more noticeable and, consequently, solve this problem of dualism.While the anthropology beyond the human suggests an ontological shift, it does not recommend an accompanying shift in epistemology. It is believed that the ways of conventional anthropology are capable of performing the anthropology beyond the human. However, a research that will require knowledge of representations beyond the human will require more time than conventional anthropological research. In order to deal with this problem, one may have to engage other researchers who understand the behavior of other non-human beings, which inhabit the research areas with humans. This in my opinion will constitute an epistemological shift; this endeavor will be unlike conventional anthropology – ethnography. Anthropology beyond human is complex and, although ethnography could constitute key a method, in the whole, it will require a hybrid epistemology.

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