Laura Rival is an Associate Professor at Oxford, where she has been teaching and researching the Anthropology of Nature, Society and Development since 2001. In addition to her position at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID, also known as Queen Elizabeth House, QEH), she is an active member of the School of Anthropology (SAME), the Institute of Human Sciences (IHS), and the Latin American Centre (LAC). With her students and research collaborators, Laura Rival has studied a wide range of conceptualizations and uses of the Amazon biome, including the mechanisms by which humans know and symbolize the biological world, reproduce and transform their social and cultural worlds, and contribute to the making of the forested landscapes they inhabit. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador with the Huaorani and the Chachi, and with the Makushi in Guyana. Through her numerous publications on Amerindian conceptions of nature and society Address: United Kingdom
This exploratory article invites anthropologists to renew their curiosity about the human conditi... more This exploratory article invites anthropologists to renew their curiosity about the human condition and creatively decode today's contemporary myth‐making practices. After a decade of active academic engagement with the Anthropocene, we would do well to turn our endless curiosity about the world and its diversity to the Promethean stories ecomodernists are spreading with accelerated ease within the public sphere. To burst out of our media‐saturated environment, the author asks: what patterns of deglobalization and reglobalization will emerge from the stories we tell each other about the Covid‐19 pandemic and the health of the planet? In what ways do these stories inform us about the society we want to create, inhabit and pass on? The author shows how redeploying our skills as storytelling analysts and ethnographers of embodied and collective experiences helps us to renew questions about place and mobility. As we enter a new era of symbolic manipulation, remembering the importance of myths may help us contribute to the emergence of a planetary civilization that the earth appears to be calling for.
The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American coun... more The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American countries poor in financial capital, but rich in biological diversity poses very specific challenges. This article examines some of the interests, claims, discourses and values of a range of social actors (government officials, business leaders, international development planners, intellectuals, indigenous representatives, and activists) involved in defining the future economic use of the Yasuní National Park, a Biosphere Reserve for Humanity located in the Amazonian Region of Ecuador, a small oil-producing country in Latin America. Two alternative development projects for this region are currently being debated by the government, the oil industry and civil society. The first one involves the development of a large oil and gas field in the Yasuní National Park, while the second proposes a financial mechanism by which Ecuador would be compensated for not exploiting the vast reserves of heavy ...
O animismo se projeta na literatura como uma religião simples e uma epistemologia falha, em grand... more O animismo se projeta na literatura como uma religião simples e uma epistemologia falha, em grande medida porque até hoje foi visto a partir perspectivas modernistas. Neste artigo, teorias da antropologia, das clássicas às mais contemporâneas, são criticadas. A partir do caso etnográfico de um povo caçador coletor, explora-se como funcionam as ideias animistas no contexto das práticas sociais, com atenção às construções locais de pessoa relacional e suas relações com as percepções ecológicas do meio ambiente. Oferece-se uma reformulação do animismo enquanto uma epistemologia relacional.
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 36 (2004). DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X04218089 Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez ... more J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 36 (2004). DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X04218089 Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez (eds.), Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell ...
... reviewed by Edmund T. Hamann 2002 ... in the various domains of the social sciences of educ... more ... reviewed by Edmund T. Hamann 2002 ... in the various domains of the social sciences of education should also keep this volume handy as it is a welcome mix of classic pieces worth re-reading (eg, Cohen [Chapter 9], Heath [Chapter 13], Ogbu [Chapter 14], Vélez-Ibáñez and ...
