Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the usefulness of revisiting Evan-Pritchard's "ecological time" for engaging the ways in which the dualist "foundation of the modernist epistemology” impedes research on diversity of the "processes of objectification.” (Descola and Palsson, Nature and Society, 1996).

Paper long abstract:

The publication of Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies marked a turning point with regards to 'crises over representations' in anthropological debates over its hitherto most influentially opposed paradigms for classifying, chronologically ordering and explaining patterns of unity and diversity amongst cultures. Dedicated to what contributing authors saw as key issues raised by E.E. Evans-Pritchard's work, the volume's focuses in the questions organising question is: Is there a basic difference in modes of thought (both in content and, more especially, in logic and formulation) as between Western and non-Western societies? .... Or - following on from this basic question - is there perhaps no significant difference that can be pointed to in this context? Or again, is this perhaps not a feasible or single question are all? ((Horton and Finnegan 1973: 11). Yet already its introduction drew attention to the significance of the latter question, in lights the extent to which influentially opposed positions on the former ( and polemic over Evans-Pritchard's work) have been enmeshed over the series of dichotomies on which polemic over whether the importance of science to modernity should be interpreted as a triumph or as a tragedy.