Ontological anthropology and the deferral of critique

Back by popular demand, ontology: Productive tensions between anthropological and philosophical approaches to ontology

In this paper we analyze relations between ontology in anthropology and philosophy beyond simple homonymy or synonymy and show how this diagnosis allows for new interdisciplinary links and insights, while minimizing the risk of cross-disciplinary equivocation. We introduce the ontological turn in anthropology as an intellectual project rooted in the critique of dualism of culture and nature and propose a classification of the literature we reviewed into first-order claims about the world and second-order claims about ontological frameworks. Next, rather than provide a strict definition of ontology in anthropological literature, we argue that the term is used as a heuristic addressing a web of sub-concepts relating to interpretation, knowledge, and self-determination which correspond to methodological, epistemic, and political considerations central to the development of the ontological turn. We present a case study of rivers as persons to demonstrate what the ontological paradigm in anthropology amounts to in practice. Finally, in an analysis facilitated by a parallel between the first- and second-order claims in anthropology, and ontology and meta-ontology in philosophy (respectively), we showcase the potential for contribution of ontological anthropology to contemporary philosophical debates, such as ontological gerrymandering, relativism and social ontology, and vice versa.

Marine conservation in Vanuatu: Local conceptualisation and 'assemblage'

This article deals with the local conceptualisation of 'conservation' in the village Siviri in Vanuatu where villagers have established and maintain a small marine conservation area. Looking at villagers' motivations, the aim is to carve out the local conceptualisation and practice of 'conservation', to show what conservation is for the villagers. The theoretical framework is a combination of two approaches, namely 'assemblage' and 'world-making'. Conservation in Siviri is ontologically different from the concept of conservation used in Vanuatu national policy. It can be regarded as a creative engagement of villagers with their environment(s) to preserve the specific world-making assemblage consisting of humans and marine life for future generations.

The ‘onto-logics’ of perspectival multi-naturalism: A realist critique

In this article, I argue for a realist anthropology based on the recognition of mind-independent reality; pitching this premise against concerted anti-dualist tendencies in contemporary anthropological thinking. I spell out core analytical entailments of these, in my view, profoundly conflicting premises. In particular, I focus on perspectival multi-naturalism, arguing that despite adherents’ claims to reinvigorate studies of ‘ontology’, this approach instead exaggerates epistemological dimensions. When assessed from a realist stance, its ground position engenders a series of epistemic fallacies by which the ontological is, effectively, subordinated under epistemology. Advocates’ reluctance to appreciate a distinction between mind and mind-independent reality entails a profound contraction of perspective in terms of empirical and methodological scope, and, analytically, a disregard for ontological complexity and depth, thus curtailing the importance of anthropology in wider academic discourse.

The ontological turn revisited: Theoretical decline. Why cannot ontologists fulfil their promise?

Holbraad and Pedersen have revisited the ontological turn, suggesting that it is strictly concerned with methodology only. Holbraad goes even further, accepting an aesthetic criterion for ethnography only. This is a sign of theoretical decline. In my paper, I claim that ontologists’ tendency to overestimate the significance of ethnographic experience causes theoretical confusion. I claim that neo-pragmatic analysis can eliminate this confusion. I also argue that there is only one remaining issue from the ontological turn that is not entirely lost. A careful evaluation of all folk categories, with all its possible consequences, can boost the robustness of all competitive theories, Cognitive Evolutionary Science included.

Slippage: An Anthropology of Shamanism

If our knowledge of shamanism has been so abidingly partial, so impressively uneven, so deeply varied by history, and so enduringly skeptical for so long, how has its study come to occupy such pride of place in the anthropological canon? One answer comes in a history of social relations where shamans both are cast as translators of the unseen and are themselves sites of anxiety in a very real world, one of encounters across lines of gender, class, and colonial incursions often defined by race. This article contends that as anthropologists have cultivated a long and growing library of shamanic practice, many appear to have found, in a globally diverse range of spirit practitioners, translators across social worlds who are not unlike themselves, suggesting that in the shaman we find a remarkable history of anthropology.

Anthropology and the politics of alterity: A Latin American dialectic and its relevance for ontological anthropologies

Recent anglophone ontological anthropologies have an important Latin American intellectual and political history that is rarely fully acknowledged. This article outlines some of that history, arguing that debates about the politics of this ‘ontological turn’ should be read in the context of a tension between political economy and cosmological approaches that have been a feature of Latin American anthropology in some form since the early 20th century, and that are deeply implicated in histories of conquest and colonialism, including internal colonialism. This conceptual history helps to explain both the desire of some scholars to avoid a certain kind of politicisation and the argument that methodological and theoretical innovation within anthropology is political in itself. But it also means that ontological anthropology encounters some of the same challenges faced by indigenous movements confronted with similar choices.