A new scientific consensus has slowly emerged at the dawn of the 21 century: plants play a fundam... more A new scientific consensus has slowly emerged at the dawn of the 21 century: plants play a fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, hence in sustaining life on earth (e.g. MEA 2005). If plants did not exist, the good working of human societies would not be possible (e.g. Kaua’i Declaration 2007). Despite their central importance, and despite the recognition that human life is contingent upon their existence, plants are often poorly appreciated (Hall 2011:17). As the nature/culture dualism that has been so central to Euro-American thought traditions starts breaking down, we are better placed to understand why plants, which dominate the biosphere, have become largely invisible, and why the question of human/plant relationships has not received the academic attention it deserves (e.g. Rival 1998). A first explanation is that the plant world is often confused with nature, and nature apprehended as a backdrop to human activity (e.g. Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995), rather than as a landscape dense with living entanglements, as in so many indigenous cultures (e.g. Kohn 2013). Now that the dismissal of plants as passive resources is giving way to a recognition of their biological complexity, plant scientists are debating whether plant awareness should be discussed in terms of “plant neurobiology” or in terms of “signaling behavior” instead (Chamovitz 2012). Plants may be brainless, but their complex sensory and regulatory difference allows them to modulate their growth in response to ever-changing conditions (Harberd 2006), an intelligence that our anthropocentric worldview may ultimately destroy (Harberd 2006:211, 299). Becoming aware of plant awareness poses special challenges to anthropology. With the discipline increasingly bent on showing that “nature” is always and everywhere socially and culturally constructed, we are left to wonder, as I have argued elsewhere, what place should be accorded to the rich data gathered and analyzed by plant scientists and biologists more generally (Rival 2014). Can anthropologists turned ethnobotanists develop a single analytical framework to account for the conceptual and practical dimensions of all people’s knowledge of plants? Is this what looking ontologically at relations between humans and plants entails? These are very important questions, which relate to the concern raised in the introduction regarding the relationship between ontology and epistemology
Introduction A General Model A Little Biology and Ethnobotany Huaorani Peach Palm Management Peas... more Introduction A General Model A Little Biology and Ethnobotany Huaorani Peach Palm Management Peasant Peach Palm Management Extrapolating into the Past Diffusion via Migration Conclusions References
In an article he wrote at the beginning of his anthropological career, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950)... more In an article he wrote at the beginning of his anthropological career, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950) noted that native Amazonians give preference to semi-wild plant species over fully domesticated ones. Precursory of the later writings where he fully developed the concepts of ‘science of the concrete’ and ‘untamed thinking,’ and the theory of the Amerindian mythologising mind, this seminal article inspired many researchers. Philippe Descola (1994, 1996) combined LéviStrauss’s early insights with the more materialist approaches of André Haudricourt and Maurice Godelier, and proposed a new analysis of the symbolic domestication of nature by Amazonian Indians. In a more post-structuralist stance, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998) argued that Amazonian conceptualisations of humanity are not more monist than modern EuroAmerican ones. Their dualism is as radical as ours, but it sets human culture, not nature, as the prior given; nature is conceptualised as what is made or constructed by cult...
This chapter follows the tribulations of a socio-ecological project at the periphery of one of th... more This chapter follows the tribulations of a socio-ecological project at the periphery of one of the world’s megalopolises, Sao Paulo. It investigates the circumstances under which the agroecologists involved in such projects create meaningful worlds through the cultivation of ecological awareness. I show how sustainability comes to figure as a central value in the agroecological movement, which is widespread throughout Latin America.
This exploratory article invites anthropologists to renew their curiosity about the human conditi... more This exploratory article invites anthropologists to renew their curiosity about the human condition and creatively decode today's contemporary myth‐making practices. After a decade of active academic engagement with the Anthropocene, we would do well to turn our endless curiosity about the world and its diversity to the Promethean stories ecomodernists are spreading with accelerated ease within the public sphere. To burst out of our media‐saturated environment, the author asks: what patterns of deglobalization and reglobalization will emerge from the stories we tell each other about the Covid‐19 pandemic and the health of the planet? In what ways do these stories inform us about the society we want to create, inhabit and pass on? The author shows how redeploying our skills as storytelling analysts and ethnographers of embodied and collective experiences helps us to renew questions about place and mobility. As we enter a new era of symbolic manipulation, remembering the importance of myths may help us contribute to the emergence of a planetary civilization that the earth appears to be calling for.
The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American coun... more The design of economic instruments for the protection of ecological wealth in Latin American countries poor in financial capital, but rich in biological diversity poses very specific challenges. This article examines some of the interests, claims, discourses and values of a range of social actors (government officials, business leaders, international development planners, intellectuals, indigenous representatives, and activists) involved in defining the future economic use of the Yasuní National Park, a Biosphere Reserve for Humanity located in the Amazonian Region of Ecuador, a small oil-producing country in Latin America. Two alternative development projects for this region are currently being debated by the government, the oil industry and civil society. The first one involves the development of a large oil and gas field in the Yasuní National Park, while the second proposes a financial mechanism by which Ecuador would be compensated for not exploiting the vast reserves of heavy ...
O animismo se projeta na literatura como uma religião simples e uma epistemologia falha, em grand... more O animismo se projeta na literatura como uma religião simples e uma epistemologia falha, em grande medida porque até hoje foi visto a partir perspectivas modernistas. Neste artigo, teorias da antropologia, das clássicas às mais contemporâneas, são criticadas. A partir do caso etnográfico de um povo caçador coletor, explora-se como funcionam as ideias animistas no contexto das práticas sociais, com atenção às construções locais de pessoa relacional e suas relações com as percepções ecológicas do meio ambiente. Oferece-se uma reformulação do animismo enquanto uma epistemologia relacional.
J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 36 (2004). DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X04218089 Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez ... more J. Lat. Amer. Stud. 36 (2004). DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X04218089 Santa Arias and Mariselle Meléndez (eds.), Mapping Colonial Spanish America: Places and Commonplaces of Identity, Culture, and Experience (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell ...
