Forest of Taboos : Morality, Hunting, and Identity

Valerio Valeri

ISBN 10: 0299162141 / ISBN 13: 9780299162146

Published by University Of Wisconsin Press Mär 2000, 2000

About this Item

Neuware - Contends that the ambivalence felt by all humans about sex, death and eating other animals can be explained by a set of coordinated principles that are expressed in taboos. Valeri evokes the world of the Huaulu, to show the attractions of the animal world which invades the human world in many ways.

Seller Inventory # 9780299162146

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Forest of Taboos : Morality, Hunting, and Identity
• Publisher: University Of Wisconsin Press Mär 2000
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299162141
• ISBN 13: 9780299162146
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 228W x 152H x 28D millimeters 228 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 28 millimeters depth
• Weight: 730 grams

About this title

Synopsis

“The Forest of Taboos may be considered among the most important books ever written by an anthropologist. Valeri writes superbly, and this book makes a fundamental contribution to one of the most central lines of thought in twentieth-century anthropology. He shows that taboo is finally comprehensible.”—John Stephen Lansing, University of Michigan

“The Forest of Taboos is no conventional ethnography, more an extended meditative essay on its subject, erudite, rich in ideas and data, wide-ranging in its theoretical inspiration, and self-consciously literary in form. It is a fitting memorial to an author whose life was so tragically cut short.”—Roy Ellen, University of Kent at Canterbury

This eloquent and profound book, completed by Valerio Valeri shortly before his death in 1998, contends that the ambivalence felt by all humans about sex, death, and eating other animals can be explained by a set of coordinated principles that are expressed in taboos. In elegant prose, Valeri evokes the world of the Huaulu, forest hunters of Indonesia. The hidden attractions of the animal world, which invades the human world in perilous ways, he shows, also delineate that which the Huaulu regard as most human about themselves.

About the Author

Valerio Valeri (1944–1998) was professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of Kingship and Sacrifice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii.