Table Of ContentRethinking Relations and Animism
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 the 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human world can no longer rely on the outdated assumption that “nature” and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.
Miguel Astor-Aguilera is associate professor of religious studies at Arizona State
University, USA. An anthropologist by training, his scholarship concentrates
on material culture and socio-religious theory. He specializes in Mesoamerican
ontology and cross-cultural personhood issues, and his publications include
“Comparing Indigenous Pilgrimage” (2008), “Latin American Indigenous
Cosmovisions” (2016), and T he Maya World of Communicating Objects (2010).
His current research focuses on Maya ritual specialists in the Yucatan peninsula
and their healing practices as related to their ecological behavioral environment.
Graham Harvey is professor of religious studies at The Open University, UK. His
research and teaching largely concern the rituals and protocols through which
various Indigenous people and Pagans engage with the larger-than-human world.
His publications include F ood, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as
Everyday Life (2013), T he Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013) and
Animism: Respecting the Living World (2nd edition 2017). He is co-editor of the
Routledge monograph series “Vitality of Indigenous Religions”.
Vitality of Indigenous Religions
Series Editors:
Graham Harvey
Open University , UK
A feosemime Adogame
Princeton Theological Seminary , USA
Inés Talamantez
University of California, Santa Barbara , USA
Routledge’s Vitality of Indigenous Religions series offers an exciting cluster
of research monographs, drawing together volumes from leading interna-
tional scholars across a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Indigenous
religions are vital and empowering for many thousands of indigenous peo-
ples globally, and dialogue with, and consideration of, these diverse religious
life-ways promises to challenge and refine the methodologies of a number of
academic disciplines, whilst greatly enhancing understandings of the world.
This series explores the development of contemporary indigenous reli-
gions from traditional, ancestral precursors, but the characteristic contri-
bution of the series is its focus on their living and current manifestations.
Devoted to the contemporary expression, experience and understanding of
particular indigenous peoples and their religions, books address key issues
which include: the sacredness of land, exile from lands, diasporic survival
and diversification, the indigenization of Christianity and other missionary
religions, sacred language, and re-vitalization movements. Proving of par-
ticular value to academics, graduates, postgraduates and higher-level under-
graduate readers worldwide, this series holds obvious attraction to scholars
of Native American studies, Maori studies and African studies, and offers
invaluable contributions to religious studies, sociology, anthropology, geog-
raphy and other related subject areas.
The Expanding World Ayahuasca Diaspora
Appropriation, Integration and Legislation
Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar
Rethinking Relations and Animism
Personhood and Materiality
Edited by Miguel Astor-Aguilera and Graham Harvey
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
religion/series/AINDIREL
Rethinking Relations and
Animism
Personhood and Materiality
Edited by Miguel Astor-Aguilera and
Graham Harvey
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Miguel Astor-Aguilera and
Graham Harvey; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Miguel Astor-Aguilera and Graham Harvey to be
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Astor-Aguilera, Miguel Angel, 1961– editor. | Harvey, Graham,
1959– editor.
Title: Rethinking relations and animism : personhood and
materiality / edited by Miguel Astor-Aguilera and Graham Harvey.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Vitality of indigenous religions | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018034622 (print) | LCCN 2018038820 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780203709887 (e-book) | ISBN 9781351356763 (PDF) |
ISBN 9781351356756 (ePub) | ISBN 9781351356749 (Mobi) |
ISBN 9781138562349 | ISBN 9781138562349 (hardback :alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780203709887 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Animism. | Material culture.
Classification: LCC GN471 (ebook) | LCC GN471 .R48 2019 (print) |
DDC 202/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034622
ISBN: 978-1-138-56234-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-70988-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of figures vii
List of contributors viii
Foreword xii
PHILIP P. ARNOLD
Introduction: We have never been individuals 1
MIGUEL ASTOR-AGUILERA AND GRAHAM HARVEY
PART 1
Relations 13
1 On the ontological scheme of Beyond Nature and Culture 15
MARSHALL SAHLINS
2 Persons or relatives? Animistic scales of practice and
imagination 25
NURIT BIRD-DAVID
3 Adjusted styles of communication (ASCs) in the post-
Cartesian world 35
GRAHAM HARVEY
PART 2
Things 53
4 Assembling new ontologies from old materials: Towards
multiplicity 55
OLIVER J. T. HARRIS AND RACHEL J. CRELLIN
vi Contents
5 Religious objects: Uncomfortable relations and an ontological
turn to things 75
AMY R. WHITEHEAD
6 Robot companions: The animation of technology and the
technology of animation in Japan 94
FABIO R. GYGI
PART 3
Approaches 113
7 The ontological turn, Indigenous research, and Niitsitapi
protocols of reciprocity 115
KENNETH H. LOKENSGARD
8 Maya-Mesoamerican polyontologies: Breath and Indigenous
American vital essences 133
