The Anthropology of Extinction (eBook, ePUB)

Essays on Culture and Species Death
Redaktion: Sodikoff, Genese Marie

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Exploring the endings of species, languages, cultures, and ways of life, this collection "provocatively makes one think about extinction in novel ways." - Biological Conservation We live in an era marked by an accelerating rate of species death, but since the early days of the discipline, anthropology has contemplated the death of languages, cultural groups, and ways of life. The essays in this collection examine processes of-and our understanding of-extinction across various domains. The contributors argue that extinction events can be catalysts for new cultural, social, environmental, and technological developments-that extinction processes can, paradoxically, be productive as well as destructive. The book considers a number of widely publicized cases: island species in the Galápagos and Madagascar; the death of Native American languages; ethnic minorities under pressure to assimilate in China; cloning as a form of species regeneration; and the tiny hominid Homo floresiensis fossils ("hobbits") recently identified in Indonesia. The Anthropology of Extinction offers compelling explorations of issues of widespread concern.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Indiana University Press
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 22. Dezember 2021
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780253005458
• Artikelnr.: 75595354

Autorenporträt

Genese Marie Sodikoff is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers University, Newark. She is author of Forest and Labor in Madagascar: From Colonial Concession to Global Biosphere (IUP, 2012).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Accumulating Absence-Cultural Productions of the Sixth
Extinction \ Genese Marie Sodikoff
Part 1. The Social Construction of Biotic Extinction
1. A Species Apart: Ideology, Science, and the End of Life \ Janet Chernela
2. From Ecocide to Genetic Rescue: Can Technoscience Save the Wild? \
Tracey Heatherington
3. Totem and Taboo Reconsidered: Endangered Species and Moral Practice in
Madagascar \ Genese Marie Sodikoff
Part 2. Endangered Species and Emergent Identities
4. Tortoise Soup for the Soul: Finding a Space for Human History in
Evolution's Laboratory \ Jill Constantino
5. Global Environmentalism and the Emergence of Indigeneity: The Politics
of Cultural and Biological Diversity in China \ Michael Hathaway
Part 3. Red-Listed Languages
6. Last Words, Final Thoughts: Collateral Extinctions in Maliseet Language
Death \ Bernard C. Perley
7. Dying Young: Pidgins, Creoles, and Other Contact Languages as Endangered
Languages \ Paul B. Garrett
Part 4. Prehistories of an Apex Predator
8. Demise of the Bet Hedgers: A Case Study of Human Impacts on Past and
Present Lemurs of Madagascar \ Laurie R. Godfrey and Emilienne
Rasoazanabary
9. Disappearing Wildmen: Capture, Extirpation, and Extinction as Regular
Components of Representations of Putative Hairy Hominoids \ Gregory Forth
Epilogue: Prolegomenon for a New Totemism \ Peter M. Whiteley
List of Contributors
Index