ABSTRACT
Throughout the early years of the present century several intellectual, but also institutional academic as well as practical developments have produced a combined range of effects that has led to the current juncture of reasoning in what may be called the ‘nature/culture’ or the ‘nature/society’ debates. From various academic perspectives, these debates examine the contents and the dichotomous arrangement of the conceptual opposition between nature and society, and/or nature and culture. Established binary ways of reasoning by means of these conceptual oppositions are persisting in influential forms and modalities, providing good reasons to explore how and why this is so. Simultaneously, new and productive alternatives for recon-ceptualizing socio-cultural life in this world are emerging, which stimulates the search for providing an enduring impact for these alternatives. My premise holds that a main thrust of this search is conceptual and epistemo-logical rather than ethnographic, although a comparative ethnography of epistemologies might become important in the course of these endeavours (Gingrich 2011). The enduring impact to which this search is committed refers to movements toward a paradigmatic change as discussed in the next paragraphs, i.e. related to the ways and modalities by which socio-cultural lives in this world are conceptualized. It seems to me that three currents of recent developments were decisive in informing the present juncture of reasoning on this topic.
