Nature, Culture, and Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Life

Description

Life is currently one of the most active zones of politics and economic production, as biological material is increasingly the subject of engineering, banking, reproduction, and exchange. These developments represent some of the most challenging issues facing humanity in the twenty-first century and call for new forms of engagement - and new anthropologies of life. Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated zones of life at particular times and scales, from the genome to the human body and the global environment. Using a 'biosocial' perspective, he argues, will help us to capture the hybrid nature of life, enhancing our sensitivity to differences and similarities in hierarchies, the reproduction of bio-objects and the exchange between humans, other species, and the environment. Engaging with topical issues on the public agenda, from personal genomics to human-animal relations to the global environment, the book sets out a compelling case for meaningful change.

Gisli Palsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland and Visiting Professor at King's College London. He has conducted fieldwork in Iceland, Cape Verde, the Canadian Arctic and the Virgin Islands. Palsson has written extensively on topics relating to social, cultural and biological anthropology, including the new genetics, environmental politics and the politics of language.

'The fruit of more than twenty years' thought, this important collection of Gisli Palsson's essays offers a sustained and invigorating inquiry into the politics, practices, logics, and varied anthropologies of life itself. Written with Palsson's characteristic erudition and care, what emerges is not only a comprehensive accounting of where we've been but a timely and provocative proposal for the development of new concepts, new forms of academic labor, and a new environmental ethics.' Hugh Raffles, New School for Social Research, New York 'In this imaginative, thoroughly grounded book, Gisli Palsson argues that life is not an essence. Rather, life emanates from the biosocial relations in which bodies are embedded. Anthropologies of life, perpetually in the making, have transformed nature since the dawn of human existence. Today, biomes, ecosystems, and Earth itself exhibit the effects of human activity comparable to geologic transformations of the past. Insightful and thought-provoking reading.' Margaret Lock, McGill University, Montreal