MIGUEL ASTOR-AGUILERA
9 Environment, ontology, and visual perception:
A saltwater case 156
KATIE GLASKIN
10 “Are all stones alive?”: Anthropological and Anishinaabe
approaches to personhood 173
MAUREEN MATTHEWS AND ROGER ROULETTE
Index 193
Figures
1.1 Ontological relationships 16
4.1 Stonehenge today 56
4.2 The stages of Stonehenge (after Parker Pearson et al. 2013) 63
5.1 The Virgin of Alcala 80
6.1 Animation continuum 98
8.1 C lathrus ruber 146
8.2 Human embryonic foetus 147
10.1 William Berens at a portage on the Berens River with
a group of “grandfather” stones, 1932 174
10.2 Naamiwan (with water drum); his wife, Koowin; son
Angus; and grandson Omishoosh (Charlie George
Owen – farther back in the Waabano lodge), Pauingassi 1933 178
Contributors
Philip P. Arnold is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of
Religion at Syracuse University, and a core faculty member of Native
American and Indigenous Studies. He is the Founding Director of the
Skä·noñh – Great Law of Peace Center (w ww.skanonhcenter.org/ ), which
repurposed a site that celebrated Jesuits coming to Onondaga Nation Ter-
ritory (1656–58). The new Center discusses the formation of the Haude-
nosaunee’s Great Law of Peace at Onondaga Lake more than 1,000 years
ago and its influences on American culture. The Center is a collaboration
among the Onondaga Nation, Onondaga County, Syracuse University
and other educational institutions in the Syracuse area. His books are
Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan (1999);
Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree (2001); The Gift
of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love
(2012) and Urgency of Indigenous Values and the Future of Religion
(forthcoming). In 2007 he organized the Doctrine of Discovery Study
Group ( www.doctrineofdiscovery.org) to investigate Christianity’s role in
the destruction of Indigenous peoples. He is the President of the Indige-
nous Values Initiative ( www.indigenousvalues.org ), which is a non-profit
organization to support the work of the Center, the American Indian Law
Alliance ( https://aila.ngo/ ) , and work at the UN.
Miguel Astor-Aguilera is associate professor of religious studies at Arizona
State University, USA. An anthropologist by training, his scholarship con-
centrates on material culture and socio-religious theory. He specializes in
Mesoamerican ontology and cross-cultural personhood issues, and his
publications include “Comparing Indigenous Pilgrimage” (2008), “Latin
American Indigenous Cosmovisions” (2016), and The Maya World of
Communicating Objects (2010). His current research focuses on Maya
ritual specialists in the Yucatan peninsula and their healing practices as
related to their ecological behavioral environment.
Nurit Bird-David is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of
Haifa (PhD Social Anthropology, Cambridge). Author of U s, Relatives:
Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World (2017) and dozens of articles
Contributors ix
in leading journals, her research interests include hunter-gatherers’ envi-
ronmental perceptions and ontologies; shifting scales of practice and
imagination; alternative notions of nation and community; neoliberal
notions of personhood, home and security; and the new algorithmic-
based “sharing economy”.
Rachel J. Crellin is an archaeologist and lecturer in later prehistory at the
University of Leicester. Her research focuses on the study and theorisa-
tion of change, new materialisms, and assemblage theory. She is also an
expert in metalwork wear-analysis. She is currently excavating a Bronze
Age burial mound on the Isle of Man and writing a book for Routledge
titled Change and Archaeology .
Katie Glaskin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Western Australia. Her research interests include dreams, personhood,
creativity, perception, property, and more recently, extinction(s). Major
research publications include edited volumes Customary Land Tenure
and Registration in Australia and Papua New Guinea (2007); M ortality,
Mourning and Mortuary Practices in Indigenous Australia (2008); Sleep
Around the World: Anthropological Perspectives (2013); and monograph
Crosscurrents: Law and Society in a Native Title Claim to Land and Sea
(2017). Katie won the Curl Essay Prize in 2015, and has been an editor
of the journal Anthropological Forum since 2011.
Fabio R. Gygi is lecturer in anthropology with reference to Japan at SOAS,
University of London. His research interests lie at the intersection between
medical anthropology and material culture. He has undertaken fieldwork
on hoarding in Tokyo, where he helped people clean up their apartments
and houses as a form of participant observation and conducted inter-
views with hoarders, psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. He
is particularly interested in dolls, robots and effigies and how to get rid
of them.
Oliver J. T. Harris is Associate Professor of Archaeology at the University
of Leicester. His research focuses on archaeological theory and the Brit-
ish Neolithic. He is co-director of the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project,
which looks at long-term change on the west coast of Scotland. He is
co-author, along with John Robb and others, of T he Body in History:
Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Future (Cambridge University Press,
2013) and, with Craig Cipolla, of A rchaeological Theory in the New Mil-
lennium (Routledge, 2017). His research has been published in journals,
including W orld Archaeology , Archaeological Dialogues and American
Anthropologist.
Graham Harvey is professor of religious studies at The Open University,
UK. His research and teaching largely concern the rituals and protocols
through which various Indigenous people and Pagans engage with the
