The anthropology of extinction
Subtitle: essays on culture and species death
By: edited by Genese Marie Sodikoff
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Bloomington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
ISBN-13: 9780253357137; 9780253223647; 9780253005458
Subjects: Extinction (Psychology); Anthropological linguistics; Extinction (Biology); Anthropology; Philosophy; Culture
Description: "The essays in this collection examine processes of--and our understanding of--extinction across various domains. The contributors argue that extinction events can be catalysts for new cultural, social, environmental, and technological developments--that extinction processes can, paradoxically, be productive as well as destructive. The essays consider a number of widely publicized cases: island species in the Galápagos and Madagascar; the death of Native American languages; ethnic minorities under pressure to assimilate in China; cloning as a form of species regeneration; and the tiny hominid Homo floresiensis fossils ("hobbits") recently identified in Indonesia."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Accumulating absence : cultural productions of the sixth extinction / Genese Marie Sodikoff; title: A species apart : ideology, science, and the end of life / Janet Chernela; title: From ecocide to genetic rescue : can technoscience save the wild? / Tracey Heatherington; title: Totem and taboo reconsidered : endangered species and moral practice in Madagascar / Genese Marie Sodikoff; title: Tortoise soup for the soul : finding a space for human history in evolution's laboratory / Jill Constantino; title: Global environmentalism and the emergence of indigeneity : the politics of cultural and biological diversity in China / Michael Hathaway; title: Last words, final thoughts : collateral extinctions in Maliseet language death / Bernard C. Perley; title: Dying young : Pidgins, Creoles, and other contact languages as endangered languages / Paul B. Garrett; title: Demise of the bet hedgers : a case study of human impacts on past and present lemurs of Madagascar / Laurie R. Godfrey and Emilienne Rasoazanabary; title: Disappearing wildmen : capture, extirpation, and extinction as regular components of representations of putative hairy hominoids / Gregory Forth; title: Epilogue : Prolegomenon for a new totemism / Peter M. Whiteley.