... reviewed by Edmund T. Hamann 2002 ... in the various domains of the social sciences of educ... more ... reviewed by Edmund T. Hamann 2002 ... in the various domains of the social sciences of education should also keep this volume handy as it is a welcome mix of classic pieces worth re-reading (eg, Cohen [Chapter 9], Heath [Chapter 13], Ogbu [Chapter 14], Vélez-Ibáñez and ...
A new scientific consensus has slowly emerged at the dawn of the 21 century: plants play a fundam... more A new scientific consensus has slowly emerged at the dawn of the 21 century: plants play a fundamental role in ecosystem functioning, hence in sustaining life on earth (e.g. MEA 2005). If plants did not exist, the good working of human societies would not be possible (e.g. Kaua’i Declaration 2007). Despite their central importance, and despite the recognition that human life is contingent upon their existence, plants are often poorly appreciated (Hall 2011:17). As the nature/culture dualism that has been so central to Euro-American thought traditions starts breaking down, we are better placed to understand why plants, which dominate the biosphere, have become largely invisible, and why the question of human/plant relationships has not received the academic attention it deserves (e.g. Rival 1998). A first explanation is that the plant world is often confused with nature, and nature apprehended as a backdrop to human activity (e.g. Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995), rather than as a landscape dense with living entanglements, as in so many indigenous cultures (e.g. Kohn 2013). Now that the dismissal of plants as passive resources is giving way to a recognition of their biological complexity, plant scientists are debating whether plant awareness should be discussed in terms of “plant neurobiology” or in terms of “signaling behavior” instead (Chamovitz 2012). Plants may be brainless, but their complex sensory and regulatory difference allows them to modulate their growth in response to ever-changing conditions (Harberd 2006), an intelligence that our anthropocentric worldview may ultimately destroy (Harberd 2006:211, 299). Becoming aware of plant awareness poses special challenges to anthropology. With the discipline increasingly bent on showing that “nature” is always and everywhere socially and culturally constructed, we are left to wonder, as I have argued elsewhere, what place should be accorded to the rich data gathered and analyzed by plant scientists and biologists more generally (Rival 2014). Can anthropologists turned ethnobotanists develop a single analytical framework to account for the conceptual and practical dimensions of all people’s knowledge of plants? Is this what looking ontologically at relations between humans and plants entails? These are very important questions, which relate to the concern raised in the introduction regarding the relationship between ontology and epistemology
Introduction A General Model A Little Biology and Ethnobotany Huaorani Peach Palm Management Peas... more Introduction A General Model A Little Biology and Ethnobotany Huaorani Peach Palm Management Peasant Peach Palm Management Extrapolating into the Past Diffusion via Migration Conclusions References
In an article he wrote at the beginning of his anthropological career, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950)... more In an article he wrote at the beginning of his anthropological career, Claude Lévi-Strauss (1950) noted that native Amazonians give preference to semi-wild plant species over fully domesticated ones. Precursory of the later writings where he fully developed the concepts of ‘science of the concrete’ and ‘untamed thinking,’ and the theory of the Amerindian mythologising mind, this seminal article inspired many researchers. Philippe Descola (1994, 1996) combined LéviStrauss’s early insights with the more materialist approaches of André Haudricourt and Maurice Godelier, and proposed a new analysis of the symbolic domestication of nature by Amazonian Indians. In a more post-structuralist stance, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998) argued that Amazonian conceptualisations of humanity are not more monist than modern EuroAmerican ones. Their dualism is as radical as ours, but it sets human culture, not nature, as the prior given; nature is conceptualised as what is made or constructed by cult...
This chapter follows the tribulations of a socio-ecological project at the periphery of one of th... more This chapter follows the tribulations of a socio-ecological project at the periphery of one of the world’s megalopolises, Sao Paulo. It investigates the circumstances under which the agroecologists involved in such projects create meaningful worlds through the cultivation of ecological awareness. I show how sustainability comes to figure as a central value in the agroecological movement, which is widespread throughout Latin America.
Alexiades, Miguel N. (Ed.). Shifting spaces, changing times: Mobility, migration and displacement in indigenous lowland South America. Berghahn Books, Oxford. (ISBN 978-1-8454-5563-7), 2009
Introduction
A General Model
A Little Biology and Ethnobotany
Huaorani Peach Palm Management
... more Introduction
A General Model
A Little Biology and Ethnobotany
Huaorani Peach Palm Management
Peasant Peach Palm Management
Extrapolating into the Past
Diffusion via Migration
Conclusions
References
La ciencia ha demostrado que la cuenca del Amazonas ha sido habitada por lo menos desde hace 1200... more La ciencia ha demostrado que la cuenca del Amazonas ha sido habitada por lo menos desde hace 12000 años; inclusive, en ocasiones y en ciertas áreas, por grandes poblaciones. Cuando era
introductory chapter to the book I edited on trees as social symbols.
