Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference

CRITICAL
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
ENGAGEMENTS IN
HUMAN ALTERITY AND
DIFFERENCE
Edited by
BJØRN ENGE BERTELSEN and
SYNNØVE BENDIXSEN
APPROACHES
TO SOCIAL
INEQUALITY AND
DIFFERENCE
Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference
Series Editor
Edvard Hviding
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Synnøve Bendixsen
University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
The book series contributes a wealth of new perspectives aiming to
denaturalize ongoing social, economic and cultural trends such as the
processes of ‘crimigration’ and racialization, fast-growing social-economic
inequalities, depoliticization or technologization of policy, and simulta-
neously a politicization of difference. By treating naturalization simulta-
neously as a phenomenon in the world, and as a rudimentary analytical
concept for further development and theoretical diversification, we iden-
tify a shared point of departure for all volumes in this series, in a search
to analyze how difference is produced, governed and reconfigured in a
rapidly changing world. By theorizing rich, globally comparative ethno-
graphic materials on how racial/cultural/civilization differences are cur-
rently specified and naturalized, the series will throw new light on crucial
links between differences, whether biologized and culturalized, and vari-
ous forms of ‘social inequality’ that are produced in contemporary global
social and political formations.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14775
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen • Synnøve Bendixsen
Editors
Critical
Anthropological
Engagements in
Human Alterity and
Difference
Editors
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen Synnøve Bendixsen
University of Bergen University of Bergen
Bergen, Norway Bergen, Norway
Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference

ISBN 978-3-319-40474-5 ISBN 978-3-319-40475-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2
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Acknowledgments
Both the idea for and the time and resources for this book project was
made possible by the framework of the broad, theory-driven project
“Denaturalizing difference: Challenging the production of global
social inequality” (DENAT) at the Department of Social Anthropology,
University of Bergen. Moreover, the generous funding of DENAT
made it possible to bring most of the contributors of this book together
for the seminar “Ontologizing Difference: De- and re-naturalizing
boundaries” in Bergen, January 2015. We are grateful for all com-
ments, interventions, and other contributions offered at this seminar,
including those from Tone Bringa, Vigdis Broch-Due, Annelin Eriksen,
Edvard Hviding, Christine M. Jacobsen, Ståle Knudsen, Marianne Lien,
Marit Melhuus, Knut Rio, Olaf Smedal, and Hege Toje. Our thanks
are also extended to our good colleagues at the Department of Social
Anthropology, University of Bergen, for their engagement with issues
at the core of our discipline.
The great people at Palgrave Macmillan—and Mireille Yanow and Milana
Vernikova in particular—also deserve a special thanks for their support, pro-
fessionalism, and continued belief in this book project. We are grateful to
the anonymous reviewer who provided us with useful critique and com-
ments to push this book project forward. We would also like to thank those
that have provided feedback to various aspects of the volume, including the
Introduction to the book. Our gratitude extends, in particular, to Thomas
Hylland Eriksen, Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen for their
keen, close, and critical reading of an early draft of the Introduction to this
v
vi Acknowledgments
volume, as well as to Henrik Vigh who early on engaged with the guiding
ideas of the book as well as several of the chapters.
Lastly, we would like to mention, especially, all the contributors to this
volume who have taken part in this journey with us—from initial idea to
now a book completed. Thank you!
Contents
1 Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology:

Anthropological Engagements with Human
and Non-Human Worlds 1
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and Synnøve Bendixsen
Part I Vistas 41
2 The Relationality of Species in Chewong Animistic

Ontology 43
Signe Howell
3 Alterity, Predation, and Questions of Representation:

The Problem of the Kharisiri in the Andes 65
Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard
4 False Prophets? Ontological Conflicts

and Religion-Making in an Indonesian Court 89
Kari Telle
5 Chronically Unstable Ontology: Ontological Dynamics,

Radical Alterity, and the “Otherwise Within” 113
Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme
vii
viii Contents
Part II Materialities 135
6 The Hold of Life in a Warao Village: An Assemblage

Analysis of Householding Practices 137
Christian Sørhaug
7 Disrupting Book Smartness: Critical Ethnography

and the “Ontological Turn” in Anthropology and
Educational Studies 159
Lars Gjelstad
8 Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold’s “Ontology

of Dwelling” Revisited 181
Are John Knudsen
Part III Politics 203
9 Ontological Turns Within the Visual Arts: Ontic

Violence and the Politics of Anticipation 205
Martin Thomassen
10 Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to

Osmotic Worlding 229
Kathinka Frøystad
11 “It Seems Like a Lie”: The Everyday Politics of World-

Making in Contemporary Peru 253
Astrid B. Stensrud
Contents ix
12 Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt in the Context

of Ontological Inquiry 273
Eldar Bråten
Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally295

Adam Reed
Index305
List of Contributors
Synnøve Bendixsen is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of

Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, with a Ph.D. from École des
hautes études en sciences and Humboldt University. Her research interests
include irregular migration, refugees, Islam and Muslims in Europe, polit-
ical mobilization, borders, and religiosity. She has written a number of
articles and book chapters, and one monograph: The Religious Identity of
Young Muslim Women in Berlin (2013). Bendixsen is the co-editor of the
Nordic Journal of Migration Research.
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen is an associate professor at the Department of Social
Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He has researched issues such
as state formation, cosmology, violence, colonialism, egalitarianism, and
rural–urban connections in Mozambique since 1998. Bertelsen has
authored the monograph Violent Becomings: State Formation, Sociality
and Power in Mozambique (2016), as well as co-edited Crisis of the State:
War and Social Upheaval (with Bruce Kapferer, 2009), Navigating
Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania,
ca. 1850 to 1950 (with Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland, 2015), and Violent
Reverberations: Global Modalities of Trauma (with Vigdis Broch-Due,
2016).
Eldar Bråten is an associate professor at the Department of Social
Anthropology, University of Bergen. His research has focused on a range
of topics emerging from fieldwork in Central Java, Indonesia: Islamization,
concepts of self and person, cultural heritage, entrepreneurship, and state
decentralization. During the last few years, Bråten has also carried out
xi
xii List of Contributors
research on historical transformations of social inequality in Norwegian

rural communities. Among his publications is the edited volume Embedded
Entrepreneurship: Market, Culture and Micro-Business in Insular Southeast
Asia (2013).
Kathinka Frøystad is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the
University of Oslo, with a disciplinary specialization in social anthropol-
ogy. Her previous works include Blended Boundaries: Caste, Class and
Shifting Faces of Hinduness in a North Indian City (2005) as well as vari-
ous articles on political and ritual dimensions of religious diversity and
change in India.
Lars Gjelstad is an associate professor and head of studies at the
Department of Vocational Teacher Education at Oslo and Akershus
University College of Applied Sciences. He conducted 20 months of field
research on youth, education, and cultural complexity in Java, Indonesia.
As a postdoctoral student at the University of Bergen, he shifted his
research field to youth and vocational education in Norway.
Signe Howell is a professor emeritus at the Department of Social
Anthropology, University of Oslo. She obtained her D.Phil. at the
University of Oxford in 1981 with a thesis entitled Chewong Modes of
Thought. It was based on 18 months fieldwork with the Chewong, a
small hunting–gathering and shifting cultivating group who lived in the
tropical rainforest of the Malaysian Peninsula. Chewong adhered to an
animistic ontological understanding. Subsequently, she has undertaken
fieldwork in eastern Indonesia. Howell has written extensively on issues
related to cosmology, religion, personhood, ritual, and kinship which
have been published. The following are a few publications of relevance
for this volume: Society and Cosmos; Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia
(1984); Knowledge, causality and morality in a “luckless” society (2012);
Seeing and knowing: Metamorphosis and the fragility of species (2016); For
the sake of Our Future: Sacrificing in Eastern Indonesia (1996); Battle of
cosmologies: The Catholic Church, adat, and “inculturation” among
Northern Lio, Indonesia (in press).
Are John Knudsen is a senior researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute.
Knudsen specializes on peacebuilding, micro-conflict, and forced migra-
tion in the Middle East. He is the author of Violence and Belonging: Land
Love and Lethal Conflict in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan
(2009) and co-editor of three books: Palestinian Refugees: Identity, Space
List of Contributors xiii
and Place in the Levant (2010); Lebanon: After the Cedar Revolution
(2012); and Popular Protest in the New Middle East: Islamism and Post-
Islamist Politics (2014).
Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard is an associate professor at the Department of
Social Anthropology, University of Bergen. Ødegaard is author of the
monograph Mobility, Markets and Indigenous Socialities: Contemporary
Migration in the Peruvian Andes (2010), and has contributed with a chap-
ter in the recently published book Contested Powers: The Politics of Energy
and Development in Latin America, edited by J.A. McNeish,
A. Borchgrevink, and O. Logan (2015). Ødegaard’s work has been pub-
lished in journals such as Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute,
Ethnos, Journal of Borderlands Studies, Journal of Ethnobiology and
Ethnomedicine, Forum for Development Studies, and Journal of Development
Studies (forthcoming), among others. Her research interests include ques-
tions of indigeneities, landscape, and cosmology in the Andes, as well as
questions related to urbanization, space, neoliberalism, labor, illicit econo-
mies, gender, energy politics, and state.
Adam Reed is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University
of St. Andrews. His research includes fieldwork conducted in Papua New
Guinea and the UK, and ranges between legal anthropology, anthropol-
ogy of ethics, anthropology of the city, and anthropology and literature.
Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme is an associate professor at the Department
of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. He has conducted two years
of fieldwork in Ifugao, the Philippines, with both practitioners of tradi-
tional animistic religion and in Pentecostal congregations. He has a par-
ticular interest in the human–animal–spirit relational complex and written
extensively on these matters which have been published. His works
include the monograph Pigs and Persons in the Philippines: Human-
Animal Entanglements in Ifugao Rituals (2014) and articles like
“Actualizing spirits: Ifugao animism as onto-praxis” in Animism in
Southeast Asia (2016) and “A dispositional account of causality: From
herbal insecticides to anthropological theories on emergence and becom-
ing” (Anthropological Theory 2014). Remme has also co-edited the forth-
coming volume Human Nature and Social Life: Perspectives on Extended
Socialities (Cambridge University Press).
xiv List of Contributors
Christian Sørhaug is an associate professor of Social Science at Department

of Health and Social Research at Østfold University College. He holds a
Ph.D. (2012) in social change among the Warao in Venezuela. His current
research concerns indigenous identity and change, elderly care, urban
minorities, cultural heritage, migration, and household studies. The ethno-
graphic fields are situated in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Romania, and Norway.
The theoretical concerns revolve around Science and Technology Studies
(STS)/Actor-Network Theory (ANT), materiality, political ecology, and
performativity.
Astrid B. Stensrud holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the
University of Oslo. She has a postdoctoral position at the Department of
Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, as part of the project
“Overheating: The Three Crises of Globalization”. Having done ethno-
graphic research in the Peruvian Andes since 2001, her current research
interests include environment–human relations, climate change, water
management, globalization, state practices, ontologies, and the political.
The Ph.D. dissertation focused on entrepreneurial activities and animistic
practices in a working class neighborhood in Cusco, Peru. Stensrud’s cur-
rent postdoctoral project examines responses to climate change and water
politics in the Majes-Colca watershed in Arequipa, Peru.
Kari Telle is a social anthropologist and a senior researcher at the Chr.
Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway. Her research in Indonesia focuses
on the anthropology of religion, with particular focus on Hindu and
Muslim relations, secularism and religious minorities, militias and vernac-
ular security, place, and landscape. She is co-editor of a special issue on
Performing the State (2016) on religious militias in Southeast Asia, and
co-edited the volume Contemporary Religiosities: Emergent Socialities and
the Post-Nation State (2010).
Martin Thomassen is an associate professor of Social Anthropology at
the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim,
Norway. His contribution as a lecturer has first and foremost revolved
around globalization, postcolonialism, and political ecology. He has done
fieldwork among peasants in the Kenyan highlands and northern Norway.
His added educational training in intellectual history from Clark University
in Massachusetts and later University of Oslo has of late developed into a
keen interest in the anthropology of art seen within a “global conversational”
perspective developed at the department in Trondheim by his colleague
Tord Larsen.
CHAPTER 1
Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology:

Anthropological Engagements with Human
and Non-Human Worlds
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and Synnøve Bendixsen
A longitudinal review of the anthropological literature will show that

usage of the concept of “ontology” has increased dramatically: Drawing
on Google Scholar one can see that between 1960 and 1990 there were
only eight articles published which had anthropology and ontology-
related words in the title, while between 1990 and 2016 the number was
approximately 90. And akin to the ontological maneuver of a reversal of
perspectives, our impression is that these 90 merely comprise the tip of
the proverbial iceberg. In other words, anthropology has literally become
awash with debates invoking ontology in a myriad ways—and, crucially,
in ways that are often mutually incompatible. Opening Google Scholar’s
gates of knowledge—or, more correctly, the digital sediments of research
texts—will therefore lead you to “ontology” being inferred in what may
seem as sprawling and ultra-diverse anthropological discourses.
The notion of ontology is, of course, also integral to non-anthropological
political analyses, such as in critical analyses of capitalism. For one, the French
philosopher Alain Badiou refers to the “ontological virtue of capital” (quoted
B.E. Bertelsen (*) • S. Bendixsen

Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
e-mail: Bjorn.Bertelsen@uib.no
© The Author(s) 2016 1

B.E. Bertelsen, S. Bendixsen (eds.), Critical Anthropological
Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_1
2 B.E. BERTELSEN AND S. BENDIXSEN
in Pignarre and Stengers 2011, xii) while, for instance, the anonymous
politically radical group The Invisible Committee in a recent book describes
the totalizing ontology of a capitalist world itself where (almost) all alterworlds
or outsides have receded into or been co-opted by capitalism (The Invisible
Committee 2015 [2014]). Such relatively recent turns of theory and meth-
odologies—in anthropology and beyond—are informed by disparate analy-
ses of scholars so differing in perspective as, for instance, Marilyn Strathern,
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Annemarie Mol, Bruno Latour, Karen Barad,
Philippe Descola, Martin Holbraad, Morten Axel Pedersen, Marisol de la
Cadena, Bruce Kapferer, Isabelle Stengers, John Law and Michael W. Scott,
to name a few. However, what is shared among all of these, we argue, is that
they in profoundly varied and sometimes also conflicting ways develop forms
of anthropology where, first, a notion of difference is accentuated and, sec-
ond, where such difference is analytically explored and theoretically circum-
scribed (if not fully empirically represented) as somehow bounded, tangibly
other or, also, as existing within entities.
However, beyond stating a sharp rise in the usage or invocation of the
term and beyond recognizing the accentuation and tentative entification
inherent to usage of “ontology” as difference, how is one, possibly, to
define or assess the impact and direction of the so-called ontological turn—
a term first coined by the anthropologists Henare et al. (2007, 7–10)?1
When seeking to respond to such a question, one needs first to note that for
anthropology the notion of “ontology” was, at least initially, seen to belong
to the domain of particularly phenomenological, ritual or philosophical
anthropological analyses. These analyses regularly drew on perspectives
from philosophers like Alfred Schutz, Paul Ricoeur, Martin Heidegger and
Edmund Husserl and generally deployed insights from the discipline of phi-
losophy’s much-longer engagement with the term. However, from such
a position of relative stability as to the meaning of the term “ontology”,
the notion has now become disciplinarily dislodged and infuses a range of
anthropological debates concerning, for instance, the nature of perspec-
tive, representation and truth, the intricacies of material and human agen-
cies, and the emergence and possibility of alter-politics. How can we make
anthropological sense of such diverse debates and fields—all of which are
often defined as or ascribed to the so-called “ontological turn” (hereafter
unbracketed)? In light of the fact that anthropologists arguably always have
studied other people’s worlds, does the series of new engagements with
“ontology” even qualify as “a turn”, in the sense of a reorientation or novel
direction? Or may it, simply, be seen as a re-run, a return to and rehashing
RECALIBRATING ALTERITY, DIFFERENCE, ONTOLOGY: ANTHROPOLOGICAL... 3
of previous positions in anthropology and related disciplines? And, more

crucially, what is at stake in these debates in relation, particularly, to notions
of alterity and difference—notions of anthropological pre-eminence habitu-
ally articulated analytically and conceptually as “culture”, “epistemology”
and “cosmology”?
While such questions are engaged in various ways by all contributors to
this book, this Introduction will elaborate on these issues through an exami-
nation of contributions to the ontological turn in terms of its promises,
premises and politics. Specifically homing in on the posture and construc-
tion of alterity and difference in this regard, we seek also to elaborate briefly
on the three strands of the ontological turn that we have identified as central
and which organizes the book—vistas, materialities and politics—followed
by a short discussion of the main critical contentions concerning the onto-
logical turn, before providing a short overview of the book’s chapters.
Knowing the World: What and How

On one level, one may argue that the ontological turn goes for the prover-
bial disciplinary throat through attacking the stuff anthropological theory
is made of, namely the inseparable questions of “What can I know about
the world?” and “How can I know the world?” Framed this way, it thereby
melds methodological anthropological procedures with theoretical and
analytical implications. One position sometimes expounded here is to take
informants’ world—in its ontological sense—seriously in their own right,
for instance, through deploying indigenous conceptualizations in order to
obviate ethnocentric impositions. Such an ambition is, for instance, clearly
stated in the introduction of Thinking Through Things, where Henare
et al. (2007, 16) advocate for a “methodology that allows for concept
production that makes worlds”. They further hold that a methodologi-
cal move to “make worlds” (in the plural) is made feasible by abolishing
the distinction between concepts and things. A similar deep-seated auto-
critique of anthropological concept-making and unease with the nature
of representation informs also anthropologist Martin Holbraad’s Truth
in Motion (2012), which as a methodological and theoretical experiment
seeks to re-center anthropological concept creation through engaging and
re-deploying recursively informants’ perceptions and methods of truth-
making practices (see also Bråten, chapter 12). A comparable sense of
a “world-making” disciplinary engagement—but one informed by the
world—is found in the French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist
of science Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (2013

[2012]). Latour’s project here, it appears, is to open up the world
through eradicating it of subject–object distinctions and nature–culture
divisions seen to hamper our appreciation of the interconnected charac-
ter of the planet or Gaia, as he terms it—only infrequently (e.g., Latour
2015) acknowledging his debt to James Lovelock (2000 [1979]). Latour
argues that we need analytically “to try to benefit from the plurality of the
ontologies that we have just released from the crushing division between
Object and Subject” (Latour 2013 [2012], 182).
Several aspects of importance to anthropological practice are revealed by
these three snippets and by way of opening up the questions of the “what”
and “how” of anthropology. We will mention only a few more here.
For one, the ontological turn directs itself against the persistent root
assumption in sciences of the unity of nature, and the common distinction
between nature and culture, for example, which is approached as the prob-
lematic outcome of a Western dualist ontology which, in turn, is also inherent
to capitalism (see, e.g., Tsing 2015). Generally, it is held that dualist assump-
tions have come to underlie much of how the West pursues scientific reason-
ing and research through, for instance, the division between the natural and
the social. In this sense radicalizing anthropology’s long-standing critique of
a Cartesian dualism (see, e.g., Strathern 1980) as well as exercising a variety
of the discipline’s much-lauded project of so-called cultural critique (see, e.g.,
Marcus and Fischer 1986), many approaches within the ontological turn aims
to end this dichotomy’s hold on anthropological thought.
Second, it is also an approach where a rethinking of the discipline’s
methodological approach and apparatus is particularly significant. Put
differently, it challenges the general anthropological pattern of reason-
ing concerning the relationship between data and analysis by reversing
the sequence, arguing that ethnography should transform the concepts
used (Laidlaw and Heywood 2013).2 And because any anthropological
undertaking, theoretical as well as methodological, necessarily is compara-
tive, the starting point for exploring and later analytically defining signifi-
cant and localizable patterns, structures, values, processes and practices will,
by default, relate to some notion of alterity and difference (Detienne 2008
[2000]; Gingrich and Fox 2002; Kapferer 2012 [1988]). Unsurprisingly,
alterity and difference are precisely domains that concern much anthro-
pology associated with the ontological turn, as we shall discuss.
Third, what is at stake in the debate on the ontological turn is also a
concern with the discipline’s relation to both the domain of the political
per se, as well to the spectrum of possible analyses of how politics may be
constituted, enacted and analyzed. For some, as anthropologist Ghassan

Hage, the future of a critical anthropology is therefore one that has the
potential to ultimately encourage as well as generate different forms of pol-
itics. Such potential for a different politics to emerge from anthropology’s
radical orientation relies, in his view, precisely on a recognition of ontolog-
ically differentiated alterity and possibility (Hage 2012, 2015). Working
on often Latin American material, anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena
(2014) provides a similar intervention into the debate. In her interpreta-
tion of what an ontologically informed anthropology means lies the pos-
sibility to unfold the situated conditions of politics in order, ultimately, to
unsettle modern politics’ hegemony (Cadena 2014). The potential of onto-
logical difference to shape novel forms of politics, expounded by Cadena
and Hage, has also made an impact beyond anthropology. For instance, as
famed radical political theorists Michael Hardt and Antonio Negro write
commenting on the direction and potential of Amazonianist and anthro-
pologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: “Our aim here—and Viveiros de
Castro’s too—is not to advocate an unmodern Amerindian ontology but
rather to use that perspective to critique modern epistemology and push it
toward an altermodern rationality” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 124).
Thus, the ontological turn can be viewed as a response to, and an
extension of, long-standing debates about the necessary diversification of
anthropology—also at the global scale and including emerging positions of
postcolonial anthropology external to age-worn traditions of thought in
Euro-American academia (see, e.g., Devisch and Nyamnjoh 2011; Mignolo
2011; Santos and Meneses 2010). Rather than a short-lived fad we consider
the ontological turn as part of anthropology’s long-standing practice of
auto-critique: since the postwar period, anthropologists have taken it upon
themselves to be self-critical and engage in radical critiques of its founda-
tions and fundament. Think, for example, of the postcolonial turn, where
anthropologists like Talal Asad (1973; see also Mafeje 1996) contributed
importantly to initiating a critique of anthropology’s relations to colonial-
ism (see also, e.g., L’Estoile et al. 2005; Ntarangwi et al. 2006). Or recall
the so-called reflexive or cultural turn in the 1980s, with contributions
from, for instance, Marcus and Fischer (1986) which continue to impinge
on the discipline and its practice. In the ontological turn one may identify
a similar urge for a reconstitution of a radical anthropology that takes the
concern of the human itself seriously and does not, a priori, assume a sin-
gular political human being—a universal homo politicus (see also Pedersen
2012a). There is, however, a crucial difference between the ontological
turn’s general insistence on difference and the reflexive or c ultural turn of,
for instance, George Marcus who in 2007 argued that “few anthropolo-
gists would set out on research in the contemporary world while laying
claim to this pure purpose for ethnographic inquiry of exploring cultural
alterity as ‘Other’” (Marcus, quoted in Willerslev 2016, vi).3
However, in general and as these three briefly introduced aspects hope-
fully have indicated, the “what” and the “how” of anthropological practice
is destabilized by various interventions from the ontological turn—with
methodological as well as political implications. In sum, this includes a
turn of the focal point of the discipline and a re-accentuation—again in
the domain of difference and alterity—of anthropology’s objects which
should, according to Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
(2004, 2015), be ontologies and not epistemologies (cf. Toren and Pina-
Cabral 2011). But what constitutes “ontologies” in this context?
Singularity or Multiplicity: Ontology

and the Human
As is well known, there has been much temperature in exchanges about

the ontological turn—an aspect also dealt with by anthropologist Adam
Reed in his postscript to this volume. Much ink and megabytes have also
been spent deliberating on the turn’s possible merits and perils, possi-
bilities and problems (for merely a few examples, see Viveiros de Castro
2015; Graeber 2015; Sismondo 2015; de la Cadena et al. 2015). While
the modes of critique are as multifarious as that, for lack of a better term,
assemblage which is concealed by the shorthand “the ontological turn”,
many critics are particularly concerned with the term “ontology”, asking,
for instance, “is ontology just another name for culture?” (Carrithers et al.
2010). Such critique is often based on the ontological turn’s advocates
frequently being seen to fail to clarify how they approach the term ontol-
ogy differently from the use in philosophy—the domain from whence it
was imported, transmogrified and re-deployed, one might say. Graeber,
for instance, argued that it has been defined as a “way of being”, a “man-
ner of being” and the “nature of being in itself” (Graeber 2015, 15–18).
Lloyd (2012, 59) contends that ontology is also sometimes inferred or
defined as “accounts of what there is”, broadly speaking referring to phi-
losopher Martin Heidegger’s meaning of the term “ontology”.4
Critics such as Lloyd and Graeber are perfectly right to hold that there
are no singular, unifying definitions of ontology at hand—a diversity
which alludes to the multiple incarnations of an ontological anthropol-
ogy. However, and this is quite important, most scholars affiliated with
the turn do see such plurality not as a problem but as, precisely, part of the
project. This is illustrated by Viveiros de Castro’s recent definition—draw-
ing on his long-term inspiration from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze:
“Ontology is outlined here by the author as an anti-epistemological and
counter-cultural, philosophical war machine” (Viveiros de Castro 2015,
2; see also Deleuze and Guattari 1986; Viveiros de Castro 2014 [2009],
159–171).
Thus, given such a critical program of continuous movement and de-
territorialization, to be within keeping of Viveiros de Castro’s Deleuzian
approach to ontology, it is no wonder that most emphasize aspects such as the
(continuous) production of plurality and practices of anti-hegemonic decon-
struction of dominant terms as, for instance, “nature”, “truth” and “reality”.
Furthermore, the turn may be seen to be composed of continued attempts
to decenter what being human entails and the porous or negotiated nature
of its boundaries to other species and materialities. For instance, in anthro-
pologist Michael W. Scott’s argument for the salience of a “poly-ontological
cosmology” approach to understand Makira socio-cultural trajectories and
worlds (Scott 2007, 12–13), he defines ontology as “the investigation and
theorization of diverse experiences and understandings of the nature of being
itself” (Scott 2013, 859). This open and experimental approach to human
being, that is, a stance contra the a priori definition of what humanity is com-
prised of, is also what informs anthropologist Eduardo Kohn’s (2015) work
on nature and forests. He defines “ontological anthropology” broadly as:
the nonreductive ethnographic exploration of realities that are not neces-

sarily socially constructed in ways that allow us to do conceptual work with
them. I see this as a response to a conceptual, existential, ethical, and politi-
cal problem—how to think about human life in a world in which a kind of
life and future that is both beyond the human and constitutive of the human
is now in jeopardy. (Kohn 2015, 315)
Again, the political impetus underlining this sense of urgency—and an urgency

to open up the discipline—is here clearly perceptible, specifically in relation to the
ecological crisis and the figure of the Anthropocene. A similar sense of urgency
as that expressed by Kohn also underlies anthropologist Anna L. Tsing’s analy-
sis of how humans must re-adapt and re-connect with nature in new ways as
capitalism has destroyed major parts of the planet’s ecosystem and depleted its
resources (2015). However, expressions of urgency is not only confined to the
domain of ecology or the global impact of the Anthropocene, but is also inte-
gral to the ambition among many who are affiliated with the turn in the sense
of being true to the world which they describe. This ambition of “writing the
world” comes very close to a related term, namely “ontography”—to describe

“things as they are”. Such a departure from general philosophical ontology in
order to return to particular empirical and historical circumstances—an ontog-
raphy for the science and technology studies—is expressed by, for instance,
Lynch (2013). Also indicative of such a reading of a naturalism, a form of neo-
positivism, for anthropology is that Holbraad chooses to use the term “ontog-
raphy” when synthesizing the methodological suggestion in his book Truth
in Motion (Holbraad 2012, 255–259). Indeed, departing from famed French
philosopher and historian Michel Foucaults’ understanding of discourse as cre-
ating its object while maintaining that there is a real world out there, Henare
et al. (2007, 13) pursue a radical constructivism by arguing that “[d]iscourse
can have effects not because it ‘over-determines reality’, but because no onto-
logical distinction between ‘discourse’ and ‘reality’ pertains in the first place.
In other words, concepts can bring about things because concepts and things
just are one and the same”. Such an orientation toward an unmediated world
(as opposed to its derivative concepts or established discourses) also fuels the
quest for what anthropological knowledge is, a quest that regularly probes the
difference or non-difference between the anthropologist and the native, as for
instance Viveiros de Castro (2013) does. The native is defined by anthropolo-
gists’ presupposition that the native’s relationship with culture is natural, while
the anthropologists must be able to express his or her culture reflexively, condi-
tionally and consciously.
In these attempts—from Tsing and Kohn to Henare and Viveiros
de Castro—one may identify a particular form of realism or, at least, an
ambition to produce anthropologies that are more directly informed by
ethnographic realities as these are understood.5 Put differently, what is
proposed may be seen to be modeled on an ideal that human and natu-
ral worlds should overlap with or complement anthropological worlds,
thus bypassing the problems of representation and discourse, cosmology
and epistemology. Paradoxically, this sense of convergence or overlap—a
hyperpositivism in a sense—is simultaneously informed by notions of onto-
logical difference or alterity.
Alterity and Difference, or the Engines

of the Ontological Turn
Given that the ontological turn shuns singularity—or at least universal-

ity—and given that it is oriented toward anti-hegemonic pluralization, it
seems fair to argue that a key premise of the ontological turn revolves
around a re-emphasis of anthropology’s long-term concern with alterity
and difference. One may even argue, as some do, that anthropology’s main
project is to grasp alterity (Nielsen 2013). However, the notion of differ-
ence has a protracted and complex history in anthropology—informing
analyses of local as well as national cosmologies in cultural anthropology
(see, e.g., Keesing 1992), being the motor or logic of analyses of dichoto-
mous pairs in structural anthropology (see, e.g., Lévi-Strauss 1968 [1958]
or Descola 2013 [2005]), as well as being crucial to any understanding of
boundary-making, in its broadest sense, in what can be termed political
anthropology (see, e.g., Malkki 1995). But difference has also informed
(and perhaps amplified) anthropological analyses of cultural distinction
where this was not always easily distinguishable from notions of race or
inequality (Hastrup 1995). Early anthropologists studied people that were
approached as inhabiting domains outside modernity and who were radi-
cally different not only in terms of living or technological approaches, but
also in modes of cosmology, sense of reality and the manner in which they
dwelled in their surroundings (Hage 2012, 288; see also Lévy-Bruhl 1926
[1910]; Sahlins 1995). In moments of self-scrutiny, anthropologists have
described this approach as producing a “savage slot” (Trouillot 2003) or
belonging to an era of “primitivist anthropology” (Hage 2012).
However, beyond various forms of primitivization of a wide range of
Others, the notion of difference is undoubtedly intrinsic to anthropology.
Particularly, it is linked up to one of the discipline’s foundational axioms,
namely that cross-cultural comparison necessarily presumes the simultane-
ous existence of (discovered or yet to be discovered) cross-cultural patterns,
actions, materialities, as well as radically different patterns, actions, mate-
rialities and so on. In this common anthropological perspective, the dis-
cipline’s critical potential is realized through its comparative exercise (see,
e.g., Kapferer 2012 [1988]; van der Veer 2016). This enduring comparative
ambition is shared by many of the ontological turn, but it emerges often
with a clear twist—as for instance by reinterpreting the anthropological cul-
tural critique dictum of expressing that people who live differently from us
are relevant to us expanded into showing that “we can be radically other
than what we are” (Hage 2012, 289). Indeed, the anthropologist Morten
Nielsen (2013) argues that conventional anthropological thinking in itself
can be said to engage in a particular horizon of knowledge that is rooted in
a fundamental separation between representations and things’ domains, and
the mutual relationship of the representations are determined by whether
they are able to reproduce reality as it is. Difference, in this approach, is thus
a function of the representation rather than the world at large. However,
argues Nielsen (2013), this way to represent matters carries a paradox which
necessitates a radically other approach to difference and variety: if difference

is viewed as a function of cultural representations, then the division between
representation and reality becomes the standard that defines difference as
variation, rather than as difference (see also Strathern 1988). One conse-
quence of this approach is that no matter how absurd our informants’ ideas
about the world seem to be, they all fall within the category of cultural rep-
resentations. For Viveiros de Castro (1992), anthropology can offer criti-
cal perspectives by positioning itself in a space where otherness is radically
other while simultaneously speaking to us—also holding multiple possibili-
ties for productive forms of misunderstanding in such exchanges (Viveiros
de Castro 2004; see also, again, Hage 2012). Related, Isabelle Stengers, a
philosopher of science, argues that “[w]e do not have to invent ourselves as
radically different from what we are, for we are already very different from
what we believe ourselves to be” (2000, 165).
But which exact similarities and differences are presupposed by such
cross-cultural comparison? What is the ontological status of difference? In
the world? In anthropological thought, analysis and method? Is difference
merely treated as a heuristics—a set of metaphors for addressing mecha-
nisms of distinction, such as class, gender, race, culture or species that are
foregone in order to construe analyses comprising a multiplicity of realities
and a multiplicity of the potentialities of the human body (Hage 2015)?
Disagreements with and critiques of the ontological turn is largely con-
cerned with how anthropologists should study, define and write about dif-
ference (see, e.g., Vigh and Sausdal 2014). The broad uses of the term
difference in anthropology—oftentimes invoked in a commonsensical way
and sometimes more precisely defined—call for many questions, also if
invoked in relation to ontology. For one, should difference necessarily be
seen as alter—as part of a dialectic, a mirror image, the other of a pair—in
concrete socio-cultural or political contexts? Or should we see difference as
a figure undergirding the founding tales of anthropology—a re-invocation
of the West and the Rest, North and South? Or, perhaps, a reinterpreta-
tion of great civilizational divides between distinct wholes, as some pro-
ponents of the ontological turn are accused of proposing? Does such an
understanding of Difference Writ Large risk erasing differences within an
“indigenous” population and neglect a study of, for instance, who has the
authoritative power to define? Graeber (2015, 33) alludes to such a conse-
quence when asking how to decide who inside a designated bordered area
“gets to define what should be considered ‘Nuer ideas’”. He thereafter cri-
tiques approaches to the ontological turn to “require universal standards for
recognizing legitimate authority (even across ‘worlds’), it proposes that

those authorities be granted authority over determining the nature of real-
ity itself, within their designated territory, whether or not the individuals in
question actually wish to be granted such authority!” (2015, 33).
If we take into consideration this critique by Graeber, can we rather
understand difference as a part of a heterogeneous, multiple and perpetu-
ally mutating totality where exchange and interchangeability dominates
and where the assemblages produced are such that it would be next to
impossible to analytically exorcize a core—an essence? In order to respond
to such questions, an earlier incarnation of Bruno Latour may be help-
ful, namely his We Have Never Been Modern (1993) which simultane-
ously rejects the object/subject distinction and attacks the Western and
anthropological premise of difference itself. However, in the ontological
turn, “difference” may well obtain another discursive and epistemological
status than what was the subject matter of Latour’s critique: Instead, some
suggest that rather than viewing differences as the product of how reality
is subjectively appropriated, some forms of difference should be under-
stood as the product of different realities (Hage 2012, 302).
At this point we also need to underline that a number of anthropologists
that are concerned with difference, domination and reality are inspired
by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s argument which, crudely put, would
approach difference not as variations over a theme of sameness or reduc-
ible to schema of representation. Instead, difference-in-itself is seen to be
related to singularity and becoming, not to the hegemony or domination
of regimes of similarity, sameness or identity. Difference—and by its exten-
sion alterity—thereby holds promises for those anthropologists that draw
on Deleuze to first recognize the singular, unique and potentially disrup-
tive characteristics of events, individuals, conceptions and, indeed, cos-
mological or ontological frameworks (Deleuze 2004 [1968]). Deleuze’s
approach to difference is what drives the radical anthropological projects
of figures such as Viveiros de Castro in his and others’ attempts at attain-
ing forms of representation that evade transcendence—or elude forms of a
priori transcendence that undermine the singularity of the object studied
and the force of difference contained within that.
It should be clear by now that rather than ontology being “(just)
another word for culture”, as the 2010 GDAT (the Group for Debates
in Anthropological Theory at the University of Manchester) discussed
(Carrithers et al. 2010), representatives of the ontological turn is instead
concerned with exploring, theorizing and analyzing forms of alterity
beyond “culture” or “epistemology”. Argues anthropologist Aparecida

Vilaça (2015) based at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, compared
to the notion of “culture”, “ontology” has the advantage of including
both cultural plurality and diversity of nature. This facilitates a more radi-
cal understanding of difference as well as situates “peripheral people and
their symbolic systems on an equal footing with Euro-Americans” (2015,
3). A similar approach to ontology was expressed at the abovementioned
GDAT debate when anthropologist Matei Candea (2010, 175) argued for
the necessity of a turn to ontology to radicalize anthropological theoriz-
ing on alterity and difference because “cultural difference is not different
enough, or alternatively that acultural difference has been reduced by cul-
tural critics to a mere effect of political instrumentality”. Put another way,
as reflected in parts of this turn, ontological difference is within or between
worlds (however these are conceived) rather than between epistemological
worldviews. This distinction has far-reaching consequences since recogniz-
ing the existence of multiple (if not wholly separate) realities “opens up
the possibility to perceive domination not only as the product of a struggle
within a reality but also the struggle between realities” (Hage 2012, 302)—
producing effectively a tense and conflictual relation between realities.
Finally—and this is crucial—also in another way alterity is not always invoked
as residing or found in localizable worlds or cultures—as differences to be
empirically identified by the anthropologist in her quest to understand the
world. Rather, as Holbraad and Pedersen point out in their particular take on
this (Holbraad and Pedersen 2016), alterity is a quality of the relation between
analytical assumptions and the ethnographic material at hand. Conceived in
this way, alterity translates as a tool of intensified relativism against conven-
tional ways to connect anthropological reasoning with empirical material.
Drawing on all these diverse and somewhat conflicting conceptualiza-
tions of alterity and difference, in this edited volume we have identified
three admittedly broad forms of analytical strands that we consider to be
central to the ontological turn: vistas, materialities and politics. We argue
that this threepronged analytical approach in various ways decenter what
it means to be human by emphasizing and rethinking difference and alter-
ity. The first, vistas, includes explorations of how worlds are imagined and
engaged and here the critical, conceptual and methodological framework
often termed “perspectivism” is central. For the second, materialities, any
sense of strict boundary between human beings and a range of (analyti-
cally and theoretically significant) non-human others translate into making
impossible, difficult or unsettled notions of difference between human
and non-human. For the third, politics, an emphasis on ontological (as

opposed to epistemological, cultural, etc.) difference or alterity aim to
severely undermine encompassing notions of human universality whilst
opening the horizons of political possibility.
This tripartite analytical typology is, alas and necessarily, a caricature as
there are myriad ways of approaching ontology that are not covered by
such triangulation. However, we believe that by framing the approach in
this way significant aspects of the contemporary debates about the onto-
logical turn may be opened up for critical engagement, re-assessment and
recalibration.
Vistas
Broadly speaking, what we have labeled the vistas approach within the
ontological turn gives particular attention to the study of cosmological
formations that are understood as fundamentally perspective-generating
or ontogenetic systems. Such cosmologically informed approaches include
the framing and imagination of worlds (Abramson and Holbraad 2014)
and ethnographic analyses of a variety of religious practices, such as how
material and spiritual worlds intersect. Aparecida Vilaça’s (2014) study
of how the Amazonian Wari group’s conversion to Christianity must be
understood not as a transition between ontologies, but rather as con-
stituting a complex of unstable positions characterized by non-linearity
and openendedness, is but one example. Particular relevant here, how-
ever, is a figure that has greatly influenced ontologically oriented think-
ing within anthropology, namely Marilyn Strathern. In her seminal book
After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century (1992),
Strathern distanced herself from the nature/culture distinction, arguing
that anthropologists had studied kinship systems as if these social con-
structions were built on natural facts. The terms in which these “facts
of life” were examined and understood, Strathern argues, were already
incorporated into culturally constructed social relations. This recognition
led Strathern to work on relationality itself and to develop the notion
of dividuality—theoretical developments that has profoundly influenced
anthropological thought, not least the work of Holbraad and Pedersen
(2009, 2016). Moreover, Strathern has emphasized that her attraction to
the Amazonian perspectivism of Viveiros de Castro is based precisely in his
approach to it as ontology, not epistemology: “It is not about what one
knows but about how one is, about the nature of the body with which one
inhabits the world and apprehends it. The body is the organ of percep-
tion; perspectives are different according to the body one has” (Strathern
2005, 140).6
Coming from a background in Brazilian anthropology and having
worked on Amazonia, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s works have been
highly influential in anthropology in both Europe and the Americas. One
of the starting points for his work is to contrast what he labels the “mul-
tinaturalism” of Amerindian thought with what he terms the “multicul-
turalist” approach of Western cosmology—cosmology here seen in an
embracing sense. According to Viveiros de Castro (1998, 470):
Where the latter [multiculturalism] [is] founded on the mutual implication

of the unity of nature and the plurality of cultures—the first guaranteed by
the objective universality of body and substance, the second generated by
the subjective particularity of spirit and meaning—the Amerindian concep-
tion would suppose a spiritual unity and a corporeal diversity. Here, culture
or the subject would be the form of the universal, whilst nature or the object
would be the form of the particular.
This shifting of perspectives between human and animal is predicated on

the idea, also taken from the Amerindian context, of an “original state
of undifferentiation between humans and animals” (Viveiros de Castro
1998, 471). Viveiros de Castro proposes we recognize such a perspectival
shift as it opens up the world in a different way to us, claiming “whatever
possesses a soul is a subject, and whatever has a soul is capable of having
a point of view” (1998, 478). Primary in this approach is that any being’s
condition is limited and defined by its bodily limits, which is what Viveiros
de Castro calls “perspectivism”. While perspectivism was first associ-
ated with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and his colleagues at the Museu
Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, it has become one of the dominant paradigms
for anthropologists working on the Amerindian context, be they situated
in Brazil, Europe or the Americas (Course 2010).
But what is perspectivism? Magnus Course sums the school of thought
up this way: “Put simply, it is the observation that in many indigenous
American ontologies different kinds of beings see different worlds in the
same way” (Course 2010, 250). Viveiros de Castro offers a more com-
plex analysis and describes Amerindian perspectivism as predicated on
the notion of deixis (1998). In general, the term deixis denotes an utter-
ance’s referential meaning that is contingent on the spatial, temporal or
personal position from which it is produced. However, in perspectivism,
deixis refers to how the world is dependent on the position from which its
perception originates. Viveiros de Castro calls this “cosmological deixis”.
All beings, in perspectival ontologies both appear human to themselves
and relate to each other as humans would, possessing human “culture”
(Course 2010). The main point here is that Amerindian ontological per-
spectivism postulates that “the point of view creates the subject; whatever is
activated or ‘agented’ by the point of view will be a subject” (Viveiros de
Castro 1998, 476f, italics in original). Rather than a “natural” essence,
it is the (temporary) holding of such a subject position that defines one
as “culturally” human (Course 2010). These perspectives are, then, not
fixed or systematically ascribed along typologies of species. Instead, to
be “human” rather than non-human is defined by one’s ability of seeing
before being seen, of being a perceiving subject rather than its object.
Perspectivism has implications for “nature” and “culture”—heav-
ily criticized distinctions that nevertheless are central to anthropological
approaches to difference. Viveiros de Castro contrasts perspectivism with
conventional thought in this way: “If Western multiculturalism is relativ-
ism as public policy, then Amerindian perspectivist shamanism is multinat-
uralism as cosmic politics” (1998, 472). For Viveiros de Castro taking such
perspectives from Amerindian cosmologies is integral to anthropological
critique which, according to him, must continually approach a “perma-
nent decolonialization of thought” (Viveiros de Castro 2014 [2009]).
And here we are at crucial aspect of the ontological turn: It may also be
approached as a project of radical dehierarchization and for Viveiros de Castro
(2013) it constitutes an attack on the authority of the anthropologist versus
the subject/object of anthropological inquiry—in his terms, “the native” (see
also Blaser 2014). In its place, he proposes reconceiving “anthropological
knowledge that is founded on the basic premise that the procedures involved
in anthropological investigation are of the same conceptual order as the pro-
cedures being investigated” (Viveiros de Castro 2013, 477, italics retained).
In this willingness to attack the premise of the reduction of the native to an
object, not a subject, at least two veins of Deleuzian thinking emerge: For
one, Viveiros de Castro’s celebration of the Other as opportunity or possibil-
ity—as a being that may be actualized—bear clear resemblances to Deleuzian
notions of virtual and actual, both, of course, famously constituting different
aspects of reality (see, e.g., Deleuze 2006 [1977]). On this Viveiros de Castro
is clear: “Without an Other the category of possibility disappears: the world
collapses, reduced to the pure surface of the immediate, the subject dissolves,
turning into a thing-in-itself” (Viveiros de Castro 2013, 478; see also 1992
[1986], 1998, 2014 [2009]).7
This first vein thus relates to the whole notion of perspectivism and
the way in which Viveiros de Castro epistemologically and ludically allows
for a plane of consistency between concepts drawn from his Amazonian
interlocutors, nay, co-anthropologists in propelling such understandings into
both form and matter of anthropology, reconfiguring its very analytical,
theoretical and conceptual terrain (see also Swancutt and Mazard 2016).
Simultaneously, Viveiros de Castro is clear that enabling ontological auto-
determination is not about repeating what informants say, that is, withdraw-
ing from the anthropological practice of conceptualization in order to lay
bare the empirical and ethnographic so-called facts (Jensen 2013). Viveiros
de Castro’s playful othering of anthropological vision and authority, not
to speak of the discipline’s relations to the world, resembles the Deleuzian
vision of philosophy where the formation and development of novel con-
cepts with which to grasp empirical processes is at the heart of philosophy’s
task (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 [1991]). In such an approach rather than
exorcizing and celebrating stable, elevated and stasis-inducing concepts,
these need to be continually generated in order to encompass the dynam-
ics of a total reality and, by necessity, be fuzzy or imprecise, on the one
hand and be encompassing on the other. Concepts need, therefore, to be
both concrete and plural in the Deleuzian vision of philosophy—much like
Viveiros de Castro’s propelling of perspectival ontologies into anthropo-
logical engagements with alterity, difference and similarity.
Materialities
A strand of what we call the materialities approach within the ontologi-
cal turn may broadly be said to emphasize how agency is distributed
across a range of domains, beings and material contexts, as well as the
turn toward objects in Science and Technology Studies. For the latter,
the term “ontology” has facilitated analyses of not only radical interpre-
tations of technological and scientific regimes but also involved a scru-
tiny of how objects enact as well as are generative of certain contexts and
assemblages—including material and non-material configurations that, as
a consequence, may involve both human and non-human beings and their
bodies (see, e.g., Law and Lien 2013; Mol and Law 2004; Thompson
2005). For the former term, agency is here understood as operating, for
instance, in multispecies settings or as enmeshed in vibrant materialities
that effectively eclipse the human as the sole being wielding agency by,
precisely, exploring non-human forces and actants. In their Introduction
to Thinking Through Things, Henare et al. (2007) contends that meanings

in anthropology are generally thought to be only abstractions, distinct
from the things themselves. Similarly, Tim Ingold has observed that: “[u]
nderstood as a realm of discourse, meaning and value, culture is conceived
to hover over the material world but not to permeate it” (2000, 340).
In contrast to such analytical assumptions where meanings are funda-
mentally distinct from their material manifestations, Henare et al. seek
to open up for the possibility that “things might be treated as sui generis
meanings” (2007, 3–4, italics retained). This implies that
Meanings are not “carried” by things but just are identical to them. Such a
starting-point neutralises the question of “knowledge” at the outset, because
meanings—be they native (relativism) or supra-cultural (universalism)—no
longer need to be excavated, illuminated, decoded and interpreted.
This reorientation toward material realities and the world of things and mean-
ing also resonates with the Dutch ethnographer and philosopher Annemarie
Mol’s work (e.g., 2002). Similar to other approaches in the ontological turn
described above, such as Viveiros de Castro, Mol explicitly seeks to move
away from epistemology in her analysis of how medicine plurally enacts “the
objects of its concern and treatment”. Empirically she examines the treat-
ment of atherosclerosis in one hospital, looking at how the body and its
diseases “are more than one”, while arguing that “this does not mean that
they are fragmented into being many” (Mol 2002, viii). Theorizing “medi-
cine’s ontological politics, a politics that has to do with the ways in which
problems are framed, bodies are shaped, and lives are pushed and pulled
into one shape or another” (Mol 2002, viii), she argues, however, against
a mere multiplication of the observers while leaving the object of study or
observation intact (Mol 2002, 12). Mol critiques the presumption that dis-
ease categories of Western medicines are “natural”—because this presumes
that a term reflects a reality that exists for the anthropologist to stumble
over—before interpreting it in diverse ways (see Mol 2002, 24). Instead she
argues for a multiplicity of reality in practice where a disease, then, becomes
and is part of different practices. As a result, an object is what it does and
what it is enacted—reality is enacted (see also Jensen 2006).
In a related vein and also engaging, one might argue, the boundaries of
systems of naturalness, in this case, humanity, in a highly interesting recent
work on humanoid robots—and engaging critically the seminal works by,
for instance, the feminist Donna J. Haraway (2013 [1991])—the robotics
anthropologist Kathleen Richardson (2016) investigates the concept of

