Ethnobiological Classification Principle of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies

Brent Berlin

ISBN 10: 0691094691 / ISBN 13: 9780691094694

Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1992

About this Item

Near Fine, former owner's name in pen on front flyleaf. Very Good jacket, some handling wear, light rubbing, some fading. 8vo, green cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine in illustrated jacket, 335 pp.

Seller Inventory # 661

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Ethnobiological Classification Principle of Categorization of Plants and Animals in Traditional Societies
• Publisher: Princeton University Press, Princeton
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691094691
• ISBN 13: 9780691094694
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
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About this title

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.

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