Who alone can ‘see’? Christian humanitarianism, aspect-perception and political critique

This article offers a critique of Christian humanitarianism in Zambia. But it does so by engaging with the arguments of anthropologists who have begun to question the status of political critique within the discipline. These anthropologists argue that critique often undermines ethnographic understanding because it problematically positions the anthropologist as an actor who is able to ‘uncover’ political realities that remain invisible to others. In this article, I take these concerns seriously and attempt to reconsider the practice of critique by drawing on an ethnographic description of the work of Christian medical missionaries in Zambia. Focusing on how these missionaries encouraged one another to ‘see’ their Zambian patients as ‘Christ-like’ and ‘faithful’ in moments of suffering, I argue that these practices of ‘seeing’ and ‘showing’ resemble certain forms of political critique. Rather than an exercise in ‘uncovering’ hidden realities, critique can also be understood as an act of ‘aspect-showing’ – the aim of which is to encourage others to ‘see’ the same things in a different light. The critique of Christian humanitarianism I offer here is therefore itself an act of aspect-showing that partially resembles that which missionaries themselves engaged in.

Como compor com um vírus!? Reflexões sobre os animal studies no tempo das pandemias

Resumo O que os animal studies teriam a nos ensinar sobre as catástrofes sanitárias de nossa geração? Este ensaio propõe que análises da pandemia provocada pela Covid-19 podem ser estimuladas pelas reflexões que a antropologia tem realizado ao longo das últimas décadas a respeito dos efeitos plurais do convívio entre animais humanos e não humanos. Relações tão íntimas e, por vezes, tão imprevisíveis com conjuntos de seres cuja agência e modos de existência nem sempre conseguimos identificar com precisão. A provocação é a de que a animalidade, enquanto um marcador relacional, não expressa somente o contraponto definido por alteridades interespecíficas que estabelecemos com certos animais diferentes de nós, mas configura-se como uma “categoria-metáfora” que nos habilita a perceber os múltiplos e complexos modos pelos quais compomos nossas vidas em relação à “natureza” de tudo aquilo que nos cerca.

Missing the political: A southern critique of political ontology

Against the backdrop of a world in crisis that plays as the stage of the ontological turn and political ontology, and based on long-term research on Colombia’s Andean southwest indigenous politics, this article critically assesses political ontologýs claims to the powers of difference. Following Wolin, Mouffe, and Laval and Dardot, it presents a notion of the political that takes into account the passionate, educational and transformative aspects of indigenous political praxis and engagements with commonality. The analysis of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s ontological multinaturalism, Mario Blaser’s critique of modernity and Reason, and Arturo Escobar’s ontological political practice points at three interconnected problems: the persistent appeal to binary thinking; the making of relativism anew; and the problem regarding the dialogue and knowledge exchange between the ethnographer and the ethnographic subject. Recapturing the political is a way to engage complex and entangled political histories and experiences of democratization in which indigenous peoples emerge as bearers of the political. The feminist concept of situated knowledges is presented as an alternative to deal with knowledge partiality, self-reflexivity, political solidarity, and collaboration.

Dividing Worlds

In 2011, a tsunami devastated Japan’s Northeast coastline following a magnitude 9.1 earthquake. In its aftermath, disaster scientists, civil engineers, and central government officials advocated protecting people and property from future oceanic incursions by armoring the coast with giant seawalls. Many survivors challenged this recommendation, arguing for other ways of ensuring safety and organizing human-nonhuman relations across the land-water interface. This article analyzes such resistance as acts of what I call ‘ontological dissensus’: the lodging of alternative ways of attuning to, conceptualizing capacities of, and arranging relations between beings in one’s environment into dominant ones. I argue that such a theory helps us not only to understand anti-seawall activism in post-tsunami Japan, but also to consider how, and when, ontological difference becomes active in political controversies.

Indigenous sovereignty and the new developmentalism in plurinational Bolivia

Across Latin America indigenous groups are asserting an alternative form of sovereignty they are calling indigenous autonomy. They have found support in international documents such as the 2007 United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights, as well as some Left-leaning governments such as those in Bolivia and Ecuador. Yet, there is a fundamental paradox at play in these demands: indigenous actors must negotiate their self-determination with the states whose essential characteristic is exerting territorial sovereignty. In this paper, we consider the politics entailed in managing these difficult political struggles. We examine one lowland indigenous community, the Guaraní of Charagua, Bolivia, which has articulated a vision of indigenous self-determination based in ñandereku, or ‘our way of being’ in the world. Rather than a liberal notion of territorial administration, this understanding of autonomy implies reciprocal relations between people and the land. We show how the Guaraní must negotiate the ‘spaces in-between’ competing notions of state and local sovereignty to approach their vision of self-determination. We argue that their efforts to assert indigenous autonomy can act as a form of emancipatory ‘politics,’ but that they are entangled with the ‘policing’ of the state, requiring skillful negotiations. Thus, their alternative notions of sovereignty must, at times, be smuggled in under the cover of other seemingly shared agendas such as economic development or liberalism. Here, we dispute Rancière’s notion of politics as the result of radical disagreement. We show instead how political actors negotiate ambiguities inherent in the multiple meanings of sovereignty to promote their own indigenous visions of self-governance. Thus, we posit that politics does not always require radical ruptures, but instead can emerge from productive entanglements in the ‘third spaces’ between neighbors, government entities, and worldviews. We conclude that this sort of balancing act might best be understood through the indigenous idea of ch’ixi, the holding in tension of competing but complementary elements.