“technological animism” in her analysis of humanoid robots in Japan (see also
Jensen and Blok 2013). Asking what kind of entity the robot is, being “human
and non-human, machine and non-machine, real and non-real” (2016, 123),
Richardson makes the crucial point that robots serve as human uncanny dop-
pelgänger and that, being both humanoid and animate, they seem to severe
evolutionary associations made between animism and the primitive. Moreover,
the humanoid robot obfuscates divisions between human and in silico artificial
intelligence as the robot is being animated by religious and cultural ideas, as
well as conditioned by laboratory practices (see also Kapferer 2014).8 Such a
liberation of the notion of animism that Richardson argues—through intro-
ducing the notion of technological animism—seems to comprise precisely
the form of metaphysical speculation that, according to anthropologist Rane
Willerslev (2011), should be re-introduced to the discipline and which is a
driving force behind many analyses and arguments emerging from the so-
called ontological turn.9
A far-reaching example of this kind of theorizing is offered by the phi-
losopher Karen Barad (2011). She famously proposes the idea of nature’s
prime queerness, that is, a nature that in its infinite complexity and con-
stant emergence is irreducible to stable, dichotomous notions of two sexes
and genders. Barad’s approach entails seeing the very smallest aspect of
nature, the atom, as queer in its capacity. Given such queer performance
at the heart and, in a sense, constitutive level of nature, she challenges the
hegemonic ontology of distinct entities, conventional logics of causality
and, more broadly, also the nature–culture divide. In her understanding,
culture becomes an effect of the myriad possibilities of an entanglement
with nature—an approach that also undermines commonly held concepts
of difference and tools of distinction.
Inspired by earlier works that are oriented toward reconceptualizing
history, geology, human–animal distinction and formations of human and
non-human energy—such as philosopher Manuel DeLanda’s A Thousand
Years of Nonlinear History (1997), historian of science Michel Serres’ The
Parasite (2007 [1980]) or philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s The Open.
Man and Animal (2004 [2002])—political theorist Jane Bennett’s post-
humanist work (1994, 2010) should also be mentioned in the same vein as
Barad’s. Bennett‘s work in many ways celebrates and explores the vibrancy
and vitality of the world and presents what she sees as a non-humanist optic
where objects—things—are imbued with various capabilities independent
of humans. Bennett theorizes how we should understand public events
as effects of ad hoc configurations of human and non-human forces. Put
differently, matter is at the heart of her “non-anthropocentric figure of

life” (Bennett 2010). In analyzing a myriad life forms, she holds that these
may be approached as emergent and mutating assemblages that, taken
together, form what she calls a positive ontology of the “vitality intrin-
sic to matter itself” (Bennett 2010, 10). What Bennett calls “ontopower”
denotes the force of such matter. In this work, she relates to a long history
of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including efforts
by philosophers Immanuel Kant (1989 [1790]) and Henri Bergson (2004
[1912]) to identify the “vital force” inherent to material forms (see also
Helmreich 2016).
This second influential vein of analysis may thus be seen to produce vari-
ous forms of destabilizing interventions into commonly held assumptions
about human exceptionalism vis-à-vis other species and agencies, as well as
assumptions about the importance of human difference. This is done, one
could argue, by pursuing analyses which undermine, in various ways, the
practices of a representational and methodological cordoning off, and mak-
ing of boundaries around human socio-cultural worlds which are then, in
turn, portrayed as singular or, at least, as distinct wholes. Instead, by open-
ing up a number of potential assemblages that include a range of lifeforms,
that are practical and machinic, that are post-human and animalesque, what
we have termed the materialities approach produces fissures in the fabric of
distinction of the nature–culture, man–animal or animate–inanimate kind.
Politics
The third significant frame of analysis, politics, emphasizes ontological
difference/alterity as destabilizing incorporated notions of human uni-
versality. Given what we have outlined above, it should come as no sur-
prise that the forms of politics being generated from a range of positions
within ontological anthropology are as diverse as the turn itself. However,
a motor driving much concern is the unwillingness to accept both human
exceptionalism vis-à-vis other species—and, particularly, the metaontology
of Western civilization—or various forms of epistemic hegemonic forms
condensing around Western conventional (also anthropological) thought.
So, if politics should be seen as radically dislocated from such domains, how
is it articulated?
The Polynesian anthropologist Anne Salmond’s analysis of the par-
ticular intellectual context in which the ontological turn grew forth is a
helpful point of entry here: Underscoring the impact of post-humanism,
post-subjectivity and post-pluralism, the ontologists, as she sees them, are
concerned with salvaging anthropology from the funeral pyre of an idea

of a singular, universal and exceptional Anthropos, that is, building a new
discipline “out of the anthropos’ ashes” (Salmond 2014, 162). Further,
given what she sees as anthropology lacking a deep critical reflexivity in
regards to its conceptual underpinnings, also for Salmond the notion of
epistemology itself is problematic. This is so as epistemology eclipses or, at
least, penumbrates what one could call the metaontology of conventional
anthropological engagements and its insistence on a “common substrate
across the face of which difference plays” (Salmond 2014, 163).10
Bruno Latour’s more recent work (2013 [2012]) is also relevant here
as it seeks to expand his previous actor-network-theory program (see, e.g.,
Lien and Law 2011) to now encompass the world of existence. Intellectually
fueled by the possibly devastating impacts of the age of the Anthropocene
(e.g. Sayre 2012), Latour calls on anthropologists and others concerned
to open up their minds to the plethora of modes of existence characteriz-
ing the world—or Gaia, as he fondly and ever so slightly romantic denotes
our sphere in the universe (see also Latour 2015). The anthropological
role in relation to such modes of existence are crucial here, according
to Latour, and here we are at what politics may look like in a Latourian
flat (or round Gaia-esque) ontology: No longer are we merely researchers
who describe and analyze and who may at times strategically represent or
speak (out) on behalf of in formal political settings—we are now players in
a more profound game, that of exerting “cosmic diplomacy” on behalf of
a global oikos where all species and things need, at some level, to be recog-
nized (see also Haraway 2003). In this vision anthropology becomes both
a vessel for analysis and translation and a platform from where to critically
engage and counteract modernist forces—hence the subtitle of Latour’s
book (2013 [2012]) reads An Anthropology of the Moderns and is oriented
toward de-pluralizing Gaia’s multiple modes of existence.
Perhaps a less totalizing way of approaching the political potential of anthro-
pological thought is provided by Ghassan Hage’s (2012) observation that
“critical thought” in anthropology—that is, its political and epistemological
insurrectionary potential—differs from that of the disciplines of sociol-
ogy or history. For the latter two, Hage (2012, 289) contends, critique
revolves around accessing and mapping those forces that constitute “us
into what we are (the social structures, the past, the unconscious)”. By
contrast, anthropology operates critically in a way that continuously
reveals the possibility that we can be “other than we are” (Hage 2012,
290) or as expressed by Holbraad et al. (2014, unpaginated): “While the
ontological turn in anthropology has made the study of ethnographic dif-

ference or ‘alterity’ one of its trademarks, it is really less interested in dif-
ferences between things than within them.” Hage (2012) sees the form of
ontological framework proposed by Viveiros de Castro to offer the poten-
tial for a radical political imaginary in a critical anthropological tradition,
through which it can play a larger role in projects of political reconceptu-
alization and intervention. Critical anthropological thought, by which he
means an anthropology that “takes us outside of ourselves” (Hage 2012,
289) simultaneously positing “a relation between the outside-of-ourselves
space” and “the space in which we are dwelling” (Hage 2012, 289), is
significant because of its stress on alternative realities that potentially open
up efficient oppositional politics. Critical anthropology transforms into a
radical politics through the recognition that we are simultaneously dwell-
ing in realities of which we are not completely aware and—as a conse-
quently—“being other than what we are” is materially possible since we
are “already dwelling in that very otherness” (Hage 2012, 301). Hage
draws on Lévy-Bruhl’s (1926 [1910]) differentiations between logical and
mystical mentalities and argues for the need to retain the ethos of primitiv-
ist anthropology, indorsing that “each era and each world has its own New
Worlds that ought to be discovered and analyzed” (Hage 2012, 306).
At a time in philosophy where the Other is no longer found at the edges of
the Euro-American world but in our midst (see, e.g., Baudrillard and Guillaume
2008 [1994]) and recalibrating the perspectivism of Viveiros de Castro, Hage
urges anthropology to politicize the notion of radical alterity. Conceiving
anthropologists as outsiders to systems of intelligibility, governmentality and
domestication (see also Kapferer 2013, 2014), Hage envisages such a reorien-
tation to make apparent or emergent new worlds or alter worlds to which the
discipline of anthropology potentially has privileged access due to its particular
critical point of departure (Hage 2012, 2015).
Likewise, Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers attempts to reinvent pol-
itics after post-humanism, actor-network-theory and the impact from the
ontological turn. For Stengers there is a need to conceive of the world in
terms of “cosmopolitics”—a term which “is emphatically not ‘beyond poli-
tics’ [but] designates our access to a question that politics cannot appropriate”
(Stengers 2011, 356). Drawing on the natural sciences and various strands of
critical thinking within philosophy and political science, her project is to
“bring into existence the question of an ecology of practices, not as a solu-
tion but as a learning process, the creation of new ways of resisting, in the
present, a future that derives its plausibility from our powerlessness as well as
from effective power relationships through which that future is established”
(Stengers 2011, 407; see also Joronen and Häkli 2016). Yet another take is
Holbraad’s (2014) exploration of revolution as a distinctive political form.
Aiming to rethink liberal political ontology, he pursues a political ontology of
revolution in Cuba, asking “what kind of thing is a revolution, what entities
and relations does it bring into play and therefore what form might people’s
commitment to (or rejection of) it take?” (Holbraad 2014, 8).
Across all these approaches to the domain of politics we identify a will-
ingness to move beyond the confines of politics in a conventional sense—
beyond ideas of human exceptionalism, beyond representationalism and
beyond formal or institutional approaches to politics. Fuelled by various
ways in which difference or alterity is conceptualized—as immanent possi-
bility, as alternative political orders or as emergent in comparative anthro-
pological exercizes—a streak running through this vein is therefore also
the ambition of moving toward a non-Western-centric or non-Modernist
plural form of politics.
Recalibrations. Assessments, Critiques and Exits

As any anthropological trend, the ontological turn has been met with
everything from sobering critique and ferocious interventions to accusa-
tions of aloofness and the shrugging of shoulders. Critical voices suggest
it is a turn deriving merely from the Amazonian ethnographic field, some-
times ignoring the turn’s influence on ethnographic work pursued in Asia
(Tsing 2015; Pedersen 2011; Willerslev 2007; Remme 2016), Melanesia
(Rio 2007; Scott 2007), Australia (Povinelli 2002; Salmond 2013, 2014),
Africa (Evens 2005, 2012) and Europe (Latour 2013 [2012]; Lien 2015;
Mol 2002). A more indignant and truculent critique of the ontological
turn—almost coached in a tone of vehemence—is undertaken by Bessire
and Bond (2014), accusing it of replacing ethnography’s concern with the
actual with a philosophically oriented sociology of the possible, thus defer-
ring and depoliticizing social critique. As they write: “We assert that the
soteriological figure of ontological alterity is a crucial metanarrative of late
liberalism imbued with its own privileged ontological status” (Bessire and
Bond 2014, 450). A similar frame of critique centers on the ontological
epistemological endeavor and its effect on ethnographic representation. For
example, Laidlaw and Heywood (2013) hold that “What, from Pedersen’s
perspective, appears as an ontology (‘there is a difference between theory
and ontology’), appears from our perspective to be a theory; and—again,
as in all good perspectivist ethnographies—we are faced with the prob-
lem of how to translate”.11 Doing ethnography is, of course, to engage in
t ranslation and Viveiros de Castro (2004, 10) has argued that translating is
to presume the constant existence of an ambiguousness rather than presup-
pose a univocality between what We and the Other are saying, an “essential
similarity” which would silence the other.
Others have critiqued the perspectivism of especially Viveiros de Castro
to either replicate structuralism (Turner 2009) or to point out that struc-
turalism actually has an ambitious goal to arrive at a universal human mind
frame that, problematically, is found lacking in perspectivism (Ramos
2012, 483). Certain practices of ethnographic writing have also been a
point of critique (Course 2010). Drawing on anthropologists and lin-
guists Benjamin L. Whorf and Edward Sapir’s famous discussion of how
representation, knowledge and language are interlinked through habitual
practice (see Sapir 1929; Whorf 1956), anthropologist Magnus Course
(2010) emphasizes that, first, even if language appears to be a transparent
representation of the world, this is not the case, and, second, there is a
dialectical linking of language and representation. This is because there is
a habitual use of linguistic forms which bring along a habitual representa-
tion that lead to habitual dispositions, which again brings along linguistic
forms. The world is not composed of subjects and objects, argues Course,
as these analogies are themselves linguistically specific. Alcida Ramos
(2012) brings parts of these points together in her incisive critique against
perspectivism, arguing that it constitutes a theoretically homogenizing
enterprise that can have adverse political effects. More specifically, Ramos
holds that the style of representation undertaken by Viveiros de Castro
undermines approaching indigenous lifeworlds altogether: “This sort of
ventriloquism […]—perhaps an inevitable feature of theory building—
assures that the voice we hear is not indigenous, but an alien v erbalization,
an ersatz native, a sort of hyperreal Indian [...] that is much easier to
absorb than the real native” (Ramos 2012, 490).
A related critique is launched by the Danish anthropologist Kirsten
Hastrup (2013) who points out that the perception of ontologically dif-
ferent worlds is based on an illogical and unpractical presumption that the
human communities which anthropologists are studying are distinct worlds
that one can, and should, understand as constituting holistic units. She
argues that this presumption within the ontological turn reinstalls forms of
cultural and cognitive essentialism (which she, among others, has worked
to eradicate) because it eclipses the general recognition that all human com-
munities are dynamic and susceptible to change in time and space. While
some proponents of the ontological turn to some extent can be understood
as yet another expression of the politics of recognition that the political
theorist Charles Taylor (1994) has promoted, Hastrup (2013) argues that
even the most well-meaning recognition of different worlds raises the ques-
tion of how to make a distinction between differences—within a society
or between societies. Drawing on Feminist anthropologist Anette Weiner,
Hastrup argues that “differentiation is in itself a permanent, emergent rela-
tion in the human world, which sometimes results in terms such as ‘native’
and ‘culture’, but it cannot at the same time be taken as starting point for
the investigation” (Hastrup 2013, 44, original in Danish).
Yet, accepting the ontological premise that we live in multiple worlds
means to endorse an anthropology that takes our prime objects of study,
namely difference, seriously. To take difference seriously means to under-
stand difference not merely as variations in relation to an already defined
scientific standard, or difference as an effect of those representations
with which we view a common world, but difference all the way through
(Holbraad, Pedersen and Viveiros de Castro 2014; Viveiros de Castro
2004; Holbraad 2012). The study of difference as difference requires that
we formulate what Latour has described as “symmetric anthropology”
(Latour 1993, 91f.). Drawing heavily on the work of Viveiros de Castro
(2004), Nielsen has proposed that such an anthropology would imply to
move between “multiple worlds rooted in radical differences in which a
Western anthropological horizon of knowledge constitutes merely one
among many” (Nielsen 2013, 25, original in Danish) and where “to think
difference is to think differently” (Nielsen 2013, 28). Taking difference
seriously, then, involves “a self-imposed suspension of the desire to expli-
cate the other” (Candea 2010, 147), not a recategorization of difference
from “culture” to “nature”. That this is a question of method is evident
from the fact that “taking seriously” involves “controlled equivocation”
and “asymmetry” (Candea 2010; Viveiros de Castro 2004): one cannot
take everybody seriously at the same time. Taking Amerindian cosmology
seriously means (at least temporarily) not taking other cosmologies seri-
ously. The distinction between what one does and does not take seriously
is far from being “ontological” itself; there are no “Western ontologies” or
“Amazonian ontologies” out there to be discovered in the world. Rather,
“each person is a people unto him- or herself” and “within ‘a’ people there
are always other people and anthropology should take them seriously too”
(Candea 2010, 148–149). This implies that it is a methodological choice
where one situates the boundary (Heywood 2012, 149).
Martin Holbraad’s work, an anthropologist that has been inspired
by Viveiros de Castro, has implicitly dealt with these objections. To
Holbraad, a key problematic issue is anthropological “representation” or,
put differently, what we as anthropologists do when we speak for and

represent the Other. He claims that “what makes other people ‘other’ is
precisely the fact that they cannot be represented” (Holbraad 2012, xvi)
and he, thus, attempts to produce an anthropological position that goes
beyond the trope of representation. He does so by juxtaposing anthropo-
logical notions of truth with the process of emergence of truth within an
Ifá context. This shift implies, as Holbraad sees it, to “use ethnography
to transform analysis” (Holbraad 2012, xviii) rather than vice versa. The
form of truth that emerges in Ifá divination he calls “oracular truth” which
does not represent the world but rather transforms it “through interfering
with its very meaning” (Holbraad 2012, xviii). Holbraad suggests a shift
in anthropological orientation from epistemic representations to ontologi-
cal transformations and outlines a methodological framework—the recur-
sive method—that is informed by an ontological point of view.
Another key figure within this mode of thinking is Morten Axel
Pedersen. Recently and in an attempt to explain what reality “means”
in a relational perspective—much in line with the ontological turn—he
invokes Gell (1998) and Wagner (1991) in an example of Russian matry-
oshka dolls. As the dolls, he outlines an endless string of worlds, all of which
may have the potential to be contained in a sequence—matryoshka-like.
This has the paradoxical consequence that every phenomenon that seems
to compose the unit at the same time covers a plurality, and vice versa
(Pedersen 2013, 38). Through the image of matryoshka dolls, Pedersen
suggests that we inhabit a multiple reality that is constantly crystallizing
and transmuting, comprising a multitude of worlds. This has deep conse-
quences for the heuristic devices of anthropological theorizing: If people
are posited to inhabit multiple worlds that may (or may not) be sequenced
string-like, then we cannot reach more profound knowledge of what it
means to be human with an a priori understanding of human limits.
Another critical reading has been launched by Salmond (2013) in her
emphasis on the accentuation of “generative misunderstandings” (Holbraad
2012) or productive “controlled equivocation” (Viveiros de Castro 2004)
in the nouvelle vague of ontology—one where anthropologists have become
“poet-translators” and “artist-philosophers” (Salmond 2014, 15bn2) and
where “our own limitations lets us off the hook in a number of ways”
(Salmond 2013, 2). Writes Salmond, “[o]ne convenient effect of this
particular absolution […] is that it opens up a seemingly infinite range of
resources—the artifacts of recursive ethnographic analysis—to be deployed
in the ‘game’ of creative concept generation” (Salmond 2013, 2).
Yet, such critique simplifies or ignores that, for instance, perspectiv-

ism is concerned precisely with the configuration of subject and object.
As Viveiros de Castro (1998, 476, emphasis in the original) puts it:
“Amerindian ontological perspectivism proceeds along the lines that the
point of view creates the subject; whatever is activated or ‘agented’ by the
point of view will be a subject”. But perspectivism is also a distinct dedi-
cation to readjust at which level analysis takes place, and to explore, as
Michael Scott (2007, 4) puts it, “the ways in which human imagination
and agency reference and reveal different configurations of the essential
nature of things”.
Another important critique is framed in terms of its alleged excessive
concern with alterity and difference—apparantly to the detriment of cel-
ebrating human commonality (Vigh and Sausdal 2014). In addressing
this critique Kohn (2015, 322) cites Latour in explicating the impetus
for such a concern: “[I]s there a way to recognize and capacitate differ-
ence that doesn’t make it fit ‘exactly inside the same eternal and univer-
sal [i.e. Western] patterns of “social life”’?” Kohn’s concern, and here
he also draws on anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, is that the implicit
and explicit reduction of all difference to such universal containers effec-
tively subjects difference to becoming “doable” within a stifling late liberal
logic (Povinelli 2002). More recently Povinelli (2012) has also sought to
elaborate an alternative to such dominant logics—developing an onto-
logical sensibility and an “anthropology of the otherwise”—that has
also informed debates on anthropological positions on what politics can,
should or might be(come) in a context of ontological anthropology (see,
e.g., Holbraad et al. 2014; Battaglia and Almeida 2014; Cadena 2014;
Bond and Bessire 2014; Escobar 2015).
Calling these presuppositions, often silenced, into the open through
deliberately and provocatively invoking (various notions of) ontology,
representatives of the turn have, if nothing else, contributed to question-
ing basic anthropological distinctions between nature and culture, epis-
temology and ontology. Some critics are preoccupied with a seeming
lack of concern with human inequality or its politics, or, as an effect, the
lack of offering a vocabulary for addressing it if everything is treated as
incommensurable with everything else (see, e.g., Graeber 2015; Bessire
and Bond 2014; Fischer 2014; Vigh and Sausdal 2014). On the other
hand, the unease expressed by, for instance, Salmond, Kohn, Latour and
Povinelli at the perennial analytical and theoretical dominance of Western-
derived frameworks for conceiving or, rather, capturing and disciplining
difference and alterity does bespeak a concern with inequality, at some
level, and are shared by many who are seen as (or see themselves as) con-
nected to the ontological turn.
Conclusion
Assessing the recent decade of debate on the ontological turn, in a sense
one could say that the affective of the ontological turn has infected its crit-
ics with, precisely, affect. One example would be the attack on what was
labeled “The French Ontological turn” at the American Anthropological
Association’s annual meeting in 2013. In the session, the few thousand in
the audience witnessed, for instance, a part embittered attack on Bruno
Latour by Michael J. Fischer and Bruno Latour’s refusal to reply to the
lengthy intervention made by Fischer.
As we have attempted to bring out the above, there is a paradox run-
ning through the ontological twists and turns and the numerous forms
of dismissals these have generated: A concern with a return to reality.
However, what such a reality may seem to consist of and how to write
about it is fraught with conflicts: For a Viveiros de Castro or a Holbraad,
an Amerindian vision of the world assumes an authority of its own accord
and the powder of a shaman on Cuba produces truth (anthropological and
other). Conversely, and for critics, such compartmentalization or playful
framing of the world into ontologies undercuts an accessible, singular, uni-
versal reality wherein the task of the anthropologist is to uncover and show
the world’s local realities as a counterpoint to mystification, metaphysics
or pure (and inane) speculation. In all these guises and inferred in all these
contexts, reality assumes a spectrality that is kaleidoscopic in nature, at the
same time as serving as a pliable and authority-conveying concept. More
radically, we can say that both proponents and antagonists are in some
sense attempting to construe a positivist anthropology for the twenty-first
century—a new platform from whence to reinvent the discipline’s rela-
tion to difference and alterity. The ontological turn, thus, reconfigures
and endorses anthropology’s long-standing will to radical self-doubt—of
the discipline and of the West. This position may be, we believe, not only
its lasting impact but is also testament to its commitment to (rather than
attack on) the potential of anthropology.
While the ontological turn—and the term “ontology” in itself—is
described in various ways, at its most general it is often coined in terms like
this, from Pedersen: “[a] technology of description which allows anthro-
pologists to make sense of their ethnographic material in new and experi-
mental ways” (Pedersen 2012b, unpaginated).12 Yet, the three positions
we have described should make it clear that seeing the ontological turn as
merely a “technology” is inadequate. Should we thus see the ontological
turn as anthroposophy rather than as anthropology? As asserted by crit-
ics (i.e., Heywood 2012), if we take seriously the term “ontology”, this
supersedes the confines of a technology because it implies, at least in some
philosophical traditions, an approach asking or denoting “what is there?”
A reply toward this critique of the term meaning too much—and, there-
fore, too little—is that the term ontology as used in anthropology refers to
“essence” (what there is), can be viewed as a theory or model (of what there
is) (Pedersen 2012b) and is, as made clear by Viveiros de Castro (2015, 2),
“an anti-epistemological and counter-cultural, philosophical war machine”.
Put differently, the ontological turn may therefore be seen to hold a diverse
number of claims about the composition of the world (whatever that may
be) and consequently approaches to anthropological theorizing about the
world (i.e., its analytical or theoretical level). Indeed, scholars affiliated
with an ontological approach in anthropology encourage taking a creative
approach toward ethnography where “the ethnographer’s task is a creative,
experimental, even poetic project—an attempt to give life to an alien reality
that unsettles our basic assumptions about what exists” (Graeber 2015, 22).
Anthropology has not been, and cannot be, we hold, in the business of
producing apodictic certainty, that is, of exclaiming capitalized truths about
the world. Fueled by a concern with difference and alterity, conditions of
which are chronically and perennially unstable, anthropology can offer par-
tial readings that may (and should, we believe) lend themselves to critical
interventions into academic discourse and political debates. Within the pur-
view of such an imagination of anthropology, the multiple and emerging
engagements with alterity and difference offered by various engagements
with ontology provide possibilities for disciplinary auto-critique and novel
forms of approaching the world. Notwithstanding the problems inherent to
(theoretical or empirical) claims of the existence of separate human, trans-
human or interspecies worlds—including problems of translation, change,
ethics and (inescapably) textual or conceptual representation—the taciturns
of ontology has, arguably, reinvigorated anthropological debate and, greatly,
expanded possibilities of anthropological experimentation, speculation and
thought. As such, it deserves scholarly attention and this volume is precisely
one attempt to engage and critically rethink its possibilities.
Chapter Overview
In Part I, Vistas, Signe Howell (Chap. 2) draws on long-term fieldwork and
ethnographic material from Chewong, a hunter-gathering group of peo-
ple in the Malaysian rain forest. Her discussion of Chewong ontology is
linked to a trend in contemporary anthropology that dissolves the division
between humanity and nature; a trend that leads one to ask if the anthropos
in anthropology, is destined to become an anachronism. She argues against
current post-humanist thought and for human exceptionalism and suggests
that to anthropomorphize is a human universal. In Chap. 3, Cecilie Vindal
Ødegaard raises important issues about anthropological approaches to dif-
ference and inequality, by reinterpreting the problem of so-called kharisiris
in the Andes. Drawing on notions of predation from Amazonian ethnogra-
phy, Ødegaard argues that kharisiris must be understood in light of Andean
notions of earth beings as powerful non-human persons. She understands
kharisiris as part of ontological dynamics where humans are potential prey
to a spectrum of powerful beings, human and non-human, due to their
common reliance on vital substances. In the subsequent Chap. 4, Kari Telle
examines a blasphemy trial on Lombok in 2010, in which a Muslim who
claimed to have received revelations from the Angel Gabriel was charged
with the offense of “insulting Islam” and accused of pretending to be a
“false prophet”. Probing the ontological conflicts involved in this case, the
chapter argues that courts are important sites of contemporary “religion-
making”. The chapter engages critically with anthropological positions that
ontologize difference, suggesting that such approaches risk feeding into a
violent politics of religious difference. Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme in Chap. 5
draws on empirical material from Ifugao, the Philippines, to develop an
approach to ontology that emphasizes its chronically unstable character.
By showing how relations between human and non-human beings within
both Ifugao animism and Pentecostalism are intrinsically unstable and how
boundaries between them are partially traversable, Remme demonstrates
how ontological differences are transformed, stabilized and destabilized
through practice. Remme suggests that the ontological dynamics of Ifugao
animism and Pentecostalism point toward a rethinking of radical alterity
as unbounded, transformative and related to an otherwise existing within
emerging entities.
Part II, Materialities, starts off with Christian Sørhaug (Chap. 6)
undertaking an assemblage analysis of households. Households analyzed
as assemblages engages three central concepts: emergence, agency and
relations of externality. Studying householding as emerging events per-

formed through a collection of people and things provides a way of ana-
lyzing change among the indigenous Warao. He argues that “things of
nature” and “things of modernity” co-mingle householding and is part
of enacting sociality for the Warao of the twenty-first century. Chapter 7
by Lars Gjelstad claims that a dominant “culturalist” approach in the
anthropology of education, from Mead to recent Cultural Studies perspec-
tives, actually helps to reinforce a naturalization of propositional knowl-
edge. The chapter explores possibilities that relational ontology and other
post-representational theory afford the practice of doing critical ethnog-
raphy of education. Gjelstad considers vocational education as a felicitous
starting point for exploring alternative ontologies, given its broad range
of assemblages of materials, tools, skills and sensory engagements. In
Chap. 8, Are John Knudsen discusses the relevance of Tim Ingold’s work
for the ontological turn in social anthropology and argues that Ingold’s
“ontology of dwelling” can be considered a theoretical middle ground:
it supports the ontological turn’s dismissal of cultured worldviews, but
rejects the claim to singular and incommensurable worldviews. Through
a critical review of this position, the chapter analyzes the strengths and
weaknesses of Ingold’s theoretical program, his break with a language-
centered epistemology and links to Heidegger’s phenomenology. In order
to contextualize Ingold’s work, the chapter juxtaposes recent inquiries
into perceiving and imagining landscapes with his attempt to overcome
the realist versus relativist positions.
In the third part of the volume, Politics, Martin Thomassen (Chap. 9)
enters into critical engagement with those who claim that a stronger focus on
alterity and difference lacks the ability to establish kinship relations on a scale
that matters in a world in which too many people are experiencing ontologi-
cal frailty on a limited planet due to heavy anthropogenic impact. Focusing
on global contemporary exhibitions within the visual arts, the chapter argues
that these constitute radical relational practices anticipating new ways to rec-
ognize and capacitate difference, none of which fits exactly inside the same
eternal and universal patterns of social life. Going beyond the trope of repre-
sentation, the exhibition practices examined in this chapter destabilize incor-
porated notions of human universality while attacking Western ontological
mindsets and its archeology. In Chap. 10, Kathinka Frøystad criticizes the ten-
dency of anchoring the alter-political imagination of alternative futures in stud-
ies of radical alterity of the kind favored by a vocal section of the ontological
turn. Frøystad argues that their tendency to analyze cosmologies, religions and
“worlds” as distinct and contrasting carries an uncanny Abrahamic echo besides
feeding into a lethal politics of difference. Drawing on ethnography from a

multi-faith neighborhood in the North-Indian city of Kanpur, it is underlined
in the chapter that it is equally relevant to look for “osmotic worlding” than
for “different worlds”. This implies, argues Frøystad, that to develop an alter-
political project of rethinking religious plurality, the first step must be to dis-
mantle the very idea of radical alterity. Astrid B. Stensrud, in Chap. 11, explores
the possibility of opening up politics and the public to animistic practices
like the ch’alla and iranta in the Peruvian Andes. Stensrud argues that the
ch’alla and other similar practices are not symbolic acts, but world-making prac-
tices from which other-than-human beings emerge. Thinking with Strathern’s
concept of partial connections (Strathern [2004] 1991), she argues that these
practices connect development projects with earth beings in more than one
but less than two worlds. Engaging with Jacques Rancière’s (2010) notion of
politics, Stensrud suggests that making these practices visible changes the space
and possibility of politics. In the final chapter, Eldar Bråten (Chap. 12) criti-
cally engages with the concept of “truth” in contexts of difference and alter-
ity. Analyzing Martin Holbraad’s book Truth in Motion (2012), Bråten argues
that its focus on “paradoxical alterity” fails to address deeper paradoxes that
arise when truth is explored qua ontology. Scrutinizing the analytical choices
Holbraad makes in arriving at the notion of indubitable truth, and suggesting
a reinterpretation of his ethnographic account, Bråten endorses an alternative
realist perspective, as proposed by Roy Bhaskar (1997). This theoretical shift
entails refocusing from truth to the relation between truth and doubt, from
alterity to its embedding in commonalities, and, on the most general level, from
“ontology” to the articulation between ontology and epistemology.
Notes
1. According to the anthropologist David Graeber (2015, 19), it was the
analytic philosopher Ethel M. Albert who, working with the Harvard
Values Project directed by Clyde Kluckhohn, introduced the term “ontol-
ogy” to anthropology.
2. Perhaps paradoxically, this bears some resemblance to the anthropologist
Fredrik Barth’s notion of an “anthropology of knowledge” which sees
knowledge as that which a person uses to interpret and to act in the world
(2002, 1). For a more recent and in some ways similar view on the impor-
tance of long-term participant observation and knowledge—and one
coached in a critique of the ontological turn—see the anthropologist
Maurice Bloch’s (2016) call for a reorientation of anthropology toward
also including philosophy, psychology, history and sociology.
3. A novel and intermediate position—straddled between the claim of radical

otherness and the reflexive turn—is precisely proposed by anthropologists
Katherine Swancutt and Mireille Mazard (2016). In their introduction to
a special issue of Social Analysis, they introduce the term “reflexive feed-
back loop” to designate the anthropologists’ knowledge-making practices
and processes which, in the field of animism research, appropriate and
recirculate notions and ideas. This approach suggests how anthropologists
and native thinkers may be seen to mutually influence each other—and
even be co-anthropologists (cf. Hastrup 1993).
4. While we do not have the possibility to go into any great detail here, such a
rendition of Heidegger’s term ontology is, of course, utterly simplifying. As
John Buren in his highly readable “Translator’s Note” to Heidegger’s
Ontology. The Hermeneutics of Facticity (Heidegger 1999 [1988]) writes, the
term “ontology” in this particular corpus for Heidegger, encompasses a num-
ber of forms of being in the world as well as accounts of “what there is”. “[It]
… is at the same time a ‘logic’ or ‘hermeneutics of facticity’ (a phrase to be
taken as both an objective and subjective genitive) because it investigates the
above theme in the most concrete sense by hermeneutically explicating ‘at a
particular time’ (jeweils) and in a historical ‘situation’ the ‘categories’ or ‘exis-
tentials’ in which factical life, as an open-ended and incalculable ‘being-possi-
ble’, ‘exists (for a while at the particular time)’ and ‘addresses’ or ‘interprets’
its be-ing and that of the world” (Buren 1999 [1988], 91).
5. Their call to be more directly informed by ethnographic realities may be
viewed as simply another variety of an age-worn Malinowskian ideal
of anthropology, namely the attempt to capture the so-called native’s point
of view. As such, these new attempts may seem to reflect also, for instance,
the so-called New Ethnography attempts in the late 1960s and well into
the 1970s and parts of the 1980s—exemplified for instance by anthropolo-
gists James Spradley’s work (see, e.g., Spradley and Mann 1975). However,
the theoretical ambition and emphasis on alterity that is integral to the
ontological turn distinguishes it clearly from the New Ethnography
approach, as well as the Malinowskian empiricism more generally, and
make therefore comparisons with these earlier trends somewhat
unrewarding.
6. This recalls the work of Marcel Mauss and his argument that rather
than approached as singular, techniques of the body must be thought of in
plural since in each society men use their body differently—each society
has its own habit of the body (1973 [1935]).
7. Another intellectual forebear here can be said to be Roy Wagner (1981
[1975]) with his notion of “invention”—a notion that has explicitly
inspired Holbraad’s theoretical apparatus in giving rise to his term “infini-
tion” (Holbraad 2012).
8. A related point regarding the potential of robotics to open up new planes,
vistas and horizons of what it means to be human and the nigh boundless
human capacity to transform the world, is offered by philosopher Gerald

Raunig (2010 [2007]), using the analytics of the machine as his primary
point of departure. Raunig finds in the machinic (and in Deleuze’s notion
of the “war machine”—a notion Viveiros de Castro also analytically deploys)
the potential for the formation of resistance of the technopolitical, ludic
kinds (see also Agamben and Wakefield 2014, for a related argument).
9. A similar kind of willingness to move into domains where anthropology
has not often trodden is represented by the recent turn to “digital ontol-
ogy” (for two introductions, see Boellstorff et al. 2016; Knox and Walford
2016).
10. Critics of the ontological turn have accused its proponents of devising a
metaontology which is epistemologically expansionist in orientation. As
Heywood notes in relation to the value of “difference” in these analyses:
“[I]s it itself a kind of meta-ontology, as far from the non-Euro-American
(and indeed from the Euro-American) understandings of nature and cul-
ture it seeks to encompass as the paradigm it endeavours to replace?
(Heywood 2012, 143–144, italics retained)”.
11. See more at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/turn/#sthash.tLW4KPLn.

dpuf
12. Article available online at http://aotcpress.com/articles/common_nonsense/
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PART I
Vistas
CHAPTER 2
The Relationality of Species in Chewong

