European University Institute Library

Bitter shade, the ecological challenge of human consciousness, Michael R. Dove

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

Bitter shade

bibliography

1184240257

Michael R. Dove

Yale agrarian studies series

the ecological challenge of human consciousness

"This book asks an age-old question about the relationship between human consciousness and the environment: How do we think about our own thoughts and actions? How can we transcend the exigencies of daily life? How can we achieve sufficient distance from our own everyday realities to think and act more sustainably? To address these questions, Michael R. Dove draws on the results of decades of research in South and Southeast Asia on how local cultures have circumvented the "curse of consciousness" -- the paradox that we cannot completely comprehend the ecosystem of which we are part. He distills from his ethnographic, ecological, and historical research three principles: perspectivism (seeing oneself from outside oneself), metamorphosis (becoming something that one is not), and mimesis (copying something that one is not), which help a society to transcend the hubris and myopia of everyday existence and achieve greater insight into its ecosystem."--, Provided by publisher

Nonhumans and the Paradox of the Human -- Pig-Humans and Human-Pigs: Perspectivism in Dayak Myth and Ritual -- Environmental Uncertainty and Augural Contingency -- A Non-Western Panopticon: The Yogyakarta Sultanate and Merapi Volcano -- "Bitter Shade": Signs and Things in Pakistani Agro-Forestry -- Culture, Agriculture, and Politics of Rice in Java -- Historic Parting of the Wild from the Civilized in Pakistan -- Ritual, Myth, and the Rise of "Greedy Rice" -- Weedy Signs of Intent and Error -- Seeing "Life Itself " -- Appendix: Principles of Augural Interpretation