The full reference is as f... more introductory chapter to the book I edited on trees as social symbols.
The full reference is as follows: Rival, Laura. 1998. Trees from symbols of life and regeneration to political artefacts. The social life of trees. Anthropological perspectives on tree symbolism (ed.) Laura Rival, 1-36. Oxford: Berg.
HOW DO AMAZONIAN FOREST SOCIETIES TRANSFORM?
For Stephen Beckerman, what you see is what you get.... more HOW DO AMAZONIAN FOREST SOCIETIES TRANSFORM? For Stephen Beckerman, what you see is what you get. The Huaorani cultivate plants; the Huaorani, therefore, are cultivators. To call them ‘hunter-gatherers’ is something of a misnomer; in fact, it is a category mistake with serious consequences. By ‘bloating’ the meaning of the term ‘hunter-gatherer’ and misrepresenting Huaorani’s economic activities (page 10 of the manuscript), I not only add to the conceptual confusion characterising the ontological turn in hunter-gatherer studies, but I also open my whole ethnography to suspicion. Why should anyone trust the ethnographic truthfulness of a monograph written by someone who has relapsed into the crime of misclassification again and again?
I argue in this short Intellectual biography of one of the 'fathers' of French anthropology that ... more I argue in this short Intellectual biography of one of the 'fathers' of French anthropology that Paul Rivet asked the questions that Claude Lévi-Strauss went on trying to answer.
This is an article using insights on body soul dualism from my work on the huaorani to propose a ... more This is an article using insights on body soul dualism from my work on the huaorani to propose a new interpretation of sacrifice among the Aztecs.
I enjoyed participating in this debate on 'infrastructure anthropology.' I argue that rivers, for... more I enjoyed participating in this debate on 'infrastructure anthropology.' I argue that rivers, forests, and other natural elements or ecosystems should not be theorised as 'infrastructural.'
Please use only the circled tools to indicate your requests and responses, as edits via other too... more Please use only the circled tools to indicate your requests and responses, as edits via other tools/methods are not compatible with our software. To ask a question or request a formatting change (such as italics), please click the tool and then choose ''Text Callout.'' To access the necessary tools, choose ''Comment'' from the right-side menu. No. Query Please confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence, and contact details, is correct. Please note that this proof represents your final opportunity to review your article prior to publication, so please do send all of your changes now. AQ: 1 Please note that ''GAOA, 2015'' has not been detailed in the reference list. Please provide complete details of the same or delete the citation. AQ: 2 Please note that ''GAAM (2015)'' has not been cited anywhere in the text. Please cite it at an appropriate place or delete the same. AQ: 3 Please note that ''Anand (2015); Carse (2012); Chalfin (2014)'' have not been cited anywhere in the text. Please cite them at an appropriate place or delete the same. AQ: 4 Please provide the volume number for reference ''Ansar etal., 2014.'' AQ: 5 Please note that ''Lazar (2016)'' has not been cited anywhere in the text. Please cite it at an appropriate place or delete the same. AQ: 6 Please check spelling: 'instrastructure'.
20/03/2019, 07*32 Des êtres vivants et des artef...-Lʼimbrication des processus vi.… du quai Bran... more 20/03/2019, 07*32 Des êtres vivants et des artef...-Lʼimbrication des processus vi.… du quai Branly (département de la recherche et de lʼenseignement)
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Papers by Laura Rival
A General Model
A Little Biology and Ethnobotany
Huaorani Peach Palm Management
Peasant Peach Palm Management
Extrapolating into the Past
Diffusion via Migration
Conclusions
References
The full reference is as follows: Rival, Laura. 1998. Trees from symbols of life and regeneration to political artefacts. The social life of trees. Anthropological perspectives on tree symbolism (ed.) Laura Rival, 1-36. Oxford: Berg.
For Stephen Beckerman, what you see is what you get. The Huaorani cultivate plants; the Huaorani, therefore, are cultivators. To call them ‘hunter-gatherers’ is something of a misnomer; in fact, it is a category mistake with serious consequences. By ‘bloating’ the meaning of the term ‘hunter-gatherer’ and misrepresenting Huaorani’s economic activities (page 10 of the manuscript), I not only add to the conceptual confusion characterising the ontological turn in hunter-gatherer studies, but I also open my whole ethnography to suspicion. Why should anyone trust the ethnographic truthfulness of a monograph written by someone who has relapsed into the crime of misclassification again and again?