Librería Portfolio

Indigenous, Modern and Postcolonial Relations to Nature contributes to the young field of intercultural philosophy by introducing the perspective of critical and postcolonial thinkers who have focused on systematic racism, power relations and the intersection of cultural identity and political struggle.


Angela Roothaan discusses how initiatives to tackle environmental problems cross-nationally are often challenged by economic growth processes in postcolonial nations and further complicated by fights for land rights and self-determination of indigenous peoples. For these peoples, survival requires countering the scramble for resources and clashing with environmental organizations that aim to bring their lands under their own control. The author explores the epistemological and ontological clashes behind these problems. This volume brings more awareness of what structurally obstructs open exchange in philosophy world-wide, and shows that with respect to nature, we should first negotiate what the environment is to us humans, beyond cultural differences. It demonstrates how a globalizing philosophical discourse can fully include epistemological claims of spirit ontologies, while critically investigating the exclusive claim to knowledge of modern science and philosophy.


This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, cultural anthropology, intercultural philosophy and postcolonial and critical theory.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments






A World of Motion and Emergence: an Outline of what's at stake






Ending the Othering of Indigenous Knowledge in Philosophy and the Ontological Turn in Cultural Anthropology






When the Spirits were banned: Kant versus Swedenborg






The Return of (animal) Spirits in the Modern Western World






Deconstructing or Decolonizing the Human-Animal Divide






Vital Force: A Belgico-African Missionary's Spirited Philosophy






Decolonizing Nature: the Case of the Mourning Elephants






Spirited Trees - Negotiating secular, religious and traditionalist frameworks






Blurred, Spirited and Touched: from 'the Study of Man' to an Anim(al)istic Anthropology



References


Index