Can Animism Save the World? Reflections on Personhood and Complexity in the Ecological Crisis

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

The Road to Taisha: Indigenous Protests for Road Infrastructure in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Ontological Turn

This contribution examines protests by Shuar people in the Ecuadorian Amazon during the summer of 2015 in favour of the construction of a road through their territory. Can the ontological turn help us understand such events? Debates around the ontological turn have hinged around its potential contribution to the analysis of environmental challenges and political conflicts. In this article, I argue that central concepts from the ontological turn – such as animism (Descola 2005) or perspectivism (Viveiros de Castro 2004) – may add nuance but not substance to anthropological understandings of environmental conflicts. I focus on the stakes of these conflicts, the construction of alliances, and the tactics used by the different stakeholders. Taking to heart one of the core premises of the ontological turn, we may think that Western concepts of “nature” and “culture” may hinder our understanding of indigenous Amazonian people’s participation in these conflicts. I argue on the contrary that efforts to overcome these concepts may precisely risk concealing or distorting the actions and statements of indigenous people involved in the conflict.

Book Reviews

Joël Glasman, Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs. (Sung Joon Park) Andrea Noll, Verwandtschaft und Mittelklasse in Ghana. Soziale Differenzierung und familiärer Zusammenhalt. (Julia Pauli) Simone Pfeifer, Social Media im transnationalen Alltag. Zur medialen Ausgestaltung sozialer Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Senegal. (Michaela Pelican) Hans-Martin Milk, „… der im Sturm steht wie ein Kameldornbaum.“ Die Evangelisten Namibias und ihre Geschichte. (Reinhart Kößler) Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher, Rosalie Stolz (Hrsg.), Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. (Anna Madeleine Ayeh)

Dancing for Uwí – Rituals and Ontologies on the Move

Dancing for Uwí (peach palm, Bactris gasipaes), a calendric ritual celebrated by the Shuar in the Ecuadorian Amazon region, forms part of a mainly animistic ontology, and has been reframed repeatedly during the past century in interaction with shifting historical, political and cultural contexts. The power field associated with Uwí is extensive, and encompasses life and death: on the one hand, Uwí stands at the centre of the ritualization of life, growth, procreativity and abundance; on the other hand, he embodies destructive agency, which has been linked with warfare and its diverse ritual frames. Uwí represents, at the same time, a significant dimension of a Shuar theory of life, as well as a figure within their theory of power, and is closely connected to conviviality and the good life. During the 1960s and 1970s Uwí was adopted and adapted by intercultural Catholic liturgy, and has acquired new ritual elements and new meanings in this context. In recent years, after large gaps between performances from the 1970s to the new millennium, Uwí and his celebration has been merged with the performance of indigeneity as part of intercultural politics in Ecuador. In this framework, the performance of an animistic ontology has been interconnected with the cultural turn in indigenous politics. This contribution explores several questions concerning ontological trajectories, as well as the relationship of ritual and cultural performances to historical developments and political issues.

The Global Biosphere and Its Metaphysical Underpinnings: Ecumenical Alternatives in Animism and Astrobiology

The term biosphere designates the “zone of life” on Earth. Outside this sphere, everything becomes “alien.” In this view of things, which I take to be canonical in the modern West, terrestrial life and biosphere overlap more or less neatly. Yet this idea of an almost perfect convergence is not the only view possible. This study presents two anthropological cases which demonstrate, a contrario, that the modern tendency to envisage the biosphere as “our home environment” or as “our familiar world” is in many ways a historical accident. Other ecumenical possibilities (by which I refer to the ancient Greek notion of the “inhabited world,” the oikumene) are by no means unthinkable. Examining the ecumenical originality of two communities that at first sight seem unrelated – Chachi indigenous people in Ecuador and scientists involved in the search for extraterrestrial life – will allow us to cast new light on the metaphysical underpinnings of the modern biosphere concept.

Declaring Kinship – Some Remarks on the Indeterminate Relation between Commensality and Kinship in Western Kenya

Based upon ethnographic fieldwork in Western Kenya, this article re-evaluates the widespread assumption that commensality constructs or, at least, earmarks kin or kin-like relations. In contrast to such generalizations, our ethnographic data suggests that the relation between kinship and social practices such as eating together is culturally not predetermined in Western Kenya. This understanding of the relation between social practices and kinship as indeterminate allows the inhabitants of Kaleko, a small marketplace in Western Kenya, to use different and conflicting strategies of ‘declaring kin’. These conflicting strategies include assertions of biological kinship, refusals to clarify the specific kin-relation and evocations of love and care. Understanding kinship as an effect of strategic practices of individuals and not of cultural norms or social practices has analytical repercussions for an analysis of marriage customs and infertility.

Slow Food, Shared Values, and Indigenous Empowerment in an Alternative Commodity Chain Linking Brazil and Europe

This article explores governance and power relations within the guaraná (Paullinia cupana) global commodity chain (GCC) of the Sateré-Mawé, an Indigenous group of the Lower Amazon, Brazil. The paper draws on ethnographic work and joint field research in Pará, Brazil and pursues an interdisciplinary approach combining economic geography and anthropological interest in ontological diversity. It describes the guaraná value chain in commodity chain terms, and discusses issues of narrative, transformation, and power in the community of values associated with the chain. Guaraná is a ritual beverage of central importance to Indigenous cosmology and is now a commodity traded within the global Fair Trade network. We found that the commodity chain is the result of not only economically, but also politically motivated Indigenous and European actors. It has a simple organization and is based on inter-personal business relations, with neither retailers nor producers controlling the chain. In this context, diverse actors, including Indigenous and non-Indigenous agents, cooperate in a joint project despite their, at times, differing values. These values are discernable in the narratives and discourses braided around the chain. This paper identifies the values at work and the tensions and dissonances produced as they rub against each other. It argues that, far from making the chain unmanageable, the tensions are creative and help the chain’s participants to bridge between Brazil and Europe.