IN AMAZONIA
The Amazon is not what it seems. Combining richly textured ethnographic research and original historical analysis, In Amazonia weaves a fascinating story that challenges us to rethink what we mean by “nature.”
Co-Winner, 2003 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Honorable Mention, Sharon Stephens First Book Prize, American Ethnological Society
A Choice/American Library Association Outstanding Academic Title
Engagingly written, theoretically inventive, and vividly illustrated, In Amazonia introduces a diverse range of characters—from sixteenth-century explorers and their indigenous rivals to nineteenth-century naturalists and contemporary ecologists, logging company executives, and river-traders. A natural history of a different kind, the book shows how humans, animals, rivers, and forests all participate in the making of a region that remains today at the center of debates in environmental politics.
Hugh Raffles has produced that rare species of academic writing, the unclassifiable book. Part ethnography, part history, and part meditation on the relationships between people and nature in Brazil, In Amazonia offers moments of fresh insight that merit wide attention in anthropology and beyond.
Michael F. Brown, Tipití