Animistic Ontology
Signe Howell
Animism refers to ontologies which assign agency and personhood to

human and non-human beings alike. Animism posits an intersubjective
and personalized universe in which the Cartesian split between person and
thing is irrelevant (Howell 1996; Århem 2015). As such it raises questions
about the relationship between physicality and interiority—between body
and consciousness as this affects identity; a question that has troubled the
anthropological study of religion from the time of Tylor (1871) until the
present. While Tylor’s evolutionary schema placed “primitive people’s”
worldwide tendency to anthropomorphize non-human beings and things
at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder, he nevertheless called it a “phi-
losophy of nature” (1903, 169). This brings to mind Evans-Pritchard’s
characterization of early anthropological theories of religion, including
Tylor, as intellectualist because they accorded rationality to primitive man,
but argued that, due to incomplete knowledge, the primitive drew the
wrong conclusions (Evans-Pritchard 1996, Chap. 2). Recently, shed of its
evolutionary philosophical base, animism has received renewed attention
by a number of scholars who, as they seek to dissolve the division between
S. Howell (*)
Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_2
44 S. HOWELL
humanity and nature, may broadly be classified as post-humanist (see

below). Others, based on fieldwork from the Amazon, have developed the
so-called perspectivism (see, e.g. Viveiros de Castro 1998, 2004) which
has resulted in a trend that argues for non-commensurability of human
ontological understanding.
By drawing on ethnographic material from Chewong, a hunting, gath-
ering, and shifting cultivating group of people in the Malaysian rain forest,1
I shall seek to throw some light on debates about the relationship between
humanity and the rest of nature (between human and non-human con-
sciousness and agency) and discuss it in relation to the re-emergence of the
topic of animism, usually linked to a focus on ontology, in recent debates.
Rather than questioning human exceptionalism (that no division exists
between humans and the rest of nature) or human commensurability
(radical otherness), I shall suggest that to anthropomorphize beings and
objects in one’s environment (the attribution of human form and charac-
teristics to gods or animals or inanimate things) is a human proclivity, not
confined to hunting-gathering people. What becomes problematic is our
attitude to the proposition that non-human beings or material objects are
sentient. My discussion will be anchored in Chewong metaphysics2—what
is the nature of reality; and their ontology—what types of things exist
in the world and how they relate to each other. Out of such imaginaries
spring an understanding of personhood, morality, and causality which are
highly pertinent for an understanding of any animistic schema (Howell
2013, 2015).
I shall argue that the forest in which Chewong live is animated in the
sense that it is home to numerous non-human animate and conscious
beings whose personhood and lives mirror those of the Chewong, but who
have, nevertheless, a unique identity that maintain their separateness as
species.3 This identity is a question of the particular physicality–interiority
relationship (see above) of each species which, despite many overlapping
features with Amazonian perspectivism is species specific, manifested by
the uniqueness of each so-called body–ruwai–eye assemblage. Chewong
ontology conflates with a comprehensive understanding of causal processes
in “nature” in which every object is a potential subject. I suggest that
Chewong do not divide the world into human versus the rest of nature, but
that they make a distinction between those species who have consciousness
(ruwai) and those who do not (see also Howell 1984, 1996, 2012, 2015).
My interpretation of Chewong animism will be made with reference
to some recent contributions to the topic that are part of a trend in
THE RELATIONALITY OF SPECIES IN CHEWONG ANIMISTIC ONTOLOGY 45
c ontemporary anthropology that dissolves the division between humanity

and nature; a trend that leads one to ask if the “anthropos” that has given
the discipline its name is destined to become an anachronism (cf. Ingold
2000). Several influential anthropologists of a post-humanists bent have
recently argued for what may in effect I suggest be characterized as a form
of anthropomorphism in Western understandings and ensuing practices
(e.g. Haraway 2003; Helmreich 2009; Latour 2005; Lien and Law 2011;
Tsing 2014).
In a related but somewhat different vein, the 2013 programmatic words
of Holbraad et al. (2014)4 claimed that
to subjunctively present alternatives to declarations about what ‘is’ or

imperatives about what ‘should be’ is itself a political act—a radical one,
to the degree that it breaks free of the glib relativism of merely reporting
on alternative possibilities (‘worldviews’, etc.), and proceeds boldly to lend
the ‘otherwise’ full ontological weight so as to render it viable as a real
alternative.
In other words, not different world-views, but different worlds. I am

going to argue against both the post-humanist stance and radical other-
ness and for human exceptionalism and human commensurability. Despite
the fact that Chewong subjectivity cuts across species and negates any clear
human–nature division, it is nevertheless human (Chewong)-centric; that
is, ultimately humanity is the base by which everything else is measured.
At the same time, the Chewong ontological schema may be understood
as one in which “living with” informs the sense of self and others (Bird-
David, unpubl. paper). We can, I suggest, gain an enhanced understanding
of the complexity of human–non-human relations by studying Chewong
ideas and practices.
The debate raises important questions about the wider implications of
ethnographic studies undertaken in societies whose ontological under-
standing challenges that of the anthropologist (for an exposition of the
issues involved in “knowing the world”, see Bertelsen and Bendixsen,
Chap. 1). While I shall suggest that to anthropomorphize beings and
objects in one’s environment is a human proclivity, I have to ask myself
how far am I willing to go to generalize from Chewong construction of
reality or allow it to change my understanding of the reality in which I
live. I have learnt how Chewong ontology and metaphysics are predicated
upon the notion that Chewong are not the only human beings in their
forest environment, but that a number of animals, insects, and plants are
46 S. HOWELL
both the particular named species, for example, elephants or rambutan

fruit, at the same time as they are human beings “in their own land”.
Should this understanding be seen as a challenge to Western ontology
that attributes an exceptional character to humanity? I am not going to
enter into detailed discussion with the many contributors to the debate.
My argument in this chapter is simply that, to a varying degree, humans
everywhere anthropomorphize things and beings in their environment.
To some, like Chewong, this is a central part of their ontology, while
to others brought up within a Western “naturalistic variation” (Descola
1996, 96–98) that insist on some form of conceptual separation between
humanity and the rest of nature, this is not acceptable. However, this
does not mean that we have to lend separation full ontological weight
(cf. Holbraad et al. above); few anthropologists today would argue for
a clear-cut dualism. Thus, many (or most) argue that we do not become
simply in relation to each other, or even to other species of living things,
but also in relation to significant material objects in our environment that
also become in their relationships with humans. This is unproblematic.
Nevertheless, just because in some contexts nature and society are per-
ceived as mutually constitutive—that does not preclude perceiving them
in other contexts as separate, or insisting upon human exceptionalism.
What about the many narratives in which two separate categories derive
its meaning precisely from the complementary (or hierarchical) opposition
between them (Howell 2012)?
While I do not adhere to Chewong imaginaries, I nevertheless am con-
fident that I have understood the principles upon which their ideas and
practices are predicated. During my periods of fieldwork I lived according
to the same principles. We communicated as human beings. This is made
possible, I suggest because, as humans everywhere, we elaborate upon our
human subjectivity in ways that no known animal or natural object has
been shown to do.
Chewong Metaphysics and Ontology
Chewong relationship with their animated environment is constituted

upon a number of prescriptions and proscriptions. These I call cosmo-
rules because they invoke their cosmos in their daily lives. Knowledge
of the cosmos and humans’ place in it is communicated through myths
and shamanistic songs; often illustrating failure to live by the cosmo-rules.
Cosmo-rules guide most daily activities, keeping the awareness of the
wider world constantly at the forefront of attention and, as such, practice

may usefully be thought of as onto-praxis (cf. Remme 2016; this volume).
Human action is not excluded from “nature”, rather it is dynamically inte-
gral to the conditions at any given time of the environment in which they
live—animate as well as inanimate.
I start by recounting an abbreviated version of a myth about elephants
told by Chewong.5 According to Chewong understanding, elephants have
consciousness (ruwai), a quality which makes them people and subjects. In
“their own land”, which is in the jungle and, in principle, identical to the
Chewong human world, but invisible to the ordinary (“hot”) human eye,
they abandon their elephant “cloaks” (baju) and appear to each other in
human shape. Here they behave in a recognizable human rational manner.
Formally speaking, from a Chewong point of view, elephants are “people”
on par with themselves, but there is, nevertheless, a unique elephant qual-
ity which renders them elephants and people at the same time. Identity is
context dependent.
Bongso and the Elephants
A man, Bongso [this name indicates that he has shamanistic abilities and,
as such, that he has cool eyes and can see through all layers of reality and
through all deceptions invisible to ordinary humans who have hot eyes]
threw his spear at an elephant who came to eat his bananas. The spear stuck
in the elephant’s flank as he ran off. Bongso did not want to lose his spear
so he followed after him. He followed a bloody trail for three days and
three nights until he arrived at Elephant Village. Here the elephants were all
without their elephant “cloaks” and in human form. Thinking he was one
of them, they gave Bongso food and told him about an old man who had
suddenly taken very ill. No-one knew what the matter with him was. Bongso
went to have a look. He saw his own spear sticking out of a wound in the
man’s side and knew it for what it was. He said a few spells and extracted
the infection from the wound. Then he went into the jungle and cut a long
tube of bamboo which he placed over the spear and pulled it out so that
nobody could see it. They all had hot eyes, and could not see the spear and
did not know what Bongso was doing. The old man recovered and gave
Bongso his two daughters as wives. After a while Bongso got home-sick and
set off to his mother’s settlement with his wives, who were wearing elephant
cloaks outside their village. When they were close to his mother’s settle-
ment, they took off their elephant cloaks, but they became frightened and
wanted to return to the Elephant land. They put their elephant cloaks back
48 S. HOWELL
on again and left. Sometime later Bongso missed them and returned to the
Elephant land and settled down with his wives. He was given an elephant
cloak to wear whenever he went into the jungle. From now on he lived as an
elephant and had become an elephant. But he was still shaman and, as such,
had cool eyes. “If we meet an elephant who is not frightened by us and who
does not attack us”, Chewong told me, “that is Bongso”. (For a full version,
see Howell 1984)
This is only one of a great number of myths in which the different realms
within a singular world in the forest in which the boundaries are far from
absolute. The myths all confirm how different realms exist side by side—
occasionally overlapping when outsiders enter—invisible to all but those
with cool eyes. This means that Chewong environment—or landscape—
may not be what it at first appears to the hot-eyed Chewong. It is decep-
tive to human perception; full of what one may call visual fallacies in the
sense that one can never take for granted the reality of what one sees. For
example, what humans see as a clump of trees may also be an elephant
people village with houses just like those of a Chewong settlement; some
boulders in a river, the settlement of frog people, and so on.
Knowledge of such places and beings is mediated through the agency of
Chewong myths and songs, all of which are central in establishing individuals’
understanding of reality, personhood, relatedness, and sociality. Knowing is
profoundly linked to doing, and doing may, and does, influence myths and
songs, but does not alter them in a structural sense. For example, shamanistic
songs describe the shaman’s journey into the world of others and provide new
details about these worlds and the beings who live in them. Not every animal
or plant species in the forest is “people”, but potentially they all are.
Chewong ontology clearly cuts across familiar dualistic boundaries erected
in Western science between humanity on the one hand, and all other species
of natural kinds and inanimate things on the other; between the human hab-
itat and the many non-human ones in the forest—in other words between
any simple distinction between nature and culture. However, this does not
mean that boundaries are not operative at some times and in some contexts,
nor that boundaries may not be rigid. Indeed, the principle of separation
between elements and things is a dominant principle (Howell 1984). The
potential for temporary movement between categories of conscious beings
implies that other conscious categories of being are not radically different
from the Chewong. They are constituted of identical properties—proper-
ties that mirror those integral to Chewong metaphysics and ontology—but
which ultimately are species specific and not interchangeable.
My Research on Chewong Cosmology

When I submitted my DPhil thesis, entitled Chewong Modes of Thought in
1980, animism—understood as a religious belief in the soul of non-human
animate and inanimate objects—was a concept that was firmly entrenched in
the dark ages of the evolutionism of Tylor, Frazer, and so on and had no place
in contemporary anthropology at the time.6 My concern was to understand
the relationship between humans and the many non-human “people” with
whom Chewong interrelated; to analyze their cosmology in terms of an over-
arching argument that there was no existential distinction between society,
nature, and cosmos, and that the numerous conscious personages, as I called
them, of some, but not all, animals, plants, and natural objects such as rocks,
celestial phenomena, were all essentially “human”, but distinguished by their
bodies (“cloaks”) and their eyes. In effect, animism by a different name.
I argued for a state of affairs that I called “relativity in perception”. By
this I meant that members of one conscious species see the world around
them according to identical criteria as do all others, but what actually con-
stitutes an object or person to members of one species appears to those of
another as something very different. I argued that
“Chewong posit a relativistic view of reality. As far as members of a particular

species are concerned, the world that they view is the true one … [neverthe-
less they adhere to a] basic belief in the ‘psychic unity’ of all personages. …
What differs between [them] is their notions as to what constitutes food,
weapons and other objects, both cultural and natural” (Howell 1984, 165).
Moreover, “[t]hey have species-determined ways of perceiving reality and
the difference is explained in terms of the eyes. The significance of this is
further underlined by their notion that eyes are made first of all when a
foetus is being developed inside its mother’s womb” (Howell 1984, 156).
Thus, what I learnt during my early fieldwork with the Chewong brings to
mind many elements discussed in recent debates about so-called perspec-
tivism that has sprung out of Amazonian ethnography (see, e.g. Viveiros
de Castro 1992, 1998, 2004; Descola 2006, 2011). In a similar man-
ner to the Chewong, many Amazonian groups display a metaphysics in
which all conscious animate beings partake in an existential approach to
living (same needs, rationality, motives, behavior, morality, way of life),
but are differentiated from each other by how they perceive their reali-
ties. According to Viveiros de Castro, perspectivism is to be understood
as “cosmologies concerning the way in which humans, animals and spirits
see both themselves and one another […] manifesting ‘spiritual unity and
50 S. HOWELL
corporal diversity’” (1998, 469–470). However, in the Chewong case, it

is not just the body that marks identity, but the assemblage body–ruwai–
eyes that constitute uniqueness and that characterizes Chewong relation-
ship with other species.
The theoretical interest in the relations that pertain between humans
and conscious non-human natural kinds—and how these are manifested
through the body/mind constitution in each case, as predicated upon local
metaphysics and ontology—lie at the heart of current debates. Moreover,
the implications of this for our understanding of the human–nature rela-
tionship more generally and the question of (in)commensurable worlds has
been raised. In returning to my ethnographic material from Chewong I
shall consider if these debates have contributed to an enhanced understand-
ing, not only of Chewong ontological imaginaries but also those of my own.
Despite being located at opposite sides of the globe, the animistic world
of the Arawaté and other Amazonian Indians, as well as that of many
Siberian societies, bear a remarkable similarity to what I demonstrated in
my work with the Chewong. Interestingly, our analyses followed a simi-
lar path of examining notions of personhood and identity and practices
that arose out of these. Their ontologies are all anthropomorphic. But
there are also some ethnographic differences in how this is manifested.
The Chewong central idea of fixed species and the notion that permanent
metamorphosis may take place following prolonged visitation of another
species, ultimately, implies bounded species and does not seem to be found
elsewhere. The term metamorphosis has been noted by others in their dis-
cussion of animism (e.g. Viveiros de Castro 2004; Willerslev 2007), but the
concept has been employed more loosely to indicate a temporal change.
Unlike Amerindian ontology, that of the Chewong allows for inhabitation
by all conscious beings of the body of another species, not just a temporary
one-way movement from human to non-humans. In the Chewong case,
this can be temporary or permanent. When permanent, I call the move for
metamorphosis suggesting that this throws a somewhat different light on
the relationship between physicality and consciousness and the meaning of
perspectivism and relational ontology.7 Although I noted in my early work
that metamorphosis was an integral part of Chewong animistic thought,
I had not, until recently, appreciated its pivotal significance. The implica-
tions were not sufficiently theorized. In light of Chewong species-specific
perception of the world around them, I shall discuss what metamorphosis
entails and how this affects personhood and sociality.
Connectedness and Separation: Chewong Notions

of Consciousness, “Speciesness”, Relatedness,
and Vision
A seeming paradox characterizes Chewong cosmology and ontology.

While everything is connected in an existential and, indeed, life-giving,
manner, different beings, domains, and objects of significance must be
kept separate. Moreover, Chewong relations with each other and with
the multifarious forest environment are predicated upon these two prin-
ciples of connectedness and differentiation, or recognition and separation
which, I suggest, constitute the semantics of equality. Humans and sen-
tient non-human sociality rests fundamentally on these ontological princi-
ples. Elsewhere I have argued (Howell 1985) that a structural principle of
equality, whereby the elements are recognized and juxtaposed, can result
in a situation where equality can constitute an order; that it can be both a
structural principle and a value (cf. Dumont 1982). Chewong basic pre-
occupation with recognition, separation, and differentiation of elements
gives rise to a classification system based on enumeration rather than on a
hierarchical ordering of elements (Howell 1984).
By performing the cosmo-rules correctly, Chewong ensure continuous
reproduction—of people, other species, society, cosmos. Correct prac-
tice invariably concerns not mixing that which should be kept apart; be
this in marriage and/or sexual relations—in interaction between human
Chewong or between humans and conscious non-humans; or in the
preparation and consuming different kinds of food. Failure to observe
the cosmologically founded prescriptions and proscriptions (cosmo-rules)
that orchestrate the maintenance of separation, invariably leads to mis-
hap of some kind; indeed to potential destruction of everything (Howell
2012). Chewong causal explanation for the flow of life and its disrup-
tions—for desirable or undesirable events—hinges on the possession and
application of relevant knowledge, that is, knowledge that is integral to
their “being with” in the world. The cosmo-rules implicitly express moral
values regarding sociality and define the subjectivity of self and the non-
human conscious beings with whom they interact.
To live in accordance with the cosmo-rules as guides for daily action,
however seemingly banal to the outsider, is best understood, I suggest,
as ritual acts. I suggest this because cosmo-rules are prescribed and bring
the humans and non-human conscious beings into a continuous relation-
ship of mutuality, rendering the cosmo-rules “techniques for life-saving”
52 S. HOWELL
(cf. Hocart 1970 [1936], 33–34). As Chewong sociality extends beyond

humans into the wider worlds of consciousness, practice is not neutral,
but embedded in and constituted upon ontological understanding that
emphasizes the mutuality of relations. While social life is predicated upon
two rules (punén and maró) that demand that everything harvested in the
forest must be shared and that to “eat alone” is the heinous transgression,
the continuity of society is further predicated upon those cosmo-rules that
demand separation of unlike elements (see below).
For these claims to make much sense I need to elaborate a little further
upon what I mean by consciousness, people, and personage in the Chewong
context. These terms all spring out of the indigenous concept ruwai—a
concept that dogged the whole 18 months of my first fieldwork. Concepts
that deal with metaphysical matters in alien cultural traditions are notori-
ously difficult to translate.8 All beings and things with ruwai in the sense
of consciousness (rationality, intentionality, emotionality) are also people
(beri). As conscious, sentient, beings they are people—regardless of their
exterior form; be this human, leaf-monkey, frog, lemongrass, or whatever
and when they are in “their own land”, they appear to each other in human
form—viz. the elephant myth above. Interaction between all sentient spe-
cies is non-hierarchical, mirroring the profoundly egalitarian basis for all
Chewong sociality (Howell 1984, 1985, 2011). In this Chewong differ
from the Amazonian societies.9 The ruwai is at the same time universal
in its qualities and species-bound in the manifestation of these qualities.
Conscious species distinguish themselves from each other through species-
specific bodies—the “cloak”. Each species has its own special body by which
it may be recognized. The ruwai of each—despite its universal characteris-
tics—is nevertheless constituted in and through the body; it is not a matter
of indifference which ruwai inhabits which body at any given time. The eyes
of each species perceive the surroundings in a somewhat different way from
the rest, but with the same intention. What I want to argue is that Chewong
animism distinguishes itself somewhat from those described by others by
insisting on a necessary assemblage of cloak, eyes, and ruwai which together
constitute the identity of each species. In other words, to state that there
is one culture but many natures, that is, bodies (cf. Descola, Viveiros de
Castro) is, in the Chewong case, too simple because eyes, which are pivotal,
are both nature and culture at the same time, as are bodies and ultimately
bodies and ruwai are not interchangeable.
Although the ruwai of a shaman of one species may take on the body
of another for short periods, prolonged inhabitation of ruwai in an alien
body leads to metamorphosis of identity. To take the analysis of this body–

ruwai interrelationship one step further, I draw on the notion of embod-
ied understanding first developed by Johnson (1987). Johnson alerted
us to some important aspects of the construction of knowledge which
may also be helpful in the interpretation of the experiencing of identity.
He urges us in our study of rationality and knowledge to “put the body
back in the mind”. He reminds us that human beings have bodies and
that “human bodily movements, manipulations of objects, and percep-
tual interactions involve recurring patterns without which our experience
would be chaotic and incomprehensible” (op cit., xix). To this I wish to
add that these patterns are not self-generated, they are those deemed sig-
nificant in the particular social contexts in which individuals operate and
learn and, in the context of animistic ontologies, to the particular species
in each case. According to Toren, “for a model of mind that is anthropo-
logically, biologically and phenomenologically sound it has to be based
on the recognition that mind is embodied” (1993, 462). Yes indeed, but
I wish to add that for humans (and in the Chewong case, all sentient
species) the reverse also pertains, namely, to coin a phrase, “bodies are
minded” (Howell 1996). This mutuality of body and mind, I suggest is
highly pertinent in Chewong ontology as it highlights both the continuity
and separation of conscious beings.
Shamanic Qualities and Power

Because shamans have cool eyes, like Bongso in the Elephant myth, they
can see the true nature of the non-human worlds, that is, they can see
beyond the trees, stones, and so on to a settlement on par with a Chewong
settlement. Shamans can also discern imposters from other species who
enter their world clad in human cloak. Chewong mythology is full of
stories that narrate the encounter between members of different species,
between those with hot—unknowing—eyes, and those with cool—that
is knowing—eyes. Often those with cool eyes deceive and play tricks on
those with hot eyes. They may even marry a member of the opposite sex
of another species who does not realize their true identity. There is thus a
clear understanding about identity.
While they are in “their own land”, the well-being of all conscious species
is dependent upon the observation of cosmo-rules which specify the same
prescriptions and proscriptions to those of the Chewong. At the same time,
each different species of sentient beings not only has a distinctive body, they
54 S. HOWELL
also live according to the specificity of their own interpretation of the mate-
rial world as this is perceived through the species-specific quality of the eyes.
Chewong adhere to a psychic and cognitive unity of all species of “people”,
at the same time as they maintain the disjuncture between each species.
Chewong know how the natives’ points of view—or rather, how their vision
of themselves and their landscapes differ. Intentions and values, however,
are identical, the actual material details that make up the world in each case
are different. From this perspective, the animated world around them may
be interpreted as a composite world that consists of many manifestations
linked through a shared imaginary (cf. Viveiros de Castro 1998; Descola
2006). However, the imaginary is that of the Chewong.
Importantly, those with shamanic abilities can send their ruwai on a
journey into space during a healing séance. On such journeys they meet
the various immortal spirits as well as the shamans of other species. This
experience is a continuous source of new ontological knowledge. Chewong
animated universe is not static, it is a social world in constant flux. During
shamanic journeys some species previously not thought of as “people”,
may reveal themselves as such. Others that are not encountered for some
time may be forgotten. There is thus no a priori separation between ani-
mate and inanimate, human and non-human; the potential for movement
between them is ever-present.
Separation and Metamorphosis
Chewong conceptions of being and consciousness are thus central to an

interpretation of their social world beyond that of the Chewong them-
selves. Regardless of species, the principle of separation emphasizes the
important principle that each person, species, entity, or element con-
tains its own existence, its own domain and its own premises for social
life which should not be disturbed or contaminated by interference from
other worlds. This principle of discontinuity between domains manifests
itself most commonly in narratives when a representative of one species
crosses the boundary and enters that of another.
In practical daily life such discontinuity is expressed most clearly in the
classification and treatment of food. The most commonly performed prin-
ciple of separation springs out of the cosmo-rules that demand the keeping of
different categories of food separate. As such it is kept at the forefront of peo-
ple’s minds. Different food-stuffs must not be mixed. They must be carried
and placed apart, cooked over separate fires, and they may not be eaten at the
same meal. Several myths recount the unfortunate result of putting different
species of game in the same basket, or an animal together with wild fruit, or
of cooking one kind of meat on the same fireplace where another kind of
meat has previously been cooked. Chewong settlements display a number
of fireplaces; for example, one inside the house for the cooking of staple
manioc and rice, fish and monkeys,10 separate fireplaces on the ground out-
side for wild pig, for monitor lizards, porcupines, and so on and for different
kinds of wild fruit or vegetable. Failure to adhere to this activates potentially
harmful species (bas), and allows them to attack the transgressor’s body or
ruwai. Both are equally vulnerable as they are perceived as “meat” or staple
that, following a breach, may legitimately be hunted and eaten. Alternatively,
incorrect transgression of boundaries may activate natural catastrophes, such
as thunderstorms, flooding, and landslide (Howell 2012).
The overriding meaning of the cosmo-rules, then, is to keep that which
is different apart. The maintenance of boundaries between unlike elements
ensures socio-cosmic order. By the same token, the relevant ruwai must in
normal circumstances be in the relevant body. If not, metamorphosis will
occur. However, various kinds of cross-species encounters are described in
myths. They follow a set pattern which involves the main character shed-
ding his/her species-bound cloak and replacing it temporarily with that of
another species. This may go both directions—from humans to animal or
plant, or from animal or plant to human. If the intruder ceases to adhere
to the specificity of his or her own cosmo-rules, the deceiver becomes
metamorphosed, unable to resume their original cloak, eyes, and life.
There is thus a kind of double vision at work here which demands a
fine balancing act by the persons concerned and which they do not always
manage to control. If an imposter fails to practice the demands of his orig-
inal species this leads to metamorphoses. One myth tells of a Chewong
man who pretended to be a dog person and married a dog-woman. She
did not know his true identity. Together with his dog brothers-in-law, he
ate the stomach content and licked the blood of killed animals. This meant
that he had abandoned his human hold on reality to such a serious degree
that he became a dog, unable to return to the world of humans.
This example further clearly demonstrates the particular Chewong
ontological understanding of personhood as a mutually constitutive rela-
tionship between body, ruwai, and vision (eyes). The associated phenom-
enon of metamorphosis which is linked to simultaneous contiguity and
separation between that which is dissimilar adds, I suggest, a new dimen-
sion to the complexity of animism.
56 S. HOWELL
To recapitulate; the forest world in which Chewong live is co-existent

with their cosmos and is made up of a number of other species of con-
scious beings whose essence is formally identical to that of the Chewong.
Such an ontological understanding links the environment and the people
in a highly intimate, but also fragile, manner. Potentially everything may
turn out to be imbued with consciousness, you never fully know what is
what. However, the cosmo-rules enable individuals to live in a meaning-
ful relationship with their animated environment, providing them with
a sense of control. In this sense, I suggest that it is through action that
reality is experienced. Reality is brought into being by each category of
sentient being. While Chewong world is predicated upon an understand-
ing that nature and humans are symmetrically intertwined, theirs is also
human-centric (or more precisely Chewong-centric).
Post-Humanism and Human Exceptionalism

The direct cause–effect sequences that are expressed in the cosmo-rules
and that characterize the relationship between the human and non-
human worlds, is an integral part of Chewong animism. Therefore, state-
ments about the world in which they live are, for the Chewong, not
symbolic or metaphoric, they are descriptions of reality. They are not,
however, a description of the reality of the non-Chewong anthropolo-
gist. Indeed, the attempt to analyze the meaning and practice of such
relationships challenges the ontological understanding of the observing
anthropologist and presents a serious conundrum of interpretation. This
is not new in anthropology. The most famous, persistent, rigorous, and
largely rejected, student of “primitive mentality” was Lévy-Bruhl, who
argued that its distinctive features were that it was mystical, prelogical
(but not alogical), and who posited a principle of participation. This, he
argued, renders primitive mentality, the whole conception of self and the
world, different from ours. Lévy-Bruhl marshaled his ethnographic data
with clarity and elegance, always displaying an enquiring mind. There
is much to learn from his work without having to accept the notion of
prelogical thought. Toward the end of his life, he reconsidered his sharp
position that today we would could radical alterity, and stated “there is
not a mystical mentality distinguishable from the other two characteris-
tics which are peculiar to it (mystical and prelogical). There is a mysti-
cal mentality which is more marked and more easily observable among
‘primitive people’, than in our societies, but it is present in every human
mind” (1949, 132).11 In other words, not different worlds as argued at

the 2013 AAA Meeting mentioned above, but different ontological and
epistemological orientations.
The conundrum that Lévy-Bruhl grappled with and pursued so relent-
lessly is still with us and has received fresh attention. New concepts have
been introduced into the discussion of human/non-human relationships
in which human exceptionalism is being questioned. Among the more
commonly encountered are actor-network theory, multispecies ethnog-
raphy, perspectivism and multinaturalism, entanglement, symbiogenesis,
becoming with, enmeshment, intra-action versus interaction, humanimal,
and biosociality. Common to all these approaches is a rejection of human
exceptionalism, refusing to give explanatory priority to one actor or entity
over another (see also Kohn 2015 for a discussion of the “ontological
turn”).
An early example is Pickering, influential in the theory of science, who
suggests that the conventional humanist approach that places humans in
the center of analysis, must be replaced by a post-humanist one whereby
we think in terms of a “decentred perspective in which humanity and the
material world appear as symmetrically intertwined, with neither consti-
tuting a controlling centre” (Pickering 2000, 7). In his famous example
of the Mississippi River, Pickering argues that there is a dance of agency
between the river (the non-human agent) and the engineers (the human
agents) because “it turns out the river wants to move” (2000, 5, my
emphasis). Yes, the river moves, but on what basis can we claim that it
wants to move, that it has some kind of intentionality? If Chewong told
me this, I would accept it and position the statement within their broader
understanding of the human and the natural worlds. Even so, not being
a fully assimilated Chewong, I would not accept it as a valid account of
what was happening.
Multispecies ethnography, that approach which, according to Kirksey
and Helmreich (2010), includes the host of organisms whose lives and
deaths are linked to human social worlds and that challenges what Haraway
(2003) has called “the foolishness of human exceptionalism”—is gaining
ground as a metaphysical model. This is a project that Kohn (2013) has
called “the anthropology of life” and which leads him to argue that forests
think and, albeit in a somewhat different vein, that has convinced Tsing
(2014) to recognize the social life of organisms such as mushrooms.
To my mind, all this raise serious epistemological questions as well as
definitional problems concerning subject and object, the meaning of social
58 S. HOWELL
agency, rationality, and self-consciousness as well as of that which is com-

monly called the natural world or the environment. Kohn argues, based
on his study of the Runa people of Peruvian Amazon for an “anthropol-
ogy beyond the human”. It is not enough merely to recognize multiple
realities he says, and asks, “can anthropology make general claims about
how the world is?” He thinks it can and he does not wish to enter “the
ontological from the direction of the human […] but choose to enter it at
a more basic level” (Kohn 2013, 10). In his book How Forests Think, the
argument is as follows: “the fact that we can make the claim that forests
think is in a strange way a product of the fact that forests think. These two
things—the claim itself and the claim that we can make the claim—are
related: It is because thought extends beyond the human that we can think
beyond the human” (Kohn 2013, 22). Surely there is a tautology here.
I think his position is difficult to maintain. To accept a world in which
forests think requires, for us, a leap of faith, not unlike that posited by
Kierkegaard when he considers Christian belief. Christian dogma, accord-
ing to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason.
There are two possible attitudes we can adopt, he states. We can have faith,
or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is
believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our rea-
son in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must
believe by virtue of the absurd. Are we not confronted by something very
similar in much post-humanist anthropology. To abandon all divisions
between humanity and nature requires, I suggest, a leap of faith. Is this
really the most useful, or interesting, future for anthropology? I want to
suggest that, so far, we do not have any evidence that contradicts a human
proclivity to anthropomorphize.
If all distinctions between humans and the natural world are erad-
icated, have we not entered the primitive world that Lévy-Bruhl ini-
tially was at pains to distinguish from the Western one. Does not his
examination of prelogical thought and mystical participation describe
pretty accurately such post-humanist projects? But, how much prelogi-
cal thought and mystical participation can we accept, and under what
circumstances? What can we not accept? This is problematic. A post-
humanist approach can, I believe, obstruct our appreciation of alter-
native ontologies like that of Chewong because we too easily seek to
conflate it with our own. We have all been brought up on fairy tales
and children’s books in which animals are presented as “humans” in the
sense that they are sentient beings with whom one may easily empathize.
The predisposition in our own “mystical mentality” (viz. Levy-Bruhl)

enables us, I suggest, to accept—or rather perhaps not reject—that
which our ontological schema would deny. However, as anthropologists
our ethnographic studies should start with human beings rather than
with non-human entities, abstractions, or patterns of practice. Our task
as I see it is to seek to understand other people’s perception and interpre-
tation of their lives and worlds and changes in them. What we learn from
others certainly has a bearing on how we understand our own world,
but it is crucial how we use that understanding. How far can we expand
the meaning of concepts such as “think” and “social” before they lose
all precision?
Post-humanism and radical alterity as epistemological and ontological
stances raise methodological challenges to which I can see no satisfac-
tory solutions. As anthropologists we can try to elicit the premises for
alien ontologies and epistemologies, and render them probable, but we
cannot generalize on the basis of that. Must we then conclude that the
anthropological study of indigenous understandings, whatever its intrin-
sic interest, can tell us nothing about what the world is really like, as
Ingold asked some time ago (2000, 95). Phrased in such terms I have
to answer “no”. Contrary to Kohn, I fail to see how anthropologists can
tell us what the world is really like, but they can alert us to the range of
metaphysical and ontological schema that exist in the world and specu-
late about similarities and differences. This, of course, is what we have
always done, and, the implications of which are in their very nature polit-
ical. In the words of Bertelsen and Bendixsen (Chap. 1), this volume is
“[f]uelled by a concern with difference and alterity, …, anthropology can
offer partial readings that may (and should we believe) lend themselves
to critical interventions into political and academic discourse and politi-
cal debates”. At any rate, I cannot see how we can drop the “anthropos”
from our discipline without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We are both immanent in nature and, through our reflections upon it,
transcendent to it. I cannot see how an absolute dissolution of a distinc-
tion between nature and humanity is productive for a future anthropo-
logical contribution to our knowledge about either humans or nature. I
cannot see how an argument against human exceptionalism or for radical
alterity can lead anywhere except to a fragmentation of humanity and an
ensuing hierarchization of the different worlds.
60 S. HOWELL
Acknowledgments I wish to extend my thanks to Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and

Synnøve Bendixsen, the organizers of the workshop held at the University of Bergen
in January 2015. They provided a stimulating intellectual frame to the meeting
which they maintained in their work as editors. I am grateful for the many apt and
insightful comments I received during the revision period. I also wish to thank the
members of the Ritual Workshop at the University of Oslo for comments before I
presented the original version in Bergen, and the participants at that event for theirs.
Notes
1. The original fieldwork consisted of 18 months from September 1977 to April
1979. At the time of my original fieldwork, and until the late 1980s, Chewong
lived deep inside the rain forest and had little contact with the outside world.
My discussion of Chewong animism is based on my findings from that time.
I have returned to the Chewong many times, the last was in 2011.
2. “That branch of speculation which deals with the first principles of things,
including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause,
identity etc.” Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
3. This chapter draws in parts heavily on Howell (2015), but the overall argu-
ment has been refocused.
4. This excerpt is taken from the talk presented at the American
Anthropological Association annual meeting in 2013 and handed out in
printed form. I was not present at the meeting, but was told that the event
attracted several hundred listeners. It was the “hottest” event at the meet-
ing. All three authors have published separately on animism and perspec-
tivism based on their own fieldwork experiences.
5. I have referred to this and other Chewong myths elsewhere in discussing
their animistic mode of thought (Howell 2012, 2015). For a complete set
of myths collected, see Howell (1982).
6. I was advised against using the word. Instead, I wrote about modes of
thought, about person and personhood and speculated about the meaning
of consciousness as it was manifested throughout the animated forest envi-
ronment in which Chewong lived.
7. In an article from 2004, Viveiros de Castro addressed the difference between
what he calls transformation and metamorphosis. By transformation he
(confusingly perhaps) means something close to what I call metamorphosis.
He states that if non-shamans “happens to see a non-human (an animal, a
dead human, a spirit) in human form, he or she runs the risk of being over-
powered by the non-human subjectivity, of passing over to its side and being
transformed into an animal, a dead human, a spirit” (2004, 468). This is,
however, a different process from the one I describe as metamorphosis
amongst the Chewong, when a person has donned the cloak of another spe-
cies and fails to behave according to the norms of his or her own species.
Viveiros de Castro terms a temporary move into the body of another species
metamorphosis.
8. I resolved the problem of how to interpret ruwai by splitting it into three
separate meanings, interlinked, but independent, and each is brought to
bear contextually. This, I caution, was a heuristic device, and I do not claim
to have caught the full Chewong understanding of ruwai. I stated; “firstly
[ruwai] may broadly be understood as ‘vital principle’. Secondly, it may be
translated as ‘personage’, by which I mean the manifestation of conscious-
ness as rationality, present in certain animals and plants and inanimate
objects as well as in all humans and the immortal superhuman beings.
Thirdly, ruwai refers both to a spirit-guide and to the possession of one
such” (Howell 1984, 125). It is the tantalizing challenges of the second
interpretation that I pursue in this paper.
9. In Descola’s four-field scheme, Chewong corresponds closely to his ani-
mistic mode, while many of the Amazonian societies discussed by the per-
spectivists are arguable more akin to his “analogic mode” (Descola 2006,
2011; Århem and Sprenger 2015).
10. Fish and leaf-monkey are regarded as neutral. Primates, that is, gibbon and
siamang, are not, and must be cooked separately.
11. This dilemma was the one facing Evans-Pritchard in his analysis of Azande
witchcraft. In fact, he was in protracted correspondence with Lévy-Bruhl
about these issues (Needham, personal communication).
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CHAPTER 3
Alterity, Predation, and Questions

of Representation: The Problem
of the Kharisiri in the Andes
Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard
The kharisiri is a well-known figure in the Andes, considered to steal

blood or fat from un-suspecting humans for purposes of profit. Such theft
of human body substance has been analyzed as metaphors for power abuse
in the region, as symbolizing experiences of racism and social inequalities
since colonial times (Bastien 1978; Ansion 1989; Sifuentes 1989; Wachtel
1994; Canessa 2000; Weismantel 2001). Being considered a manifesta-
tion of experiences of loss and fear connected to the intrusive strangers
of modernity, the monstrous character of the kharisiri has been seen as a
way of unmasking—or de-naturalizing—power structures. A similar line
of argumentation is found in Taussig’s (1980) work on the devil con-
tract among wage laborers in Bolivia and Colombia. These beliefs are a
response to the introduction of a capitalist mode of production, Taussig
argued; a form of resistance to the breaking down of an economy based on
subsistence and gift exchange, and a critique of the commodity fetishism
of capitalism.
C.V. Ødegaard (*)


DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_3
66 C.V. ØDEGAARD
The interpretation of kharisiri attacks as a representation of something

else—and apparently more real—may, however, obscure the ontological
dynamics of such attacks. We need to explore the underpinnings of kharisiri
attacks if we are to understand their historical continuities notwithstanding
shifting political–economic circumstances. In most scholarly interpretations
of kharisiri attacks, there is focus on rupture and historical discontinuity
rather than continuity. This is a problem also in Taussig’s analysis of devil
contracts. Taussig argued that the introduction of wage labor in the Andes
distorted the cosmological analogism between human and natural spheres
(or bodies), so that the iconography of nature was replaced by the figure of
the devil of the mines. Seeing mining rites as embodying and attempting to
transcend the destructiveness of modernization, Taussig considered the rites
among alienated wage laborers as fundamentally different from those of
in-alienated farmers. Distinguishing between the devil ritual and sculptures
versus a repressive reality, he analyzed the first as an issue of art and folk
beliefs helping to reveal the social relations and “un-naturalness” of wage
labor (1980, 155). The problem in this and similar approaches is that “folk
beliefs” are reduced to a secondary ontological and epistemological status,
and that important continuities in these practices are glossed over. As noted
in the introduction of this book, this critique of anthropological concept
creation is central for the “turn to ontology” in anthropology.
This chapter seeks to develop an alternative to the “representational-
ist” analysis of kharisiri attacks. It focuses on the substances involved in
these attacks and in the treatment of their effects, and discusses the flow
of substances between human and non-human beings. In so doing, the
chapter raises the question whether the kharisiri attacks may reveal a dif-
ferent way of conceptualizing and dealing with alterity and boundaries,
that is, a way of conceptualizing self and other, material and immaterial
that departs from Euro-American dualisms (see Scott 2013). In particu-
lar, I explore how “other” in this context is defined by a potential for
destabilizing the boundaries of self and body through acts of predation
(Viveiros de Castro 1992; Descola 2013) which jeopardize the flow of
vital substances between human and non-humans. While problematizing
the “representationalism” of how kharisiris have often been understood,
I also critically discuss the anti-representational stance outlined more in
detail in the introduction of this book. In so doing, I seek to develop
a position between Viveiros de Castro and historically informed critical
analysis, and drawing on the works of de la Cadena (2010), Strathern
(2004), and Mol (2003).
ALTERITY, PREDATION, AND QUESTIONS OF REPRESENTATION... 67
One problem with reducing the kharisiri attacks to an issue of represen-

tation is that it involves an assumption of a specific relationship between
reality (read: exploitation) and metaphor (read: kharisiri)—between signi-
fied and signifier. In other words, the interpretation of kharisiri attacks as
metaphor rests upon an assumption that such attacks are less “real” than
the exploitative relations of production. It involves an assumption that
the occurrence of kharisiri attacks has another, different status as “real-
ity”, that is, as symbol for exploitation and power abuse. The way we thus
deal with issues of reality and metaphor, signified and signifier in anthro-
pology raises questions about the ways in which we deal with difference,
and the risk of reducing difference to a question of—or response to—
for instance inequality or socio-economic process. We may thus overlook
ways of dealing with difference and alterity that departs from hegemonic
Euro-American conventions, by undermining ethnographic specificities
which might have informed our development of analytical alternatives.
My intention is of course not to understate the significance of inequali-
ties and power abuse in the Andes, but rather to suggest that the kharisiri
attacks concern a political/symbolic economy of relating to “other” in
a different, or more general sense, and not necessarily being limited to
relations of class or mestizo domination. As Hage notes in his rethinking
of a critical anthropological politics informed by the so-called ontological
turn, there is always an excess to how one defines a social relation: it is
always more than a “relation of power”, a “relation of domination”, or a
“relation of exploitation” (2012, 306).
In the chapter, I relate the kharisiri to the question of animism in the
Andes, and explore kharisiri attacks in terms of ontological principles
where human and non-human persons belong to the same socio-economic
domain, sharing interior traits—such as the capacity of agency and inten-
tionality—and depending on the same vital substances. While draw-
ing upon notions of predation from Amazonian ethnography (Viveiros
de Castro 1992, 1998), I nonetheless also problematize what I see as
the perspectivist approach’s rigid ontological scheme, and make use of
approaches that explore ontological difference in terms of emergence, or
the formation of entities in human–non-human assemblages (Mol 2003;
Strathern 2004; Latour 2005; de la Cadena 2010; Remme, Chap. 5).
Important for such approaches to ontology are that entities and boundar-
ies are considered to emerge as effects of practices, without being limited
to one singular model for how entities are differentiated. Drawing on these
approaches, I explore kharisiri attacks as involving ontological dynamics
68 C.V. ØDEGAARD
where entities and boundaries are uncertain and unstable. Hence trying to
avoid a presupposition of ontology as worlds separated by incommensura-
ble difference, I discuss kharisiri attacks in terms of ontological dynamics,
where ontological difference emerges as effect of practices. In so doing,
I explore kharisiri attacks as characterized by an emergence of various,
different powerful beings and forces. It is for instance impossible to know
who is a kharisiri beforehand, and, as I will illustrate, kharisiris make their
exchanges not exclusively with the devil but also actualize other power-
ful entities. A kharisiri attack is therefore not necessarily constrained by a
conventional form of representation, but is ontologically more open. This
is different, therefore, from situations where for instance eating, or theft,
is used as metaphor for corrupt politicians.
The chapter is based on several fieldworks in the city of Arequipa, and
shorter fieldworks in Lima and rural parts of Puno and Cuzco.1 The inter-
locutors are bilingual Spanish and Quechua or Aymara speakers, and many
of them work as traders and contrabandistas (smugglers) in the border area
between Peru and Bolivia. The kharisiri is known by different names in
the Andean region. Kharisiri (and likichiri) are the terms used by Aymara-
speakers in South-Eastern Peru and Bolivia; nakaq among Quechua-
speakers. Pishtaco is the common term in urban, Spanish-speaking Peru
(Weismantel 2001, 270). In Arequipa, and especially among Aymara-
speaking people who have migrated from the highlands, some people
use the terms kharisiri and pishtaco interchangeably, while others make
a distinction; kharisiris make payments to the devil, while the pishtaco is
a knife-using assassin operating in the cities, also referred to as saca-ojos
(person who removes eyes).
“Ontologizing Difference”, or Partial

Connections?
Central for several contributors (Viveiros de Castro 1992; Latour 2005; de
la Cadena 2010; Holbraad 2012) to the so-called ontological turn(s) has
been to problematize the Cartesian dualism between matter and thought,
nature and culture, signified and signifier. According to Holbraad (2012),
such distinctions are problematic not just because “such distinctions are
not shared worldwide”, but also because they are implied in our own
analytical models and ways of representing “other”. Holbraad seeks to
go beyond the trope of representation by suggesting to “use ethnogra-
phy to transform analysis” (2012, xviii) rather than vice versa. Inspired
by Viveiros de Castro, he proposes a shift in anthropological analysis

from epistemic orientations to ontological transformations, by drawing
on the way in which Ifá divination is concerned with transforming the
world rather than with representing the world, through interfering with
its very meaning (2012, xviii): “Convention relies on the assumption that
the realm of symbols and the realm of things for which they stand are
opposed—culture to nature, representation to world. Conventions arbi-
trarily ‘fix’ the meaning of symbols that can then be used to express things
by being ‘applied’ to the world” (2012, 44). According to Holbraad, the
nature–culture dichotomy is implied in the distinction between signified
(matter) and signifier (thought), and serves to reproduce some of the
flaws both of naturalism and constructivism, that is, that both anthropolo-
gists and the people they study are in the business of representation and
not invention (2012, 46).
While Holbraad’s argument may be useful in pinpointing some of
the problems in interpretations of kharisiri attacks, this “rush against
representation” as a general line of argumentation is also problematic.
First, Holbraad is glossing over important contributions within semi-
otics which have tried to overcome a dichotomy between nature and
culture, matter and spirit in the understanding of sign processes (Peirce
1992; Bateson 2000). Previous scholars have thus tried to show how
signs also exist beyond the human by situating representation and sign
in the logics of a broader non-human universe (Kohn 2013, 7). Second,
considering Holbraad’s focus on the semiotics of invention among Ifá
diviners, it is difficult to ascertain if his anti-representational stance
should be taken to count for meaning-creating practices in general.
Drawing on Wagner (1981), he argues that “meaning is not a precondi-
tion for expression but rather an outcome of it” (2012, 45) but leaving
it unclear whether he thus wants to dismiss the importance of conven-
tional forms of representation in human life. Holbraad’s argument that
diviners “extend meaning” may imply that he acknowledges a certain
degree of convention in human life, but giving the impression that such
“conventions” are taken care of by “ordinary” people for diviners to
creatively elaborate upon. This one-sided focus on conceptual invention
contains a danger that we leave certain kinds of others out of our ana-
lytical conversations (Salmond 2014, 159). In this regard, some readers
may be left wondering what Holbraad thinks about the significance of
convention in the workings of powerful ideologies (see also Bråthen,
Chap. 12).
70 C.V. ØDEGAARD
Like Holbraad, various contributors to the so-called ontological turn(s)

have argued for the importance of taking the radical alterity of conceptual
universes seriously, through a concern with differences between worlds or
ways of being, rather than epistemological worldviews and ways of know-
ing (Viveiros de Castro 2004; de la Cadena 2010; Hage 2012). Viveiros
de Castro (1992, 1999) has criticized the concern with animism as a ques-
tion of epistemology (see Bird-David 1999), arguing that such practices
should not be understood in terms of knowledge or representation of
reality. He thus problematizes the ways in which anthropologists often
attempt explaining non-western ontologies by deriving them from (or
reducing them to) epistemology. According to him, “this massive con-
version of ontological questions to epistemological ones is the hallmark
of modernist philosophy” (1999, 79). Instead, he defines animism as an
ontology “concerned with being and not with how we come to know it”
(1999, 79). In this perspective, animism postulates the social character of
relations between humans and non-humans, where both are immersed in
the same socio-cosmic medium (1998, 473). By suggesting this approach,
Viveiros de Castro seeks to avoid an understanding of animism simply as a
projection of differences and qualities of the human world onto the non-
human world (1998, 474). This aspect of Viveiros de Castro’s argument
is also relevant in the Andean context, where human relations with moun-
tains and other earth beings cannot be reduced to a “cultural interpreta-
tion” of “nature” (de la Cadena 2010, 365; 2014). The reason is not only
because people relate to these non-human beings as persons, with feelings
and intentions like humans, but also because these beings have a real-life
impact on people’s lives. People’s relations with other-than-human beings
can therefore not be reduced to a matter of social projections.
Suggesting the term “multinaturalism”, Viveiros de Castro problema-
tizes the dichotomy in Euro-American discourse between nature (as given)
and culture (as variable). He points to important flaws in the term “multi-
culturalism”, but at the same time he appears to revert and thus reproduce
the nature–culture dichotomy, by proposing a view where nature is con-
sidered variable, and culture as given (Ramos 2012, 486). A problem in
Viveiros de Castro’s argument about a universal humanity shared between
humans and animals is that notions of subjectivity, spirituality, humanity,
and culture seem to be lumped together into one single category. There
is thus a danger that we may end up reproducing a dichotomy which very
much created the starting point to the ontological turn(s). Difference is
located in the body, according to Viveiros de Castro, but in this manner
we are left with a categorical differentiation between bodies and sub-

jectivity, or culture, although reversing—through the multiplication of
natures(s)—the Euro-American presupposition about such distinctions
(Ramos 2012; see also Salmond 2014). Latour’s (2005) approach may
appear more moderate in this regard. In his exploration of non-human
agency (actants), he focuses less on rigid ontological schemes and more on
the emergence of entities in assemblages of both human and non-human
actors. However, while Viveiros de Castro seems to intensify (or exotify)
difference, Latour’s “scienctific animism”2 appears to collapse difference
through his universalized notion of human–non-human assemblages. By
universalizing the significance of non-human agency, Latour leaves the
good old question about cultural difference or worldviews unexplored,
and thus he under-communicates the significance of different ontological
principles and dynamics underlying processes of “othering”.
Regarding the question of ontological difference, Mol emphasizes the
way in which such difference is created and engaged through practice.
Difference, in her perspective, is located neither in the body nor in the
mind, but is created and enacted through practice. Exploring the body
multiple, Mol (2003) problematizes perspectivism and argues that this
approach multiplies the observers, hence leaving the object of study intact
(in this case, the body and biomedical diagnosis) (2003, 12). She examines
how the body and its diseases are more than one, while emphasizing that
“this does not mean that they are fragmented into being many” (2003,
viii). In so doing, she argues for the multiplicity of reality in practice, in
the sense that a disease is part of, and emerges from different practices.
Several proponents of the ontological turn(s) have been criticized
for intensifying and compartmentalizing difference into worlds that are
incommensurable, that is, with their emphasis on radical alterity and the
move from different worldviews to different worlds altogether (Vigh and
Sausdal 2014). In order to retain the usefulness of a notion about ontolog-
ical dynamics without assuming a notion of disconnected or incommen-
surable worlds, it may be useful to draw upon Strathern’s (2004) notion
of “partial connections”.3 Partial connection refers to a relationship com-
posing an aggregate that is “neither singular nor plural, neither one nor
many, a circuit of connections rather than joint parts” (2004, 54). Partial
connections create no single entity, and the entity that results is more
than one, yet less than two. This notion of partial connections is useful
for understanding the complexities of life in the Andes, without assuming
rigid ontological schemes. This is especially important since indigeneity
72 C.V. ØDEGAARD
as a historical formation in the Andes, as noted by de la Cadena, cannot

be separated from the mestizo; indigenous-mestizo are always part of the
other and their separation is impossible, since indigeneity has always been
part of modernity (2010, 348). If we understand the question of khari-
siris as a partial connection, the attacks can be seen as a historic-political
articulation of more than one, but less than two socio-natural worlds. In
this view, the ontological underpinnings of kharisiri attacks may entail a
way of dealing with loss and fear that is different from, but not excluding,
a notion of class relations and exploitation. So while kharisiri attacks are
part of ontological principles which cannot simply be seen as representa-
tion or result of class relations, the experience of exploitation or oppres-
sion may well inform such ontological dynamics of dealing with “other”.
They take the form of partial connections in the sense that the one does
not exclude the other (Hage 2012). De la Cadena (2014) suggests we
pay attention precisely to such ethnographic (and postcolonial) moments
which oblige analysis at the crossroads of ontology and modern politics,
so as to open modern politics to critical view by what she prefers to refer
to as “ontological opening” rather than “turn” (see also Salmond 2014,
178). Considering how modern politics is premised on representation and
thus requiring “reality” out there, she proposes we explore that which
falls outside politics, such as earth beings in the Andes, in order to “open
up” the blind spots of modern politics. Such ethnographies may enable us
to “conceptualize otherwise”, according to de la Cadena, in partial con-
nection with difference (which, being located at sites of limit, emerge as
radical difference).
A note on the notion of ánimo in the Andes is necessary before dis-
cussing the question of kharisiris. Allen (1998, 21) has underlined how
all beings in the Andean context are considered to share a matrix of
animated substance, or life force. This shared interiority is referred to as
ánimo (soul, energy), associated with life force and the ability to work
hard. The ánimo may leave the body and travel across space, especially
in cases where people experience fear or shock (susto). Symptoms of susto
are generally headache, tiredness, nervousness, and lack of appetite, as
well as the occurrence of strange or unusual dreams. In order to make
the ánimo return, it is necessary to call it back with the help of the
affected person’s clothes or favorite treat, preferably at the place where
the ánimo was lost. While being associated with soul or energy and hav-
ing the capacity of being separated from the body, the ánimo depends
on vital substances in order to be healthy, and cannot be seen as “pure”
substance nor spirit. In this regard, the symptoms of a kharisiri attack

are similar to those of susto; both involve a loss of ánimo and the victim
may die if left untreated. For the victim of a kharisiri attack, the loss of
fat involves a loss also of ánimo.
Powerful Entities and Beings

