How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn
How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn
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How Forests Think
Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

Author: Eduardo Kohn

Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner

Unabridged: 10 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/22/2017


Synopsis

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human—and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador's Upper Amazon, Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world's most complex ecosystems.

Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction—one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

About Eduardo Kohn

Eduardo Kohn is an associate professor of anthropology at McGill University and winner of the 2014 Gregory Bateson Prize.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Eelin on March 14, 2016

Note to self: if you write a book about how FORESTS think, define what you mean by 'forest'. This book is all about thinking, and many different ways of thinking, by many different thinkers in a forest. But if you are wanting to read something about the agency and thinking of the actual trees or oth......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth on May 05, 2014

The best book I've read that I can't recommend to anyone. Readers must be comfortable with ontological, epistemological, anthropological thinking with an understanding of semiotics.......more

Goodreads review by Min on December 28, 2015

Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human asks humans to understand the world through the perspectives of other than humans. Further, through his research, Kohn encourages anthropologists to engage in ethnography beyond the human. Kohn weaves his own ethnographic rese......more

Goodreads review by Kate on September 24, 2024

I would not have been so frustrated by this book if it had a different title. Or if it didn't make its mission so all-encompassing. Like listen to this statement: "if 'we' are to survive the Anthropocene -- this indeterminate epoch of ours in which the world beyond the human is being increasingly mad......more

Goodreads review by Selaine on May 03, 2014

I'm having a hard time processing this book into 'regular' language. I suppose that means I haven't understood it so well, which is likely true. The language is so densely academic that I understand while I'm reading (or think I do) but have a difficult time relaying what I've understood. The author......more