Ethnobiological classification : principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies / Brent Berlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Berlin, Brent, author.

Series:

Princeton Legacy Library

Princeton legacy library

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Folk classification--Cross-cultural studies.

Folk classification.

Ethnozoology.

Ethnobotany.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (354 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1992]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

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

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [291]-308) and indexes.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-691-63100-X

0-691-60126-7

1-4008-6259-0

OCLC:

884013126