Just before my fieldwork in 2011, my interlocutor (with the pseud-
onym) Juan had been very ill, and his family was afraid of losing him. His
illness had been caused by a kharisiri who had “sacado su sangre” (removed
his blood). Juan was ill for several months, suffering from stomachache and
a loss of ánimo, and thus being unable to engage in the contraband business
he runs with his wife. According to Juan, kharisiris are persons who speak
with the devil. They go to the mountains to give people’s body substances to
the devil, and in return they get a lot of money. Previously the kharisiris also
removed liquid from people’s knees for purposes of exchange, but accord-
ing to Juan they do not do this any longer. Now the kharisiris remove blood
or fat from people’s stomachs, since this apparently gives better pay.4 Juan
stressed that kharisiris can do this sort of thing only by looking at people,
but there are also accounts of kharisiris who use knives or more advanced
equipment like needles and even laser attacking un-suspecting victims.
Juan and his wife (with the pseudonym) Dorothea are from Zepita, a
little town close to the border with Bolivia. They both work as contrabandis-
tas in the border areas and own a house in Arequipa as well as in Zepita.
The existence of kharisiris appears to be a problem for people in Zepita,
especially for the many traders there, since traders travel a lot and expose
themselves to danger. In order to prevent such attacks, people are recom-
mended not to go out at night, not to travel by bicycle-taxi but by bus or
car, and to bring garlic for protection.5
The kharisiri is said to appear as a regular person, although often con-
sidered to look like a white or mestizo person with a beard and bright-
looking skin. The kharisiri may also take other shapes, however, as when
Juan was attacked. Juan got ill after one night he had opened the door to
his house after hearing someone knocking outside. As he opened, he saw
a dog outside his door, and two weeks after he got ill. According to Juan,
this dog was a kharisiri who had converted himself, and it was not until
he got ill that he realized that the dog was a kharisiri. Kharisiris may thus
take both human and animal form.
A person can be recognized as a kharisiri only through the effects of his
actions. This means that it is hard to know if anyone is a kharisiri, since a
74 C.V. ØDEGAARD
kharisiri may look like a regular person, although often with the appear-
ance of a foreigner or white person, as already noted. Indeed, the person
sitting next to you on the bus may prove to be a kharisiri, but you will not
know whether he is a kharisiri until after you get ill. This happened to one
of my interlocutors on one of her journeys. As she one day was on her way
between Arequipa and Zepita, she fell asleep on the bus. Later, when she
got ill, she realized that the man who had been sitting next to her on the
bus, reading the Bible, probably was a kharisiri who had been reading the
Bible upside down. A kharisiri attack is thus discovered and defined by the
effects of the kharisiri’s actions.
The powerful actors with whom the kharisiri makes his exchanges—his
clients—may involve not only the devil but also other powerful actors and
entities, such as powerful earth beings, priests and doctors. This is an issue
I return to. As the above indicates, the kharisiri is an entity corresponding
to a singular person, but one that has transformative capacities and who
may sometimes merge with powerful others. So although corresponding
to a singular person, you can never know who is a kharisiri, or who he
makes exchanges with. Thus not being identifiable beforehand, the khari-
siri emerges in and through the incidence of a kharisiri attack.
While kharisiris are generally male, they may also be female, or appear
in a pair. Before my fieldwork in 2011, a young trader working at the Feria
in Arequipa got seriously ill due to a kharisiri. While at work one day he
suddenly saw a tall, white-skinned man in a suit, approaching him together
with a young girl without shoes, a paisana (girl from the highlands). They
both called at the young trader “joven, joven” (young man), all the while
hiding their hands behind their backs. The boy was so struck by fear that
he later became seriously ill. In retrospect, vendors at the market referred
to the couple as kharisiris, although it was said that the young man got ill
primarily due to fear. It was through his fear that he recognized the couple
as a kharisiri. He had a susto and his ánimo was lost. No attempts to cure
the young man succeeded, until he was brought to a curandero (shaman)
in his mother’s village of birth.
Historical Continuities
Since colonial times, there has been an association of kharisiris especially
with priests, who are suspected of collecting fat from local people for use
in the bishop’s holy oils, or for the oiling of church bells. This association
between kharisiris and priests still holds sway, as noted by Juan regarding
the priest in Zepita: “Oh, he is the one who really knows about these
issues. He also knows how to remove people’s blood and fat”. The same
priest had baptized Juan and Dorothea’s children. Kharisiris have been
associated with a variety of different powerful actors, in addition to priests
and bishops (see Bastien 1978; Ansion and Sifuentes 1989; Crandon-
Malamud 1991; Wachtel 1994; Weismantel 2001). During the 1900s
and until the 1960s, for instance, kharisiris were associated with hacienda
owners, who were suspected of stealing fat for use in an increasingly indus-
trialized agriculture. In the 1970s, kharisiris were associated with engi-
neers suspected of stealing fat for the production of electricity in the USA,
and in the 1980s, kharisiris were associated with Peruvian soldiers and the
violence during the dirty war. Later the kharisiris were increasingly associ-
ated with modern pharmacies and factories, where people suspected that
sexual organs and fosters were used in the production of medicine and
cosmetics (Crandon-Malamud 1991; Weismantel 2001).
Such accounts indicate that the kharisiri attacks may actualize a range
of different entities or actors, varying over time and with different histori-
cal and socio-economic conditions. A kharisiri attack does thus not rely
on a particular category of actors, like priests, pharmacists or the like, but
may involve different actors and entities, both human and non-human. In
some cases, the kharisiri is the one who both steals and makes use of body
substance, while in other accounts, the kharisiri primarily steals in order
to sell body substance to powerful actors who provide him with profit
in return. In the case of the latter, the kharisiri is differentiated from his
“clients”.
While the kharisiri is often interpreted as a response to or metaphor for
exploitation and inequality, due to the image of kharisiris as white-skinned
intruders, some anthropologists, for example Gose (1994), have argued
instead that the accounts of kharisiri attacks express the historical signifi-
cance of blood-sacrifice in the Andes. In a similar vein, Orta has argued
that kharisiris must be seen as expression of cosmologies and practices
more generally in the Andes (2004).
Indeed, it is important to take into account that kharisiris are consid-
ered to make exchanges also with non-human beings such as the powerful
mountains, or apus (see also Stensrud, Chap. 11). The apus are powerful
mountain lords viewed to have great power and to be pura plata (full of
money/silver). It is therefore not only or necessarily priests, pharmacists
or hacienda owners who are considered to be the recipients or thieves of
body substances, but also the powerful mountains.
76 C.V. ØDEGAARD
The exchanges between kharisiris and the mountains indicate the impor-
tance of not overlooking the significance of the powerful earth beings in our
understanding of kharisiri attacks, and may serve to question the interpreta-
tion of the kharisiri as expression primarily of indigenous people’s fear of,
or reaction to outsiders, modernity or capitalism. People fear the powerful
earth beings too, due to their powers to not only provide prosperity but also
to destroy, a point I will return to. In this regard, the kharisiri is a trickster
who draws advantage of different sources of power and prosperity, that is,
the power associated with the mountains as well as those associated with
modern forms of knowledge and technology; both of importance for flows
of substances between humans and non-humans. So, rather than assuming
that the fear of kharisiris is connected to a fear of modernity or intrusive
strangers, I suggest that the kharisiri articulates the presence of different
powerful actors and entities—including the power of the mountains, which
can be both benign and destructive. In this regard, kharisiri attacks and
their treatment demonstrate particular ways of dealing with a sense of loss.
Rather than relying on a rigid ontological scheme, however, I see these
attacks as involving an ontological dynamics where boundaries are precari-
ously uncertain and unstable, and therefore requiring an analysis open to
different ontological dynamics and principles. The instability of entities
and boundaries not only make humans vulnerable to different non-human
actors, but also to powerful humans of different kinds.
While kharisiris are most often associated with white-skinned strangers,
these attacks may also occur along lines that do not necessarily follow the
division between insider and outsider, Indian and non-Indian. In my con-
versations with Juan and Dorothea, they suggested that it might have been
Juan’s brother-in-law who had attacked him. They thus suspected that the
attack had to do with the fact that Juan’s sister had just moved in6 with a
new man, a man they believe is a kharisiri. Like Juan and Dorothea, their
brother-in-law is also a contrabandista, bringing in goods from Bolivia to
sell at the Feria in Arequipa. At the Feria, the contrabandistas from Zepita
are respected for being hardworking people who continuously travel to
bring and sell goods. When I asked why anyone would remove blood from
their brother-in-law, Juan replied somewhat vaguely that: “because now
we are family, and because of envy, or that we don’t really mean anything
to him”. This illustrates that kharisiris may also appear among insiders—
and even kin (see also Weismantel 2001). Juan was soon cured, however,
by his uncle who is a curandero. According to Juan, the doctors do not
know how to cure this kind of illness—only the curanderos and brujos
(shamans) do, since they know how to speak with the devil too.
The Significance of Fat

As noted by Canessa (2000), many scholars have listed the various ways
in which the different clients of the kharisiri make use of the fat and
blood, while few have considered why such body substances have this cre-
ative power in the first place. According to him, body substances are the
most important means of communicating with the powerful earth beings
through offerings. More so than blood, fat is especially important in such
offerings, like llama fat or fetus, candles and the froth on the surface of
beer or the like (2000, 709–710). This importance of fat in offerings
has been seen as a substitute for human sacrifice (Bastien 1978; Sallnow
1987). Especially llama fetuses, as human ones, are considered to contain
vital life force. As noted by Canessa, such offerings serve to secure the
earth beings the fat they need for their own sustenance. In exchange for
the fat that humans offer in the form of animal or alcoholic substances,
the earth beings provide people with the vitality contained in human fat.
In this manner, fat is essential for legitimate social reproduction, contain-
ing life force and being associated especially with people’s ability to work.
Fat is not simply a symbol of life force, it is life force (see also Stensrud
about the significance of ch’alla, or offerings, in the Andes; Chap. 11).
Likewise, theft of fat is a form of exploitation and loss, rather than simply a
symbol of exploitation. Kharisiri attacks can therefore not be reduced to an
issue of representation. By extracting from the flow of life force between
human and non-human beings, kharisiris not only cause illness, but also
undermine the very basis of social life. In Juan’s case, for instance, the
kharisiri attack entailed not simply a removal of body substance, but also a
destruction of Juan’s ability to work and provide for his family.
The most common cure for kharisiri attacks is to make the patient
consume substances similar to those they have lost, that is, blood or fat
that can be bought from curanderos or brujos, that is, shamans. Such
blood or fat is mostly taken from animals, although the umbilical cord
of babies may serve the same purpose. The kharisiri’s destructive acts of
exchange are thus sought counter-acted through the use of the transfor-
mative potential of body substance. In Zepita at the time of my fieldwork
in 2011, it was also possible to buy tablets at the pharmacy that can cure
kharisiri attacks. It is said that this medicine is made by curanderos—but in
a tablet form that resembles biomedical treatments. So, while other non-
biomedical illnesses and afflictions (not recognized by biomedical diagno-
sis or treatment)7 are cured by making offerings, kharisiri attacks cannot
78 C.V. ØDEGAARD
be cured through offerings, but rather by consuming body substances or

tablets (see Blaisdell and Ødegaard 2014). As previously noted, there is an
association between biomedical tablets and human fat, and when tablets
are now used to cure kharisiri attacks, it may be a result of the view that
biomedical tablets contain similar substances to that of fat, only in another
form. Pharmacists in Arequipa too reported to have cures for kharisiri
attacks, but in the form of regular biomedical tablets that they prescribe
on the basis of symptoms (see Blaisdell and Ødegaard 2014).
The Question of Predation
Underlying accounts of kharisiri attacks is a notion of loss at the hands of

powerful forces or beings. Descola (2013) applies the notion of predation
in order to explain a style of relating to both humans and non-humans
among the Achuar in Amazonia that is based on capturing principles of
identity and vital substances considered to be necessary for the perpetu-
ation of the self. He found this predatory attitude not only in warfare
and rituals but also in daily life, contrasting with the philosophy of equal
exchange by which social life in Amazonia had previously been defined
(2013, 319). An ethic of predation as a way of incorporating otherness
has also been explored by Viveiros de Castro (1992), Vilaça (2015) and
Fausto (2007), and may help illuminate the kharisiri in terms of onto-
logical dynamics where human and non-human persons belong to the
same socio-economic domain, depending on the same, vital substances
and sharing the capacity of agency and intentionality.
As noted, Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism involves a reconsid-
eration of the notion of animism, in order to recognize how animals
see themselves as humans, and being differentiated from humans only
by and through their bodies (1998; see also Vilaça 2015). While ani-
mism involves a subjective and social continuity between humans and
non-humans, perspectivism puts emphasis on physical discontinuity, in
the sense that the spirit or soul integrates, while the body differenti-
ates (1998, 479). Perspectivism thus presupposes “a spiritual unity and
a corporeal diversity” (1998, 470). In Viveiros de Castro’s account,
both animals and spirits see themselves as humans, and they see their
food as human food, in the sense that jaguars for instance see blood as
their manioc beer (1998, 470). The manifest form of each species is a
mere envelope (“clothing”) that conceals a shared internal human form,
which is visible to certain beings and shamans. This internal form is the
“soul” or “spirit” of the animal: an intentionality or subjectivity identi-

cal to human consciousness (1998, 471). There is thus a spiritual com-
monality to all animate beings, both humans and animals, with a variable
bodily appearance. Hence bodily appearances are not fixed attributes,
but “changeable and removable clothing” (1998, 471). In this “highly
transformational world” (Riviere 1994, 256), spirits may shift clothing
and take animal form, and humans may turn into animals. This per-
spectivist and cosmological transformism can be seen in various ethnog-
raphies from South America, and Viveiros de Castro suggests that the
notion of the body as a “clothing” very likely is pan-American (1998,
471). Important to note though is that perspectival inversions do not
involve all animal species, but refer primarily to the relative and relational
statuses of predator and prey (1998, 471; see also Fausto 2007). Animal
is the extra-human prototype of other, according to Viveiros de Castro,
maintaining privileged relations with other prototypical figures of alter-
ity, such as affines (1998, 472; see also Descola 2013). In this manner,
there is a “predicative” horizon of all relations with the other, be they
matrimonial, alimentary or bellicose (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 480).
In the Andes, the equivalents of extra-human prototype of “other” are
the earth beings. Socialities in this context have generally been regarded
as characterized by an ethic of sharing and balanced exchange, also in
human relationships to earth beings—like the pachamama (powerful
earth or ground) and apus (see, e.g., Allen 1988; Harris 2000 [1978];
Harvey 2001). These relationships involve ritual activities concerned with
maintaining the health, fertility, and prosperity of human and non-human
beings alike. The power of earth beings may be actualized in different
forms, such as in the form of fertile fields, health, money, and prosperity,
as well as in the power to cause illness, death, and accidents. People make
offerings to the earth beings in order to secure their goodwill, because
they, like human persons, have needs and feelings, and may become hun-
gry, angry, jealous, or revengeful.
While ethnographies from the Andes have not been particularly con-
cerned with the issue of transformation, some authors have noted that
the powerful mountains can manifest themselves in different bodies, for
instance as large birds or humans. When an apu appears in human form,
it is often as a light-skinned man8 (Gose 1994, 212; Stensrud 2011), and
thus similar to kharisiris who are often associated with white-skinned out-
siders. Indeed, like kharisiris, the apus are associated with powers con-
sidered external to the local community and imagined to have certain
80 C.V. ØDEGAARD
similarities with mestizos (Orta 2004). For instance, the most powerful
apu in Arequipa is called Misti, which is Quechua for mestizo, lord or
powerful other. The powerful apus are also associated with devil images
(as illustrated in the offerings made to figures shaped after devil images),
and may, like the pachamama, be manifested in the figures of Catholic
saints (Nash 1979; Harris 2000 [1978]). Powerful non-human beings are
thus characterized by a capacity to appear in different shapes.
If the earth beings’ needs and desires are not responded to, that is, if peo-
ple do not share with them, they may withdraw their goodwill and do harm.
Pachamama will get hungry if people fail to make offerings, a situation that
may make her want to take or attack people (quiere agarrar), for example
by physically making them fall down. Such a fall may result in illness, that is,
unless you make an offering or simply urinate on the spot where the fall has
taken place. There are various accounts of how people get ill, have accidents,
or die if failing to make an offering. These practices are not necessarily lim-
ited to rural areas, but are reproduced also when people move to the cities
(Ødegaard 2010). In the Andean context, it would not be accurate, however,
to say that there is one spiritual interiority taking on different clothing, as
in the spiritual universality suggested by Viveiros de Castro. Rather, there
are different beings and spirits, like the pachamama, apus as well as other
powerful beings, and they all have different personalities, character traits, and
degrees of power. While pachamama encompasses a generalized idea of the
earth or ground—implying that its powers are not necessarily place-specific
but may be at work anywhere—the apus, in contrast, are more specific to a
certain place and region. In this manner, the powers of an apu may be limited
to a certain area. This geographical limitation of apu power is seen to depend,
however, on the particular apu’s size and powers, and the more powerful ones
can have a wide geographical reach (Lund Skar 1994). Lund Skar (1994,
209) thus notes that there are hierarchical relations between the apus within
the near, and in some cases quite distant, surroundings (see also Sallnow
1987, 129; Urton 1981, 48–53). In the Andean context, it is also difficult to
separate powerful beings from their physical manifestations or place, consider-
ing how all beings are seen to share a matrix of animated substance.
Pachamama and the apus consume the same substances as humans do
(meat, beer, coca), provided by human offerings. However, if humans do
not treat the earth beings with respect and share with them by making offer-
ings, they may see humans as their food (prey). In this manner, the character
and outcome of these encounters depend on whether you make an offering
or not. One point to draw from this is that the interaction with earth beings
is based upon an expectation of sharing, and that the failure to do so trans-

forms the relationship from one of sharing to one between predator and
prey. Rephrasing a perspectivist position as expressed by Viveiros de Castro,
we could say that the apus respond with aggression if not being recognized
for their humanity through sharing. The kharisiri appears to interfere in
these relationships between humans and earth beings, by making use of and
actualizing a predator–prey potential—and in so doing, converting human
body substances—or their life force—directly into prosperity. In this man-
ner, kharisiris disturb and skew practices of balanced reciprocal relations
between human and non-human beings, by stealing the substances of those
relations for purposes of exchange. The kharisiri is, therefore, not a symbol
of fear, it is part of the way in which social relations are constituted. Indeed,
the widespread view of such monstrous figures as symbols of fear is basically
a very modernist, Euro-American notion.
The Capacity of Conversion
While kharisiris sometimes appear in the shape of a regular human person,

they may also convert and appear in the form of an animal, in order to
capture vital substances. In the case of Juan, for instance, he got ill after
he one night had opened the door to find a dog outside his door. This
dog was a kharisiri who had converted himself. This capacity of conver-
sion may enable the kharisiri to hide his intentions, and thus to realize the
removal of body substance. In this case, this kind of conversion might have
been particularly important because the kharisiri was apparently related
to Juan as his brother-in-law, who therefore might have recognized him
otherwise. Now, if we consider how kharisiri attacks are generally actual-
ized by strangers or people who would be categorized as other, it is inter-
esting to see that the kharisiri in this case was not a white-skinned person,
but took place between affinals. It illustrates how the relationship between
affinals also actualizes notions of other—and thus potentially representing
a relationship of predation as emphasized in the Amazonian ethnography
(Viveiros de Castro 1992; Descola 2013). Taking place between (affinal)
kin, Juan’s case indicates the importance of kharisiri as other in a more
general sense, and not being limited, for example, to ethnic or racial oth-
ers, as has often been suggested.
A few years before my fieldwork in 2011, a young boy in Zepita was
killed by a kharisiri. In the aftermath of this people organized a demonstra-
tion to claim justice, so that the kharisiri should not go unpunished. The
82 C.V. ØDEGAARD
man who was supposed to have killed the boy was finally arrested by the
police. The day after, however, when the police officer came to his cell,
the man had turned into a wolf. The next day, when a police officer again
came to check on the prisoner, the man had turned into a snake. And when
a police officer came in the third day, the man stood there as a person, but
with the body covered in dollars. Instead of taking the man to justice, the
police officer—and apparently the tax agents—removed all the dollars from
the man’s body and let him go. This account illustrates how some of the
exchanges realized by the kharisiri depend on this possibility to convert, for
example, into an animal to escape justice9 and then into a human person
who can bribe the authorities. It thus appears that the kharisiri may take the
form of whatever/whomever he likes within the category of predators. That
is, not just exploitative foreign actors, but also predators like snakes or dogs.
Perhaps this capacity of conversion, or the kharisiri’s ability to take different
forms—both human and non-human, insider and outsider—may contrib-
ute to explain the persistence and historical continuity of kharisiri attacks.
The experiences of kharisiri attacks and the practices of preventing and
treating such attacks illustrate a way of being where human is potential prey,
both to other humans and to non-humans. The boundaries of the body are
unstable and uncertain, but can be stabilized and maintained through gifts
and offerings. In Vilaça’s (2015) ethnography among the Wari, Amazonas,
it was the instability of humanity (and the potential of becoming animal)
which paved the way for conversion to Christianity, since neither God nor
devil have bodies and therefore representing stability in a transformative
world. In the Andes, the flow of substances between humans and non-
humans creates the very basis of social life, health and prosperity, but are also
vulnerable for disruption. Here, the kharisiri reveals the potential in all rela-
tions—both with human and with non-human persons—of preying on the
circulation of vital substances. This is not an ethic of predation in the sense
that has been described in the Amazonian literature, nor an ontology of a
common humanity differentiated by bodily shapes. Rather, I suggest that
the kharisiri can be understood as part of an ontological dynamics where
humans are potential prey to forces and powerful beings of different kinds,
due to their common reliance on vital substances.
Conclusions
In this chapter, I have embarked upon an exploration of kharisiri attacks
as characterized by an actualization of different beings and forces, in an
attempt to avoid a reduction of kharisiri attacks to an issue of symboliza-
tion of social inequalities and exploitation. Seeking to understand the onto-

logical underpinnings of kharisiri attacks, I have explored the significance of
vital substances in such attacks, and in the treatment of their effects. In so
doing, I have argued that the kharisiri must be understood in light of the
significance of earth beings as powerful non-human persons in the Andes.
In sharing human capacities of agency and intentionality, and depending on
the same vital substances as humans, earth beings may bring prosperity as
well as cause harm to humans. Drawing on notions of predation from the
Amazonian ethnography as a style of relating to human and non-human
persons, I have examined the kharisiri attacks in terms of ontological
dynamics where humans and non-humans depend on the same substances
as vital principles of identity. Central to my understanding of the kharisiri
attacks is the kharisiri’s capacity of conversion, and the way such attacks
involve different beings and forces. As I have illustrated, a kharisiri attack
does not rely on a particular category of actors, like priests, pharmacists, or
the like. Kharisiri attacks are related to the unstable boundaries of the body
and social life’s reliance on the flow of substances between humans and
non-humans. A kharisiri attack may therefore involve different actors and
entities, both human and non-human, strangers and kin. The kharisiri is a
trickster who draws advantage of different sources of power and prosperity,
that is, the power associated with the mountains as well as those associated
with modern forms of knowledge and technology; both of importance for
flows of substances between humans and non-humans.
In this regard, the kharisiri can be seen to reveal a different way of
creating and conceptualizing alterity, one that may be connected—but
not limited to—the existence of socio-economic inequalities and exploita-
tion. Kharisiri attacks reflect a political/symbolic economy characterized
by particular principles for relating to “other”. These principles account
for life in general and are not necessarily being defined by or limited to
class exploitation or mestizo domination. It is another way of relating to
other, illustrating Hage’s point, that there is always an excess to how one
defines a social relation, for example, more than “a relation of power”
or “relation of exploitation”. The kharisiri reveals the potential in social
relationships—both with human and non-human persons—of preying on
the circulation of vital substances and principles of identity that create the
very basis for social life. My attempt to explore the ontological underpin-
nings of kharisiri attacks is not based on a notion of different ontologies
as worlds separated by incommensurable difference. Rather, my analysis
in this chapter is based on more dynamic understandings of ontology
84 C.V. ØDEGAARD
emphasizing how entities and boundaries emerge as effects of practices.

In this regard, I have suggested that the kharisiri can be understood in
terms of Strathern’s notion of partial connection, or as a historic-political
articulation of more than one, but less than two socio-natural worlds.
Acknowledgements My warmest thanks to the people in Peru who were so kind

and helpful to let me follow them in their daily lives and who shared with me
their experiences and points of view. Many thanks also to Amy Blaisdell who so
enthusiastically agreed to explore the problem of kharisiris together with me. I am
grateful also to Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and Synnøve Bendixsen for inviting me to
contribute in this edited volume, and especially to Bjørn for his patient reading of
chapter drafts and his valuable comments. In addition, I would like to express my
thanks to Adam Reed, for his constructive reading of an early draft of this chapter.
Notes
. In 1997, 2001, 2003–2004, 2007, 2011, and 2016, for 19 months in total.
1
2. I borrow this term from Andrew Lattas.
3. As noted in the introduction of this book, Strathern’s work on relationality
and dividuality has been influential for several proponents of the “ontologi-
cal turn”; see for instance Holbraad and Pedersen (2009).
4. Note that in such comments about what substances give the better pay, the
kharisiri’s “clients” are often left unspecified.
5. Kharisiri are apparently not fond of garlic, and they never marry in Church,
indicating the influence of Christian notions of devil.
6. Note that this couple was co-residing and not married, a point also under-
lined by Juan.
7. Examples of “folk illnesses” are susto, mal viento (bad, powerful wind which
may cause illness; often existing close to the mountains or graveyards), or
pacha illness (occurring e.g. when a person falls and/or fails to make and
offering, causing pachamama to grab the person).
8. Although they may also appear as a woman or a child; and with either dark
or white skin.
9. In other cases, people suspect the authorities of granting kharisiris with a
permission to kill (Weismantel 2001).
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CHAPTER 4
False Prophets? Ontological

Conflicts and Religion-Making in an
Indonesian Court
Kari Telle
Introduction
Since 1998, when Indonesians embarked on a process of democratiza-
tion after more than three decades of authoritarian rule, there has been
a sharp rise in accusations of “insults to Islam” and ensuing prosecutions
of blasphemy. This chapter examines a blasphemy trial on the island of
Lombok in 2010, in which an elderly Muslim farmer from East Lombok
was accused of being a “false prophet” (nabi palsu) and taken to court. In
court, Pak Abdullah alias Amaq Bakri testified that he had visited heaven
on several occasions, including the highest seventh level.1 Yet it was the
claim that he had received revelations from the Angel Gabriel, a key fig-
ure in the Islamic tradition, that court officials and religious authorities
found particularly troubling. Besides challenging mainstream under-
standings of prophesy in Sunni Islam, local authorities worried that other
Muslims might be misled to assume that divinity might crop up anywhere
K. Telle (*)
Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_4
90 K. TELLE
and within anyone. While the prosecutor demanded a one-and-a-half year

sentence, the judges on the District Court ruled that a one-year prison
sentence was sufficient since the accused was of an advanced age, did not
have a prior criminal record, and declared himself willing “to return to the
true Islamic teachings”2. Considering that blasphemy carries a maximum
penalty of five years imprisonment, the sentence was relatively light.3
Trials of the kind that Amaq Bakri endured involve ontological conflicts
and clashes. Probing some of the conflicts involved in this case, I argue that
blasphemy trials constitute a “religion-making” (Mandair and Dressler 2011)
technology geared toward the creation of a distinctly Indonesian conception
of “religion” (agama), while rendering certain forms of religiosity illegal.
By ontological conflicts, I mean disagreements involving substantially dif-
ferent experiences and assumptions about the world, including the relations
between the various kinds of beings and entities making up the cosmos, what
defines the nature of and difference between humans, animals, spirits, and so
forth. At stake in this trial, I suggest, was a concern to sharpen the boundary
between the time/space of prophesy in Islam and the present, processes that
accentuate the otherworldliness of divinity and protect Muhammad’s status as
the last prophet. Hence, this trial invites questions such as: “How do incom-
mensurate worlds emerge? How are they sustained in their incommensurabil-
ity?”4 In other words, an ordinary Indonesian criminal trial may enable better
understandings of how the inconceivable is conceived.
Though I characterize the conflicts described in this chapter as involv-
ing ontological conflicts, my argument is not that the protagonists in this
trial—a semi-illiterate Sasak Muslim farmer, Salafi-inspired preachers, law-
yers, and judges in the civil court—inhabit different “worlds”, some fully
inhabited reality distinct from other equally distinct realities. While claims
for incommensurable “worlds” are made by influential proponents of “the
ontological turn”, the post-humanist strands of the turn strike me as being
methodologically and theoretically problematic. Here I have in mind
approaches that reject the humanist project of theorizing difference within
a shared humanity, in favor of multinaturalism and perspectivism, posi-
tions developed by Viveiros de Castro and Holbraad among others.5 For
instance, in the introduction to Thinking Through Things (2007), Henare,
Holbraad, and Wastel announce that: “[T]he presumption of natural unity
and cultural difference—epitomized in the antropos—is no longer tenable.
If we are to take others seriously, instead of reducing their articulations to
mere ‘cultural perspectives’ or ‘beliefs’ (i.e. worldviews), we can conceive
them as enunciations of different ‘worlds’ or ‘natures’” (2007, 10).
FALSE PROPHETS? ONTOLOGICAL CONFLICTS AND RELIGION-MAKING... 91
In what follows I attempt to take my interlocutors seriously, an endeavor

that requires sensitivity to the ways in which they are differently positioned
in the trial situation and to the kind of work being accomplished in the
highly charged setting of a blasphemy trial. In placing the accent on what
is generated through practice—on effects rather than intentions—I take
inspiration from perspectives that reject a priori notions of essence and
focus on enactment, and the formation of entities in assemblages or net-
works of humans and nonhuman entities (Latour 1993, 2010; Remme,
Chap. 5). Relying on specific genres of speech, precedents, and evidence,
the criminal trial both reflects and enacts forms of selfhood in which the
individual must take responsibility for his or her intentions and actions,
including speech.6 Assuming that courts are exemplars of what Latour
(1993) calls “the modern constitution”, I suggest that courts are impor-
tant albeit often overlooked sites of contemporary “religion-making”.
Tracing the genealogy of “religion” (agama) in postcolonial Indonesia,
I show how judges participate in the construction of the time/space of
original prophesy as an inaccessible realm.
The dream visions that Amaq Bakri reported in the courtroom chal-
lenge mainstream understandings of Islam and the “real” by claiming inti-
mate encounters with beings who are distinctly “other”—spirits, angels,
and the divine. Everyone in court would likely agree that these beings are
situated across an “ontological divide” (Keane 2008, 120), in the sense
that they take the “difference to be a qualitative one, as between kinds
of things, rather than […] simple spatial distance”. Of course, such dis-
tinctions are not necessarily clear. What was at stake in this blasphemy
trial concerned the kinds of relationships and communication that can
take place across such a divide and under what circumstances. By ruling
that the time of revelation is over and that no ordinary human can com-
municate across this divide, the judges made quite a radical move. With
this ruling, the judges participated in the construction of a wholly differ-
ent realm, cordoning off the time/space of original prophesy from the
immanent here and now. If some proponents of ontological anthropology
might be suspected of flirting with ideas of radical alterity, this verdict
made the veracity of incommensurate worlds integral to the natural order
of the state. By lending legal power to a particular conception of Sunni
Islam, the judges further entrenched a theo-political formation in which
the lines between the “political” and “religious” are becoming increas-
ingly blurred.
92 K. TELLE
New Prophets?
The ambition “to take others seriously” is arguably a leitmotif for those
proponents of the ontological turn who seek to reinscribe difference at
the heart of the anthropological project. According to Viveiros de Castro,
“anthropology is the science of the ontological self-determination of the
world’s peoples, and that it is thus a political science in the fullest sense”
(2003, 18). As he notes, the “language of ontology” is also introduced for
a “tactical reason” as a countermeasure to the “derealizing trick frequently
played against the native’s thinking, which turns this thought into a kind
of sustained phantasy, by reducing it to dimensions of a form of knowledge
or representation, that is to an ‘epistemology’ or ‘worldview’” (2003, 18).
In line with this, Holbraad argues that the ontological approach to alterity
“gets us out of the absurd position that what makes ethnographic subjects
most interesting is that they get stuff wrong” (2010, 184). What such
an impasse implies, the argument goes, is that we have reached the con-
ceptual limits of our analytical concepts—hopelessly mired in Eurocentric
dualist assumptions like body and mind, experience and reflection, signi-
fied and signifier—and hence are doomed to fail “to take others seriously”
(Henare et al. 2007, 10). For Holbraad, conceptualization thus becomes
the critical task of an ontological approach in anthropology (2010, 184).
I have no quarrel with the idea that “ethnography should be used to
rethink our analytical concepts” and Holbraad’s (2010, 184) proposition
that “such a task effectively inverts the very anthropological project” is
intriguing (but see Bråten, Chap. 12). When Henare et al. (2007) advo-
cate an approach that takes “things encountered in the field as they pres-
ent themselves” (2007, 3), this is simultaneously a methodological and
political claim that aims to generate concepts that go beyond Western
metaphysics (see Venkatesan 2010; Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1).
It is also a proposal for approaching ethnographic difference in terms of
radically different ontologies, or “strong ontologies”7. “The promise of
ontological anthropology”, as Holbraad et al. (2014) recently announced,
“resides not only in the ways in which it may help to promote certain
futures, but also in the way that it ‘figurates’ the future in its very enact-
ment”. Moreover, this endeavor is permanently revolutionary, in the sense
of being geared toward the politics of “indefinitely sustaining the possible,
the ‘could be’” (Holbraad et al. 2014). The tenor of this and similar state-
ments has led some critics to characterize ontological anthropology as an
“unmoored form of speculative futurism” (Bessire and Bond 2014, 441).
Picking up on the eschatological tone in the new anthropology of ontol-

ogy, Scott’s (2013) brilliant mini-ethnography concludes that this proj-
ect turns anthropology into “religion science”. What characterizes this
emerging “religion science”, Scott suggests, is a rejection of “the alleg-
edly wonder-occluding ontology they name Cartesian dualism” in place of
“something like conversion to the allegedly wonder-sustaining relational
non-dualism they impute to indigenous animisms—often intriguingly,
with the aid of reference to a wealth of Western philosophers, writers,
artists, even scientists” (Scott 2013, 861). Despite what the new prophets
of this “religion science” advocate, this analysis will address Amaq Bakri’s
wonder-filled experiences and his court case, without positing the exis-
tence of “worlds” separated by incommensurable difference but rather by
uncovering difference within a shared world.
Religion-Making in Indonesia
Being concerned with the production of blasphemy in contemporary
Indonesia, I am dealing with an unstable phenomenon at the intersection
of law and religion, with a complex genealogy. The Muslim farmer who
was put on trial clearly spoke from experiences and assumptions that dif-
fered from the more formally educated Muslim and non-Muslim actors
involved in the trial. Yet I stress that these differences are forged in dia-
logue, not through isolation, giving evidence of the deep plurality within
Islam in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation in Southeast Asia with
more than 240 million people, 900 languages, and the world’s largest
Muslim population. As Keane (2014, 312) points out, “any community
supposedly identified with a ‘single’ kind of Christianity is likely to con-
tain conflicts and divisions due to the different logics and temporalities
associated, respectively, with ecclesiastical institutions, popular practices,
and scriptural texts. These conflicts may extend even to basic ontologi-
cal assumptions”. That observation equally applies to Islam, a proselytiz-
ing monotheistic religion that has been present in “the lands below the
winds” (Reid 1988) and in what is now the Republic of Indonesia at least
since the fourteenth century. Conflicts over heresy and false religion have
shaped the historical development of both traditions (Ginzburg 1992
[1976]; De Roover 2011). Today such issues may take on a global signifi-
cance, as the Rushdie affair and the so-called caricature debates illustrate.
Religion qualifies as an “essentially contested concept” (Gallie 1964).
The concept has all the definitional vagueness of other truly powerful
94 K. TELLE
iscursive constructs. Talal Asad (1993), among others, has criticized

d
efforts to define religion as a universal and transcultural phenomenon,
pointing out that universalizing definitions of religion have tended to
privilege belief. Steering clear of all attempts to essentialize religion or its
supposed counterpart, the secular, Asad “follows Wittgenstein’s recom-
mendation to look for ‘use’, not ‘meaning’” (Mandair and Dressler 2011,
16) in his genealogical approach to religious formations. Asad’s point that
the privileging of belief tends to carry much normative baggage is useful
to keep in mind when turning to Indonesia. Being sympathetic to Asad’s
position that an essentialist definition of religion is not viable, I do not
attempt to define religion for the purpose of this chapter, which is mainly
concerned with legal forms of “religion-making”. The following sketch
gives examples of “religion-making from above” (Mandair and Dressler
2011, 21), a heuristic concept that refers to the authoritative discourses
and practices that define and confine things as “religious” through the
disciplining means of the state and its institutions.
Since the Republic’s founding in 1949, after a long struggle for inde-
pendence from the Dutch, state officials have put much effort into defin-
ing what counts as legitimate religion. Indonesia is not a religious state,
nor can Indonesia be described as a secular state in the conventional sense
of the term. The 1945 Constitution commits the state to support religion,
and belief in One God (keTuhanan yang Maha Esa) is the first of five prin-
ciples (Pancasila) constituting the Republic’s ideology. In the early 1950s,
the Ministry of Religion began to work out a more precise definition of
what qualified as religion. As agama, a Sanskrit loanword, was elevated to
the status of religion, the term was dissociated from both “law” and “tra-
dition”, which was one of its original senses in Sanskrit (Picard 2011b, 5).
According to the Ministry, “a religion would have to be revealed by God,
possess a prophet and a holy book, have a codified system of law for its
followers, and further, it should enjoy international recognition and not
be limited to a single ethnic group” (Picard 2011b, 13). In 1965, Sukarno
signed a Presidential decree on the Prevention of the Misuse/Insulting
of a Religion, which specified that six religions (Islam, Protestantism,
Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism) were legitimate
and that deviations from their “core” tenets would be punished.8 In 1969,
the decree was upgraded to the status of law, and is generally known as
the Blasphemy Law. During Suharto’s New Order regime (1966–1998),
which legitimated itself as saving the nation from falling into the hands of
godless Communists, Confucianism lost its status as a legitimate religion.
As the above discussion suggests, the Indonesian concept of agama is

a hybrid concept, drawn from several linguistic and historical traditions. A
cornerstone of the New Order policy was the distinction between agama
and adherents of so-called mystical beliefs/streams of belief (aliran keper-
cayaan), a broad category of groups that were lumped together through
what they purportedly lacked. The latter were regarded as “people who
do not yet have a religion”, and associated with backwardness, parochial-
ism, and suspected of being subversive. The official endorsement of depo-
liticized forms of religion conveyed the idea that “agama is progressive
(maju) and a requisite of good citizenship” (Kipp and Rodgers 1987, 23),
and it was religious affiliation, rather than other identity markers that were
printed on people’s ID cards. A telling illustration of the regime’s attitude
is a regional commander who in 1974 was quoted in Tempo magazine
as saying: “I do not care which religion they have, as long as they have
one” (Bubandt 2011, 185). As Hefner (2000, 59) notes: “Regime strate-
gists looked to organized religion as a ground for public morality, a shield
against Western liberalism, and an antidote to Communism”.
With the collapse of the New Order regime in 1998, the government’s
grip on the bureaucratic regulation of religion was relaxed, albeit to a
lesser extent than many had expected. In the early Reform (Reformasi)
period when Indonesians began experimenting with democracy, the
scope for expressing different forms of religiosities widened consider-
ably.9 Scholars have documented a rise of movements of eclectic, non-
denominational spirituality, especially among the urban middle class, as
well as renewed interest in devotional forms of Sufism, often promoted
by televangelists and celebrity preachers (Howell 2005; Rudnyckyj 2010).
But it did not take long before concerns were raised about the harmful
effects unregulated religious pluralism was bound to have on individuals
and the nation’s well-being. Such concerns were raised within different
sections of the ummat, perhaps most vocally by the Indonesian Council
of Ulama (MUI), which in 2005 launched a campaign against “deviant
sects” (aliran sesat) and ideas.10 During the National Congress in 2005,
one fatwa declared that “secularism, pluralism, liberalism” was incompat-
ible with Islam, and referred to these foreign ideologies by the acronym
sipilis, the Indonesian term for syphilis. While leaders of the major Muslim
mass organizations criticized the Council for issuing this and other divi-
sive opinions, several Islamist organizations were positive. The leader of
the Indonesian Council of Predication (DIII) was quoted in Jakarta Post
saying: “We have to vaccinate our congregation to prevent them from this
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sipilis virus”, and vowed to “fully support the MUI in its war on deviant
thoughts”.
Among the developments that the Council saw an urgent need to
stop was the rise of a Jakarta-based Sufi Muslim group initially known as
Salamullah, whose female leader Lia Aminuddin claimed to be a medium
for the Angel Gabriel, whom she later married. This small group became
widely known after members distributed thousands of letters containing
copies of the Angel’s revelations, which also urged self-purification by
renouncing corruption and doing good works (Howell 2005). In 2006,
and again in 2009, Lia Aminuddin was arrested and convicted under
Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law. This is one of a rising number of cases since
1998 in which people who identify as Muslims have been prosecuted for
blaspheming Islam.11 The groups targeted in such cases tend to be small,
local groups with no international network support, and the prosecutions
usually take place after the MUI has issued a fatwa against the group
(Crouch 2014). In response to this rise in prosecutions, a coalition of
non-governmental organizations and prominent Muslims petitioned for a
constitutional review of the Blasphemy Law, which they argued was being
misused to criminalize religious difference and harass adherents of minor-
ity religions. In 2010, after a public hearing, the Constitutional Court
upheld the Blasphemy Law, stressing the importance of protecting reli-
gious teachings from defamation and the role of the state in guaranteeing
religious harmony and public order (Bagir 2013; Crouch 2014).
Between Revelation and Deviance

