Negotiating a human : Viveiros de Castro - Descola - Turner

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of selected anthropological models transforming the semantic scope of what in the Western discourses of knowledge used to be considered the domain of human being. The text presents concepts developed by three anthropologists: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Phillipe Descola and Terry S. Turner. Each conducted research among the indigenous people of South America, each invoked the structural imagination of Claude Lévi-Strauss and considered similar theoretical and methodological problems. The models developed by these Amazonianists will be examined based on the methods they use to expand the field of anthropological research and to reconfigure its conceptual framework. The aim of this article is to determine potential benefits and limitations resulting from applying these models in the study of culture.