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Summary
Summary
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.
Reviews (1)
Choice Review
Animism is the oldest, most diverse, and most widespread religion in the world. It usually involves a belief in spiritual beings and forces in nature and their associated relationships. Individuals whose primary identification is with other religions often pursue elements of animism. Graham Harvey, its foremost student, edited this seminal volume; many of the 41 contributors, from diverse backgrounds and countries, are readily recognized for their prominence. This unique tome surveys the entire range of animistic beliefs and practices. After the introduction, the 40 chapters are grouped into seven parts, each with a brief introduction summarizing the highlights of its chapters. These parts successively focus on different animisms, nature and culture, larger-than-human communities, things, spirits, consciousness, and performance. The extensive bibliography of 38 pages cites the most pertinent literature. Ultimately, the authors provide challenging contrasting and complementary perspectives on the elemental and pivotal questions of the nature of being human and the place of humans in nature. Surely, this enchanting, provocative work is destined to become the standard source for continuing the renewed discussions and debates about animism, including its past, present, and future meanings and significances. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. L. E. Sponsel emeritus, University of Hawai'i
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. 1 |
Part I Different Animisms | |
Introduction | p. 15 |
1 We call it tradition | p. 17 |
2 Animism, conservation and immediacy | p. 27 |
3 Animism and a proposal for a post-Cartesian anthropology | p. 38 |
4 Animism for Tylor | p. 53 |
5 Building on belief: defining animism in Tylor and contemporary society | p. 63 |
Part II Dwelling In Nature/Culture | |
Introduction | p. 75 |
6 Beyond nature and culture | p. 77 |
7 The materiality of life: revisiting the anthropology of nature in Amazonia | p. 92 |
8 Metamorphosis and identity: Chewong animistic ontology | p. 101 |
9 The ancestral sensorium and the city: reflections on religion, environmentalism and citizenship in the Philippines | p. 113 |
10 The invisibles: toward a phenomenology of the spirits | p. 124 |
Part III Dwelling In Larger-Than-Human Communities | |
Introduction | p. 135 |
11 Death and grief in a world of kin | p. 137 |
12 Hunting animism: human-animal transformations among the Siberian Yukaghirs | p. 148 |
13 Ontology and ethics in Cree hunting: animism, totemism and practical knowledge | p. 159 |
14 Moral foundations of Tlingit cosmology | p. 167 |
15 Embodied morality and performed relationships | p. 181 |
16 The animal versus the social: rethinking individual and community in Western cosmology | p. 191 |
Part IV Dwelling with(Out) Things | |
Introduction | p. 211 |
17 Being alive to a world without objects | p. 213 |
18 Animate objects: ritual perception and practice among the Bambara in Mali | p. 226 |
19 Submitting to objects: animism, fetishism, and the cultural foundations of capitalism | p. 244 |
20 The new fetishism: Western statue devotion and a matter of power | p. 260 |
Part V Dealing with Spirits | |
Introduction | p. 273 |
21 "The One-All": the animist high god | p. 275 |
22 Shamanism and the hunters of the Siberian forest: soul, life force, spirit | p. 284 |
23 Bodies, souls and powerful beings: animism as socio-cosmological principle in an Amazonian society | p. 294 |
24 Exorcizing "spirits": approaching "shamans" and rock art animically | p. 307 |
25 Whence "spirit possession"? | p. 325 |
26 Psychedelics, animism and spirituality | p. 341 |
27 Spiritual beings: a Darwinian, cognitive account | p. 353 |
Part VI Consciousness and Ways of Knowing | |
Introduction | p. 361 |
28 Sentient matter | p. 363 |
29 Towards an animistic science of the Earth | p. 373 |
30 Talk among the trees: animist plant ontologies and ethics | p. 385 |
31 Action in cognitive ethology | p. 395 |
32 Embodied Eco-Paganism | p. 403 |
33 Researching through porosity: an animist research methodology | p. 416 |
34 Consciousness, wights and ancestors | p. 423 |
Part VII Animism in Performance | |
Introduction | p. 439 |
35 Nature in the active voice | p. 441 |
36 Animist realism in indigenous novels and other literature | p. 454 |
37 The third road: Faërie in hypermodernity | p. 468 |
38 Objects of otaku affection: animism, anime fandom, and the gods of... consumerism? | p. 479 |
39 The Dance of the Return Beat: performing the animate universe | p. 491 |
40 Performance is currency in the deep world's gift economy: an incantatory riff for a global medicine show | p. 501 |
Acknowledgements | p. 513 |
Contributors | p. 515 |
Bibliography | p. 521 |
Index | p. 561 |