In 2009, text messages alleging that a man from East Lombok claimed to
be a “prophet” (nabi) began circulating on Lombok. Similar messages,
distributed anonymously, urged people to be alert against “false prophets”
(nabi falsu) and others spreading “deviant” (sesat) teachings. According
to a journalist based in Mataram, the provincial capital, these widely cir-
culating text messages created a stir among the island’s Muslims, many of
whom were shocked that anyone would make such a preposterous claim.
Shortly after these messages appeared, government officials convened a
hearing to ascertain if his understandings of Islam were legitimate or not.
As I discuss elsewhere (Telle, under review), prior to this hearing, a group
of Salafi preachers carried out a covert investigation into his “beliefs”
and passed on their findings to the MUI. Below I give some examples
of the exchanges during this pre-trial hearing, in which village officials,
bureaucrats from the sub-district, officials in the Ministry of Religion,

high-ranking state officials, police officers, and several journalists took
part.12
The man who was called to testify was Amaq Bakri, a farmer who ekes
out a humble living cultivating vegetables in the foothills of the Rinjani
volcano in northeast Lombok. I was not present during this hearing, but
my sources recalled that he had been cooperative and talkative, his answers
occasionally eliciting bemused laughter. But a low-ranking village official
said that he had felt very uncomfortable and angry with the government
officials who insisted on addressing Amaq Bakri using Indonesian, despite
the fact his command of the national language is poor. Besides making
him appear stupid and uneducated, this meant that many questions were
misunderstood. This miscommunication possibly went beyond language,
involving a failure to fully fathom the performative weight of words in
this quasi-legal confessional situation. On the other hand, Amaq Bakri
probably saw little reason to guard his words: After all, he was a practicing
Muslim whose life had been transformed by a series of remarkable encoun-
ters in the “invisible realm” (alam ghaib).
Being asked to explain the purpose of the Islamic obligation to fast
(puasa) during the month of Ramadan, he answered that the goal of fast-
ing is to become “satisfied” or puas, a reply that departs from common
renderings of fasting as training the ability to abstain from lust. He fur-
ther explained that there are two kinds of scripture: The Holy Qu’ran
that scholars (ulama) and students study in Arabic script and an “inner”
scripture that he carries deep within himself, and whose contents may only
be divulged under certain conditions during Maulud, the month when
Muslims celebrate the birth of Prophet Muhammad.13 Speaking in Sasak,
he also recalled his journeys into the “invisible realm”, which included
glimpses of the highest seventh level of paradise (surga). In referring to
these journeys, he used the term mi’raj, the term used in Islamic sources
to describe the Prophet Muhammad’s mystical ascent, commonly known
as the Night Journey (Graham 1977). In 1970, he had traveled on a
yellow drum. On his second trip in 1975, when entering the “invisible
realm” through a well, he had seen the spirits of the dead. On his third
journey in 1997, the Angel Gabriel (Malaikat Jibril) had taken him on a
tour of paradise before giving him a “diploma” (ijazah) to certify that he
had graduated from the lengthy apprenticeship.
Being compelled to speak about Islam, Amaq Bakri dwelled on his trans-
formative encounters with Muslim figures and various spirits inhabiting
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the invisible “in-between” realm (alam barzakh). This realm, also known
by Sasak speakers as the “other world” (alam or dunia kedua) or sim-
ply the “invisible world” (alam ghaib), is the space where the dead and
other spiritual beings reside and that the living may temporarily visit, for
example, when they dream (Telle 2000; Hay 2001). An important con-
cern for many Sasak is to maintain the appropriate distinctions between
the domain of living human beings, the spirits of the dead, and the various
nonhuman sentient beings inhabiting other domains, including Muslim
spirits (jin) and non-Muslim ones (jin kafir). Precisely because humans
and various spirit-beings share the same cosmos, inhabiting different yet
potentially interpenetrating domains, it takes sustained effort to main-
tain the appropriate distinctions and boundaries. Remme’s discussion
(Chap. 5) of Ifugao ontological dynamics as being “chronically unstable”
has some resonance with Sasak efforts to avoid being possessed or over-
powered by spirits, processes that may lead to a depletion of life-force
(ruh), and ultimately death (Telle 2007b). As beings from the “invisible
world” tend to be invisible for humans, their presence can be difficult to
discern. One consequence of this perceptual difficulty is that Sasak are
inclined to relate to the physical world as being saturated with poten-
tially meaningful “signs” (tanda) that require some ethical response by
individuals, families, or larger collectivities (Telle 2007a, 2009). However,
the perceptual difficulties involved in relating across ontological differ-
ence imply that there are often disagreements about what is going on, and
consequently, what might be the appropriate ethical response. Ongoing
processes of Islamic reform have sharpened such disagreements, which are
sometimes adjudicated in the civil courts.
In light of this lively two-way traffic across a permeable ontological
divide, Amaq Bakri’s claims to have visited the highest level of paradise
where he met the Angel Gabriel, are certainly unusual but entirely con-
ceivable. But rather than locating these experiences within an animist
Sasak life-world, I want to suggest that the possibility of such encounters is
found within Islam. As a “religion of the book”, Islam is built around the
premise that Divine revelation is a historical fact and the Qur’an is often
taken as the tangible evidence of this occurrence.14 The possibility of simi-
lar occurrences being repeated is therefore perfectly conceivable, which
partly explains why generations of Sunni theologians have kept insisting
that Muhammad was the final prophet and that new revelations will not be
forthcoming. But as this testimony indicates, these efforts have not been
entirely successful. A key figure in the Islamic tradition, it was the Angel
Gabriel who transmitted the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, who is

said to have received the revelation as sounds (Graham 1977). On his part,
Amaq Bakri claimed to have received a “diploma” (ijazah), a token and
sign of his “inner” transformation. The replica that he had a student in
graphic design make, served as a souvenir for remembering the encounters
with the Angel and for conveying these intangible experiences to others.
As such, the “diploma” evoked a relationship stretching from heaven to
earth, linking the divine and a Sasak farmer. As these narrated experi-
ences were sufficiently similar to accounts of prophecy in scripture and the
broader Islamic tradition, they elicited interest as well as serious concern.
By opening a space for divine inspiration, Amaq Bakri’s testimony of
encounters with the Angel Gabriel exceed the boundaries of “reason”
(akal). A concept derived from Arabic (‘aql), Muslims in Indonesia and
elsewhere in Southeast Asia tend to take “reason” to be what distinguishes
humans from the rest of the animal world, and this special gift from God
can be developed through study and the observance of Muslim prayer and
discipline (Peletz 1996). While this testimony challenges prevalent distinc-
tions between “reason” and “passion”, “divine” and “human”, it clearly
emerges in dialogue with the Islamic scriptural tradition. To convey his
experiences, Amaq Bakri used vocabulary that people in his milieu were
likely to recognize, such as idea of mystical ascent (A.mi’raj). Muhammad’s
paradigmatic Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and through the
various heavens where he met earlier prophets and came close to God, was
thus imbued with Sufi-inspired and idiosyncratic significance.15 While this
capacity to identify with the Prophet’s spiritual travails, which culminated
in the Night Journey, had given him a small coterie of loyal followers, the
“modernist” bureaucrats who organized the hearing found this identifica-
tion to be offensive, a case of improper innovation (A.bid’a). In 2013,
Amaq Bakri said that he regretted that the sub-district head had cut him
off in a rude manner, barring him from sharing more insights. Despite
having been tried and imprisoned, he still assumed that these extraordi-
nary experiences could move even the most skeptical interlocutors.
In thinking about how to comprehend narratives of such experiences,
which hold that certain dream visions involve access to the divine, I find
Amira Mittermaier’s (2011) work on dreams and the imagination in con-
temporary Egypt inspirational. In Islamic eschatology, the barzakh refers
to a space where the spirits of the dead dwell before Judgement Day.
Mittermaier turns the barzakh into an analytical optic for thinking about
the “in-between”, loosely conceived as “modes of being in the world that
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circumvents the rule of the either/or” (2011, 4). In so doing, she builds
on Crapanzano, who takes inspiration from the classical Sufi philosopher
Ibn al-‘Arabi, to suggest that the barzakh can be conceived as a “con-
stitutive space-time” or “the betwixt and between” located between two
or more ways of being in the world (Crapanzano 2004, 6; 57). By tak-
ing the “in-between” as an ethnographic object and as an analytical tool,
Mittermaier seeks to illuminate “modes of being in the world that are not
easily intelligible from within rationalist secular vocabularies but that nev-
ertheless are of political and ethical relevance” (2011, 4). Much as dream
visions embrace ambiguities, such that a “dream-vision can both originate
in the dreamer and come from an Elsewhere” (2011, 239), she refrains
from stamping out this ambiguity by subjecting her material to the binary
logic of either/or (real/imagined, traditional/modern, prophetic/wish-
ful thinking). These moves have some affinity with Povinelli’s concern to
develop an “anthropology of the otherwise”, as discussed by Bertelsen and
Bendixsen (Chap. 1). Dream-stories are thus used to open up alternative
understandings of the imagination, which not simply entail other ways of
dreaming, but other ways of being in the world and relating to others.
Rather than ontologizing difference by positing the existence of
“worlds” separated by incommensurable difference, this analytical move
aims to uncover difference within a shared world. In subtle but important
ways, Mittermaier’s analysis departs from the postulate of multiple ontolo-
gies, that, in its most radical form, would appear to erect sharp bound-
aries between hermetic “worlds”, confining people and things to stable
essences (Keane 2009; Vigh and Sausdal 2014; Frøystad, Chap. 10).
Rather than presenting dream-stories from an exclusively emic point of
view (both a theoretical and methodological impossibility), or suggesting
that they form some form of self-contained dream culture, Mittermaier
treats dream-stories as “always already engaged” with other discourses
(secular, rationalist, religious, psychoanalytical, etc.). Yet by showing how
her interlocutors grapple with an “alterity that remains radically inassimi-
lable but that nevertheless compels and moves the dreamer” (2011, 5),
this analysis of dream-visions in Egypt deftly points to alternative ways of
engaging with alterity. Inspired dream-visions, and what Derrida (1995)
called the “wholly other”, are thus shown to be a vibrant site of revelation
as well as contestation.
What sets Mittermaier’s analysis apart from the proponents of
“strong ontology” introduced earlier is precisely the insistence on the
“in-betweenness” of dream-stories as “always already engaged” with
ultiple discourses. Historical entanglements and modern discourses

m
tend, however, to be erased from the picture by influential proponents
of ontological anthropology, whose project therefore runs a serious risk
of distorting empirical diversity. It is surely difficult to square the dynam-
ics of the Indonesian pre-trial hearing I have described or the dream-
scapes Mittermaier uncovers in contemporary Egypt with Viveiros de
Castro’s suggestion that “anthropology is the science of the ontological
self-determination of the world’s peoples” (2003, 18). Even a superfi-
cial exploration of a concept such as the barzakh—which is highly sig-
nificant for both Indonesian and Egyptian Muslims—suggests significant
overlaps as well as profound disagreements, with consequences for how
people act and respond to ethical dilemmas. To the extent that Sasak
would regard themselves as a “people”, a defining feature would most
certainly be their Muslimness. This suggests that the “strategic essential-
ism” championed by Viveiros de Castro holds little promise when deal-
ing with groups who identify with translocal historical formations such as
Islam.16 Lurking behind the language of “ontological self-determination”,
is a broader narrative of Western modernity as being founded on a regime
of representation that involves a distinction between model and reality,
a knowledge–power regime that has yielded mastery over nature and
(non-Western) natives, but also estrangement and a disembedding of life
from previous unities (Keane 2007; Scott 2013).17 By marshaling a ver-
sion of this narrative of Euro-American disenchantment, which hinges on
particular assumptions about representation, proponents of ontological
anthropology run the risk of reproducing the dichotomies they set out
to critique. Rather than “taking others seriously”, this analytical move, I
argue, easily ends up misrepresenting and standardizing alterity by por-
traying “others” as little more than inversions of “ourselves”.
Besides compelling a citizen to confess, I suggest that the broader
objective of this pre-trial hearing was to sharpen the divide between this
world and the other-worldly Divine realm. While the participants har-
bored very different experiences as well as assumptions as to how blurred
or absolute this ontological divide might be, they were hardly strangers
to one another. For instance, years before Amaq Bakri was called to tes-
tify in court, he had met ridicule and skepticism, and during the New
Order era, army personnel would occasionally give him a harsh beating
to teach him to be a “good Muslim”. Thus, he was perfectly aware that
many fellow Sasak Muslims are dismissive of the possibility of visitational
dreams and spiritual journeys. On their part, the Salafi-oriented preach-
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ers who initiated a preliminary investigation into his “beliefs”, introduced

themselves to their host by pretending that they had received dreams and
supernatural “signs” directing them to seek him out as a teacher (Telle,
under review). To me, such self-reflexivity and intimate familiarity with
other points of view and ways of being Muslim, suggests that we are deal-
ing with ongoing processes of self-formation, othering, and differentia-
tion, in which the “other” is located as an imaginary presence within the
self. This universal human capacity to place oneself in the position of oth-
ers may also involve “strategic empathy” (Bubandt and Willerslev 2015)
for the purpose to deceive, harm, or kill the other.
The testimony of Amaq Bakri appears to have upset many officials who
took part in the hearing, who suspected that what they had heard prob-
ably qualified as a case of blasphemy against Islam. However, before the
criminal procedure was initiated, arrangements were made to send him to
Selagalas, a psychiatric hospital in the provincial capital. Over a three-week
period, the elderly farmer was subjected to a number of psychological
tests. According to Amaq Bakri, “Mr. Doctor said I was not crazy (gila).
He could not find anything wrong with me”. While he was pleased to
be declared sane and in good health, this meant that he was fit to stand
trial for blasphemy. Shortly after being released from the hospital, he was
arrested by the police and imprisoned. By this time, the East Lombok
chapter of the MUI, a semi-independent body of Islamic scholars, had
already issued an opinion (fatwa) declaring that his “new teachings” (aja-
ran baru) “deviated” from Islam.18 Although the opinions of this religious
body are not binding on the state, the Council’s opinion was, as I will
show in the next section, much referred to in the final judgment that was
handed down by the civil court.
Creating Incommensurable Worlds in Court
Stories of inspired dream-visions offer glimpses of the Divine in surpris-

ing places. Because such stories question established religious and official
authorities, they can upset those who claim an exclusive right to define
what constitutes “true Islam”, which in Indonesia is the state. At stake
in this trial, I argue, was a concern to firmly separate the time/space of
original prophesy in Islam from the immanent here and now, processes
that underline the radical alterity of Divinity while simultaneously ensur-
ing Muhammad’s status as the final prophet. In certain respects, these
objectives exemplify the work of “purification” that Latour (1993) has
identified as being characteristic of modernity, largely conceived as an

artificial dualist taxonomy. However, in other respects, Latour’s actor-
network perspective fails to illuminate key dynamics of this case. Latour’s
signature intellectual move in his actor-network theory has “been to flat-
ten all entities onto a single plane” (Harman 2014, 90). By making all
entities equally “real”, this maneuver is of limited help in accounting for
differently valued zones of reality and different kinds of beings. I argue
that in Indonesia, blasphemy trials, conceived as a “religion-making tech-
nology”, are laboratories for the production of radical alterity.
Having studied the 35-page court decision (putusan) that the judges on
the Civil Court in Selong, East Lombok, produced, I am struck by the con-
fidence they display when speaking of what religion is.19 That is, they operate
with a rationalized conception of “religion” (agama) as a distinct set of beliefs,
doctrines, and activities that are firmly grounded in scripture. Moreover, they
assume that there is a near-perfect overlap between the legal notion of agama
and a modernist understanding of Islam as a revealed religion (din) whose
scriptures are subjected to a particular literalist interpretation. For example,
the decision notes that despite the fact that the accused insisted on “being
Muslim”, his interpretation of the Confession of Faith (basmallah) “differed
from its original meaning” (berbeda dengan aslinya). More seriously, they
reasoned, “he seems to believe that his dreams in 1970, 1975, and 1987
amounted to a mystical ascent (mi’raj) and a meeting with the Angel Gabriel,
and other matters that violate the teachings of Islam, the religion to which the
Defendant and Muslims in general adhere” (2010, 30).20
The judges in this blasphemy trial, as in similar criminal trials taking
place across the country, are trained in the canons of secular civil law,
not in Islamic jurisprudence or theology. As already noted, Indonesia
is not an Islamic state, but contemporary Indonesia illustrates how reli-
gion, “conceived as an isolable object has become a mode through which
political power operates” (Hurd 2015, 11). Not being experts on Islam,
the judges—two Balinese women and one Javanese man—followed stan-
dard court procedure by calling “expert witnesses” (saksi ahli) to identify
what constitutes the object of Islam. Their choice fell on representatives
from the Ministry of Religion and the MUI despite the fact that the East
Lombok chapter of MUI already had denounced the “new teachings” as
blasphemous. Not surprisingly, these experts agreed that the accused’s tes-
timony during the trial deviated from what is written in Islam’s core texts,
notably the Qur’an and Hadith (the corpus of the Prophet’s sayings and
doings). Of course, the judges might have used their authority to invite
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other experts, but this choice ensured that a consensus would quickly be
reached.
The opinion (fatwa) issued by the East Lombok section of the MUI
figured prominently in the decision, and it is worth quoting parts of the
opinion because it illustrates how this reading of the scripture identifies
the time/space of the revelation as a gradual historical unfolding toward
completion, which comes to an end with Muhammad. One section of
the fatwa explained that “according to core Islamic doctrine, the Angel
Gabriel only descends to Prophets (Nabi) and Rasul (Messengers) to
impart God’s revelations (Wahyu Allah) and the Prophet Muhammad is
the final messenger (Nabi terakhir). Hence the Angel Gabriel does not
descend to provide humans with more revelations (Wahyu)”. After quot-
ing several verses from the Qu’ran, the fatwa concludes that, “not even a
single verse suggests that the Angel Gabriel still has the task of bringing
new revelations to humanity, be it in the form of new teachings (ajaran
baru) or to clarify existing teachings because God’s revelation is already
perfect and complete (sempurna)”. Besides suggesting that the Qu’ran is
the preeminent if not singular source of knowledge of Islam, this opinion
subjects scripture to a literalist interpretation, and insists on the unsurpass-
able gulf separating humans from the Divine. Insisting on God’ absolute
transcendence, the verdict denied the possibility of communication across
this divide, and thus construed a realm so radically different as to be inac-
cessible to humans. While some Muslims would criticize such pronounce-
ments as illustrating the limits and hubris of narrow “reason” (akal), I
think the judgment also illustrates that radically different worlds are made,
not given, and therefore emergent and subject to change.
This theological opinion figured prominently in the decision, which
rephrased those sections of the MUI-fatwa which emphatically insist that
no more revelations are forthcoming. Using this opinion as their stan-
dard, the judges reasoned that Amaq Bakri’s claims to have received divine
inspiration clearly was in conflict with Islam, and had made his follow-
ers inclined to consider him a “prophet” (nabi). Without even a nod to
the internal diversity among Muslim scholars in Indonesia or beyond,
they ruled that the accused had clearly strayed from the “true” Islamic
teachings and was therefore guilty of blasphemy against Islam (penodaan
terhadap agama Islam). Noting that the guilty man probably had limited
abilities and means to spread these misguided teachings, they accepted
his pledge “to return to the true Islamic teachings” as a mitigating fac-
tor when deciding the length of the sentence. This verdict illustrates how
a particular theological conception easily becomes the metalanguage or

standard when courts of law decide what legally counts as religion, as
opposed to “false” or heretical belief (De Roover 2011).
Conclusion
This chapter has suggested that courts and modern legal institutions are an
important, albeit somewhat overlooked, site of contemporary “religion-
making” (Mandair and Dressler 2011). Rather than seeing blasphemy
trials in Indonesia as an exception to an ostensibly “secular” norm of
modern statecraft, I have argued that these trials reveal how modern state
power routinely turns “religion” into an object of politics (Asad 1993;
De Roover 2011; Hurd 2015). While the blasphemy trial Amaq Bakri
endured was unique, this case also illustrates the pivotal role of law in
defining the boundaries of religious life, not only in Indonesia but also in
late modernity more generally. By criminalizing those who are accused of
spreading “deviant” or “false” religion, the state is producing “religion”
as a singular sacred object which can be insulted or defamed, a project that
also entails inscribing divisions between good and bad citizens.
A common thread that runs through ontological anthropology is a bold
ambition “to provincialize forms of power within the modern project while
co-creating vital alternatives to them” (Bessire and Bond 2014, 441). Being
concerned with what qualifies as blasphemy in contemporary Indonesia,
I have examined a phenomenon at the intersection of law and religion.
Using the East Lombok trial as my case, I have argued for the importance
of keeping our definitions of religion open and elastic, while recognizing
the fundamentally historical character of religious practices. Given the high
stakes involved in such trials, where repressive state power is used to enforce
particular conceptions of religious truth, it is clearly important to destabi-
lize religion discourses and refrain from language that has the potential
to feed a potentially lethal politics of religious difference. Ontologizing
difference seems too risky. Proponents of ontological anthropology are
inclined to celebrate the life-worlds of those who supposedly are untainted
by the malaise of modernity. Ironically, the prophets of the emerging
“religion science” (Scott 2013), such as Viveiros de Castro or Holbraad,
have a proclivity for seeking out “pure” ontologies, an inclination shared
by many modern religious movements and state-led “religion-making”
projects. This move runs the risk of collapsing existing differences in the
world “into versions of just one big opposition, that is, into inversions of
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ourselves” (Keane 2007, 12). Thus, self-proclaimed ontological anthro-

pologists can be criticized for standardizing relational nondualisms and
homogenizing modernity (Scott 2013; Bessire and Bond 2014). Despite
centuries of efforts to standardize and purify Islam in Indonesia (Ricklefs
2007), Indonesia’s 200 million Muslims are expressing their faith in ever
more diverse ways. While influential institutions, both state and religious,
will probably continue to patrol the boundaries of “true” Islam, other
Indonesian Muslims will likely continue to find traces of the divine in their
dreams and everyday lives and hold open the possibility for truly revelatory
events.
Acknowledgments I want to thank Fathul Rahman and Widodo Dwi Putro for

the great collaboration during fieldwork, without their assistance, it would not
have been possible to research this court case. I also want to thank Bjørn Enge
Bertelsen for his helpful input on earlier versions of this chapter. Fieldwork was sup-
ported by a grant from the Norwegian Result Council for the project “Regulating
Religion: Secularism and Religious Freedom”, and I am grateful for the support.
Notes
1. I have chosen to use his real name/title rather than invent a pseudonym.
The case is closed and I hope this work may be useful to scholars and activ-
ists who are concerned with the rising number of convictions for blas-
phemy in Indonesia.
2. The Indonesian court decision reads, “kembali kepada ajaran Islam yang
sesungguhnya”. Putusan Nomor:24/PID.B/2010//PN.SEI.
3. This chapter draws on fieldwork carried out in 2012 and 2013, hence I was
not present during the pre-trial hearing or the trial. I have carried out more
than two years of fieldwork in Indonesia, initially working with Sasak in
Central Lombok and since 2005 also among the island’s Hindu Balinese
minority.
4. Povinelli also raises these questions in her review article (2001).
5. Vigh and Sausdal (2014) and Thomas Hylland Eriksen (2015) provide
good overviews and methodological critiques of these strands of the onto-
logical turn. See also Bråten, this volume.
6. See Brooks (2000) for an analysis of the interplay between religious and
legal forms of confession, which extends Foucault’s work on the disciplin-
ary aspects of confession.
7. Proponents of “strong ontologies” appear to assert a “fundamental reality
independent of any representations of it, and sufficiently self-contained as
to yield no significant overlap with any other reality” (Keane 2013, 196).
He wryly notes that despite the asserted incommensurability of worlds,
“anthropological proponents of strong ontology appear to understand
shamans; moreover, their readers are unsurprised by this”. Vigh and
Sausdal (2014) raise similar methodological objections. See also Sivado
(2015) for a philosophical critique of the anti-representationalist list stance
proposed by Henare et al. (2007).
8. See Picard (2011a) for an analysis of how Balinese worked with the
Ministry of Religion to mold Hindu Balinese traditions into a form of
monotheism that would be acceptable to the Ministry.
9. In 1999, Abdurhahman Wahid, then president, proposed to abolish the
Ministry of Religion on the premise that it entailed undue interference in
religious affairs, but the proposal failed to gain momentum (Crouch
2014).
10. The MUI was set up in 1975 as a semiofficial religious body under the
Ministry to Religion to guide the Muslim community. Since 2002, when
the Council declared itself independent of the government, it has edged
toward the conservative end of the Islamic spectrum, winning favor among
Islamists, see Bruinessen (2013).
11. In this chapter, I am concerned with the criminalization of disputes inter-
nal to Islam, but there are also many cases in which Christians have been
convicted for blaspheming Christianity or Islam, see Crouch (2014) for
discussion of the historical trends in court cases.
12. This hearing, held on 13 October 2009, had the status of a Muspika
(Musywarah Pimpinan Kecamatan) and involved staff from Bakorpakem,
an intelligence body tasked with monitoring of groups who are suspected
of deviating from orthodox religion.
13. The allusion to the “true” or “inner” Qu’ran within the body is quite
reminiscent of the symbolism and anthropocentrism of popular Javanism.
As Beatty (1999, 161) notes, “Even the Qu’ran is a secondary, outward
thing derived from a ‘true’ original; and that original is not the Preserved
tablet of Islamic dogma, the inaccessible treasure of a remote God, but the
human form itself, the ‘wet Book’(kitab teles) of the living body”.
14. This is inspired by Keane’s (2008) analysis of how scripture-based religions
are highly portable and how the decontextualized quality of scripture pro-
vides semiotic grounds for the existence of an authority that transcends any
particular context.
15. The Night Journey is described in the Qu’ran, sura 17 (Al-Isra), in the
hadith literature. There is extensive discussion of this journey in early Sufi
literature, and the Prophet’s ascension has often been taken as a model to
be emulated by Muslims, see Colby (2006).
108 K. TELLE
16. See Bessire and Bond (2014) for a critique of how the critical claims of
ontological anthropology depend on disavowing the complex temporali-
ties of indigenous South American societies, which result in an “artificial
standardization of alterity itself” (2014, 443).
17. See Latour (2010) for one version of this critique of the Moderns and their
“cult of the Factish Gods”.
18. A fatwa is a nonbinding pronouncement by a qualified Islamic legal scholar
on an issue, belief, or practice. In Indonesia, a fatwa is not recognized as
an official source of law by the state or the civil courts (Crouch 2014).
19. An English translation of the court decision and the MUI fatwa, with my
commentary, will be posted on the Politics of Religious Freedom Project’s
open access webpage later in 2016.
20. I suspect that the correct year is 1997, not 1987. Of course, this would not
make a difference for the verdict.
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CHAPTER 5
Chronically Unstable Ontology: Ontological

Dynamics, Radical Alterity,
and the “Otherwise Within”
Jon Henrik Ziegler Remme
Ontological Closures
I will open this chapter with closures and close it with what I hope will
become an opening.
The closures I think of here are two. One is created by the alleged
comparative dead end created by the ontological turn’s focus on radi-
cal alterity (Vigh and Sausdal 2014, 57). The other is generated by the
tendency of criticizers of the ontological turn to close off alternative
ways of thinking about ontology and radical alterity, alternatives, that
is, to the approaches of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (e.g. 1998, 2004a,
2013) and Martin Holbraad (e.g. 2009, 2012). I think that in order
to open the ontological turn’s potential for rethinking the questions
of the “what” and “how” of anthropology, as Bertelsen and Bendixsen
phrase it (Chap. 1), we need to open up both of these closures.
J.H.Z. Remme (*)


DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_5
114 J.H.Z. REMME
We need to open anthropology to thinking otherwise about ontology,

alterity, and difference.1
I should admit already from the get go that I have been greatly stim-
ulated by Viveiros de Castro’s and Holbraad’s takes on the ontological
turn. Their experiments in thinking about anthropology’s metaontology
and their attempts at unsettling it by letting indigenous concepts work
recursively to deform and subvert anthropology’s conceptual apparatus
(Viveiros de Castro 2004b, 5; Holbraad 2012) is a project I strongly sym-
pathize with.2 However, I also think some of the critique raised against
parts of the ontological turn is warranted. Vigh and Sausdal, for instance,
make a valid point when they claim that Holbraad’s and Viveiros de
Castro’s tendencies to treat ontologies as “naturalized and essentialized,
internally coherent and bounded, as incommensurable worlds” (2014,
65) make comparison difficult if not impossible. I also think Bessire and
Bond make a succinct point when they claim that Viveiros de Castro tends
to reify the binary between incommensurable modern and nonmodern
worlds, and that this essentialized incommensurability obscures the histor-
ical and political process through which these worlds—entangled as they
mostly are—have become construed as compartmentalized and through
which notions like nature and culture have become “dispersed political
technologies” today (2014; see also Turner 2009; Bessire 2014). Hence,
taking in these critiques one could argue that the approaches to ontology
most central to the ontological turn, at least as they are portrayed by these
critiques, appear unnecessarily essentialistic and static as well as insuffi-
ciently de-politicized and de-historicized.3
As much as I agree with these interventions, I also think we could ques-
tion whether these critiques of the ontological turn are based on a too nar-
row understanding of what an anthropology of ontologies might be and
perhaps also of what—theoretically, analytically, and critically—Viveiros
de Castro and Holbraad’s project actually is about. Despite the common
interest in reorienting anthropology to make it better able to deal with
the problems we confront in the Anthropocene, the ontological turn is
far from a coherent movement (Salmond 2014; Kohn 2015). Indeed,
as Bertelsen and Bendixsen’s introduction (Chap. 1) makes evident, it
is multiple and unstable. While much of the critique of the ontological
turn (e.g. Bessire and Bond 2014; Vigh and Sausdal 2014; Graeber 2015)
tends to focus on Viveiros de Castro and Holbraad, other voices that are
more open to the historical, political, temporal, and scalar complexities of
ontological differences tend to be evaded. I think particularly of the works
CHRONICALLY UNSTABLE ONTOLOGY... 115
of Blaser (2009, 2010), Cadena (2010, 2014), and Scott (2007) who all
have explored the ontological dimensions of historically situated political
processes.
Perhaps more worryingly are the misapprehensions one can trace in
these critiques regarding Viveiros de Castro’s and Holbraad’s analytical
project. Their project is a recursive one in which our interlocutors’ con-
cepts are allowed to transfigure our anthropological concepts. Hence,
while conventional anthropology attempts to minimize the anthropolo-
gist’s distortion of native concepts, the recursive approach cultivates
the distortion of anthropological concepts by native ones. Rather than
inhibit and close off comparison, then, the aim is to treat native terms and
anthropological ones as “epistemically continuous” (Viveiros de Castro
2013, 475).4 Despite their insistence on radical alterity, they actually
also make a claim for comparison, but that is a comparison that is bet-
ter seen as a translation that betrays its destination language (Viveiros de
Castro 2004b, 5) or as a transfiguration (Povinelli 2014). The recursive
approach is thus, as Kohn argues, a form of “cosmic philosophical preda-
tion” (2015, 319).
In this chapter, I draw on these other ways of thinking about onto-
logical differences in order to develop an ontologically oriented approach
that does not imply worlds separated by incommensurable differences,
but which approaches ontology as a dynamic field in which the states of
being of entities are chronically unstable and require particular relational
practices to become momentarily stabilized.
By engaging ethnographic material from Ifugao, the Philippines, I
work toward developing a notion of ontological dynamics that emphasizes
transformability and which sees the eventual boundedness and radicality of
ontological difference as an emergent effect of practices but which at the
same time does not see these boundaries as intraversable. I will show how
in Ifugao all beings have an inherent potential for becoming transformed
into something different and will explore how encounters with such trans-
formations—mainly in sacrificial rituals—are forms of mirroring encoun-
ters with what we could call a “difference within”, that is the potential for
becoming otherwise that always reside within one’s own relational becom-
ing. I propose a dynamic understanding of ontology in which ontologi-
cal boundaries are effects rather than premises and are never stable but
fluctuate between various forms of partial permeability. Toward the end,
I discuss how this ontological dynamic opens up for thinking “radical” as
transformational and “alterity” as an “alterity within”.
116 J.H.Z. REMME
Reversibility of the Otherwise
In an article on the ontology of Yanomamö spirits, Viveiros de Castro
(2007) states that spirits do not denote a distinct class of beings, but inti-
mate rather a region or moment of indiscernibility between the human
and the nonhuman. He relates this ontological mode to a mythical past
in which differences between species were still to be actualized. The
myths record the actualization of the present state of things out of this
virtual pre-cosmological condition, and the result of this actualization
was a bifurcation into a relative invisibility (human souls and animal spir-
its) and a relative opacity (the human body and somatic animal clothing)
that determines the make-up of all present-day beings. However, the pre-
cosmological virtuality of the actualized entities is indestructible. Entities
are therefore not self-identical, but carry with them a potential for revers-
ibility, for becoming otherwise. They are what they are by not being what
they are not. The actualization of an entity, then, always involves com-
parison with a yet unrealized otherwise. Comparison is thus inherent to
Amerindian ontologies, but this is a comparison based on differences, on
equivocation (see also Viveiros de Castro 2004b, 7; 2014; Kohn 2015,
319).
Another inspiration for this chapter is Elizabeth Povinelli’s work toward
an anthropology of the otherwise (e.g. 2011, 2014). In her approach,
the existing is always more than one as it contains immanent within its
existence “its own possible derangements and rearrangements” (Povinelli
2014). The otherwise is these immanent derangements and rearrange-
ments (see also Serres 1987) which are forever there as a potential, threat-
ening to emerge. Given this, it becomes an important analytical task to
elicit how entities emerge, endure, and exhaust and how the otherwise is
allowed to flourish or is kept at bay.5
Although there are significant differences between Amazonian notions
of spirits and those operative in Ifugao, the Philippines, these arguments
about the reversibility of the actual state of becoming of entities also speak
to the dynamics in Ifugao human–spirit relations. As I will show here,
human becoming is a result of an ongoing “othering” of that which it
is not, an activity that takes place on the background of the potential
for becoming “otherwise”. But while this potential for becoming “other-
wise” must be averted, Ifugao ideas about how life and reproduction are
ensured by the proper enactment of human–spirit relations require that
this potential must at times be engaged with directly. This requirement
imbues human–spirit relations with a particular dynamic that moves spirits

between potential and manifest states of being.
Ifugao Ontological Dynamics

The Ifugao villages in which I have done fieldwork for a total of nearly two
years each consist of about 1000 inhabitants whose main occupation is wet
rice cultivation in irrigated terraces and swidden horticulture in gardens
located in the steep mountainsides.6 Clusters of houses are spread around
in the terrain: on top of mountain ridges, in the middle of the terraced
fields, and hidden in the forest across the river gorge. The villagers share
this landscape with an array of other-than-human beings known collec-
tively as bā’i. These include ancestors (nun’apuh), place specific pinādeng,
mythical characters, and other bā’i associated with meteorological phe-
nomena, illnesses, and forms of protection.
Humans and bā’i are similar in that all of them have lennāwa which
can variously refer to a general life force, a form of soul, and conscious-
ness. All living beings must have lennāwa in order to live, but the extent
to which this also means that they are conscious beings, depends con-
textually. However, this common quality of lennāwa is contrasted by a
differentiation between human and bā’i in terms of their different bod-
ies, odol. It is the lennāwa–odol relationship that defines what kind of life
form the lennāwa inhabits. In any case, this relationship is far from stable.
The lennāwa may leave the odol, and thereby engage in a shared world
with other lennāwa, which occurs for instance when one dreams. One can
then encounter the lennāwa of other living humans and bā’i, and one can
engage in interaction with them. The shared quality of having lennāwa
entails, then, that there is a potential for a shared social field between
humans and bā’i.
However, this shared social field is rarely realized in its totality. In
everyday life, humans and bā’i exist separately from each other, and the
“total socialization of the world” (Pedersen 2001) that the sharedness of
lennāwa makes possible, remains for the most part only a potential. This
separateness has several dimensions, including spatial, temporal, and per-
spectival differences.
Humans and bā’i inhabit the same cosmos, which is divided into five
general parts: Earthworld, Underworld, Skyworld, and the Upstream
and Downstream worlds. Humans live in the Earthworld, while the bā’i
inhabit all the regions of the cosmos. Despite the presence of bā’i in the
118 J.H.Z. REMME
part where humans live, the bā’i are acknowledged as living “somewhere
else”. This is related to the two other dimensions that separate them, the
temporal and the perspectival. In addition, then, to living somewhere else,
the bā’i belong to a mythical and ancestral past. Bā’i are for the most part
present to humans in their everyday life more as memory than as actual
interaction partners. The fact that humans and bā’i have different bodies
entails also that they have different perspectives (see Howell 1989). For
instance, what are wild pigs and rats to humans are for bā’i their domestic
pigs and chickens. And bā’i may see humans as prey. In sum, the world
of the bā’i is a different world that is superimposed upon that of humans.
In this respect, Ifugao human–bā’i relations appear to fit Descola’s
ontological schema of animism quite neatly (see also Howell, Chap. 2).
Descola (2013) defines animism as an ontology in which there is conti-
nuity in the interiority of humans and nonhumans and discontinuity in
their physicalities. As Kapferer (2014) points out, however, Descola’s
schema sets up this ontology as too static and disregards the relational
processes through which they are stabilized or transformed. This is
worth mentioning for Ifugao human–bā’i relations make it evident that
ontological differences are far from fixed. They are rather chronically
unstable (Vilaça 2005) and require effort in order to be both stabilized
and transformed. Although bā’i exist in most everyday life as separate
from humans, they can transform their own bodies into animal or human
form. They can make their presence known in dreams and through
inflicting illness and other problems to humans. And also humans may
suddenly be cast into a different space-time, as happened to Duntugan
who walked on a well-known forest path and suddenly lost his spatial ori-
entation. As Mary, Gobler, and several others of my informants related,
dreaming of their ancestors or of future disasters put them in direct con-
tact with these persons or events. Instances such as these—along with
most other instances of illness—were occasioned by the bā’i who by
appearing in their world, made their lennāwa temporarily leave their
odol. Such change in the lennāwa-odol relation was considered danger-
ous and potentially lethal.
The emergence of a bā’i before the gaze of Duntugan, Mary, and
Gobler entailed a risk of becoming overpowered by the perspective of
that bā’i, which could result in the loss of their own human perspec-
tive with the corollary effect of bodily transformation—drying out, get-
ting ill, and impotence. If they did not counter this perspectival shift in
time, the transformation would become permanent. They would die and
eventually become nun’apuh, ancestors. As humans, they were thus in a
state of becoming that entailed the ever-present potential for transfor-
mation (Howell 2014). To stabilize themselves as humans required them
to enact differences between them and the bā’i.
There were several ways in which this could be done. The main way
was to maintain their rice terraces in proper condition, keep the burial
caves where the bones of their ancestors were kept dry and clean, perform
rituals at planting and harvesting; basically showing respect for their ances-
tors. They could also intervene by means of sensorial perceptions such
as squeezing a piece of ginger or burning a piece of hair whenever they
encountered what could be a bā’i. Ramon’s old mother hung a protec-
tive plant over her ear in order to avoid hearing the voice of her deceased
husband. All of these protected against sensing the bā’i.
Although these techniques stabilized the spatiotemporal and perspec-
tival differentiation from the bā’i, they could not make this differentia-
tion permanent or total. The ever-present risk of losing their humanness
was accompanied by momentary lapses of differentiation in which lay the
potential for fecundity and reproduction. The flow of life force between
humans and bā’i produced successful rice yields and good health, and
this flow could only be secured through rituals in which, as I will come
back to soon, humans and bā’i were immanently copresent. Becoming and
enduring as humans necessitated thus a dynamic fluctuation in the rela-
tions between humans and their other-than-human others. The separation
between the world of Duntugan, Mary, Gobler, and their co-villagers and
the world of the bā’i had therefore to be destabilized every now and again.
The transformational character of these differentiations entails that the
bā’i co-exist with humans not as completely separated “others” but as
virtual potentials of humans’ own momentarily stabilized becoming. The
pastness and spatial distance of spirits relate thus to the presentness of
humans not as a past that has passed and a space that is another place, but
rather as a co-existing virtual dimension of the actualities of the human
domain or as a potential alterity inherent in their own becoming. As we
shall see, the virtual state of being of bā’i can transform into an actual
state. Bā’i thus fluctuate between different ontological states, and these
differences have implications for how humans relate with them and how
the boundaries between their worlds are experienced.
It is in sacrificial rituals that these ontological transformations primar-
ily take place. When Bugan, a young woman got ill, her family consulted
120 J.H.Z. REMME
one of the ritual experts, the mumbā’i, who reckoned that she had been
secretly married to a pinādeng spirit who had brought her lennāwa with
him to his village inside a mountain. Consequently, Bugan was not feel-
ing well. In order for Bugan to recover, her lennāwa had to be returned
to her odol, and this could be done by giving the pinādeng pigs. When
her family had brewed rice wine and procured pigs for the offering, the
mumbā’i came to their house and started invoking the bā’i, telling them
to come to the house of Bugan. As the bā’i arrived, they briefly possessed
the mumbā’i and were served rice wine. Myths were also chanted, and at
this stage, these were about how the rice terraces were once completely
destroyed by an earthquake and how the bā’i of lightning was captured
in a tree in the human world. These were stories about the collapse of the
differentiations between humans and bā’i, and chanting these myths was
held to bring about such a condition within the space-time of the ritual.
When all the bā’i had arrived at the house, the mumbā’i opened a small
wooden box called pun’amhan which contained a collection of small rice
bundles smeared with blood from previous sacrifices and tiny age-old
pieces of pork from sacrificed pigs. They killed chickens too and singed
them in the hearth, producing thus a smell that is particularly attractive to
bā’i. Moving to outside the house, the mumbā’i invoked all the bā’i again.
Also here the bā’i briefly possessed the mumbā’i and received rice wine.
The visitors who had gathered outside could then talk to the bā’i and see
them dance.
Through these ritual practices, the differentiations between humans
and bā’i were momentarily dissolved: The bā’i had been relocated to
Bugan’s house. In fact, parts of the invocations told the bā’i exactly which
paths to take. This spatial reconfiguration of the human–bā’i differen-
tiations occurred together with a temporal “present-ing” of them. Bā’i
are normally of a “time otherwise”, but this temporal differentiation was
dissolved by the actual appearance of the bā’i within the particular space-
time of the ritual. This did not mean that the temporalities of the bā’i
and humans were totally conjoined, but that the different temporalities
converged to form a trans-temporal hinge (Nielsen 2011; Pedersen and
Nielsen 2013).
The opening of the pun’amhan enabled a conjunction of past sacri-
fices with the present one. Feathers and blood from the sacrificed chickens
were conjoined with the other items in it thus engendering a form of co-
existence of past and present. With its miniature collection of the major
components of Ifugao relational life—rice, blood, meat, and betel nuts—
all from various pasts, the box was like a “world total in a box”. By open-
ing it, they opened up for a direct engagement with time in its totality.
It was not the box alone that engendered this, however. The whole
montage (Kapferer 2013) of co-existing temporalities, spatialities, and
perspectives that the mumbā’i put together engendered a situation in
which time was there in its total potentiality. This particular ritual co-
existence of human and bā’i worlds created a form of indiscernibility of
the past and the present and of the human world and its otherwise. It was
as if the ritual dynamic itself set up a perspective all of its own, a view from
everywhere (Holbraad and Willerslev 2007, 333), a perspective which was
identical neither to that of humans nor that of spirits, but rather an excess
of perspectives or a perspective of or on all potential perspectives.
The very brief and partial possessions of the mumbā’i were conducive
to this perspectival excess. Possession constituted a co-existence within an
odol of the lennāwa of both the mumbā’i and the bā’i and thereby evinced
an excessiveness of perspectives, a co-existence of the “this-wise” and the
“otherwise” in one and the same body at one and the same time (cf.
Knauft 2014). Similarly, the ability to remember the long lists of names
of spirits to be invoked while being drunk engendered an excessiveness
of agency. And the engulfment of participants in smoke and the smell of
singed chicken feathers, with its olfactory ambiguity, also contributed to
this co-existence of potential worlds.
Hence, by effectuating a convergence of spatial, temporal, and per-
spectival differentiations, the ritual established an entrance point into a
space-time perspective in which the perspectives of both humans and bā’i
co-existed alongside each other. For those of us present, this co-existence
of indiscernible differentiations offered an image of the otherwise that was
inherent within our own becoming. The co-existing perspectives reflected
each other, but did so as in a “non-reflexive mirror”, that is one that
returns to us an image (of ourselves) in which we do not recognize our-
selves, but which shows us what we may become (Hage 2012, 297).
As much as this situation was a prerequisite for the continued flow
of life force between humans and bā’i and for the retrieval of Bugan’s
lennāwa, it was also highly dangerous. The copresence of “perspectives
otherwise” entailed for those present a risk of losing their human perspec-
tive and becoming by that transformed into that otherwise. The indiscern-
ibility of the different perspectives required therefore that the participants
balanced properly between these perspectives. To this effect, the ritual was
replete with regulations regarding the spatial and temporal organization
122 J.H.Z. REMME
of activities, and the mumbā’i, who engaged most intimately with the
bā’i, had to observe these regulations particularly strictly. To further avert
this risk, the ritual practices of the latter part of the ritual were geared
toward reestablishing the spatial, temporal, and perspectival differentia-
tions between humans and bā’i.
This re-differentiation commenced already with the killing of the pigs,
in which humans received the body of the animals and the bā’i their
lennāwa. Prior to the killing of the pigs, the mumbā’i in their possessed
state walked and danced back and forth between the kolhoddan and yard
where the pigs lay, thus enacting a movement of the bā’i to the yard.
After the killing, this movement was reversed by calling them back to the
kolhoddan again and from there back into the house. The chants they had
chanted earlier about the destruction of the terraces and the entrapment
of bā’i in the human world were now continued, but at this point they
related the reconstruction of the terraces and the release of the bā’i of
lightning from the tree, that is, the rebuilding the world after its collapse
and the re-differentiation of the human and the bā’i world. The mumbā’i
then entered the house again and brought the bā’i with them. The bā’i
enjoyed a meal of fried pork there before the mumbā’i told them to leave
Bugan’s house. Everyone else had to wait outside to eventually be served
a common meal of boiled pork and rice. The latter part of the ritual thus
consisted of a series of re-differentiations of the temporal, spatial, and per-
spectival separations between humans and bā’i. In the days that followed,
all of us who had participated in the ritual had to refrain from eating citrus
fruits since these were held to smell the same as singed chicken feathers,
the smell par excellence of the ambiguous situation brought about in the
ritual. This would ensure that the bā’i stayed away and that the vital dif-
ferentiation between human and bā’i perspectives was maintained.
In sum, then, the ontological boundaries between humans and bā’i are
slippery and shifting. The highly volatile and transformational character of
both humans and bā’i warrants therefore an approach that acknowledges
the ontological dynamics that the shifting state of being of these enti-
ties engenders. Both humans and bā’i fluctuate between various states of
being, and these states of being are the effects of practices, what I referred
to elsewhere as onto-praxis (Remme 2016). Entities are here in a constant
state of becoming and transformation.
This ontological fluidity does not, however, inhibit the establishment of
boundaries between worlds. In most everyday life, to uphold the boundary
with the bā’i world is vital, but equally vital is the momentary dissolution
of that boundary in sacrificial rituals. Ifugao animism is thereby character-

