Ethnobiological Classification : : Principles of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies / / Brent Berlin.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton Legacy Lib. eBook Package 1980-1999
• VerfasserIn: Berlin, Brent,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2014]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library ; 185
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (354 p.)

A founder of and leading thinker in the field of modern ethnobiology looks at the widespread regularities in the classification and naming of plants and animals among peoples of traditional, nonliterate societies--regularities that persist across local environments, cultures, societies, and languages. Brent Berlin maintains that these patterns can best be explained by the similarity of human beings' largely unconscious appreciation of the natural affinities among groupings of plants and animals: people recognize and name a grouping of organisms quite independently of its actual or potential usefulness or symbolic significance in human society. Berlin's claims challenge those anthropologists who see reality as a "set of culturally constructed, often unique and idiosyncratic images, little constrained by the parameters of an outside world." Part One of this wide-ranging work focuses primarily on the structure of ethnobiological classification inferred from an analysis of descriptions of individual systems. Part Two focuses on the underlying processes involved in the functioning and evolution of ethnobiological systems in general.Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE: Plan -- CHAPTER ONE. On the Making of a Comparative Ethnobiology -- CHAPTER TWO. The Primacy of Generic Taxa in Ethnobiological Classification -- CHAPTER THREE. The Nature of Specific Taxa -- CHAPTER FOUR. Natural and Not So Natural Higher-Order Categories -- PART Two: Process -- CHAPTER FIVE. Patterned Variation in Ethnobiological Knowledge -- CHAPTER SIX. Manchúng and Bíkua: The Nonarbitrariness of Ethnobiological Nomenclature -- CHAPTER SEVEN. The Substance and Evolution of Ethnobiological Categories -- References -- Author Index -- Index of Scientific Names -- Index of Ethnoscientific Names -- Subject Index