Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. Methods. The relative native ; And ; Perspectival anthropology and the method of controlled equivocation ; Zeno and the art of anthropology : of lies, beliefs, paradoxes, and other truths -- Part II. Virtual Kinship. Along the spider thread : virtuality, actualization, and the kinship process in Amazonia ; The gift and the given : three nano-essays on kinship and magic ; Immanence and fear : stranger-events and subjects in Amazonia -- Part III. Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere. Preface to the lectures ; Cosmologies : perspectivism ; Culture : the universal animal ; Nature : the world as affect and perspective ; Supernature : under the gaze of the other -- Afterword: Facts force you to believe in them; perspectives encourage you to believe out of them / by Roy Wagner.

This volume is the first to collect the most influential essays and lectures of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Published in a wide variety of venues, and often difficult to find, the pieces are brought together here for the first time in a one major volume, which includes his momentous 1998 Cambridge University Lectures, "Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere." Rounded out with new English translations of a number of previously unpublished works, the resulting book is a wide-ranging portrait of one of the towering figures of contemporary thought -- philosopher, anthropologist, ethnographer, ethnologist, and more. With a new afterword by Roy Wagner elucidating Viveiros de Castro's work, influence, and legacy, The Relative Native will be required reading, further cementing Viveiros de Castro's position at the center of contemporary anthropological inquiry.