ized by an ontological dynamic in which the states of being of entities
are enacted differently in different contexts. In some instances, entities
and differentiations between entities are momentary stable but in other
instances the inherent instability is realized for therapeutic or life/repro-
duction securing effects. Moreover, the transformational character of enti-
ties entails that the boundaries that are set up are on the one hand against
an alterity, but on the other hand that alterity is an alterity that exists as
a potential in one’s own becoming. The potential of encountering other
perspectives is always present, and such encounters must be brought about
from time to time in order to secure life, reproduction, and fecundity.
Human becoming thus emerges as a form of extraction from a multiper-
spectival potential, that is, through a constant “othering” of one’s poten-
tial for becoming otherwise. Any encounter with the perspective of the
bā’i implies an encounter with that “otherwise within”.
There is, then, in this ontological dynamic an ever-present potential
for becoming transformed. What Povinelli calls “the otherwise” (2011)
is never far away, neither in time or space, but is present as a potential
for transformation in the relational becoming of humans. Although “the
otherwise” is normally enacted as a form of excess in one’s own actual
becoming, it is “always on the verge of the actual” (Ingold 2006).
The above description of Ifugao ontological dynamics may at first
glance appear as just another example of a bounded ontology, which may
be considerably dynamic but which is so within its own confines, so to
speak. I will emphasize, however, that I see these ontological dynamics as
entangled with other social processes that undoubtedly have both given
shape to these dynamics and been given shape by them. Ifugao onto-
logical dynamics of today—the descriptions above are, I should perhaps
stress, not a bygone tradition, but living practices—have been enmeshed
in cosmo-political processes (Cadena 2010; Stengers 2010; Holbraad
et al. 2014) for centuries and are so still. Since the mid-1800s, Spanish
Christian missionaries attempted to pacify the rebellious highland people,
and the establishment of schools by the American colonizers challenged
traditional Ifugao ways of living, causing in some cases great shame, humil-
iation, and a form of “cultural intimacy”7 (Herzfeld 2005) regarding bā’i-
related practices, although often in conjunction with cultural self-pride
and active resistance (see Scott 1974). These cosmo-political processes
seem to have made a particular impact on the temporal dimensions of
Ifugao human–bā’i relations. The bā’i have always belonged to a mythical
124 J.H.Z. REMME
past, but the temporal differentiation between humans and bā’i gained
another dimension when ritual practices began to be associated with an
“uncivilized” past. The otherwise of the bā’i world included thereby also
“the otherwise we once were”.
Another “Otherwise”
In recent years, the instability of Ifugao ontological dynamics has again
taken on new forms. I think here of the introduction of Pentecostalism
which started in the region about 30 years ago. While most of the villagers
with whom I have worked combine the practice of human–bā’i relations
with Catholicism, a slowly increasing part of the villagers are convert-
ing to Pentecostalism. Ifugao has not experienced any mass conversion
as reported elsewhere (e.g. Knauft 2002; Robbins 2004), and most of
the members of the congregation Christ is the Answer Church (CITAC),
which came to be my “home church”, are struggling with conversion.
“We’re trying to become Christians”, as sister Linda said, admitting that
she was never quite certain if she actually made it. Conversion constitutes
here not a radical break (cf. Robbins 2007), but is rather an ongoing
relational action (Street 2010) which, when successful, enacts relations
with God and makes him manifest. Praying privately is one way of doing
that, but the Sunday services remain the prime venue for experiencing
God’s presence. The methods for doing so are on the surface quite dif-
ferent from animist rituals: giving testimony, singing praise and worship
songs, praying, preaching, and listening to the Word of God. As in other
Pentecostal churches, sensational forms (Meyer 2010)—particularly sound
and tactility—are crucial in CITAC for bringing forth the encounter with
God (Engelke 2007). But these differences combine with a similarity with
animist rituals. Also here do the ritual practices effect a transformation of
the state of being of an other-than-human being, that is, a transformation
of God from a transcendent state of being to becoming an actual person
with whom they can engage in relations (see Luhrman 2012). And the
purpose is clear: reciprocation by God, not so much in terms of eternal
life but rather in the more immediate terms of well-being, healing, and
prosperity here and now. For this to occur, God must be present, and it
is through the ritual practices that this relationally generated presence is
enacted. God is then transformed into some sort of bodily experiential
form, for instance by speaking in tongues, which is quite rare, and more
commonly through the ability to pray rapidly and fluently in a combina-
tion of English, Ilocano (the area’s lingua franca), and vernacular Ifugao.
These ritual practices are at one and the same time manifestations of God’s
presence and seen as gifts to God (Cannell 2006). Praying, singing and
most explicitly “giving” testimony enact exchange relations with God,
with clear expectations for reciprocation.
However, as much as these ritual practices may result in experiencing
God, they too carry with them their own potential otherwise. The ongo-
ing relational enactment of God which conversion entails always comes
accompanied with the risk of backsliding,8 that is being drawn back into
a way of life in which relations with God cannot be properly enacted.
Backsliding may take various forms, like drinking too much or behaving
immorally in one way or another. Even the ritual practices themselves
inhere a potential for the emergence of Satan; by trying too hard to speak
in tongues or playing praise and worship songs too well, for example.
Such instances of backsliding are usually held to be caused by Satan or his
demons, and should be countered by praying and recurrent enactments of
relations with God.
Converting and “trying to” be Christians are thus no easy tasks. The
Satanic otherwise lurks underneath, forever on the verge of emerging.
A central part of this enactment of relations with God is the avoidance
of everything that is associated with the bā’i, particularly the rituals in
which they are present. For the members of CITAC, the bā’i are demons,
and having anything to do with them can result in becoming possessed
by them. Staying away from venues where demons appear—as in sacrificial
rituals—is thus one measure taken against this danger. But doing so entails
other potential dangers that have to do with the exchange and consump-
tion of pig meat at animist sacrificial rituals.
Part of the meat of the pigs that were killed in Bugan’s ritual was
divided into pieces that Bugan’s family gave to their relatives. The rela-
tives would reciprocate these pieces of pork whenever they arranged a
ritual. It is through these exchanges of pork that their kin relations were
enacted. By giving, consuming, and reciprocating pieces of pork they acti-
vate or sustain kin relations, and by not giving, they could de-actualize kin
relations, relegating them into latent forms of kinship. When Pentecostals
refuse to receive and eat meat from sacrificed pigs, they refuse not only to
enact relations with demons but also, as a consequence, their relations with
their kin. They can no longer participate in the ongoing relational practice
that constitutes kin relations. This causes conflicts within families, partly
because those who sacrifice pigs get offended when their relatives refuse
126 J.H.Z. REMME
to accept their share. The most immediate danger for the Pentecostals,
however, is that when they no longer arrange sacrificial rituals themselves
and consequently do not share meat with their relatives, they are prone to
provoke feelings of envy among their kin, which easily turns into attacks
of a form of witchcraft known as pāliw, which if not counteracted, could
result in death.9
The introduction of Pentecostalism has thus introduced another
dimension to the ontological dynamics operative in Ifugao human–bā’i
relations. Enacting relations with God must be done continuously as that
too operates upon the backdrop of the potential for the manifestation of
the “otherwise” of that world, namely Satan in his various disguises. But
while human–bā’i relations among the non-Pentecostals were seen as both
potentially fruitful and dangerous and necessitated an occasional engage-
ment with one’s “difference within”, among the Pentecostals there was
no such potential positive effects of engaging with that “otherwise”. The
boundary toward that alterity had to be maintained and remain as strong
as possible. But that of course requires strict work, relentless efforts at
manifesting God through prayers and leading a life that avoids actualizing
the ever-present potential of Satan’s manifestation.
Ontological Openings
Let me close this chapter, then, with some thoughts on what openings
(Cadena 2014) Ifugao ontological dynamics offer for thinking otherwise
about ontological differences.
As mentioned above, Viveiros de Castro (e.g. 1998, 2012) and
Holbraad (e.g. 2012) have been criticized for allegedly claiming that
anthropological analysis must take place at the level of the cultural struc-
tures of ontological presuppositions (see also Bråten, Chap. 12). As the
critique goes, this easily leads to culturalizing ontology, essentializing both
people and ontologies, establishing boundaries between ontologies, mak-
ing them thus incommensurable with each other. They become worlds
apart (Jensen 2014; Vigh and Sausdal 2014; Graeber 2015). As I will
claim to have demonstrated here, however, speaking of ontological differ-
ences does not necessarily entail that these differences are static, incom-
mensurable, and deter comparison. If there is anything essential to Ifugao
ontological dynamics, it must be that they are intrinsically chronically
unstable. There is an ever-present potential for transformation of both
humans and other-than-human beings, a potential which is occasionally
realized when humans are enticed into sharing the perspective of bā’i,
when bā’i are made manifest in sacrificial rituals and when God become
present in Pentecostal Sunday services. The difference between humans
and other-than-human beings is a difference that is thus an intrinsic part of
becoming human. Human being contains its own potential otherwise, and
encounters with such otherwises—as in dreams and sacrificial rituals—are
comparative events. The inherent comparison is, however, not based on
inducting similarities, but rather on difference, and it is by enacting these
differences correctly that human becoming is restored or maintained.
Paying attention to the dynamic aspects of ontological differences—
both those I have demonstrated here and those evinced in Viveiros de
Castro’s discussion of Yanomamö spirits (2007; see also Course 2010)—
provides a much more nuanced view of ontological differences than what
tends to appear in the critiques of the ontological turn. This is an argu-
ment not only for seeing the dynamic aspects of the recursive approaches
in the ontological turn but also for including in that turn approaches that
are less interested in ontological presuppositions, but rather in the emer-
gence and formations of entities in assemblages that includes both human
and nonhuman agents and actants. I think here of those theoretical devel-
opments coming out of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-
Network Theory (for instance Mol 2002; Latour 2007; Blaser 2010; Ishii
2012; Law and Lien 2013) that see ontological differences more as shift-
ing effects of practices than as static, bounded, and intraversable.
As others (for instance Jensen 2014; see also Bertelsen and Bendixsen,
Chap. 1), I do not find these various approaches to ontology incom-
mensurable but rather mutually enriching, and this chapter is evidently
inspired by both the recursive anthropology of Viveiros de Castro and
Holbraad, the political ontology of Blaser and Cadena and the attention
to emergence and ontological effects of practices of Latour, Mol, and
Law. I approached entities such as humans and bā’i as effects of practices,
that is, as ongoing enactments that are and need to be shifting, creating
an ontological dynamics that is intrinsically unstable. These ontological
differences are also subject to historical change and “cosmo-political”
struggles (Cadena 2010; Stengers 2010). By paying attention to how
the ontological status of entities and the ontological presuppositions
themselves are inherently unstable, I want to work toward an approach
to ontology that does not require establishing incommensurable differ-
ences and boundaries around static ontological schemes. To the extent
that such boundaries are made, they are so as an effect of practices, of
boundary work or worlding (Tsing 2011), a work which can be and often
is intrinsically cosmo-political.
128 J.H.Z. REMME
This points toward another intervention regarding the ontological turn’s

engagement with radical alterity. As mentioned earlier, I find the critique lev-
eled against the turn’s tendency toward essentialization and focus on radical
alterity to be partly warranted. However, perhaps some of this critique speaks
more to the rhetorical and political pragmatism of the ontological turn than
its actual analytical strategies. The radical alterity focused on by Viveiros
de Castro and Martin Holbraad, for instance, does not make comparison
impossible but forces us rather to think differently about what comparison
is, for instance, “controlled equivocation” (Viveiros de Castro 2004b) and
what comparison and anthropological analysis actually does, for instance,
transform or invent concepts (Holbraad 2009, 2012), two strategies that
both, needless to say, build significantly on Marilyn Strathern (1988) and
Roy Wagner’s (1981) work. The interesting point here is if the concept of
“radical alterity” itself can be the subject of such a conceptual invention.
Could, for instance, the Ifugao way of engaging closely with (the) alterity (of
the bā’i) suggest different ways of thinking about and engaging with alterity
also for anthropology? And what implications could this rethinking of alterity
have for the notion “radical alterity” that occupies criticizers of the ontologi-
cal turn so much? Perhaps we could think about radical not in terms of its
original Latin sense, as having roots or being essential, but rather in terms of
how it was used in surfer slang in the 1970s, namely as “at the limits of con-
trol”. Radical thus becomes a potential for transfiguration. And alterity needs
not mean an alter that is totally separated from a self, but rather as a constitu-
ent part of embodied existence itself (Csordas 2004; Bubandt 2014). When
we combine such rethinking of radical with this “intimate alterity” (Csordas
2004), radical alterity becomes a potential for becoming otherwise which is
an inherent part of becoming. In Ifugao practices, one moves between avoid-
ing and approaching this potential for becoming otherwise, and that move-
ment is part of one’s existence as a human being. Human becoming thrives
thus on the limits of control of one’s “otherwise within”.
Approaching ontology in this way, as more loose at the edges, as more
shifting and transformational, as basically more open-ended fares well with
an approach that emphasizes the political and historical situatedness of
ontological processes. An approach to ontology that takes into account its
fundamental dynamic character is particularly open to such analyses and
is “open” in a particular sense, namely to the ever-present potentials for
becoming otherwise. It calls us to account for the cosmo-political pro-
cesses through which some and not others of the multiplicity of possibili-
ties become enduringly actualized, transfigured, or extinguished.
Notes
1. I wish to thank the editors of this volume for inviting me to the workshop
from which this chapter emerged and for their encouragement and critique.
I also wish to extend my gratitude to all the participants in that workshop
who provided useful comments. In particular I want to thank Signe Howell
for her enduring role as part allied, part sparring partner.
2. I should add here that I sympathize with this as an experiment in thinking
and not as a normative program for all anthropological analyzes. I think
Viveiros de Castro’s use of a term like “illegal move”, for example in his
critique of Graeber’s analysis of fetishes (Viveiros de Castro 2015, 13; see
also Graeber 2015), (quite paradoxically) inhibits rather than promotes the
openness toward thinking otherwise that I want to retain from his approach.
3. This critique is also highly relevant for the ontological cartography (Costa
and Fausto 2010, 95) of Descola’s Beyond Nature and Culture (2013) in
which he outlines four ontological schemas: naturalism, animism, totemism
and analogism. As Kapferer (2014) points out, Descola treats these schemas
as unnecessarily static and bounded, pays insufficient attention to the his-
torical forces involved in their stabilization and transformation and avoids
attending to the potential for co-existence of different ontologies and the
dynamics thus created.
4. Whether they succeed is, however, debated. Salmond (2013, 2014) claims,
for instance, that they actually privilege the role of interpreter for ethnogra-
phers, allocating anthropology’s interlocutors the role of a muse (Salmond
2013, 25).
5. Povinelli (2014) argues that the immanence of the otherwise and its poten-
tial emergence is a fundamental political and ethical issue. The reproduction
of arrangements of entities and the concomitant shadowing of immanent
otherwises is a matter of power and that the opening up of conditions for
the emergence of the otherwise is an ethical issue.
6. The province of Ifugao is located in the Cordillera Mountains in Northern
Luzon. I conducted fieldwork in various villages in the municipality of
Banaue for a total of two years, in 2003–2004 and 2007–2008. Names of
informants are anonymized.
7. Hertzfeld describes “cultural intimacy” as those aspects of cultural identity
that are considered an external embarrassment but which nevertheless pro-
vides insiders assurance of common sociality.
8. I have italicized this and other Pentecostal terms to stress that I approach
them here as they were used in the congregation I studied. Both the terms
backsliding and demons are part of a globalized Pentecostal vocabulary that
may take on different meanings and connotations as they are localized.
130 J.H.Z. REMME
9. While Pentecostalism’s encouragement of self-discipline may have positive

consequences in terms of financial expenditure and entrepreneurship
(Smilde 2007), the financial advantages of converting must be understood
as related to two forms of nonmarket exchange: offerings to God and the
kin generating offerings to bā’i (see Haynes 2013).
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Press.
PART II
Materialities
CHAPTER 6
The Hold of Life in a Warao Village:

An Assemblage Analysis of Householding
Practices
Christian Sørhaug
We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most inti-
mately, that is the hold which life has on him. (Malinowski 1922, 25)
Sleeping in a Warao hanoko makes you aware of the multiple species that
live in and around the house. With no walls, palm-thatched roofs, forest
on one side and the river and tidal waters on the other, insects and animals
constantly bombard its inhabitants with sound. Pigs roaming around the
support pillars, fish jumping, dogs sneaking in the dark, bats living in the
palms, termites constantly eating away at the wooden structure and crick-
ets and birds chirping, lovers sneaking around, men paddling home after
nighttime fishing. Winds rustle the thatched roof, and blow through the
house, cooling off the sleeping people. At nighttime, other sounds emerge
as outboard engines pass the village at night. When dusk arrives, a radio
comes on, and some start up a generator if they need some extra light in
C. Sørhaug (*)
Østfold University College, Halden, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_6
138 C. SØRHAUG
the early morning hours. The smell of gasoline mix in with the early morn-
ing fires and fresh air fills your nostrils.
The Warao, an indigenous population inhabiting the Orinoco River
Delta, Venezuela, build their houses on stilts along the river’s edge.
These Amerindians live their lives on platforms, palafitos, elevated from
the ground. Diurnal tides constantly flood the landscape making marshes,
mangrove swamps, and muddy grounds. There are thousands of islands
in the littoral zone of the Delta. Rivers and tidal channels continu-
ously erode and create pathways in the environment, creating a natural
infrastructure the Warao can traverse these landscapes with their boats.
Though the Warao have a relatively sheltered existence in this swampy
habitat, they have engaged with others through precolonial, colonial,
and postcolonial history. In the last 40 years, global economic reforms
have swept over the continent and made its impact felt even in the most
remote corners of the Amazon. Moreover, people in these parts of the
world have been eager participants in the global economic and social
changes taking place in the Amazon. Through these changes, the Warao
are increasingly engaging with “industrial objects” or “modern consumer
goods” that entangle their householding practices, and become part of
Warao worldmaking.
In this chapter I will argue that the everyday household practices of
the Warao are inextricably intertwined with various heterogeneous mate-
rials gathered from the surroundings, including rivers and forests as well
as urban sprawls and garbage heaps. I am suggesting that certain types
of material relations are insufficiently reflected in Amazonian studies of
households. Studies of households which do not take sufficient mea-
sure of the involvement of “foreign consumer goods” when investigat-
ing Amerindian socialites limit a fuller understanding of how indigenous
societies create and constitute contemporary identities. I will pursue the
question, in line with Malinowski’s creed to study man and what con-
cerns him most intimately, “the hold which life has”; how does the assim-
ilation of novel objects into their villages and households create changes
in Warao way of life? I will start by elaborating on how an assemblage
analysis of household could look like. Then I will draw on ethnographic
examples to investigate how this type of analysis might yield some dif-
ferent answers into understanding how Warao indigenous identities are
crafted today. I conclude by suggesting how the ontological turn might
contribute in revitalize and retheorize household studies through assem-
blage analysis.
THE HOLD OF LIFE IN A WARAO VILLAGE... 139
Warao Householding Practices and Assemblage

Analysis
Households are central organizing institutions in Warao society. In fact,
the Warao word for village is hanokosebe, meaning many households, indi-
cating the centrality of these institutions in their society. One approach in
anthropology to understand the organizational dynamics of indigenous
households has been through the prism of kinship system. The assump-
tion has been that kinship systems are defining features of households
that organize activities like production, consumption, and distribution.
For example, among the native Amazonian of the Guyana, they have a
“dravidinate-type” kinship system characterized by creating marriage alli-
ances between cross cousins that stretches over generations. The Warao on
the other hand, though part of ethnographic Guyana, have an “iroquoin-
ate type” kinships system where marriage alliances functions centrifugal
to the social group, given that it is prohibited to marry anything closer
than a second cousin. The Warao ideally practice uxorilocality, and a man
marrying into a village is expected to provide services for his father-in-law
through most of his life (Heinen and Henley 1998–1999).
However, in the village I conducted fieldwork only about half of the
household followed uxorilocal marriage patterns, and several would also
not give much heed to the principle of providing work for their father-
in-laws. As such, it should not be assumed that it is possible to classify
and understand households through kinship structures and genealogies
because this “rests on the shaky assumption that people who are similarly
linked genealogically will have the same or greatly similar social relations”
(Yanagisako 2001). Kin relations are constantly negotiated and renego-
tiated, and the content of these relations cannot be yielded by kinship
relations alone. At the same time, other relations are also central to the
household. Philippe Descola connects the Ecuadorian Achuar households
with their surrounding ecology. Descola says: “Each household, stand-
ing alone in the forest, thinks of itself as an individual independent cen-
ter where the relation to nature is constantly being acted out” (Descola
1994, 4). Descola extend the relational network of Amerindian and their
householding practices to nonhumans. However, in contrast to Descola’s
portrayal of the Achuar, national policies, economic markets, and colonial
apparatus have had a substantial effect on Warao householding practices.
External influential relations, represented through traders, politicians,
and missionaries, have entangled Warao households. Younger men would
140 C. SØRHAUG
engaged in lumber work felling trees and cutting out plank boards for
money, and later engaging in various forms of conspicuous consumption.
Further, most of the people in the village could narrate stories about living
and working for extended periods in urban sprawls further up the river.
Some anthropologists have pointed to the tendency to analyze house-
holds as black boxes (Gullestad 1989; Wilk 1991). However, as household
members engage in external relations to reproduce their household, the
households themselves become transformed. The challenge is to explain
such processes of change. My suggestion is to open up this black box
by analyzing the household as assemblages embedded in wider networks
engaging external relations of humans as well as nonhuman component
parts. Economic globalization has widened the trade network of the
Warao, increasing the amount and types of items and peoples that become
entangled in their household activities. A central argument I am interested
in making is that the things traded and gathered lead to changes in what
it means to be Warao.
Drawing on some theoretical threads from the ontological turn, I
want to investigate how everyday household practices are bound up with
materials that influence how the Warao act and interact. For example,
for some households, the canoe motorboat constitutes one component
part of the household. By attaching an outboard motor to the canoe,
the villagers are able to travel further and faster. Today Warao can travel
with more ease to urban areas to trade produce, engage in paid labor, or
resource gathering farther away. The household assemblage is an emer-
gent whole that is constantly crafted and recrafted through component
parts being gathered into its midst. The philosopher Jane Bennett in
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010) suggests an assem-
blage analysis where:
The effects generated by an assemblage are, rather, emergent properties,

emergent in that their ability to make something happen (…) is distinct
from the sum of the vital force of the each materiality considered alone.
Each member and proto-member of the assemblage has a certain vital force,
but there is also an effectivity proper to the groupings as such: an agency
of the assemblage. And precisely because each member actant maintains an
energetic pulse slightly “off” from that of the assemblage, an assemblage is
never a solid block but an open-ended collective, a “non-totalizable sum”.
An assemblage thus not only has a distinctive historical formation but a
finite life span. (Bennett 2010, 24)
I will elaborate on three themes mentioned in this quote by Bennet:

emergence, agency, and collective. The first, emergent properties, is con-
cerned with worldmaking and the processual aspects of households. In
the ontological turn, agency also involves nonhumans, instead of privi-
leging actions and effects as having purely human origins. Lastly, collec-
tive is a concept demonstrating households as an open-ended assemblage
of external relations that is involved in defining the composition of the
assemblage.
Reality is constantly unfolding, or emerging, as Bennett points to.
The term “worldmaking” used by the philosopher Nelson Goodman
(1978) might be a useful concept in grasping how realities are emerg-
ing. Worldmaking points to the fact that humans inhabit several worlds
(Goodman 1978), and that there is a constant renegotiation going on
in peoples’ everyday lives. People are involved in making worlds; how-
ever, they are also subjected to a reality over which they have no control.
Humans do not just implement a pregiven plan or design, but are rather
mutually entangled with their material surrounding. Form and function
cannot be analyzed as separated (Ingold 2002, 346). There are a multi-
tude of surprises and uncertainties introduced in human social projects
as they are assembled, and these types of agency need to be accounted
for (Latour 2005, 60). Worldmaking points to the constant renegotiation
that goes on in peoples’ everyday realities. Hilary Putnam reminds us that
reality is never one, always plural and constantly changing. Further, he
underlines the fact that human lives are constrained by a reality that we do
not necessarily control, and that plays into human lives. That is, as Putnam
says: “The source of the puzzlement lies in the common philosophical
error of supposing that the term ‘reality’ must refer to a single super thing,
instead of looking at the ways in which we endlessly renegotiate—and are
forced to renegotiate—our notion of reality as our language and our life
develops” (Putnam 1994, 452). Similarly, the Warao are engaged in a
constant negotiation concerning their reality.
Warao households deteriorate through human and nonhumans tear
and wear. Termites eat the wooden poles holding up the house; winds
tear the thatched palm roof; rain and saline waters create good conditions
for moist and microbe activities. People walking and the children run-
ning wear at floorboards; glows from fires burn away at the palm floor;
hammocks swinging from the beams place strain on the wooden struc-
ture. However, maintaining the household concerns more than the house
142 C. SØRHAUG
structure. Winds blow kitchen utensils out into the mud, clothes are torn
and worn out, the lamps need kerosene and shotguns need ammunition.
The Warao constantly travel over distances, short as well as far, to gather
what is needed to reproduce the household. The household needs to be
done over and over again. As novel people, things, and localities become
entangled in the household, everyday practices change. For the more
“advanced” household, outboard engines and generators need gasoline
and oil, as well as spare parts and light bulbs. Maintaining houses and
their activities drive the Warao to different localities: surrounding forests
and river, the littoral zone to gather crabs or the missionary town and the
more far-reaching state capital Tucupita or the garbage heaps outside of
the city Ciudad Guyana (Sørhaug 2014). All these locales have “patches
of abundance”—concentration of resources in the environment (Rival
2006)—that are involved in reproducing Warao households. External
component parts are gathered into Warao household becoming part of
the emerging realities of life in the Orinoco Delta.
Assemblage theory draws our attention to how entities in a household-
ing, humans, and nonhumans exist in a network and mutually transform
each other. Agency in this perspective is a property of relations and not
something limited to either humans or nonhumans. In the actor-network
literature this is referred to as the principle of symmetry: “To be symmet-
ric, for us, simply means not to impose a priori some spurious asymmetry
among human intentional action and a material world of causal relations”
(Latour 2005, 76). By allowing nonhumans and their effects to “speak”
any analysis of the human condition will be more substantial. In such a
“philosophy of adding” the analytical focus is on unfolding, emergent
realities (Asdal 2012, 384). Any assembled entity, like a hammock, house-
hold, or a village, can affect the very constitution of other assemblages.
From this perspective, we can study the entanglements that the Warao
constantly engage and become with (Haraway 2008). This gives an under-
standing of households not as mere containers for human action, but
rather as constitutively entangled with humans and their nonhuman sur-
roundings. Householding practices assemble ideas, persons, and materials
from the places outside the delta, and even outside of Venezuela. These
external relations entangle with Warao householding practices through
storytelling practices, through performance of identity, through subsis-
tence practices, and through the expression of social relations. Things as
stereos, clothes, electrical generators, outboard engines, entangle house-
hold practices, influence group, and individual identity.
A central figure in formulating an assemblage theory is the philosopher

Manuel DeLanda who has worked to develop these ideas into a theory
in A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity
(2006). According to DeLanda, the ides of assemblage was formulated
by Deleuze and Guattari (2004) as a critique of the Heglian notion that
wholes can be reduced to its component parts through studying their
internal relations. Instead it is suggested that wholes are composed of
external relation assembled by component parts:
In fact, the reason why the properties of the whole cannot be reduced to
those of its parts is that they are the result not of an aggregation of the com-
ponent’s own properties but of the actual exercise of the capacities. These
capacities do depend on the component’s properties but cannot be reduced
to them since they involve references to the properties of other interacting
entities. Relations of exteriority guarantee that assemblages may be taken
apart at the same time allowing that the interaction between parts may result
in a true synthesis. (DeLanda 2006, 11)
To give an example, the Warao lifeform is inextricably connected with

canoes. Canoes enable movement in this otherwise swampy habitat. The
rivers and channels function as natural infrastructure. Johannes Wilbert,
the first anthropologists to do fieldwork with the Warao, has written
extensively on the mythological lore of the Warao and the connection
with the Warao as carpenters of the canoe (1996). According to Wilbert,
Warao originally meant canoe people (Wa—canoe, araro—people). Life
in the lower delta area would simply be impossible without the canoe.
It is the assemblage Warao/canoe that enables movement to fish, hunt,
and garden and gather foods. A Warao would not independently have the
capacity to perform these food-procuring activities.
Today some Warao have managed to get hold of outboard engines,
though still lacking funds to buy a boat. Carpenters of canoes today cut
off the stern of a large canoe, and add a plate to attach the engine. This
has provided a new assemblage having profound effects on Warao life and
householding activities. The collective Warao/canoe/engine is an assem-
blage that provides new capacities and possibilities for the Warao. The
thesis of external relations implies that: “a component part of an assem-
blage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in
which its interactions are different. In other words, the exteriority of rela-
tions implies certain autonomy for the terms they relate” (DeLanda 2006,
11). The heterogenic component parts that come together in a household
144 C. SØRHAUG
interact creating something novel. At the same time, the various compo-
nent parts of any assemblage have a temporary durance being relatively
stable, having the ability to become part of other assemblages.
The Orinoco River Delta and the Warao
Warao means “people living on the rivers’ edge” (Heinen and Henley
1998–1999), and is an apt term for a people who inhabit the edges of the
many distributaries that come of the Orinoco and “feed” the delta with its
sediment rivers. The rivers and channels function as a natural infrastruc-
ture, as the muddy ground makes it impossible to walk for long distances.
This is probably the reason that the Warao for a long time was translated
as “canoe people” given that outside most households you will see a canoe
moored to the bridge, and is central instrument for existing in this habitat
(Wilbert 1996).
The Warao household is usually composed of three structures; the
“food place” (hisabanoko), “hammock place” (hanoko), and “the woman
place” (ibomanoko). The Warao build their houses on stilts to stay clear
of the tidal waters that constantly flood the grounds. Connecting all the
households is a walking bridge (hoisi), which is also the only public area.
Building the hoisi used to be a communal task, organized by the village
headman. However, today, the government authorities pay contractors to
do the job, who then pay villagers a bare minimum wage to do the job.
The village consists of about 30 households and 250 people. The Warao
refer to households as hanoko, and a village as hanokosebe, meaning sev-
eral household. The word “village” translates to several household units.
Households are relatively independent units; however, in the villages there
are extensive systems of barter in-between the households, exchanging
fish, tubers, money, and other household items. In addition, the village has
a school built in massive concrete with corrugated iron as well as church.
Returning in 2006 to the village in which I did my fieldwork in 2001,
after an absence of five years, I was struck by the amount of commodities
in the village; there were several electrical generators, some fridges, lights,
outboard engines, and generally more affluent villagers. The sources of
this wealth were not difficult to trace. The left wing politics of the Hugo
Chavez administration had seen to that the poorer part of the Venezuelan
population should have access to education through various types of schol-
arships. These scholarships were also distributed to many Warao who pos-
sessed identity cards. The distribution of these scholarships gave a financial
infusion to the household economy and consequently influenced Warao

householding practices.
On my return in 2006, the number of household members had
decreased dramatically, from 13 members to only 3. In 2001, our hanoko
had consisted of the hanoko arotu, house-owner; Emanuel, my foster
father; Anjelica, my foster mother, and their two daughters (Romelia and
Berki), as well as Romelia’s son (Junio), their only living son (Juan), his
wife (Tomasa), their son (Lumeno) and newborn daughter, and three
grandchildren (Selva, Francisco, and Rosa Maria). Juan did not move to
his wife’s place, given that both her parents were dead. However, Juan
did render some work service to her grandfather, who lived some houses
down from us. In addition, other daughters would visit the household
with their families. In 2006–2007, there was only Junio, with his two
grandparents, Emanuel and Anjelica.
The ceiling was in a rather bad shape, and you could see light coming
in through the palm leaves. As with most houses, there were no walls,
only a windbreak made of yawihi (Lat: Manicaria succifera) palm leaves
set against the forest and the north, for protection against the chilly night
winds. There was also the shelf that Emanuel had set up between two sup-
port pillars for the roof. Here they had placed the old cassette recorder
that I bought for them the last time I was there—it was still working,
though poorly. Attending to the maintenance of the house was a con-
stant concern as the wooden and plant materials rapidly deteriorated. The
discussions between Anjelica and Emanuel concerning household chores
were always ongoing; what was going to be a priority among the vast
amount of household chores.
Especially in the morning it was possible to observe how people were
trafficking back and forth between their hanoko (sleeping quarters) and
hisabanoko (kitchen) to prepare breakfast. The women would be out wash-
ing off the dropping the dogs had left on the footbridge during night.
Though the villagers appreciated the dogs for their abilities to assist in
hunting, most of the dogs were quite skinny. Food was often short, and
the dogs seldom got even leftovers. During low tide, pigs would come out
of the forest and assemble under the house. They knew that they would be
given the peelings of the tuber ure. The omnivorous pigs seemed to find
a better living in the muddy ground beneath the houses than the dogs.
Each pig belonged to a hanoko and even had specific owners within the
house. Children were often given one or several pigs and the responsibil-
ity of keeping an eye out for the free-ranging pigs. It was the Catholic
146 C. SØRHAUG
Capuchin, who have been missioning in the Delta since 1925, who intro-
duced pig farming. In addition to converting the Warao to Catholicism,
they have worked hard to influence the householding practices among the
Warao: permanent residence along the larger rivers, using proper clothes
while in church, gardening, Spanish language, tourist artwork, engaging
markets, and buying consumer goods. All these activities, which also have
had substantial effect on household practices, have been part of the Warao
conversion to Christianity.
The morning traffic is not just internal to the household assemblages
but also in between the households. Children and women would be mov-
ing back and forth between the hanoko, exchanging pieces of meat with
the newly arrived fish caught by the men. Some would have had more
luck and more fish to eat than others would, and an extensive sharing
network was in operation at this time of day. Others would have a sur-
plus of the tuber ure from their garden, which also frequently was shared.
Usually, covering the half of the kitchen floor is the sturdy winamoru palm
stems, which is more uncomfortable to sit on, unless one likes squatting
over a longer period. The villagers build the clay hearth over the palm
floor, as they were relatively easy to replace from the surrounding forest.
Glows from the fire and food preparation in general eroded this part of
the kitchen. The other part is often, depending on their resources, cov-
ered with the more comfortable plank boards. Ordinarily, people could sit
on the floorboards. Through the gaps in the floor, while eating, the kids
would toss food scraps down to the pigs.
Households Emerging with Nonanimated

Nonhumans: The Use of Clothes
Central in Warao cosmology is the surrounding nonhuman spirits of vari-
ous kinds. Perhaps the most frequently present spirits were the Nabarao,
meaning “river people” (naba—river, arao—people). The Nabarao inhab-
its the rivers and have villages, hanokosebe, just like the Warao. However, the
Nabarao have a different perspective on reality than the Warao. While the
Warao perceive themselves as hunters of the Nabarao, from the Nabarao
perspective, they can be hunting the Warao. Warao and Nabarao even
experience building materials differently: the lianas used to fix the struc-
ture are seen as anacondas for the Warao, a fan for the fire for the Nabarao
is for the Warao experienced as the stingray, palm wine for the Nabarao
is blood, and so on. The Nabarao, usually manifested as the fresh water
tumbler, sees themselves as persons. The Nabarao are actively involved in

cohabiting and co-forming contemporary Warao actions and experiences
of self. Even the composition of the household units are arranged in rela-
tion to the river spirits; the menstrual hut, ibomanoko, is placed toward the
forest, furthest away from the river spirits who perceive menstrual blood
as food.
Discussions about nonhuman animated entities and their influence on
human lives and society has been an important issue in social anthropology
(Kirksey and Helmreich 2010). More recently, this discussion has taken on
new relevance through the ontological turn, especially through the work
of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and his work to understand perspectivism
in Amerindian thought (1998). The idea of perspectivism has roots in phi-
losophy (Nietzsche 1968) and has been discussed in social anthropology
earlier (Hallowell 1960; Howell 1984; Årheim 1993). Drawing on this,
Viveiros de Castro (1998) explores how our attention to the construction
of multiple realties is depending on the bodies that reality is experienced
through. A perspective on reality “sits” in a body, he argues. For example,
from the Nabarao body perspective, blood is not blood. It is food. From
the perspective of the Warao, Nabarao are not humans, they are animals
and spirits, and the Warao can therefore potentially eat Nabarao. The
point is that beings experience realty through their bodies.
Through this contrast Viveiros de Castro launches a critique on the
social constructivism that has dominated theory and analysis in the social
and human sciences. One particular area of critical engagement is his
rejection of the bifurcation of nature and culture; physical and social; body
and mind. The bifurcated ontological starting point has analytical con-
sequences, because the analyst has already ordered certain phenomenon
in the one pile or the other. Perspectivism allows nonhuman entities to
“speak” through the various animated beings that surround Amazonian
Indians. Instead of interpreting the river spirits as a religious superstition,
they are involved as bona fide actors generating effects in Warao everyday
lives. Perspectives are not reducible to symbolic representation because,
says Viveiros de Castro, “the point of view is located in the body” (1998,
478). Beings, human and nonhuman, see the world through the body
they inhabit. “This, what I call ‘body’ is not a synonym for distinctive
substances or fixed shape; it is an assemblage of affect or way of being
that constitute habitus” (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 478). By locating the
perspective on the world through the body, the bodies become the site
of perception. And the type of body you inhabit explains why you see the
148 C. SØRHAUG
world as you do. The constitution of the body itself provides the perspec-
tive on the world.
Such a multinaturalism explains shamans transforming themselves into
other beings; through metamorphosis they are able to perform, do or
make the bodies of other beings, thereby participating in their worlds.
Through correct ritual procedure the shaman can enact the bodies of
other worlds:
The animal clothes that shamans use to travel the cosmos are not fantasies
but instruments: they are akin to diving equipment, or space suites, and not
to carnival masks. The intention when donning a wet suit is to be able to
function like a fish, to breath underwater, not to conceal oneself under a
strange covering. In the same way, the “clothing” which, amongst animals,
covers up internal “essence” of a human type, is not a mere disguise but
their distinctive equipment, endowed with the affects and capacities which
define each animal. (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 482)
Viveiros de Castro sees the bodies that the Amerindians animal clothes
themselves with not as mere appearances or superficial disguises. Rather,
they are tools that enable a certain type of being: “It is not so much that
the body is a clothing but rather that clothing is a body” (Viveiros de
Castro 1998, 482).
Yet, one type of ontological partitioning is not discussed by Viveiros
de Castro: the division between the modern and traditional. Though
Amazonian anthropologists have readily admitted the presence and influ-
ence of nonhumans, they are of a particular kind. This division has a ten-
dency to order certain objects on either the modern side or the traditional
side. The nonhumans allowed to speak in the analysis are for the most
part animated spirits. Other types of nonhumans that are nonanimated
or nonsentient, like outboard engines, chainsaws, or gasoline, becomes
part of a background or facades. Concepts like “industrial consumer
goods” or “manufactured commodities” makes out analytical positions.
Items of this kind are the representative of a modernity that has made a
sometimes untimely incursion into a pristine lifeworld. Stephen Hugh-
Jones in “Yesterday’s luxuries, tomorrow’s necessities” has criticized the
Amazonian anthropology for not sufficiently including commodities in
their analysis. He underlines the need to analyze the use of consumer
goods as creative experiments with White-Creole culture (Hugh-Jones
1992, 70). The interest that Amerindians display for these goods is about
creating and understanding White-Creoles as well as the things them-

selves. However, I would argue that we can push Hugh-Jones insight
further through analyzing their transformative effect on the household
assemblage and try to understand some of the effects that are generated
through their immersion into Warao worldmaking.
Clothes, accompanied with other things, can enact a transformation.
Can we talk of “modern” clothes as enacting another type of being for
the Warao? One particular event makes me allure to such particular rela-
tions between cloth consumption and being. One day I was standing
with Anjelica on the bridge next to our kitchen. A local entrepreneur
was standing in his boat on the outside. It was an impressive speed boat
mounted with two large Yamaha engines totaling about 300 horse-
power. Anjelica told me that the owner had transformed to a hotarao
(tai hotarao namoniae). Hotarao is a general term used by the Warao
for White-Creoles. The entrepreneur had been born in a village not
far from ours, and he had Warao parents and kin. Now, however, she
said that he wore hotarao clothes, spoke hotarao (Spanish), he lived in
a house in Tucupita (the state capital), and he had a car. He even had a
hotarao wife. With all these things combined, she meant that he now had
become a hotarao.
In his otherwise great article on Kayapo body images Terrence Turner
chooses to analyze what he sees as nonindigenous entities as a façade
(1995). He is interested in “the indigenous system of bodily treatments,
beliefs, representation, and adornment as it continuous, with relatively few
modifications, beneath the façade of Brazilian dresses, shorts and T-shirts”
(Turner 1995, 148). In my reading, Turner argues for a true essence of
Kayapo that has been defiled by modernity represented by the encroach-
ment of “modern consumer goods”. However, my experience among the
Warao is that they do not today consider things like clothes to modern.
Rather, they see it as an important part of being a decent moral Warao.
They might tell stories about their grandfathers who did not wear clothes,
and only had loincloths, or about mysterious delta people living in the
interior of their islands.
These nonanimated, nonhumans need to be critically involved in the
analysis of Warao worldmaking in order to make sense of contemporary
Amerindian ways of life. Turner, as other social anthropologist working
with household studies and material culture in the Amazon, seems to insist
that the ontological status of objects is limited to the meaning humans
attach to them. Similarly, Fernando Santos-Granero in The Occult Life of
150 C. SØRHAUG
Things is primarily interested in how nonhuman objects are ensouled or

subjectivized by humans (Santos-Granero 2009, 110). Even when objects
“revolt”, they have a human origin (Santos-Granero 2009, 3). That inani-
mate nonhuman objects generate effects seem to be impossible to grasp
from a theoretical model that insists on bifurcating objects into a tradi-
tional world and a modern world. My claim is that not admitting the
effects and multiplicity of nonhuman, nonanimated entities in the emer-
gence of sociality is a serious analytical disadvantage when we attempt to
understand a society and households like the Warao.
Becoming with Nonanimated Nonhumans: Dugout

