How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question the central assumptions about what it means to be human–and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador’s Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world’s most complex ecosystems. Whether or not humans recognize it, their anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make them distinctly human. However, when ethnographic attention is turned to how they relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing humans from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how human lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs they spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction–one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world humans share with other kinds of beings.