The Handbook of Contemporary Animism brings together an international team of scholars to examine the full range of animist worldviews and practices. The volume opens with an examination of recent approaches to animism. This is followed by evaluations of ethnographic, cognitive, literary, performative, and material culture approaches, as well as advances in activist and indigenous thinking about animism. This handbook will be invaluable to students and scholars of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology.
How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements of their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In his new book, Graham Harvey explores indigenous and environmentalist spiritualities in which people celebrate relationships with other-than-human beings. He examines present and past animistic beliefs and practices of the Ojibwe, the Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans, revealing the diverse ways of being animist and of living respectfully within natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of animist worldviews and lifeways. He argues that animist beliefs can contribute significantly to contemporary debates about consciousness, cosmology, and environmentalism. In addition, he examines the colonialist ideologies and methodologies that have caused many academics to exclude the term "animism" from their critical vocabularies.
The reckoning of climate change calls for us to fundamentally rethink our notions of human centrality, superiority and power. Drawing on a wide range of modern writers and thinkers – from Freud and Darwin to Latour and Derrida, from Shakespeare and Carroll to Woolf and Kafka – Radical Animism develops a new theory of life for a planet in crisis. In this original and timely work, Jemma Deer reframes our thinking of the Anthropocene with ideas from anthropology, astronomy, deconstruction, evolutionary biology, psychoanalysis, quantum physics and veganism. Through readings that are both inventive and compelling, this book shows how 'literary animism' – the active and transformative life of literature – can open our thinking to the immense power of the non-human world.
In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world’s religions played in ameliorating—or causing—the crisis we now face? Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, appears to bear a disproportionate burden for creating humankind’s exploitative attitudes toward nature through unearthly theologies that divorce human beings and their spiritual yearnings from their natural origins. In this regard, Christianity has become an otherworldly religion that views the natural world as “fallen,” as empty of signs of God’s presence. And yet, buried deep within the Christian tradition are startling portrayals of God as the beaked and feathered Holy Spirit – the “animal God,” as it were, of historic Christian witness. Through biblical readings, historical theology, continental philosophy, and personal stories of sacred nature, this book recovers the model of God in Christianity as a creaturely, avian being who signals the presence of spirit in everything, human and more-than-human alike. Mark Wallace’s recovery of the bird-God of the Bible signals a deep grounding of faith in the natural world. The moral implications of nature-based Christianity are profound. All life is deserving of humans’ care and protection insofar as the world is envisioned as alive with sacred animals, plants, and landscapes. From the perspective of Christian animism, the Earth is the holy place that God made and that humankind is enjoined to watch over and cherish in like manner. Saving the environment, then, is not a political issue on the left or the right of the ideological spectrum, but, rather, an innermost passion shared by all people of faith and good will in a world damaged by anthropogenic warming, massive species extinction, and the loss of arable land, potable water, and breathable air. To Wallace, this passion is inviolable and flows directly from the heart of Christian teaching that God is a carnal, fleshy reality who is promiscuously incarnated within all things, making the whole world a sacred embodiment of God’s presence, and worthy of our affectionate concern. This beautifully and accessibly written book shows that “Christian animism” is not a strange oxymoron, but Christianity’s natural habitat. Challenging traditional Christianity’s self-definition as an other-worldly religion, Wallace paves the way for a new Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancient image of an animal God.
This book provides a comprehensive analysis of Animism as a religion and a culture of the Nilotic peoples of the Upper River Nile in modern "Southern Sudan". It gives an account of how the animistic ritual performances of the divine chief-priests are strategies in conflict management and resolution. For centuries, the Nilotic peoples have been resisting changes to new religious identities and conservatively remained Animists. Their current interactions with the external world, however, have transformed their religious identities. At present, the Nilotics are Animist-Christians or Animist-Muslims. This does not mean that the converted Nilotics relinquish Animism and become completely assimilated to the new religious prophetic dogmas, instead, they develop compatible religious practices of Animism, Christianity and Islam. New Islamic fundamentalism in Sudan which is sweeping Africa into Islamic religious orthodoxy, where Sharia (Islamic law) is the law of the land, rejects this compatibility and categorises the Nilotics as "heathens" and "apostates". Such characterisation engenders opposing religious categories, with one side urging Sharia and the other for what this study calls "gradable" culture. Kuel Jok is a researcher at the Department of World Cultures at the University of Helsinki. In Sudan, Jok obtained a degree in English Linguistics and Literature and diplomas in Philosophy and Translation. He also studied International Law in Egypt. In Europe, Jok acquired an MA in Sociology from the University of Joensuu, Finland and a PhD in the same field from the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Amazonia and Siberia, classic regions of shamanism, have long challenged ‘western’ understandings of man’s place in the world. By exploring the social relations between humans and non-human entities credited with human-like personhood (not only animals and plants, but also ‘things’ such as artifacts, trade items, or mineral resources) from a comparative perspective, this volume offers valuable insights into the constitutions of humanity and personhood characteristic of the two areas. The contributors conducted their ethnographic fieldwork among peoples undergoing transformative processes of their lived environments, such as the depletion of natural resources and migration to urban centers. They describe here fundamental relational modes that are being tested in the face of change, presenting groundbreaking research on personhood and agency in shamanic societies and contributing to our global understanding of social and cultural change and continuity.
"Forward offers a fresh and imaginative view of magic and mayhem in this first book of a projected trilogy."--Library Journal Young Alex is a slave. But recognized for his potential as an Animist, he is bought by his college and begins rigorous training. Now, Alex must begin his quest for his Anim-the animal with whom he will bond. Alex hopes it will be an extraordinary creature that will help him earn the money he needs to buy his freedom. Unfortunately, his Anim turns out to be . . . well, not nearly what he had hoped. But as Alex finds himself caught in one misadventure after another, he will learn-and learn to appreciate-that there is more to his Anim than meets the eye. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Personhood and relationality have re-animated debate in and between many disciplines. We are in the midst of a simultaneous "ontological turn", a "(re)turn to things" and a "relational turn", and also debating a "new animism". It is increasingly recognised that the boundaries between the "natural" and "social" sciences are of heuristic value but might not adequately describe reality of a multi-species world. Following rich and provocative dialogues between ethnologists and Indigenous experts, relations between the received knowledge of Western Modernity and that of people who dwell and move within different ontologies have shifted. Reflection on human relations with the larger-than-human world can no longer rely on the outdated assumption that "nature" and "cultures" already accurately describe the lineaments of reality. The chapters in this volume advance debates about relations between humans and things, between scholars and others, and between Modern and Indigenous ontologies. They consider how terms in diverse communities might hinder or help express, evidence and explore improved ways of knowing and being in the world. Contributors to this volume bring different perspectives and approaches to bear on questions about animism, personhood, materiality, and relationality. They include anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnographers, and scholars of religion.
Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations. Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state. Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.
Basing his study on firsthand experience with Yukaghir hunters, Rane Willerslev focuses on the practical implications of living in a 'hall of mirrors' world, one inhabited by humans, animals and spirits, all of whom are understood to be endless mimetic doubles of one another.