Motorboat
As previously mentioned, a common sight along the river and channels
in the delta is the dugout motorboat. As more Warao can afford out-
boards, they have started to combine these propulsion engines with their
boatbuilding techniques. Encountering the village headman, Miguel, he
explained that there had been an influx of government funds made avail-
able for several villages in the area through the Hugo Chavez administra-
tion. He was in the process of making a new dugout motorboat with an
engine he was hoping to acquire through some new funds. Miguel was
considered a master boatbuilder, and well competent to make a good dug-
out motorboat. The dugout motorboat was made from a large dugout,
where they cut of the stern and placed a wooden plate, which was attached
with industrial glue and screws. Making a dugout motorboat is more
work-intensive and requires a work team. It also demands competence.
When a young man in the village made his own similar dugout motorboat
with the help of other young men he lost his entire engine. The engine
and the wooden attached stern was knocked off by a submerge tree trunk.
He was severely scolded by the villagers for his lack of competence, and
lack of willingness to listen to the advice of the elder in the village. The vil-
lagers also scolded him for his lack of competence in communicating with
the spirits, which also was listed as a reason for the unfortunate incident.
Walking through a contemporary Warao village most nights you will
hear the chanting of the shaman communicating with the spirits. A type
of spirits that often makes incursions to the village was the Nabarao, river
spirits attracted by the smell of food (blood), or being sent by malevo-
lent shamans. As these spirits penetrated the bodies of Warao, they cause
disease. Using various techniques, the work of the shaman would be to
persuade the spirits to leave the body. Through chants, smoke, massag-
ing, and sucking techniques, the shamans work into the night in order to
assist the diseased. Among the Warao, these spirits are an integrated part
of their everyday householding practices and worldmaking efforts, and
have been extensively documented by several anthropologists (Heinen
1990; Briggs 1992; Wilbert 1993). The anthropologist Johannes Wilbert,
who has written extensively on Warao cosmology and canoe building, has
demonstrated the connection between mastery of certain spirits and the
knowledge of canoe building (Wilbert 1993, 1996).
Today, as Warao householding practices entangle novel objects like the
dugout motorboat, these carpenters of canoes need knowledge that does
not have any room in Warao cosmology. The worldmaking of contem-
porary Warao demands mastery of entirely different materials. Annemari
Mol’s work on ontology examines how objects enact social realities. She
points to the involvement of materials in understanding the human con-
ditions where “objects are framed as parts of events that occur and plays
that are staged: if an object is real it is because it is part of practice. It is a
reality enacted” (Mol 2002). Similarly, Warao use of “modern industrial
consumer goods” in their householding needs to be critically involved in
the analysis of their everyday activities.
For example, after Baramo, the village headman’s sons, were able to
acquire government funds to buy a 75 horsepower Yamaha outboard
motor, a group of young men came together to build water-skies. They
used some rubber boots they had found at the garbage heap and a balsam
tree. When a week had passed the men were satisfied and they started
waterskiing outside the village on the river. The other villagers greatly
admired this type of ingenuity, as this was taken as proof that the people
of the Crazy Waters was not as backwards as many accused them of being
(e.g., when I was in the missionary town, people would often remark
on the underdeveloped conditions of the village). Of course, waterskiing
was not the intended use for the engine from the perspective of NGOs,
or government officials. The outboard engine was supposed to provide
means of transportation to markets further up the river so that the Warao
could sell their produce for a better price. However, as the villagers were
well aware, traveling such distances required substantial amounts of fuel.
When fuel and other costs amounted, there was no profit left, at least not
compared to selling the produce locally. Not that the young men and
women minded. They were happy about doing the travel, and described
the journey as an adventure. Engaging the external markets, traveling with
152 C. SØRHAUG
their produce, was something they enjoyed. However, it was not a luxury
they could afford frequently, as their labor was needed at home.
Through my conversation with the young men of the village, they
talked extensively about their dream of getting hold of an outboard
engine; they talked at length about how they would get a job in the
city; sell their produce in shops; work for local entrepreneurs. All to
acquire money so they could fulfill their dream of buying an outboard
motor to travel with ease over distances. Though the canoe has always
enacted greater freedom for Warao youths, an outboard motor mounted
on a dugout would generate even more freedom. Further, it was clearly
heightening the status of the person who was able to buy one, being a
proof of competence and ability.
Though the Warao society is a relatively egalitarian, elders have wielded
some authority over the younger generation. I could see this among oth-
ers in the kin terms which distinguish between younger and older brother
(daka/dahe) (Heinen and Henley 1998–1999). Through the elders and
their storytelling practices, a moral code became evident, where the
younger brother should take the advice of his older brother, or a son
should take the advice of his father-in-law. Knowledge of how to live in
the delta is transferred from the older to the younger generation, and this
demands certain obedience. However, as external markets have become
more accessible to the younger generation, is seems as if the authority of
the elder generation has exercised is decreasing. However, at the same
time, I would argue that novel items like the dugout motorboat, and the
effects generated by it in the householding practices of the Warao, does
not transition the Warao into some modern condition. Rather, the Warao
are using these elements in their own worldmaking. Modernity, like real-
ity, is no one thing, rather it is constantly renegotiated. The Warao are
not becoming moderns. Rather, Warao indigenous identity is becoming
in a somewhat different fashion. Just as the Warao have never been mod-
ern, the Warao have never been traditional. Novel materials like outboard
motors, clothes, and radios become part of co-forming the life in the vil-
lage. Material effects entangle in the very act of householding, enmeshing
in the daily rhythms of everyday acts. Household practices, analyzed as
a heterogenic assemblage of humans and nonhumans, provide us with
a possibility to look into the mutually constitutive relations of materials
and sociality. Outboard motors are central elements of co-forming identity
of young men in a contemporary Warao village, as well as reorganizing
householding practices.
External Relations Becoming with Warao

Householding Practices
My initial reflection of waking up in a Warao household, hearing animal
sounds combining with gasoline smell and engines called for an attention
to other details. Wearing a loincloth is different from wearing pants; driv-
ing an outboard motor is different from paddling. These component parts
have characteristics that influence householding practices in various ways;
you need competence and knowledge to operate an outboard motor,
money to buy parts and gas. Clothes enact another way of identifying
with what it means to be Warao. Though the older generation still flaunts
their nawa (ponchos) as an ethnic marker of their identity, the younger
generation of women wears short skirts or pants and tops. Acquiring such
clothes takes time and resources, and requires travels over a large distance
(the closest city is the delta municipality located 300 km up the river).
Young men dreaming of reaching far-away places in their dugout motor-
boats is one consequence the motorboats enact. Young Warao men have
always been adventurous Argonauts. The cultural hero, Habori, is a mystic
figure young men imitate and fantasize about. However, the outboard engine
enacts and generates new household challenges; how to get money to buy
gasoline; how to change engine parts; how to take apart and reassemble a
Yamaha engine? Analyzing households as nexuses of assembled external rela-
tions clarifies how objects are involved in enacting new realities for the Warao.
By giving greater attention to the meaning of material components in the
construction of households, we can discover how global connections are
made and unmade in “the sticky materiality of practical encounters” (Tsing
2005, 1). This is not to say that all materials stick. What might be termed a
luxury item does not need to become part of the household. If the item fails
to interact with the assemblage, it may simply be thrown away. During my
first fieldwork, a young man brought a bicycle back from the garbage heap,
300 km further up the river. Traveling up the river in a canoe on the Orinoco
River is filled with dangers, ranging from getting robbed by pirates or capsiz-
ing due to large waves. I was puzzled by why he exposed himself to such dan-
gers and enormous amount of work to get a bicycle when it was impossible
to use it in the village. In the canoe, he had limited place for goods gathered.
He answered simply that it was for fun. Upon my return in 2006, I asked the
same man about the bicycle, and he laughed and said he had thrown it away.
Similarly, though it was a hype for a short time, the young men stopped using
the water-skies, most agreeing that it was a dangerous pass-time activity.
154 C. SØRHAUG
Assembled from a distance, the church, market, and state are institu-
tions that make themselves relevant for Warao household. The Venezuelan
state initiates and carries some costs and the Warao agree to be law-abiding
Venezuelans citizens. The Catholic Church initiates Catholic liturgy and
practices. Both school and church influence householding activities.
Clothes are an integral part of a hanoko—washing, repairing and, not least,
acquiring these clothes in the first place. The school channels the children
and teenage workforce from the household. Whenever the schoolteachers
would come (which was quite irregular), the children ran along the walk-
ing bridge to the school; boys wear white shirts, blue/black trousers and
shoes, and the girls wear blouses and skirts. Villagers put a lot of work into
clothing the children going to school, and they would pity children with
less economic viable parents who could not clothe their children properly.
The church ceremonies advocate a certain morality and way of life—hard
work, abstinence from alcohol, monogamy, fidelity, and the heeding of the
word of God, as well as attending church in the proper clothes.
In Amazonian anthropology, I think we need to give more analytical
attention to the inanimate nonhumans that entangles with household-
ing. There has been a substantial interest and analytical perspectives on
how indigenous Amazonians have handled and negotiated external rela-
tions (see e.g., Overing 1992; Gow 1994; Conklin and Graham 1995).
However, the ontological turn provides an opportunity for anthropolo-
gists to address nonhuman material things and technologies as these par-
ticipate in the worldmaking of the Warao.
Conclusion
The first chapter of this book points out that the ontological turn surges
in a contemporary world as a response to a sense of urgency (Bertelsen
and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). The ecological crisis and the unintended con-
sequences of human actions, having impacted the geological composition
of the world we inhabit, have given rise to the concept the Anthropocene
(Crutzen 2002). The sense of urgency that is evoked by humans making
serious damaging impact on the environment, resulting in (unpleasant)
effects like droughts, floods, overheating, might be a reason for renewing
anthropology’s ambition to be true to the world being described (Bertelsen
and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). The ontological turn provokes new questions and
challenges a range of assumptions in anthropological theory. Methods like
participant observation were designed by Malinowski to ensure that human
life worlds were properly grasped at its most intimate level. At the same
time, Sidney Mintz notes that Malinowski reproached himself for ignoring
the European colonial influence among the Trobriands (Mintz 1986, xxvi–
xxvii). The post-Kantian epistemological tradition, of which Malinowski was
a part, tended to presume a singular relation between people and things
(Harman 2013). A possible explanation for this “vanishing act” might be a
need to purify, creating this singular relation of people and objects, of orga-
nizing the world into a modern and traditional sphere. The ontological turn
challenges such unilateral relations, and suggests instead multiplies relations
between humans and their nonhuman surroundings.
Dualisms like the modern/traditional and the material/social have had
wide ranging analytical consequences for social anthropology. As I see it,
a household assemblage analysis can provide new perspectives on contem-
porary Warao. I would like to conclude suggesting three components that
could form a basis for an assemblage analysis of households. First, Warao
households are constantly emerging in a wider ecological and economic
network. Households are assembled over and over again, each day, through
a wide range of heterogenic component parts. Canoe, spirits, people, axes,
machetes, wooden pillars, palm-thatched roofs, lianas, kitchen utensils,
electrical generators and dugout motorboats, are some of the component
parts that are gathered and assembled. Second, these component parts
interact, mutually influencing each other, creating the emergent whole
that is a contemporary Warao household. The novel items are becoming
entangled with Warao identity and sociality. For example, as mentioned
previously, there has been taking place an alteration in the perception of
prestige. Among the men, there is considerable prestige involved in being
able to acquire an outboard engine. However, this demands mastery over
a another set of skill; speaking Spanish, understanding the development
discourse, writing, knowing people in the city and the city administration,
and mastering the colloquial language of bureaucracy, and so on. Several
of the younger men, who have lived in the city for longer periods, are bet-
ter equipped for this sort of resource gathering.
The third suggestion concerns relations of externality. The Warao
has since precolonial time been enmeshed in interethnic trade with both
Arawak and Carib, long before the colonialists arrived (Heinen and Henley
1998–1999). The mythological cultural hero Habori, whose stories are
frequently told, encourages young Warao to travel the world and experi-
ence new things. The Warao are explorers that travel the world bringing
new ideas and things back to their households. Grasping the desires and
156 C. SØRHAUG
motivation among contemporary Warao is about making room for the

creative engagements that people enact through various materials. The
Warao are explorers in a reality continuously unfolding. Villagers discuss
and engage with shamans, spirit attacks, uxorilocality, and bride service.
At the same time, the Warao engage with outboard engines, gasoline, life
in urban areas, garbage heaps, and urban sprawls. New items assembled
in the household are not simply given new meaning; they re-form what it
means to be Warao in the twenty-first century.
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CHAPTER 7
Disrupting Book Smartness: Critical

Ethnography and the “Ontological Turn”
in Anthropology and Educational Studies
Lars Gjelstad
Introduction
Critical ethnography of education explores ways of combining interpreta-
tive approaches to local knowledge with critical social theories of wider
historical–material settings (Anderson 1989; Levinson et al. 1996; Lave
2011). It developed in the 1980s as part of a broader interdisciplinary
theoretical shift to “problems of epistemology, interpretation, and dis-
cursive forms of representation” (Marcus and Fischer 1986, 9). A practi-
tioner of critical ethnography is not content with describing what is, but
in how things could be done otherwise, by pointing at power relations
and tacit assumptions about human nature and social difference. Critical
ethnography, then, moves from “what is” to “what could be” (Madison
2005, 4). This chapter explores some further possibilities that relational
ontology and other post-representational theory afford the practice of
doing critical ethnography of education. It will particularly contribute
to an everting, or decomposing, of the vocational–academic divide that
dominates modern education, on a global scale.
L. Gjelstad (*)
Department of Vocational Teacher Education, Oslo and Akershus University
College of Applied Sciences, Oslo, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_7
160 L. GJELSTAD
Building on Helen Verran’s notion of “generative critique” (Verran

2001, 2014a, 2014b), I argue that a disruption of the academic–vocational
divide demands an ontological politics that doubts not only the bound-
aries between nature and culture but also the much less problematized
boundaries between general and particular domains of knowledge and the
related polarities of abstract/concrete, particular/general, and unique/
universal (Verran 2001, 46, 210). Within both popular and expert dis-
course, relations between “theory” and “practice” are often circumscribed
by these and similar polarities. A generative critique may open up new
possibilities for creating partial connections across general and practical
domains of knowledge. In particular, I will explore the possibilities for
developing a mobile ontology of education, where emergent rhythms,
forces, affects, sensations, vibrations, and textures are brought into the
analysis of vocational practices (cf. Merriman 2012, 9) without falling into
a romanticizing of practical work and an antitheoretical position.
It is widely recognized that schooling is vital in naturalizing notions
of personhood and human subjectivity, including the nature of intelli-
gence, thinking, and skills. Intelligence is often considered in terms of
some innate capacities or in some reductionist notions of natural differ-
ences, including being smart with one’s hands versus being “theoretically
smart” (Korp 2011; Hatt 2007). As Bloch and others have pointed out,
after Goody, the introduction of literacy helped to create and naturalize
a distinction between theory and practice and between procedural and
bodily knowledge (Bloch 1998). Schooling is therefore vital in disciplin-
ing young people into text-oriented modes of apprehending the world.
Certain institutional forms further shape the representational and objecti-
fied character of academic knowledge in school. Modern schools are gen-
erally aged-graded, hierarchical, and separated from where the learning
eventually will be applied (Levinson 2000, 5).
In this chapter, I argue that the “culturalist” approaches that have dom-
inated the anthropology of education—from Margaret Mead to recent
versions of Cultural Studies—contribute to a naturalization of representa-
tional understandings of knowledge and personhood. This is for instance
visible in the highly influential anthology, The Cultural Production of the
Educated Person (Levinson et al. 1996). Although this work is informed
by a theory of practice approach (e.g., Abu-Lughod, Bourdieu, Comaroff,
Giddens, Ortner, and Willis), their cultural production model still oper-
ates with a rather textual concept of culture, production, and human
subjectivity. Analytically it deals with difference in terms of how “distinct
DISRUPTING BOOK SMARTNESS... 161
societies (…) define the fully ‘educated’ person” (Levinson et al. 1996, 2,
italics added). Although the authors pursue a cultural critique, associated
with Marcus and Fischer (1986), that juxtapose and thus display tensions
between coexistent formations of knowledge and personhood, their dis-
cursive orientation tends to singularize and circumscribe such differences
(see Chap. 1). My objective is to develop alternative ways of theorizing
difference, by asking—what impact for anthropological analysis does the
multiple, novel configurations of various forms of human and non-human
agency have?
I consider school-based vocational educational practices as a felicitous
starting point for exploring alternative ontologies of education, given their
broad range of assemblages of materials, tools, skills, and sensory engage-
ments. Practices of enskilment, the becoming of skilled persons, entail
more than cultural production. As suggested by Karen Barad (2003),
Donna Haraway (1997), Annemarie Mol (2002), and others, “relational
ontology” may potentially reconfigure the notion of critique itself and
thus offer a more radical alternative to a post-structuralist legacy of doing
critical ethnography of schooling. A relational ontology may, in my view,
help to radicalize anthropological theories of practice, including the struc-
ture–agency framework that also Levinson et al. (1996) adhere to. I want
to explore what can be gained by a shift from a cultural critique to what
Dirk Postma (2012) have referred to as a “sociomaterial critique”. In his
view, the task of critical educational research is to describe “sociomaterial
practices that enact realities which provide alternatives to a dominant real-
ity” (Postma 2012, 155).
Materializations of Difference in a Mechanical

School Workshop
In Norway, a separation of “general studies” and “vocational education”
programs is institutionalized at the level of secondary education. My main
case is an ethnographic study of educational practices at a Technology
and Industrial Production (TIP) program at a secondary school in rural
Norway. Although these educational practices apply a national standard
for combining academic and vocational/practical subjects, the actual inte-
gration and separation of “theory” and “practice” is always performed
situationally. In my study, I followed three classes over a school year,
focusing on the differing ways in which students, individually and col-
lectively, engaged with heterogeneous assemblages of learning materials.
162 L. GJELSTAD
The everyday enactments of the TIP program are also highly influenced
by some particular local conditions. The local community is character-
ized by a strong masculine motor culture, and a small-scale mechanical
industry now invests heavily in advanced computer-controlled production
machines (computer numeric control, CNC). The learning practices at
the 800 m2 large training workshop, which is stuffed with old and new
mechanical equipment, are also constituted by these socio-material fields.
I analyze the workshop practices as simultaneously extensions (materi-
alizations) of the boys’ repair and peer group practices at home, local
manufacturing practices, but also practices of schooling, such as writing
and examination. A variety of place-making practices are occurring in the
workshop as groups of students inhabit the workshop differently, based
on their different interests, skills, and aspirations (Gjelstad 2015). Some
prefer spending their time chatting with friends and tinkering with their
motorbikes in the “moped corner”, while others are eager to learn how
to operate the advanced computer-controlled machines sponsored by the
local industry. The school workshop may then be conceptualized as “sev-
eral sites in one”, to cite Ulf Hannerz (2003). This is reminiscent of Anne
Marie Mol’s (2002) notion that reality is “more than one, but less than
many”, and I consider the school training workshop (and any mechanical
object) as a multiplicity of reality enacted in practice (see Bertelsen and
Bendixsen, Chap. 1).
Both vocational teachers and students at the school persistently accen-
tuate the difference between academic and vocational domains of knowl-
edge. What is the ontological status of this difference, and where is it
located?
Following Beth Hatt,
the artifacts of smartness within schools include grades, “papers” (diplo-

mas), labels (i.e. gifted or honors), standardized test scores, books, large
vocabulary, (…). The artifacts, acting as semiotic mediators, are what make
smartness appear “real” and as something tangible or biologically based
rather than socio-culturally produced. (Hatt 2007, 151; italics added)
School smartness is, then, as concrete, particular and unique as it is

abstract, general, and universal (cf. Verran 2001). Although often
performed as universal, abstract theory is also physical and artificial.
Following relational ontology, school smartness do not merely “appear”
real (as the citation above indicates), but is a specifically enacted real-
ity. The mechanical training workshop is filled with different kinds of

artifacts or things, such as hand tools, manuals, technical drawings,
motorbikes, robots, welding gears, overalls, protection boots, textbooks,
pencils, and much more that afford alternative forms of smartness. As
suggested above, I expand the understanding of the “mediating” quali-
ties of artifacts to account for the entanglements of things in “vibrant
matter” (Bennett 2010). Put differently, rather than considering the
workshop as stuffed with artifacts or material objects, I see the school
workshop as “an ecology of materials”, as a meshwork of things and per-
sons (Ingold 2012). The correspondence of sensuous bodies and frac-
turing metals at the welding workstation is one example. The strand of
ontological anthropology that Bertelsen and Bendixsen (Chap. 1) refer
to as “materiality approaches” may then help to overcome the limita-
tions of Levinson et al.’s (1996) cultural production model in account-
ing for the “education” of skilled persons.
Reviewing the “Cultural Production

of the Educated Person” Model
I have argued that a “culturalist” understanding of difference dominates

the anthropology of education. In this section, I examine more specifi-
cally some assumptions lying behind the comparative model developed by
Levinson et al. (1996), entitled the Cultural Production of the Educated
Person (hereafter, the CPoEP model). Expanding the anthropological
convention of distinguishing education from schooling, their compara-
tive model builds upon the premise that all cultures and social formations
develop,
some kind of training, and some set of criteria by which members can be
identified as more, or less, knowledgeable. Distinct societies, as well as eth-
nic groups and microcultures within those societies, elaborate the cultural
practices by which particular sets of skills, knowledges, and discourses come
to define the fully “educated” person. (Levinson et al. 1996, 2; italics added)
Inspired by Bourdieu (1984), they define a fully “knowledgeable” person as

a person endowed with maximum “cultural capital” (Levinson et al. 1996,
20–21). The title of the book has a deliberate double meaning as it refers
to the fact that “while the educated person is culturally produced in defi-
nite sites, the educated person also produces cultural forms” (Levinson et al.
164 L. GJELSTAD
1996, italics in original). These cultural practices moreover shape hopes,

desires, subjectivities, knowledge, and power relations that are effective far
beyond school buildings (Levinson et al. 1996, 14). Building on the broader
intellectual legacy of the Birmingham school of cultural studies (Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies, CCCS), they emphasize that:
Through the production of cultural forms, created within the structural

constraints of sites such as schools, subjectivities form and agency develops.
(Levinson et al. 1996, 14)
Even though Levinson and Holland to some extent are concerned

with specific sites and the mediating role of cultural forms, they do
not take into full consideration the materiality of learning environments
and their artifacts. To Ingold (2012), there is an ontological difference
between material objects (as analyzed by most material culture scholars)
and materiality. The cultural production model, in my view, operates
with rather abstract concepts of agency, and I argue that Ingold’s con-
cept of “correspondences” takes us some steps further.1 Ingold adopts
Deleuze and Guttari’s notion of “thinking from materials” as “the con-
sciousness […] of the matter-flow” (in Ingold 2013, 94). This is in
accordance with an ontology of movement and mobility that is gaining
prominence in anthropology (e.g., Farnell 2012) and, perhaps more
profoundly, in human geography (e.g., Merriman 2012). These non-
representational perspectives provide, in my view, a valuable comple-
ment to cultural production models that tend to reduce the intensity of
human engagements (the multisensorial, rhythms, energies, and affects)
with their environments.
Rather than analyzing knowledge practices of the school workshop
merely as alternative definitions of what it means to be an educated
person, I want to build an alternative ontology, starting with senses,
affects, material artifacts, spatial arrangements, that is, heterogeneous
and dynamic assemblages of persons and things. Reparation and main-
tenance practices, which are an important part of the TIP program, are
about interfering with the physical properties of materials, including the
perishability of things. The students learn to increase wear resistance
of metals by painting or lubricating, and they develop numerous other
ways of preventing strain, overload, and oxidization. In their “corre-
spondences” with materials, the mechanics students are wearing specially
crafted gloves, shoes, glasses, masks, and helmets to protect themselves
from heat, sparks, sharp edges, noise, weld flashes, and so on. Being
part of an “ecology of materials” (Ingold 2012), these technologies
extend students’ ordinary organic and physiological capacities to deal
with such material qualities and forces. Work gloves, smells of oil, the
click and clack of repair tools, and many other things participate in the
mattering of knowledge and persons. The material processes of welding,
for instance, things happening to the metal and the consciousness, may
moreover lead to a conceptualization of educational practices as events,
that is, as dynamic potentialities (Kapferer 2010). These material and
technological practices also transform the body and alter the students’
ways of moving their bodies (walking, talking, gesturing), thus becom-
ing techniques of the body, creating distinct styles and manners, also
because of the virtual capacities of artifacts to change people’s relations
to themselves and others. Artifacts may expand, transform, and restrict
imagination, desire, expectation, hope, and other kinds of agency/affect.
Putting on working clothes, then, enable students not only to exceed
physical constraints but also to change the way they relate imaginatively
and affectively to their environments.
The spatial arrangements and its diversity of learning resources (tools,
materials, drawings, persons) provide the mechanical school workshop
with some unique possibilities for vocational teachers to draw upon other
aspects of youths’ experiences and skills than those being activated in the
classroom (Gjelstad 2015). When the students, for instance, are working
at the manual turning lathe, an assignment from the engine factory Rolls
Royce (with drawings bearing their company logo) will have a more moti-
vating and imaginary force than a drawing made by the teacher for purely
pedagogical purposes (and where the part is manufactured for the garbage
bin). Teachers will typically help figure the learning process as “work”
by enthusiastically bringing stories from their own working life into the
scene. The students may embrace the role as an industrial mechanics or a
CNC operator, treat the problem as a “real” problem, interact differently
with the physical properties of tools and materials, and thus participate in
matter flows they would not otherwise have discovered. The drawings are
now perceived differently. In the process, they will take themselves more
seriously, and relate to their peers as colleagues. This case indicates the
significance of humans’ capacity for virtuality, to project aspects of their
environment forward and backward in time (Moore 2011). This process
not only is symbolic or imaginary but also involves a reassembling of ele-
ments and forms of “mattering”.
166 L. GJELSTAD
The Moped Corner

I will next describe the ways a group of students inhabited part of the
school workshop and transformed it into what teachers and fellow stu-
dents referred to as the “moped corner”. The boys physically build the
moped corner by driving their bikes into the workshop, gathering around
them, collecting appropriate hand tools, telling stories about the situation
where the breakdown of the vehicle occurred, discussing various solu-
tions to the problem, giving each other a helping hand, turning on the
music, start singing and dancing to it, planning the next racing tours, or
arguing about what’s a cool bike and what’s not. In the moped corner,
as elsewhere in the workshop, it is physicality, practical sense, freedom of
movement, and friendship that are appreciated. The motorbike corner can
be analyzed as a taskscape, and following Tim Ingold, I argue that the very
basis of sociality here lies in the persons’ mutual adaptation to each other’s
movements and the attention they give one another in a shared context
of practical action (Ingold 2000, 196). The boys’ engagements with their
bikes in the school workshop are entangled in their social, symbolic, affec-
tive, and material relations to the “same” vehicles in related sites (cf. Toren
1999, 111). The presence of the motorbike at school materializes some
particular kinaesthetic, haptic, visual, and aural sensibilities of racing (cf.
Merriman 2012). These embodied sensations and engagements are also
brought, along with their bikes, into the school workshop.
The practices at the moped corner take shape in relation to the avail-
ability of manuals and hand tools, supportive teachers, local roads where
they can test out their newly tubed machines, and so forth. The plea-
sure of being able to repair one’s bike, the pleasure of skillful handling
of tools, of being able to understand its underlying mechanisms, is also a
kind of “affect”. In the process, their desire for brand names (Metrakit,
Honda) and passion for repair work develop in relation to their personal
and occupational identities.2 As Long and Moore (2013) points out, soci-
alities, understood as relational matrices, are constantly transforming.
New technologies take sociality in new directions: The practices where
the boys train themselves as producers of repair and similar workshop
services also involves various consumer practices, including the ordering
of spare parts on web shops (e.g., www.speedoptions.no). They are also
posting pictures of their bikes on Facebook, uploading and download-
ing videos of racing trips on YouTube, watching instructional videos for
how to repair a broken part, or they discuss tinkering problems on the
“Mopedportalen” (http://www.mopedportalen.com/forum/) and simi-

lar virtual communities. The boys at the moped corner relate to old and
new popular youth cultures, which places them in a broader geography of
youth culture (cf. Skelton and Valentine 1998). Through their practices,
they come to inhabit a virtual world of racers, repair people (“mekkere”)
and tuned mopeds, with a rich technical vocabulary of carburetor, brakes,
gears, clutch, suspensions, spark plugs, cylinder heads, crankshafts, and so
forth. In addition, they customize their bikes by changing grips, mirrors,
and lights, modifying the frame, placing stickers on body parts, and so on.
This provides them also with a rich language for self-styling (Willis 2000),
in ways similar to music and clothing. Becoming familiar with a vocabulary
of popular motor culture is also a means to demonstrate technical, voca-
tional knowledge. Whereas dominant forms of schooling tend to disen-
tangle literacy and other knowledge practices from ongoing practices and
objectify them into “classes”, general knowledge, and so on, vocational
didactics often imply a re-entangling of writing and calculating into ongo-
ing bodily engagements, such as repair and racing.
These materializations suggest that it is not the tension between “the-
ory” and “practice” per se that is critical, but the relations between sed-
entary, mentalist, abstract, individualist labor/learning on the one hand
and practical, physical, bodily, sensuous, and desirous ones on the other.
This is also continuous with the distinction between relating to things
as “objects” versus as “extensions of human bodies” (Verran 2001, 75;
cf. Ingold 2012). Under some material conditions, these tensions gener-
ate alienation, resistance, and frustrations, whereas other circumstances
might generate productive overlaps and shaping new forms of relevance
and hope among school-weary youths.
Ethnography as Cultural Critique

and the Ontological Turn in Educational Studies
Pointing out such connections relates to a long tradition in the anthropol-

ogy of education, which has from its early beginning been concerned with
creating productive disjunctures between exotic and familiar forms of edu-
cational practice. Marcus and Fischer (1986, 157–159) refers to Mead’s
Coming of Age in Samoa as one of the first and certainly most influential
work using the method of “defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposi-
tion”. She wanted, literally, to denaturalize basic American assumptions
about the universal foundation of human development, including the
168 L. GJELSTAD
“natural rebelliousness of adolescence”. Mead’s work extended the larger

program of Franz Boas to prove the importance of culture vis-à-vis biol-
ogy in constituting human character (Howard 1984, 53).
Marcus and Fischer (1986), however, criticized Mead and other earlier
attempts of cultural critique for not being properly situated in real histori-
cal worlds of political economy, and for not taking the contradictions and
complexity of these worlds seriously. Rather than grounding the critique
of Western modernity in a Boasian anthropological legacy of describing
and separating broad, homogeneous “cultures”, Marcus and Fischer argue
that the power of ethnography as cultural critique resides in the fact that,
[S]ince there are always multiple sides and multiple expressions of possibili-
ties active in any situation, some accommodating, other resistant to dom-
inant cultural trends or interpretations, ethnography as cultural criticism
locates alternatives by unearthing these multiple possibilities as they exist in
reality. (Marcus and Fischer 1986, 116)
Levinson et al. (1996) was important in exactly developing a framework for

analyzing educational practices in contemporary complex societies. In their
CPoEP model, cultural practices are considered as ongoing and contested.
The ontological turn that has also influenced some recent theory-building
(regarding materiality, affect, body, and place) within the wider field of
educational research (Leander et al. 2010; Fenwick et al. 2011; Fenwick
and Landri 2012; Sørensen 2009; Mulcahy 2012; Postma 2012) may
inspire anthropologists to develop new possibilities of critique.
In an article in a special issue on “Materialities, Textures, and
Pedagogies” of the journal Pedagogy, Culture & Society, Dirk Postma
argues for a reconceptualization of critique as “a sociomaterial practice
which goes deeper than discursivity by developing an ontology of critique
(Mol 1999)” (Postma 2012, 139, italics added). He is skeptical about
the tendency to equate a critical approach in education with epistemol-
ogy, and will instead develop Barad’s thesis that knowing comes from a
direct material engagement with the world (Barad, in Postma 2012, 141).
According to Postma, “both humans and matter are actively involved,
through practices, in the world’s becoming” (Postma 2012, 142). Postma
also refers to Helen Verran’s (2001) study of Yoruba classrooms (Nigeria),
where indigenous and Western number systems faced a somewhat unset-
tled relationship. At some critical moments, though, the teacher would
facilitate a meeting between these different reals, where students could
relativize and master both of them. In this situation, the Yoruban teach-
ers and pupils enact a reality which was not imposed on them through
colonialism nor locks them in a romantic form of primordial knowledges
(Postma 2012, 150).
Vocational teachers allowing their otherwise disengaged students to
form projects of their own at the “moped corner” is an example of how
educational practices may take shape as a “material critique” (Postma
2012). I often observed teachers picking up students’ discontents and
resistances and transformed them into productive learning situations by
making “partial connections” between motor culture and mechanics, and
between “theory” and “practice”. Teachers were often looking for oppor-
tunities to build on students’ already acquired skills, identities, and moti-
vations. The teacher would typically wait until the students encountered a
problem in their self-initiated repair practice, let them figure out the things
themselves and thus discover the limits of their mastery, before stepping
into their ongoing practices with some relevant instruction. Teachers are
here building bridges, and creating routines that “translate” between dif-
ferent forms of knowledge (cf. Sørensen 2009, 189).
Estrid Sørensen (2009) and her book, The Materiality of Learning,
may exemplify an ANT-informed perspective on learning.3 In her view,
we should explore how humans are enacted in various socio-material
arrangements, rather than starting with a predefined notion of persons
as actors and things as passive objects. She assumes that different forms
of educational practice shape students’ thoughts into particular patterns
(Sørensen 2009, 192). Looking into the materiality of learning “makes
it possible to reimagine and rearrange educational practice” (Sørensen
2009). Then, we must recognize that a multiplicity of forms “exist” and
analyze how these forms are being performed (Sørensen 2009, 192). For
instance, she claims that knowledge “in the mind” does exist as far as
“there are socio-material practices (…) that perform such form of knowl-
edge” (Sørensen 2009, 192).
A limitation of Sørensen’s critical approach is the lack of a proper the-
ory of human subjectivity (cf. Navaro-Yashin 2009; Moore 2011). This
version of relational ontology, where human subjectivity is sometimes
considered as merely effects of shifting assemblages may, then, pose
some limitations to critical ethnographic understanding of d ifferences
in educational practices. Other strands of the ontological turn in edu-
cational studies, however, develop Deleuzian and other non-represen-
tational perspectives that may potentially radicalize anthropological
170 L. GJELSTAD
theories of educational practices, including Lave and Wenger’s under-

standing of learning as being shaped in situations where “agent, activity,
and the world mutually constitute one another” (Lave and Wenger 1991,
33). The ontological turn in educational studies is highly influenced by
human geography, including the notion of a “mobile ontology”, where
movement, affect, sensation, rhythm, vibration, energy, force, and much
more are brought into the analysis of human practices (cf. Merriman
2012, 2). These recent ontological shifts may also open up new pos-
sibilities for practicing a generative critique within educational studies.
Vocational educational practices with their encompassments of reciprocity,
bodily movement, vibrant matter, and sensuous knowledge are significant
in that they offer alternatives to individualist, rationalist, and objectified
forms of knowing.
The Automatic Machine and Sensuous Ways

of Knowing
Although mechanics is a field of expertise founded on Descartes and

Newton (Euclidian geometry and computer science is at the core of
automated machining), the mechanical school workshop is filled with
affects (pleasure of work and friendship, frustration, anxiety, boredom),
sensations (touch, smell, skilled vision, and hearing), and unpredictable
outcomes. Students and vocational teachers all emphasized the impor-
tance of being able to receive feedback in terms of sound (whether
cutting speed is too high or too low), vibration, smell (burned metal),
touch (surface roughness), and sight (color of metal chips) which are
not visible on the simulator program. Inspired by Ingold’s “ontology of
dwelling” (see Knudsen, Chap. 8) and his notion of knowing as move-
ment, as finding one’s way as one inhabits the world (Ingold 2013),
I explore and analyze the practices whereby students begin to feel at
home in places filled with screens, keys, software codes, and manuals. As
students build up their capacities to perform increasingly more complex
tasks, they are looking for a variety of artifacts (manuals, drawings and
program sheets from similar tasks, cutting tool specifications printed on
the package) and placing them in their immediate work environment,
thus building and rebuilding artificial realities. The assembled artifacts
then serve as “mediating devices” that makes the students able to calcu-
late, memorize, visualize, try out, and plan certain work practices, and
similar “higher mental functions” (Vygotsky 1978). In the process, both
outer and inner environments are shaped and modified. The introduc-
tion of computer-controlled machines, the writing of machine codes to
specify the movements of cutting tools, implies—to some degree—an
extension of the hegemony of writing, of phonocentrism, and logocen-
trism (Thrift and French 2002). The programming and running of these
machines nevertheless rely on a variety of sensory experiences, which
provide the skilled operator with feedback information concerning the
quality of tools and materials. Through skilled listening, the machinist
will modify feed and cutting speeds, and vibration may indicate improper
mounting of the work piece.
A decisive challenge of CNC machining is being able to “translate”
between different modes of a mechanical “entity”, primarily between
technical drawings, program codes, and the physical part itself. Sometimes
the students get a drawing and are asked to write a program specifying
every single movement of the cutting tool needed to produce it. They may
also start with a physical part in their hands and then figure out how to
produce an identical piece (i.e., to write a program). They should also be
able to visualize a three-dimensional object from a given list of machine
codes (a program sheet). It is quite fascinating to observe how a novice,
with a drawing on his table, starts to imagine how the cutting tool has
to move on a piece of metal in order to manufacture the part. It involves
a massive coordination of fingers, considerations and calculations, tools,
drawings, and program sheets.4 A beginner will have to hold the work
piece in his hand and then physically move the selected cutting tool on the
work piece. In the process, they will calculate measures on paper as well
as make sketches of possible tool paths, which then serve as templates (cf.
Keller and Keller 1996). As Ingold (2013) points out, although the draw-
ing is given, the actual design of the work process has to be constructed
piecemeal. It also shows that one cannot separate intellectual reasoning
from mechanical execution (Ingold 2013, 59). Like craftsmen and arti-
sans, the operators have to continually improvise solutions to problems
that they could not have anticipated (Ingold 2013, 48). It is more like
“practical geometry” informed by tactile and sensuous knowledge than
abstract theory (Ingold 2013, 51).
172 L. GJELSTAD
This actualizes Verran’s distinction between objects versus artifacts

as “extensions of the human body” (Verran 2001, 75). Machining is
entangled in everyday practices, and persons develop their distinct styles
and ways of practice depending on experience (cf. Verran 2001; Ingold
2013). The instructors at school were usually critical of students trying to
“memorize” abstract machine codes and mathematical formulas detached
from particular task situations. They are worried that the students will
lose flexibility. This means, I think, that they see practices of rote learn-
ing as a form of objectification rather than ways of knowing developing
with practical engagement. As mentioned above, vocational didactics in
the TIP program often involve re-entangling mechanical and mathemati-
cal reasoning into ongoing bodily and material engagements. Students’
active networking of resources at the CNC workstation exemplify how
materializations of educational practices relates to available tools, manuals,
machines, instructors, and so forth. On the one hand, advanced mechanic
students will have to learn to read drawings and manuals properly, to plan
the work process, write program sheets, and other operations entailing a
more abstract, procedural kind of knowledge. On the other hand, they
will have to re-entangle the “texts” into their practice, to establish a corre-
spondence between thinking, materials, and tools. This is the tension that
has to be bridged: to be able to situationally combine abstract and sensory
modes of knowing.
The instructor often emphasized to his students that there are several
ways of machining a part. After having offered a suggestion, he will typi-
cally add, “there are probably other solutions that are equally appropri-
ate”. Students themselves enter the workshop with very different skills
and competencies. Some are mostly interested in computer programming.
Others have developed a strong interest in machining proper, building
on a familiarity with manual turning and milling practices. Others have a
familiarity with mathematics, and may convert school math into machin-
ing problems. This situation makes advanced “machining” more than one.
There are partial connections to academic subjects, to popular tinkering
practices, to personal computer practices, and so forth. Different students
will develop quite different machining practices, by physically building up
particular assemblages of tools, manuals, types of assignment, program
sheets, and drawings.
A “Generative Critique” of Academic–Vocational

Divides
In describing the cases above, I wish to contribute to a further disruption
of a foundational ontology and a separation of world, representational
knowledge, and mind. Following Verran, this and similar cases may further
be analyzed as microworlds: “specific materially arranged times/places
where rituals, repeated routine performances, occur” (Verran 2001, 159).
It is within these kinds of sites that new productive relations between sen-
suous knowing and school smartness are being created. The multiplicity
of objects enacted through these practices has no pre-established bound-
aries. The stuff of the mechanical school workshop consists of accom-
plished objects, emerging in such microworlds. The process of identifying
and analyzing such generative sites is a central part of Verran’s critical
approach. To look into microworlds (Verran 2001, 148) is to pay atten-
tion to the generative and ordering nature of site.
In the technological program that is my empirical locus, the introduc-
tion of computer-controlled production machines (CNC) also creates new
“ontic tensions” (cf. Verran 2001, 2014a), primarily between digital pro-
gramming codes (and simulation of work processes) and the physicality
of materials, tools, and human reasoning. New production technologies
then radically transform the nature of skills and other aspects of person-
hood. The tensions between “theory” and “practice” are then reassem-
bled in a situation where the training program is expected to perform both
“world-class skills” and “social inclusion”. This tension participates in the
materialization of particular configurations of equality and hierarchy in
contemporary Norway.
The present ethnography shows the possibilities of workshop learning
in providing community and practice oriented pedagogies that can disrupt
the naturalization of representational knowledge that certainly takes place
in everyday schooling. During fieldwork, I was often struck by the extent
to which vocational teachers actively, and in very direct and physical ways,
facilitated learning spaces in which students could develop skills and val-
ues that were otherwise unrecognized by school institutions. Mechanics
instructors apparently preferred learning situations where students could
experience directly by themselves, engage with materials, feel the work
with their hands, and draw upon their already acquired interests and sen-
sibilities. This is knowledge that cannot be acquired by reading alone.
Vocational teachers often rely on other ontological and epistemological
174 L. GJELSTAD
assumptions than academic subject teachers. Both mechanical students and

teachers are however at risk of being locked into a defensive, closed world
of masculinity and manual forms of practice and identity (cf. Willis 2000).
Rather than describing vocational and academic knowledge traditions as
worlds apart, I argue that ethnographies of vocational education should
develop a form of “infra-critique” by looking for partial connections and
productive overlaps between distinct ways of knowing (or “logics”).
As Verran (2014a) underscores, ethnographic work, while placing itself
in such zones of ontic tensions, can open up new possibilities of critique.
Verran elaborates:
Staying in that place of tension […], the ethnographer has a chance of dis-
criminating divergences and convergences: generative, or exploitative, or
unfruitful doings of difference. […]. [E]thnography located in that imag-
ined zone of ontological tension can and should engage a form of infra-
critique, gesturing at possible generative tensions, while explicitly refusing
others. (Verran 2014a)
Verran further conceptualizes the practice of infra-critique as a “decompos-

ing” (2001, 47), which may entail an effort to or “dissolve the elaborate
boundaries that foundationism demands—the separations of world, repre-
sentational knowledge, and minds that know worlds through the represen-
tations”. Along similar lines, Fenwick and Edwards (2011, 722) points out
that classroom education entails a performance of learning as representing
knowledge “out there” to the mind “in here”. In my case, intra-critique
may involve turning a dominant theory–practice polarization inside-out.
Following Strathern, this can only be achieved by looking at both theory
and practice as activities situated in particular historical and political cir-
cumstances. The ontological politics involved here is to challenge the deg-
radation of those forms of knowledge that appear as “other” to scientific
knowledge (cf. Verran 2001, 124), and to show that alternative forms are
distinct but equivalent to dominant forms of knowledge in schools (Verran
2001, 125). This is relevant to the problem of recognizing different forms
of knowledge as equal in egalitarian welfare societies (Lidén 2001).
The “grounded aesthetics” (Willis 2000) of the moped boys’ tinker-
ing practices may be analyzed as an escape from an abstract, instrumen-
tal, algorithmic, and hyperefficient world of advanced machines. Their
encounters with CNC machines certainly come to frame the practices at
the “moped corner” as “not advanced”, that is, as inefficient, incompe-
tent, unproductive, useless, and passé.
Vocational students’ engagements with both popular youth culture and

a workshop culture reveal a (more or less articulate) critique of the ways
in which they are ordinarily treated as “pupils” at school. Through follow-
ing the actual practices and critical events through which vocational youth
transform spaces of learning into their own places, the anthropologist may
discover a kind of critique immanent in these practices (Willis 2000). The
boys’ motor practices may also be seen as a kind of resistance against the
increasing automatization of mechanical work processes.
Developing the attractive qualities of vocational education, especially
opportunities for practical, bodily, sensual, and desirous endeavors, as an
alternative to academic diplomas (Jørgensen 2012, 11) is indeed onto-
logical politics. The production of skilled persons, including the formation
of manual–gestural skills, is not merely about filling bodies with cultural
capital.
Conclusion
It is widely recognized that schooling is vital in disciplining young people
into text-oriented modes of apprehending the world. In this chapter, I
have argued that the “culturalist” approaches that have dominated the
anthropology of education, from Margaret Mead to recent versions of
Cultural Studies, actually contribute to a naturalization of representational
understandings of knowledge and personhood. This is for instance vis-
ible in the highly influential anthology, The Cultural Production of the
Educated Person (Levinson et al. 1996). Although this work is informed
by a theory of practice approach, their cultural production model still
operates with a rather textual concept of culture, production, and human
subjectivity. Analytically, it deals with difference in terms of how “distinct
societies (…) define the fully ‘educated’ person” (ibid., 2). I consider that
vocational educational practices provide an apt starting point for exploring
alternative ontologies of knowledge and learning, given its broad range of
assemblages of materials, tools, skills, and sensory engagements.
Rather than analyzing knowledge practices of the school workshop
merely as alternative “definitions” of what it means to be an “educated
person”, I want to build an alternative ontology, starting with senses,
affects, material artifacts, spatial arrangements, that is, heterogeneous
and dynamic assemblages of persons and things. Reparation and main-
tenance practices, which are important parts of technological vocational
training programs, are about interfering with the physical properties of
176 L. GJELSTAD
materials. In their “correspondences” (Ingold 2013) with materials, the

mechanics students are wearing gloves, masks, and helmets to protect
themselves from heat, sharp edges, noise, and so on. Being part of an
“ecology of materials” (Ingold 2012), these technologies extend students’
ordinary physiological capacities to deal with such material qualities and
forces. Work gloves, overalls, hand tools, and many other things partici-
pate in the mattering of knowledge, skills, and persons.
In the mechanical school workshop described here, the introduction
of advanced computer-controlled production machines (CNC) also cre-
ates new “ontic tensions” (cf. Verran 2014a), primarily between digital
programming codes and the physicality of materials, tools, and human
reasoning. New production technologies then radically transform the
nature of skills and other aspects of personhood. The materiality of the
workshop, including its spatial formations, affords ways of learning and
sociality that cannot be reduced to merely a “practicing of theory”. Rather
than describing vocational and academic domains of knowledge as worlds
apart, I argue that ethnographies of vocational education should develop a
form of “infra-critique” (Verran 2014a) by looking for partial connections
and productive overlaps between such realms.
Acknowledgments Thanks to the participants of the “Ontologizing difference”

workshop at the University of Bergen, January 2015, and to Synnøve Bendixsen for
valuable comments to the first draft of this chapter.
Notes
1. This distinction is also central to my critique of research on vocational edu-
cation for not fully recognizing the materiality, the generativity, and physi-
cality of vocational knowledge practices.
2. Several of the boys joked that they learned tinkering with cars (“mekke
Volvo”), along with their fathers, before they learned to walk.
3. ANT refers to Action Network Theory (cf. Latour 2005).
4. Compare with Verran’s account of tallying as entangled in bodily and social
movements.
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CHAPTER 8
Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold’s

