The materiality of life: Revisiting the anthropology of nature in Amazonia.

In what distinctive ways are lowland South American Indians animists? Is there a place in Amerindian thought for a conception of biological life autonomous from social intelligence and its socially determined intentions? How far can it be said that by viewing animals, plants and objects as subjective agents endowed with consciousness and intentionality, native Amazonians construct a way of knowing the world which is both culturally unique and antithetical to biology? In trying to provide ethnographically informed answers to these questions, I critically review various theoretical approaches to animism, ontological animism and perspectivism. In ending, I attempt to explain why these theories ultimately discard or ignore the rich base of biological knowledge that underlies the natural and cosmogonic classiications of native Amazonians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]