Animism And The Question Of Life
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| Author | : Istvan Praet |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 215 |
| Release | : 2013-08-15 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1134500599 |
The central purpose of this book is to help change the terms of the debate on animism, a classic theme in anthropology. It combines some of the finest ethnographic material currently available (including firsthand research on the Chachi of Ecuador) with an unusually broad geographic scope (the Americas, Asia, and Africa). Edward B. Tylor originally defined animism as the first phase in the development of religion. The heyday of cultural evolutionism may be over, but his basic conception is commonly assumed to remain valid in at least one respect: there is still a broad consensus that everything is alive within animism, or at least that more things are alive than a modern scientific observer would allow for (e.g., clouds, rivers, mountains) It is considered self-evident that animism is based on a kind of exaggeration: its adherents are presumed to impute life to this, that and the other in a remarkably generous manner. Against the prevailing consensus, this book argues that if animism has one outstanding feature, it is its peculiar restrictiveness. Animistic notions of life are astonishingly uniform across the globe, insofar as they are restricted rather than exaggerated. In the modern Western cosmology, life overlaps with the animate. Within animism, however, life is always conditional, and therefore tends to be limited to one’s kin, one’s pets and perhaps the plants in one’s garden. Thus it emerges that "our" modern biological concept of life is stranger than generally thought.
| Author | : Istvan Praet |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 0 |
| Release | : 2014 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 9781315890203 |
The central purpose of this book is to help change the terms of the debate on animism, a classic theme in anthropology. It combines some of the finest ethnographic material currently available (including firsthand research on the Chachi of Ecuador) with an unusually broad geographic scope (the Americas, Asia, and Africa). Edward B. Tylor originally defined animism as the first phase in the development of religion. The heyday of cultural evolutionism may be over, but his basic conception is commonly assumed to remain valid in at least one respect: there is still a broad consensus that everything is alive within animism, or at least that more things are alive than a modern scientific observer would allow for (e.g., clouds, rivers, mountains) It is considered self-evident that animism is based on a kind of exaggeration: its adherents are presumed to impute life to this, that and the other in a remarkably generous manner. Against the prevailing consensus, this book argues that if animism has one outstanding feature, it is its peculiar restrictiveness. Animistic notions of life are astonishingly uniform across the globe, insofar as they are restricted rather than exaggerated. In the modern Western cosmology, life overlaps with the animate. Within animism, however, life is always conditional, and therefore tends to be limited to one's kin, one's pets and perhaps the plants in one's garden. Thus it emerges that "our" modern biological concept of life is stranger than generally thought.
| Author | : Mark I. Wallace |
| Publisher | : Fordham Univ Press |
| Total Pages | : 196 |
| Release | : 2018-11-20 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 0823281337 |
2019 NAUTILUS GOLD WINNER 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.
| Author | : Graham Harvey |
| Publisher | : Columbia University Press |
| Total Pages | : 280 |
| Release | : 2006 |
| Genre | : Animism |
| ISBN | : 9780231137003 |
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.
| Author | : Stefan Herbrechter |
| Publisher | : BRILL |
| Total Pages | : 261 |
| Release | : 2021-12-13 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 9004502505 |
The current crisis in thinking the “human” raises questions not only about who or what may come after the human, but also about what happened before. What dark secrets lie in our ancestral past that may be stopping us from becoming human “otherwise”?
| Author | : Graham Harvey |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 544 |
| Release | : 2014-09-11 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 1317544501 |
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.
| Author | : Arne Johan Vetlesen |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 378 |
| Release | : 2019-03-28 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 0429594097 |
This book engages with the classic philosophical question of mind and matter, seeking to show its altered meaning and acuteness in the era of the Anthropocene. Arguing that matter, and, more broadly, the natural world, has been misconceived since Descartes, it explores the devastating impact that this has had in practice in the West. As such, alternatives are needed, whether philosophical ones such as those offered by figures such as Whitehead and Nagel, or posthumanist ones such as those developed by Barad and Latour. Drawing on recent anthropological work ignored by philosophers and sociologists alike, the author considers a radical alternative cosmology: animism understood as panpsychism in practice. This understanding of mind and matter, of culture and nature, is then turned against present-day posthumanist critiques of what the Anthropocene amounts to, showing them up as philosophically misguided, politically mute, and ethically wanting. A ground-breaking reconceptualization of the natural world and our treatment of it, Cosmologies of the Anthropocene will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, philosophy and anthropology with interests in our understanding of and relationship with nature.
| Author | : Kaj Arhem |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 340 |
| Release | : 2015-11-19 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1317336623 |
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.
| Author | : Jeremy Narby |
| Publisher | : Penguin |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 2006-03-02 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 9781585424610 |
Continuing the journey begun in his acclaimed book The Cosmic Serpent, the noted anthropologist ventures firsthand into both traditional cultures and the most up-todate discoveries of contemporary science to determine nature's secret ways of knowing. Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the Shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels the globe-from the Amazon Basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers understand about the intelligence present in all forms of life. Intelligence in Nature presents overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity alone. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny penchant for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. Narby presents the first in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.
| Author | : Bruce Boehrer |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 775 |
| Release | : 2018-09-20 |
| Genre | : Literary Criticism |
| ISBN | : 1108581161 |
Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.
