Ethnobiological Classification – Principles of Categorization of Plants & Animals in Traditional Societies: Principles of Categorization of Plants and ... Societies (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Berlin, Brent

 
9780691094694: Ethnobiological Classification – Principles of Categorization of Plants & Animals in Traditional Societies: Principles of Categorization of Plants and ... Societies (Princeton Legacy Library)

Synopsis

A founder of the field of modern ethnobiology examines 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.

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Review

"This well-researched and enthusiastically written book is a major contribution to ethnobiology.... This book is aimed at professional ethnobiologists, but it will also be of value to those who are interested in linguistics, systematics, psychological mechanisms, and the postmodernist debate."--The Quarterly Review of Biology

Synopsis

A founder of the field of modern ethnobiology examines 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.

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