Philippe Descola's first book, La Nature domestique (1986, Éditions de la MSH, translated into English and Spanish) describes and analyzes the ecology of the Achuar Indians of the upper Amazon as a network of sociability bringing together human and non-human actors in which technical and ecological factors, modes of assembly and representations mutually determine each other. Les lances du crépuscule (1993, Plon, "Terre humaine" collection, translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese and German) is a more personal account of life among the Achuar, sharing the way in which ethnographic knowledge of others is gradually built up. Co-edited with A.-C. Taylor, La remontée de l'Amazone(L'Homme, 1993) took stock of anthropological, ethnohistorical and archaeological research on indigenous Amazonia.

Written with G. Lenclud, C. Severi and A.-C. Taylor, Les Idées de l'anthropologie (A. Colin, 1988, translated into Hungarian) sets out to present this science by tracing the genesis of the problems it poses and the links it has with neighbouring disciplines. It is also a concern for pedagogy that made Philippe Descola one of the architects of the monumental Dictionnaire de l'ethnologie et de l'anthropologie (PUF, 1991), a tool that has become a classic and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Arabic. Finally, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Un parcours dans le siècle, (Odile Jacob and Collège de France, 2012) brings together the papers given at a tribute to the great anthropologist on the occasion of his centenary. Nature and Society (Routledge, 1996, translated into Spanish), co-edited with G. Pálsson, has become a reference book in environmental anthropology, bringing together contributions by anthropologists who question and attempt to overcome the dualism of nature and society, while Antropología de la Naturaleza (Lima 2003) offers Spanish-speaking readers an introduction to the main concepts of the anthropology of nature. Par-delà nature et culture (Gallimard, "Bibliothèque des sciences humaines", 2005, translated into ten languages) proposes a new approach to the ways in which continuities and discontinuities are distributed between humans and non-humans, based on a structural conception of ontology understood as the classification of the qualities of beings and the systematics of the relationships that unite them.

Diversité des natures, diversité des cultures, (Bayard, 2010, translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) is a conference designed to introduce a young audience to the various ways of understanding and treating plants and animals. La Fabrique des images. Visions du monde et formes de la représentation (Somogy, 2010) is the catalog coordinated by Philippe Descola for the exhibition of the same name he organized at the musée du quai Branly from February 2010 to July 2011, to put to the test of images from around the world the ontological schemas he has isolated in his work. L'Écologie des autres. L'anthropologie et la question de la nature (Quae, 2011, translated into English, Italian and German) is an epistemological reflection on how the social sciences approach the relationship between societies and the environment. Taking the form of a dialogue with philosopher Pierre Charbonnier, La Composition des mondes (Flammarion, 2014, translated into Spanish) is a retrospective reflection on the evolution and stages, both ethnological and anthropological, of Philippe Descola's work, offering an opportunity both to clarify certain contemporary issues in his thought and to better specify the intellectual context in which it was constituted. Être au monde. Quelle expérience commune? (Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2014) is the transcript of a public debate held in Grenoble with the renowned British anthropologist Tim Ingold, which highlights the points of convergence and divergence between the latter's approach (the anthropology of inhabitation) and that of Philippe Descola (the anthropology of nature), which are apparently quite similar, but which are separated by many differences, both in terms of methods and philosophical expectations. As for Cultures (INSEP/ Le Pommier/ Carnets Nord, 2017), a title chosen by the publisher, this is the transcribed version of a television interview devoted to the anthropology of the body in which Philippe Descola questions the relationship of non-modern societies to play and sport.

These works are complemented by edited conference proceedings, popular works and over 150 scientific articles and book chapters.

Awards and honors

Philippe Descola received the CNRS silver medal in 1996 and the gold medal in 2012; the Édouard Bonnefous prize from the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in 2011; the gold medal from the Académie d'agriculture de France in 2014 and the Cosmos prize from Japan in 2014. He is Commander in the Order of the Legion of Honor (2016), Officer in the National Order of Merit (2004), Knight in the Order of Academic Palms (1997). He is a foreign member of the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal.