Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment

Abstract

The sphere of human engagement with the environment, in the practical activities of hunting and gathering, is disembedded from the sphere within which humans are constituted as social beings or persons, as a precondition for letting the latter stand to the former as schema to object. In short, through the practical activities of hunting and gathering, the environment including the landscape with its fauna and flora enters directly into the constitution of persons, not only as a source of nourishment but also as a source of knowledge. The received vocabulary of anthropological analysis offers but two alternative terms to denote in general the processes whereby human beings draw a subsistence from their environments: 'collection' and 'production'. Barring the substitution of 'foraging' for 'collection' as an inclusive term for the activities of hunting and gathering, this formulation represents no advance on Engels's of over a century ago.

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