Cognition, Language and Performance
From the three angles of philosophy, anthropology and ethnoscience, I have been pursuing three lines of research, namely: (1) anthropological fieldwork in Kerala, (2) textual studies in Sanskrit sources of medicine and philosophy, (3) explorations into the cognitive foundations of linguistic anthropology, the development of this discipline over the last forty years, and its alliance with the anthropology of performance in the study of voice and linguistic pragmatics.
http://anthropologielinguistique.fr
This cluster of websites, intermingling English with French occasionally but mostly in French, records work in progress in my weekly research seminar on Linguistic Anthropology, Performance, Verbal Art and Cognition. A specificity of my approach to Linguistic Anthropology is to resort to problematics and illustrations culled from literary fiction and the performing arts.
Learned Traditions and Intellectual Property Rights in South Asia
At first trained in classical philosophy, Sanskrit and social anthropology, I studied Ayurveda with Ashtavaidyan Vayaskara N. S. Mooss in Kottayam (Kerala) during two long periods of fieldwork in 1976-78 (Kottayam) and 1981-84 (Pondicherry). A regular visitor to Kuttanad in central Kerala and a reader of Malayalam contemporary literature, I am currently exploring the following domains or addressing the following issues: pathocenosis in the Ashtavaidya tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, ethnobotany (medicinal plants) and intellectual property rights in the realm of Galenic and Ayurvedic pharmacy, environmental ethics and water management in the backwaters and the gardens of spices, not to forget the one-century long historical and sociological process conducing to the eradication of matriliny and to the advent of Communism in Kerala.
The “Direction d'études” which I have been representing at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales is labelled Anthropologie et histoire des sciences dans le monde indien [Anthropology and History of Science in South Asia]; within this larger framework, I have been acquainted more specifically with Kerala society and Malayalam culture, and in my research all along the years, social and cultural anthropology has been associated with classical philosophy and the history of logic, medicine and botany in India.
As shown on this cluster of websites, my current interests are divided between (1) Ecology and bioethics, Ayurvedic medicine, ethnoscience (medicinal plants and Galenic pharmacy), and natural philosophy in Sanskrit sources; (2) Cultural linguistics, iconicity and figures of speech in the mother tongue, verbal art in performance, Vāc and the philosophy of the Voice in Indian and Buddhist sources; (3) Philosophy in India or from India, and current issues in the philosophy of mind.
I wish to take up the challenge of introducing non-Western tongues and modes of thought into the practice of professionally established, academic philosophy. I am interested in non-Western developments of professional philosophy, and I am focussing on problematics that belong with my fields of research as an anthropologist in India, namely: (1) Environmental and medical ethics, (2) Voice and the iconicity of language, and (3) Self and others in their lifeworld.
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A cluster of websites dedicated to “South and East Asia: Places, Textualities and the Social Sciences.”
Technical details regarding design, development and maintainance of my websites on a virtual dedicated server.
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Francis Olivier ZIMMERMANN
Directeur d'études à l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
Anthropologie et histoire des sciences dans le monde indien
Office address:
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
190, avenue de France
F—75013 Paris
E-mail addresses:
zimmermann < a > ehess.fr
fr.zimmermann < a > orange.fr