Relative Native Essays on Indigenous Conceptual Worlds [Minkštas viršelis]

This volume is the first major collection of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s best yet hitherto scattered essays and lectures, including his momentous 1998 Cambridge University Lectures, “Cosmological perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere.” Included are new English translations of essays from the original Portuguese and previously unpublished material. A force to be reckoned with, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’souevre has gained immense popularity in anthropology over the past two decades, most notably through his elucidation of Amazonian perspectivism—a major influence on discipline’s recent “ontological turn.” Here is Viveiros de Castro at his finest—philosopher and anthropologist, ethnographer and ethnologist, superbly engaging with classic topics such as kinship yet subverting nature/culture ideologies, and taking us into the theoretical depths of magic, cosmology, ontology, and history.

This volume is the first to collect the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Published in a wide variety of venues, and often difficult to find, the pieces are brought together here for the first time in a one major volume, which includes his momentous 1998 Cambridge University Lectures, Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere.”

Rounded out with new English translations of a number of previously unpublished works, the resulting book is a wide-ranging portrait of one of the towering figures of contemporary thoughtphilosopher, anthropologist, ethnographer, ethnologist, and more. With a new afterword by Roy Wagner elucidating Viveiros de Castro’s work, influence, and legacy,The Relative Native will be required reading, further cementing Viveiros de Castro’s position at the center of contemporary anthropological inquiry.