“Ontology of Dwelling” Revisited
Are John Knudsen
Introduction1
One of the problems that confront anthropologists is the question of cul-
tural relativism—how do we know not only other minds but also other
worldviews? I am in this chapter in particular trying to focus on one aspect
of this problem, namely how persons come to perceive the natural envi-
ronment differently and to what degree it is possible to gain information
about the life world of others. In the early twentieth century, the theory of
cultural relativism replaced evolutionism as the dominant intellectual force
and marked the beginning of modern social anthropology. Since Franz
Boas, the central idea in anthropology has been that it is possible to gen-
eralize across cultures and relativism is “basically a doctrine in the theory
of knowledge: it asserts that there is no unique truth, no unique objective
reality” (Gellner 1982, 183). Recently, there have been explicit attempts
to revise what could be termed the relativist paradigm in the study of envi-
ronmental perceptions and the privileging of a Western ontology in the
depiction of the life world of others (Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1).
A.J. Knudsen (*)

Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_8
182 A.J. KNUDSEN
The ontological turn pursues a programmatic approach to radical alterity

that entails “distinct and incommensurable worldviews” (Vigh and Sausdal
2014, 50). To gloss one of its key features, it turns the traditional anthro-
pology problem of cultural translation on its head, arguing that there is
not a “multiplicity of cultural ways of apprehending a ‘unified nature’ …
[but] … a unified subjectivity producing a multiplicity of natures” each
representing singular worlds and worldviews (Hage 2012, 298). The tra-
ditional anthropological project of cultural translation hence becomes
untenable, as does indeed ethnography’s claim to represent other world-
views. This has led to criticism that the ontological turn is a post-humanist
endeavor that promotes apolitical theorizing and reduces anthropology to
a myopic exercise in search of pure theory (Vigh and Sausdal 2014, 62; see
Hage 2012, for a diverging view).
Tim Ingold has over the past decades emerged as perhaps the most
influential theoretician of man–environment relations. His work can be
considered a theoretical middle ground in support of the ontological
turn’s dismissal of cultured worldviews, but argues that the engagement
with the environment renders worldviews mutually intelligible. Ingold’s
theory of practical engagement, the ontology of dwelling, has developed
over several decades starting from key articles (1992, 1993, 1995, 1996a,
b, c), later reissued and refined in anthologies (Janowski and Ingold
2012), collected works (Ingold 2011a), and monographs (Ingold 2013).
The ontology of dwelling or simply the dwelling perspective (Ingold
2011a, 153) combines phenomenology with ecological psychology. Taken
together, Ingold postulates that bodily engagement with the world (dwell-
ing) makes worldviews comprehensible through direct perception. This
has two important implications: the rejection of the Cartesian mind–body
dualism and the nature–culture divide that underpins cognitive science.
Ingold’s work in this sense prefigures the ontological turn’s rejection of
this duality and “the ways in which humans engage with the world” (Kohn
2015, 313). Ingold’s work is fundamentally about this engagement, in
particular as it relates to the specific aspect of engaging with nature’s many
forms and manifestations. The work of Ingold is therefore of special inter-
est for examining key tenets of the ontological turn’s claim to singular
worlds and worldviews.
In order to contextualize Ingold’s work, I first give a short histori-
cal introduction to the problem of how to understand perceptions of
the environment in anthropology, and then outline the constitutive ele-
ments of Ingold’s alternative, the dwelling perspective. Finally, I p resent
BEYOND CULTURAL RELATIVISM? TIM INGOLD’S “ONTOLOGY OF DWELLING”... 183
Ingold’s attempt to overcome the realist versus relativist positions by

applying his concept “temporality of the landscape” (Ingold 2011b) to
my ethnographic material from Palas, a remote North Pakistan valley
(Knudsen 2009). Palas is an agro-pastoral society with endemic conflict
between persons and kin groups over all forms of landed property. Why
are the villagers willing to kill or be killed in disputes over minute fields
and remote forests? In order to understand why, I needed to grasp not
only what land signified but also what it meant. Tim Ingold’s work is cru-
cial in this respect, as it entails historical attachment, sociality, and bodily
engagement with the land in a way that makes it not only attainable but
also comprehensible. To this end, I argue that Ingold’s work represents
an alternative to the ontological turn’s claim to singular worldviews and
offers a theoretical grounding for appreciating the mutuality of social and
natural worlds and worldviews.
The Perceived Environment?

The idea that humans perceive landscapes differently has been a mainstay
of anthropology since its foundation as an academic discipline. Going back
to Malinowski, anthropologists have sought to “grasp the native’s point
of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world” (1922, 25).
The understanding that we perceive the world differently, what one might
call perceptional relativism (Chapman 1985, 223), argues that culture is
a grid that either colors (weak) or determines (strong) the perception of
nature, what in everyday language is more often called the environment. If
we provisionally accept that the way we perceive the environment is condi-
tioned by culture then, fundamentally, our understanding must be rooted
in our conceptualization of the world. In other words, it is related to lan-
guage as in Saussure’s distinction between la langue and parole. In order to
study the variation in how the environment is constituted, anthropological
inquiry first turned to linguistics and ethno-semantics (cf. the distinction
between phoneme and phonetics was used by Marvin Harris to coin the
terms emic and etic), later to systems of classification that became known
as ethnoscience, subsequently glossed as indigenous knowledge. The goal
of ethnoscience was to use linguistics as a tool for understanding folk tax-
onomies of the environment as perceived by the users of that environment.
One of the earliest examples of this approach is Harold Conklin’s (1969)
[1954] study of Hanunóo swidden cultivators in Mindaro (Philippines).
Conklin’s study showed that people’s actions were not to a large degree
184 A.J. KNUDSEN
structured by their system of classification. Moreover, while the inventory

of native terms underlined the importance the Hanunóo placed on par-
ticular cultigens and the extent of their cultural knowledge, classification
did not in a simple and straightforward way structure their use of the envi-
ronment. An early attempt to advance the study of environmental percep-
tion was Harold Brookfield’s article “On the Environment as Perceived”
(1969). In accordance with the idea of perceptual relativism, Brookfield
stressed the importance of recognizing that it is the perceived, and not
real, environment that guides peoples’ actions. However, Brookfield was
aware of the methodological problems involved, and the fact that the per-
ceived environment is “complex, monistic, distorted and discontinuous,
unstable and full of irrelevances” (Brookfield 1969, 74). The interest in
the perceived environment was strongly influenced by ethnoscience, but
at the time of Brookfield’s article, the theoretical foci had shifted from
linguistics and classification to cognition and behavior. Nor was it longer
taken for granted that behavior could be derived from classification as a
cultural grammar. As Brookfield admits, with reference to his own work
on land use among the Chimbu (Papua New Guinea), it was proximity
to their settlement, not intrinsic land quality inscribed as indigenous soil
classifications that decided the intensity of land use (Brookfield 1969, 71).
In the 1960s, the study of the perceived environment was strongly influ-
enced by the rising prominence of structuralism, which moved the study
of the environment in a cognitivist direction. In The Savage Mind (1966,
268), Lévi-Strauss abandoned Lévy-Bruhl’s distinction between pre-logic
and logic mentality arguing that “the savage mind is logical in the same
sense and fashion as ours”. In its place, Lévi-Strauss formulated an objecti-
fied cultural grammar that, he claimed, is universally applicable to all human
thinking (Schweder 1984, 59). As a way to approach the world of others the
interest now turned to cultural categories and cognition (Tambiah 1969)
and, especially, taxonomic anomalies (Douglas 1966). The interest in anom-
alies, from the point of the Western observer, can be traced to two sources:
first, the possibility of mapping cognitive models different from ours and
second, that economic utility was no longer found to be an adequate mea-
sure of ritual and symbolic importance. One of the better-known examples
of this approach is Ralph Bulmer’s (1967) classic essay on animal classifica-
tion among the Karam in the New Guinea highlands: why do the Karam
not classify the cassowary—a large ostrich-like bird—in the taxon yakt that
comprises all birds and bats known to the Karam, but group the cassowary
in the taxon kobtiy? In other words, “Why, to the Karam, is the cassowary
not a bird?” (Bulmer 1967, 5). The analysis is clearly influenced by structur-
alism, but Bulmer moves beyond the confines of structuralism “not so much
[because it is] wrong as inadequate for indicating the significance which
certain of these animals have in Karam thought” (Bulmer 1967, 9). Though
this work is widely regarded as an exemplary study, Bulmer’s distinction
between a natural and cultural classification is unsatisfactory. Bulmer claims
that “At the upper level of Karam taxonomy, however, objective biological
facts no longer dominate the scene … […]. … This is the level at which
culture takes over and determines the selection of taxonomically significant
characters” (Bulmer 1967, 6).
As Barnes has noted, this means that to “the extent that Karam tax-
onomy corresponds to ours it is intelligible by reference to nature, and
to the extent it does not it is intelligible by reference to culture” (1984,
196). Indeed, the taxonomy based on both the objective biological cri-
teria and the cultural elaboration of higher-order taxa (such as kobtiy) are
cultural theories of how the world is constituted.2 Bulmer privileges our
own (Western) system of classification, and only from the point of the
Western observer is the classification of the cassowary an anomaly. The
reason for this can be traced to the Cartesian division between nature and
culture, and the primacy of the Western ontology, which, it is now argued,
has impeded the understanding of other forms of cultural knowledge.
Cultural Relativism
The Western separation of nature from culture is a dualism often attrib-
uted to Descartes and the enlightenment (Bruun and Kalland 1995).3 In
Descartes’ cosmology, there was a rigid separation of the ideal (Res cogitans)
and the material world (Res extensa) (Willis 1990, 247). This is reflected in
the two counterpoints in an anthropological understanding of the concept
of nature: nature as an objective reality (materialism) or a category that
is meaningful only in relation to culture (idealism) (Hastrup 1989, 16).
According to the latter definition, it follows that how we perceive of the
natural environment to a large extent is dependent on the cultural frame-
work through which we filter it. The extreme relativist position that not
only are cultural universes different but mutually unintelligible was formu-
lated by the American linguist-cum-anthropologist Edward Sapir and his
former student, Benjamin L. Whorf (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). On the
basis of Whorf’s fieldwork among Hopi Indians, Sapir argued that “the
worlds in which different societies live are different worlds and not merely
186 A.J. KNUDSEN
the same world with different labels attached” (Sapir 1929). This position
was later modified by Whorf (1956, in Lukes 1982), but still retained
the essential claim that worldviews are incommensurable, a position now
advanced by radical ontologists (Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). If we
provisionally accept that other people have alternative ways of understand-
ing their environment, how do we conceptualize this difference? The con-
ventional approach to this problem was that we all possess or hold models
of how the world ideally is and how it is in reality (whether we all interpret
or scrutinize these models is a different question), a distinction variously
cast as operational and representational models (Holy and Stuchlik 1981),
local and universal models (Gudeman 1986, 28ff.), or cognized and oper-
ational models (Rappaport 1968, 337).
In the early 1990s, Tim Ingold published the first in a series of essays
dealing with the perception of the environment, following on from ideas
first raised in his monograph The Appropriation of Nature (1986). From
the start, he rejected the dichotomy implied in these models, arguing that
the environment cannot be separately cognized—there is no detached or
disengaged vantage point (Ingold 1992, 48). Ingold (1993) relates this to
the problem of how we gain information about our life world, that is, the
link between perception and cognition. Opposed to Brookfield’s approach
in the “Environment as Perceived”, Ingold argues that “culture is not a
framework for perceiving the world, but for interpreting it” (1992, 53).
He rejects the idealist or cognitivist view that “persons can neither know
nor act upon their environments directly, but only indirectly through the
medium of cultural representations” (Ingold 1992, 40). The two most
important theoretical influences in Ingold’s work come from the philoso-
pher and semiotician Jacob von Uexküll, especially his concept of Umwelt,
“the world as constituted within the specific life activity of the animal”
(Ingold 1995, 62), and the ecological psychologist Gibson’s concept of
affordances, “what the environment offers the animal, what it provides or
furnishes” (1979, 127). Such affordances, maintains Gibson, are immedi-
ately available to the observer through direct perception. Taken together,
Gibson and Uexküll provide the basis for rejecting the conventional
idea that cultural categories are learnt through a process of encultura-
tion. Indeed, this assumption is tautological, claims Ingold, because if we
assume that internalizing culture is a learning process, it follows logically
that this can only be accomplished if the actor has already internalized
culture and cultural categories. The only way to escape this tautology is to
postulate that we gain a direct perception of the environment by actively
engaging with the world. Direct perception, hence, challenges the notion
that culture structures the perception of the environment and leads Ingold
to abandon the nature–culture and mind–body dualisms.
The Nature–Culture Dualism

As already described, the conventional or cognitivist assumption is that
culture informs our perception of nature. This means, argues Ingold
(1996b, 118), that we need to separate “really natural nature”, the object
of study for natural science, and “culturally perceived nature”, the object
of study for social anthropology. This, however, mandates that we intro-
duce two types of culture: real culture and our own conception of it. Thus,
not only is nature a cultural construct, so is culture. This paradox can
only be solved, Ingold claims, by abandoning the idea that culture struc-
tures environmental perception and adopt the notion of direct perception
through engagement.
This leads us to Ingold’s concern with the ethnographic practice, where
the conventional mind–body dualism imagines man as half in nature and
half in culture (Ingold 1993). This view is perpetuated despite the fact that
a number of people neither distinguish culture from nature nor entertain
a Western mind–body dualism (Strathern 1980). In many cases, neither
is the concept nature a basic category nor are there any concepts that are
directly comparable to the Western concept of nature (Ellen 1996, 118).
Thus, Ingold wants us to abolish the duality both because it hinders an
adequate depiction of indigenous practice, and underpins the idea that cul-
ture is a framework for perceiving nature. The antidote to the disembed-
ding caused by the nature–culture and mind–body dualisms Ingold finds in
the dwelling perspective (1995, 59), a key concept for Ingold and one that
bridges the different parts of his argument. The term dwelling Ingold has
adopted from Heidegger’s phenomenology, especially the seminal essay
“Building Dwelling Thinking” written in 1971 (Ingold 1995, 75). The
concept of dwelling, as used by Heidegger and Ingold, reverses the com-
mon assumption that building precedes dwelling. In Ingolds’ use of the
term, dwelling means taking up a view in the world, and second, appreciat-
ing what the world looks like from this place (building). In order for this
to be possible, however, the world must be unbounded and continuous.
Ingold’s concept of continuous worlds underpins his critique of cultural
relativism and rationality, a debate he dismisses as futile (1993, 225). His
main analytical point is that what is conventionally construed astranslation is
188 A.J. KNUDSEN
actually an act of inversion. Inversion as the process whereby the detached

Western observer extracts or decontextualizes or, perhaps better, recon-
textualizes indigenous knowledge or discourse which is filtered through a
Western ontology and then inverted or deflected back again as the picture of
this culture. The process of inversion replaces views in the world with views of
the world and from this position, it follows that different views of the world
are the result of a variety of cognitive models (Ingold 1993, 224). “It is the
logic of inversion”, Ingold argues, “[that] has set the terms for the never-
ending and singularly futile epistemological debate, between the advocates
of rationality and relativism” (Ingold 1993, 225).
The way to avoid this distortion is to assume that every position is per-
spectival and that the world is a “continuous and unbounded landscape”
(Ingold 1993, 226). Rather than thinking in terms of discrete cultures,
Ingold envisages a continuous world where people take up views in the
world and instead of being separate worlds it is “the same world viewed
from another vantage point within it” (Ingold 1993, 226). The notion
of continuous worlds therefore removes the foundation of the relativist
versus realist positions and, by implication, resolves the problem of trans-
lation that is created by the process of inversion. Translation therefore is
an artificial reconstitution of a divide created by inversion (Ingold 1993,
230). Replacing inversion with the idea of continuous worlds therefore
removes the problem of cross-cultural translation. Implicitly, this is also
a critique of the language-centered epistemology that has dominated
anthropology for half a century (Eriksen 1992, 27).
Text, Context, and Contextualism

An example of this privileging of language and classification is the philoso-
pher Barry Barnes’ (1984) claim that learning to conceptualize the world
can be envisaged as a Hesse net (named after the philosopher Mary Hesse),
and is characterized by the twin processes of ostension and generalization.
Ostension is the process whereby an actor learns a new term by repeatedly
being shown the image and the accompanying term such as “this is a bird”.
Generalization is the process where the new term bird is qualified with state-
ments such as all birds can fly, birds have feathers, and requires knowledge
of all the sub-class terms such as goose, duck, swan, and so on. Full compe-
tence, hence, requires a delineation vis-à-vis all the other terms in the class.
Thus, taking up a view in the world is similar to learning a language and tan-
tamount to gain competency or fluency in a pre-defined classificatory system.
Ingold’s work is in direct opposition to this textual approach and a

rejection of hermeneutics’ separation of text and context (Strathern
1987). Since Ingold rejects the argument that culture is a framework for
taking up a view in the world, this can be seen both as a denial of the
text–context dichotomy and the problem of translation that is implicit to
hermeneutics (as mentioned earlier, Ingold argues that translation is an
artifact of the logic of inversion). Implicitly, we must assume that Ingold
rejects the methodological problem of understanding other minds, what
Giddens labels “double hermeneutics” (1989, 284). Ingold’s alternative
involves situating social life in the act of acting, that is, as enskilment or
engagement (1995, 58), a view he grounds in the phenomenology of
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.
The way Ingold uses the term, context is closely related to praxis theory
and its negation of the separation of action and meaning (Bourdieu 1990).
Thus, it is argued that people’s relation to nature cannot be lifted out of its
context (disembedding) because it is partly this context.4 Ingold’s theoretical
program therefore underpins the contextualist approach (Hornborg 1996,
53) which situates ecology and culture within a common framework; monism
as opposed to dualism. This monist project was anticipated by Bateson’s con-
cept of mind, and his insistence on the unity of mind and nature (1979),
but also to studies which questioned the universalism of the nature–culture
dichotomy (Strathern 1980). The contextualist position does, however, raise
a host of methodological (and epistemological) problems, such as if a large
part of the environmental knowledge and perception is embodied, contex-
tual and tacit, how do we describe and analyze it? Ingold is aware of this
problem and in later works introduce Bourdieu’s concept of bodily hexis
to account for nonverbal, bodily engagement with a particular environment
(1990, 39). Still, the question remains, to what degree is it possible to know
not only other minds but also other intentional worlds?
Relativism and Perspectivism
The philosopher Brian Fay (1996, 77) makes a distinction between epis-
temological relativism and ontological relativism. The former asserts that
our experiences are shaped or colored by and can only be judged from
within a particular conceptual scheme. Ontological relativism, on the
other hand, takes this argument a step further by asserting that by inhabit-
ing different conceptual schemes, people not only think or experience the
world differently, they actually live in different worlds (Fay 1996, 80).
190 A.J. KNUDSEN
Even in its weaker epistemological sense, Fay claims, relativism leads to

separatism. That is, we end up with the result that cultures, as intentional
worlds, are mutually unintelligible as claimed by the ontological turn. In
order to salvage the relativist position Fay suggests some modifications
to the relativist stance: (a) difference requires a background of similarity,
(b) competing paradigms must be intertranslatable, and (c) our ideas do
not constitute our world (as ontological relativism claims). The alternative
position is what Fay calls perspectivism; the view that all knowledge is situ-
ated and perspectival but not mutually unintelligible, hence differs mark-
edly from Viveiros de Castro’s use of the term (Bertelsen and Bendixsen,
Chap. 1). Ingold objects to both versions of perspectivism (realism/ratio-
nality vs. relativism), and by arguing for a continuous world, he claims not
only to have rephrased the problem of other worlds but having resolved it.
Take for example the way in which Fay poses the question: “Do People in
Different Cultures Live in Different Worlds?” This presupposes that cul-
tures are discrete or discontinuous and worlds or worldviews are bounded
and culture specific. None of the two apply, claims Ingold.
One of the problems with the extreme relativist position was its failure
to grasp that in order for differences to be comprehensible, something
must be shared. Moreover, the extreme relativist position was difficult to
maintain because it undermined the whole enterprise of anthropological
inquiry.5 In order to sidestep this problem, the alternative was to assume
that this difference is idiomatic, that it is rooted in the characteristics of a
given language and express similar relations between units. For example,
Barth mentions that the Baktaman horticulturalists (Papua New Guinea)
put uprooted weeds around their plants because they believe “taro likes
the smell of rotting vegetation” (1987, 68). Barth interprets this as an
idiomatic statement that “seems an adequate way to depict a certain
beneficial agronomical technique” (ibid.). However, Barth sidesteps the
problem of ontological relativism and instead advocates a praxis approach,
that is, to see such statements embedded in peoples’ practice. To clarify,
Barth, as I understand him, argues that put in its appropriate context the
Baktaman share a conception of ecology comparable to ours. The problem
with this solution is that it may lead to a reification of local knowledge in
order to make it comparable to Western science (Hviding 1996a). Carrier
argues that Ponam islanders’ (New Guinea) notions about species ecol-
ogy differ significantly from Western ecological science and “saw their
environment in a way fundamentally different from that of Westerners
and to different effect” (1987, 155). Presenting Ponam knowledge as
essentially equivalent to Western science is therefore exactly an example

of the re-contextualization Ingold finds is typical of inversion. Ingold’s
work is therefore a critique of the ecosystem approach in human ecology,
which despite rejecting the division of culture and environment as separate
spheres, retained the primacy of a Western ontology (Ellen 1982, 2006).6
Classification, History, and Cognition

It is important to acknowledge that the primacy of a Western ontology
has always been the point of departure for social anthropology and the
lens through which we have seen others. What we tend to forget is that
our own conceptualization of the natural world has changed through-
out history. Classification is certainly not unique to traditional or tribal
societies, yet classification in modern or Western societies has received
much less attention (but see, Leach 1964; Bouquet 1995). Classification
is also historically contingent and not necessarily fixed once and for all.
Our own system of classification is a product of European history, and
to a great extent, builds on ideas developed during the enlightenment,
ideas which to us now seem eminently natural, right, and appropriate. As
Löfgren (1985, 190) has showed, animal categories changed with the rise
of an urban bourgeoisie during the seventeenth century. During the eigh-
teenth century, a strictly formal or scientific classification system took hold
with the publication of Carl Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae (1735). With the
entrenchment of the Linnaean system of classification in Western science,
how can we escape its dominant position?
Ingold argues that we learn to attend to the world by a process “akin to
the practice of a craft” (1993, 221).7 In addition to negate the primacy of
classification for perception, Ingold criticizes what he calls orthodox culture
theory for its “obsessive concern with classification systems” (1992, 47). He
argues that classification is not a prerequisite for understanding the various
uses of material objects: a screwdriver can be used as a lever or a makeshift
whisker regardless of how it is classified; the point is that we recognize the
multiple uses of its form: long, pointed, graspable object. Taking Gibson’s
(1979) concept of affordances as point of departure, the multiple uses of an
object will be apparent to the user without prior classification.
Ingold argues that direct perception entails “processes of actively and
intentionally attending to the world, of continually adjusting the receptor
organs so as to pick up, from the modulations of the sensory array, infor-
mation specifying significant features of the environment” (1993, 220).
192 A.J. KNUDSEN
The key term here is significant, but how does one know what is significant
and how do people agree that some features are more important than oth-
ers? Moreover, if perceptual difference (i.e., life-worlds) can no longer be
attributed to cultural difference, why do people living in similar environ-
ments perceive them in different ways? The reason why similar environ-
ments are perceived differently is because people’s modes of engagement
with those environments are different. In Ingold’s work, this is linked to
the idea of personhood in the works of the philosopher G.H. Mead. Mead
argued that it is exactly because we are continually engaged in one social
world of relationships that we are able to differentiate ourselves from one
another (Ingold 1993, 227). The counterintuitive argument of Mead and
Ingold is therefore that it is exactly because we live in a continuous world
that both persons and landscapes differ:
If people from different backgrounds orient themselves in different ways,

this is not because they are interpreting the same sensory experience in
terms of alternative cultural models or cognitive schemata, but because, due
to their previous bodily training, their senses are differentially attuned to the
environment. (Ingold 1996a, 105)
Ingold (1991, 373ff.) sees human sociality as forming a topological

field where social relations develop over time, hence both sociality and
engagement are inherently processual and not only unfold but enfold
through time as actors engage with other persons and the environment
and thus are “becoming persons” (see also Ingold 1996c, 1998). This
also ties in with how to define the environment and the question of what
the environment is; its defining features, limits, and boundaries and espe-
cially, its relation to us. In his discussion of the The Idea of Environment,
Cooper (1992, 169) argues that “an environment as a milieu is not
something a creature is merely in, but something it has”. Ingold pursues
the same idea when he argues that: “It may seem obvious, but is often
forgotten, that an environment can only be defined relative to a being or
beings whose environment it is” (1986, 2). Like Ingold, Cooper takes
his clue from phenomenology and claims that the relation between an
animal and the environment is intentional in the sense that it is “a field
of meaning or significance” (Ingold 1986, 169). The environment is
often considered having a sheer physical substance, but Ingold sees it
as relational, taking on meaning in relation to the beings, humans, or
animals that inhabit it. Taking this as the starting point, it means that the
environment, like the landscape, is continually changing, and there is no
longer any basis for distinguishing the two, they are not disjointed but
continuous (1998, 36).
Continuous But Different Worlds?

The two key concepts in Ingold’s argument are dwelling and continuous
worlds. The concepts presuppose one another; continuous worlds are con-
tingent upon dwelling and vice versa. In what ways are the two related?
In order to argue for continuous worlds, this presupposes something that
is shared. There must be something extending through these worlds;
the question is, what is it? Ingold’s starting point is that conventional
approaches or explanations presume that culture informs our percep-
tion of nature (constructivism). Constructivism springs from cognitivism
which privileges the processes whereby sensory data are rendered mean-
ingful by being filtered through some kind of cultural grid (i.e., classifica-
tion). It follows, logically, that we perceive of the natural world differently
because we have different cultures. If Ingold is right that we perceive of
the world as affordances through a process of direct perception, this has
removed the culture argument. The reason why we still, without culture,
come to perceive, or to use the term Ingold prefers, interpret, the world
so strikingly different is due to our capacity to dwell. As Ingold describes
dwelling, it is a singular and undifferentiated faculty accorded to every
human being. Second, given the premise that nature gives itself so to
speak through affordances which are directly and immediately available,
and the world is continuous—why is that we still come to take up differ-
ent views or perspectives of the world? Ingold’s answer is that it is related
to the character of place and the “vista[s] it affords to someone standing
there” (1993, 226).8
Ingold has pursued the dwelling perspective by focusing on the tempo-
rality of the landscape, that is, understanding the landscape as formed by
social and natural process evolving through time (2011b, 198). More spe-
cifically, he argues that the temporality of the landscape merges the twin
aspects of taskscape and landscape. The former Ingold defines as the aural
processes that inscribe themselves on the visual landscape. The landscape
therefore is neither land, nor nature or space (2011b, 190ff.). The two are
fused by their temporality, which neither chronology nor history, makes
the landscape an embodiment of the taskscape. To illustrate this argu-
ment he applies this understanding to the medieval artist Pieter Bruegel’s
painting The Harvesters (1565). Bruegel’s masterpiece shows a hilly rural
194 A.J. KNUDSEN
landscape of farms, fields and forests during the autumn wheat harvest and
Ingold analyze it, not as a work of art, but as if the reader was “set down
in the very landscape depicted” (Ingold 2011b, 202).
The Temporality of the Landscape
Taking my que from Ingold’s mode of analysis above, I would like to illustrate
how the temporality of the landscape can be envisaged by imaging ourselves
present during a misty summer evening in the remote Palas valley, one of the
largest of the Kohistani valleys (Knudsen 2009). Deep below in the valley
floor, the fast-flowing river is almost invisible, and can only be recognized by
the rumbling sound as it flows toward its confluence with the Indus River.
From the valley floor, the landscape progresses from terraced maize fields, via
grasslands, to the holm-oak belt capped by large confiners clothing the undu-
lating hills casting long evening shadows in the setting sun.
The steep relief of the landscape has been transformed into small ter-
raced fields that dot the mountain slope both inside and outside of the oak
forest belt. This is the middle range of seasonal habitation and the main
maize-growing zone (maji ser). The maize yields are very poor, yet here
and there fields are lying fallow. This is due to property disputes leading
to cultivation bans imposed by lethal enmity (kané) that inscribe social
conflict onto the landscape. Prevented from cultivating their corn fields,
the adversaries come under severe pressure in a marginal agricultural envi-
ronment. From a distance the gray and fallow fields are clearly visible and
stand out from the yellow cornfields of ripening maize. The fallow fields
are indexical markers of the prevalence of enmity that forces adversaries
into hiding and, with time, make the weaker party leave the valley and
resettle elsewhere.
Moving up and down the mountains in seasonal migration cycles, the
villagers have an intimate knowledge of the natural environment. They
also know its dangers. Hiding in the dense forests, they are waiting for the
right moment to avenge their grievances. Many men have been killed or
ambushed during seasonal migrations. The landscape therefore holds his-
tories of murders, ambushes, and dramatic escapes. Survival means atten-
tive involvement in and to the landscape; sounds such as barking dogs
and distant gunshots, the movement of friends and foes along paths and
mule tracks, or any disruption of the rhythms of daily life; water running
in the irrigation channels, men ploughing the fields, or women sifting and
drying the corn. To the villagers, the taskspace therefore provides sensory
imagery crucial to survival and blends with the temporal and seasonal
shifts in the landscape.
Looming high above the terraced field are jagged mountains, narrow
ridges, and lofty peaks clothed with dense evergreen forests. The symbolic
importance of the conifer trees is evident from the Tree of Life motif
carved into beams and doorframes and, occasionally, engraved into boul-
ders and rocks. In addition to serving as an archetypal motif, tree symbol-
ism is important to religious imagery. The motif adorns the prayer niche
(mirab) in the oldest and most prominent wooden mosque in the val-
ley. The mosque’s finely ornamented and elaborate designs are central
elements of the region’s wooden architecture and bear testimony to the
ethos of vernacular spirituality. Next to the mosque lies a small graveyard
with finely ornamented grave enclosures and adorned by ornitomorph
stone epitaphs signaling pre-Islamic influences. In this sense, the histori-
cal biography of the mosque and graveyard embodies the developmental
processes that constitute the localized mode of dwelling.
Leaving the valley floor and moving beyond the broad-leaved forests,
the landscape is dominated by mixed conifer forests (zangal). This is the
most important, valuable, and contested natural resource in the valley. The
fields and forests in the valley were parceled out during the last land divi-
sion (wesh) a century ago, and this event remains the ultimate authority of
ownership in case of property disputes and a cornerstone in their territo-
rial emplacement. More important than their economic value, ownership to
fields and forests validate symbolic belonging to valley and the peer group
of landowners (ulsi’ya).The trees also provide firewood, logs for cantilever
bridges, agricultural implements, and, most importantly, the timber that is
used to construct the vernacular house-type.
Set deeply into the steep slope, the dwellings close themselves off from
the surroundings while at the same time enclosing and protecting those to
whom they belong. The rectangular layout of the Kohistani house appears
simple, but masks a sophisticated cog joint construction. The house is not
only a dwelling but also a refuge in times of conflict. In the event of an
outbreak of hostilities between opposing groups, a tall watchtower (gari)
is added to the house. This not only provides them with better protection
from attacks but also transforms the house (gosh) into a fortress (qal’a). The
construction of a watchtower is indicative of the severity of the conflict and
the many towers in the valley evidence of past and present feuds. Like the
landscape, the built environment changes with time, taking on temporal
features of the chronotope, that is, the place were “temporality takes on
palpable form” (Ingold 2011b, 205).
196 A.J. KNUDSEN
The thick walls of the house not only provide safety against attacks but
also are held together by a lengthways secondary beam (teri) that increases
structural rigidity and enables the house to withstand earthquakes. This is
important in an area that lends it name to the Kohistan Complex, a notori-
ous seismic zone where the Indian Plate presses against the Asian Plate giving
rise to frequent tremors and earthquakes. Palas is located on top of the main
collision zone, what the geologists refer to as the Main Mantle Trust. In this
way, the built and natural environment fuse historical and geological time.
As this short passage illustrates, meaning “is there to be discovered in the
landscape” (Ingold 2011b, 208), hence by taking up a view in rather than
of the landscape, we can appreciate its multilayered temporality. A phenom-
enological approach, as advocated by Ingold, allows us to appreciate the
social foreground (taskscape) as it enfolds against the historical background
(Hirsch 1995, 3). Seen in this way, the mutuality between social and natural
process in cocreating landscapes make them emerge as a continuum.
Conclusion
As stated in the introduction, my goal in this chapter has been to reflect
on the problems associated with grasping or fixing people’s perception of
the environment. The interest in cognition, first raised by linguistics, is an
attempt to understand how we come to embrace, embody, and internalize a
particular vision of the world in which we live. As Ingold has shown, there
is an inherent contradiction or paradox in the notion that our perception
of nature is conditioned by culture. This critique ties in with a more gen-
eral attempt to rid ourselves of the culture versus nature dichotomy that
has dominated twentieth-century research in the social sciences. This does
not mean that the monist project is without its problems. If we assume the
“other” does not share our (Cartesian) separation of nature and culture,
how to grasp and describe this vision? Anthropologists have been inclined to
cast this difference as models used as a heuristic tool to organize our percep-
tion from theirs. This approach, however, poses a delineation problem; are
people’s perception fundamentally different or only cast in another idiomatic
language? There is also the problem of knowing whether the native vision
is an artifact of our research methods or a true depiction of their worldview.
Ingold claims that translation, as conventionally construed, is more
adequately depicted as an act of inversion; it re-contextualizes (rather than
decontextualizes) local knowledge. Translation is therefore an artifact of
our way of constructing the life world of others and trying to integrate
what epistemological relativism has fragmented. Ingold’s ontology of

dwelling challenges the conventional constructivist position, in particu-
lar, his insistence on the temporality of the landscape offers a theoretical
basis for uncovering meaning in and an understanding of the temporal
processes that shape landscapes and, hence, the engagement with them.
Ingold’s work raises questions about the anthropological construc-
tion of both others and their life world that has wide-ranging implications
outside the narrow field of human ecology. In Ingold’s work, we find
a general skepticism to structuralism and its linguistic roots. As a post-
structuralist he is primarily concerned with syntagmatic (connective or
combinatorial) dimensions. This can also be a fitting summary of Ingold’s
theoretical program: it attempts to reconstruct the notion of place, the
continuous world, through a new theory of practical engagement, the
ontology of dwelling.
Notes
1. Inspired by the work of Tim Ingold, this chapter started out as a founda-
tional paper for my doctoral dissertation that was later turned into a mono-
graph (Knudsen 2009). I owe special thanks to the editors for critical
comments and suggestions that helped me improve, refine and update it.
The usual disclaimer applies.
2. Keesing has argued that “folk taxonomies are in large measure artifacts of
elicitation procedures” (1987, 383).
3. Ingold has traced this separation to the first domestication of animals which
not only altered perceptions of, and engagements with, animals, but also led
to a shift away from monism (Ingold 2011c).
4. Ingold also points the fact that we do not interpret everything we sense, and
borrowing from Polanyi (1973), he terms this “tacit knowledge”.
5. The same critique has been leveled against the ontological turn (Vigh and
Sausdal 2014, 58–59).
6. Ingold’s work is also a driving force behind the paradigm shift in human
ecology toward a more emphatic, contextual, and praxis-oriented approach
(Descola and Pálsson 1996; Hviding 1996b).
7. As demonstrated by recent findings in cognitive anthropology, concepts are
constituted before they are formed into words known as the “concept first”
theory (see also Bloch 1991).
8. Moreover, it is not possible to escape the epistemological problem of differ-
ent worlds by locating this difference in society itself, an argument first put
forward almost 100 years ago by Durkheim and Mauss in Primitive
Classification (1963). Studying the social origin of human representation of
198 A.J. KNUDSEN
natural categories, Durkheim and Mauss argued that classification was mod-
eled on society and the first logical categories were social ones. For example,
logical hierarchies were made contingent upon social hierarchy. There were
several theoretical deficiencies in this argument, in addition to the fact that
in a number of the cases examined, there were no correspondence between
classification and the form of society.
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PART III
Politics
CHAPTER 9
Ontological Turns Within the Visual Arts:

Ontic Violence and the Politics
of Anticipation
Martin Thomassen
One major concern with “ontological anthropology” is how to think

about human life in a global world in which “a kind of life and future
that is both beyond the human and constitutive of the human is now
in jeopardy” (Kohn 2015, 315; see Tsing 2015; see also Bertelsen and
Bendixsen, Chap. 1). A prevalent critique leveled against the ontological
turn (Moore 2014) warns against turning anthropology toward ontology
on the basis that “it” lacks the ability to establish kinship relations on a
scale that matters in a situation in which too many people are experiencing
ontological frailty on a limited planet due to heavy anthropogenic impact.
Radical alterity—in Moore’s view the most important p re-theoretical
assumption held by those who adhere to turning anthropology toward
ontology—cuts down the spaces and fails to animate the new possibilities
since it convinces people that they do not even share a world.
Against such critique, this chapter argues, first, against reducing the
ontological turn to a singular (radical) position belonging to a coherent
M. Thomassen (*)
Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science and
Technology, Trondheim, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_9
206 M. THOMASSEN
school of thought with a unified theoretical framework. I suggest rather

that “it” contains a plurality of directions, approaches and claims (see also
Law 2012; Pedersen 2012; Remme 2013; Remme Chap. 5). More mod-
erate approaches to ontology see difference as a relation and address it
through relations with others (e.g. Strathern 1996; Glissant 1997; Latour
2007; Lien 2012) or make claims about less radical differences (see e.g.
Descola 2013). My second argument is subsequently that it is radical rela-
tionality that serves the turn best as a pre-theoretical assumption in combi-
nation with a relentless focus on processes of becoming (see Deleuze and
Guattari 1987; Remme 2013).
The ethnographic basis for my arguments draws on analyses of global
contemporary exhibition practices since 1989 within the visual arts. I have
chosen Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, France and the Center for Art
and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, approaching these as “contact zones”
(Clifford 1997) of global encounters. Practicing an anthropology of art
within such global spaces makes it all too clear that the anthropology of
art has expanded well beyond expertise on “native artifacts” confined
to Western institutions to the active interpretation of contemporary art
alongside artists, curators, editors, and critics in global spaces of encounter
(see Ong 2012). From an anthropological point of view, these exhibition
practices can be seen as a distinctive mode of space rupturing and con-
ceptual reconfiguration, juxtaposing modern notions of truth and being
with the processes of emergence of truth and being performed within the
exhibition contexts itself through a creative use of ethnography that in
turn transforms analysis. My focus will be on the “dynamic agents” (see
Cohen-Solal 2015) next to the artist who organizes the conditions of her
visibility and production in certain space and time: curators, editors, and
critics. In fact, much contemporary art production addresses the curator
(and editor) as an ethnographer who, by providing maximum context,
herself becomes the performing artist by turning the exhibition itself into
the real artwork. Since 1989, the curators (and editors) have to a large
extent not only replaced the artists in making art (see Michaud 1989;
Larsen 2009) but also gradually taken over the traditional role of art c ritics
(see Belting 2013a). The anthropologist herself has become a cointer-
preter alongside the artists, editors, curators, and critics (see Ong 2012).
Taking in these recent developments, I will explore a total of three
exhibition and publication projects and I see these ethnographically as
“events”, that is, occasions or entry points that establish a problematic
(Kapferer 2010, 1). As situated global practices, they have the potential
ONTOLOGICAL TURNS WITHIN THE VISUAL ARTS... 207
to reveal upon investigation dimensions of the potentialities within which

they irrupted. The critical dimensions can thus be seen as opening to
new potentialities in the formation of social realities, what Deleuze and
Guattari (1987) describe as the continual becoming of the social as a com-
plex emerging and diversifying complexity that is enduringly open (see
also Kapferer 2010, 1–2).
All three events, I will argue, are knowledge production projects incor-
porating academic reflection from an “anthropology of otherwise” (see
Povinelli 2012) one way or another that comes very close to challenging
the hegemonic Western ontology of universal (see Mol 2002) and distinct
(see Bennett 2010) entities. The exhibitions themselves are performative
outcomes of a set of dynamic, ever shifting assemblages, and juxtaposition
practices that exist in a continuous and experimental process of becom-
ing, contributing to a sense of increasing potentiality through an infinite
potential of montages (see Suhr and Willerslev 2013). Basing myself on
such orientations, I will make a modest attempt to assess how, and to what
extent, these events can be viewed as a distinct kind of “anticipatory poli-
tics” (Hammer 2005; Ong 2012) undoing Western categories not only
of knowledge but also being and truth. Anticipatory politics engages in
a continuous criticism of naturalized categories while anticipating emerg-
ing problems and new global possibilities, especially under conditions of
“social uncertainty and exception” (Hammer 2005, 120). From a global
social inequality perspective, the bottom line question becomes this: Do
these critical events animate new possibilities in the direction of a “per-
manent decolonization of thought” (Viveiros de Castro 2011, 128) and
ontological self-determination of the world’s peoples (see Viveiros de
Castro 2003)?
Magicians of the Earth: Alternative Realities

I start by tracking the aesthetic anticipatory politics in curator Jean-Hubert
Martin’s artwork Magicians of the Earth in 1989 at the Pompidou Center
in Paris against his critics, most notably the artist, curator, and art editor
Rasheed Araeen, as well as Cohen-Solal curating the 2014 documentary
exhibition Magicians of the Earth: Retour of a legendary exhibition, pre-
sented at the same venue in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the
original Magicians show. My preliminary aim here is to demonstrate how
the Magicians project prefigures the ontological turn, especially perhaps its
thing/object orientation (see Henare et al. 2007) and its related recursive
208 M. THOMASSEN
orientation (see Holbraad 2012). Like the ontological thing/object orien-

tation, the event was anticipatory of how to engage artifacts on their own
terms “as opposed to explaining them away with recourse to more familiar
conceptions” (Henare et al. 2007, 1). In addition, like the recursive orienta-
tion as I will show, the event demonstrated a keen sensitivity toward alter-
native “truths” while at the same time destabilizing the more accustomed
“Western” or “modern” renderings of it, rethinking the universal separation
of the entity known as “art” off into its own ontological space.
Specifically, the event itself unfolded as a drama in which non-Western
“art” production was performed as contemporary rather than as primi-
tive ethnic “art” and it did so for the first time on a global scale. The
way it performed such global contemporaneity was by assembling and
juxtaposing works from Western art centers alongside “art” from what is
nowadays called the Global South. Hence, the so-called others entered
the stage as colleagues of western artists, reintroduced as contemporaries,
and displayed alongside an equal number of western artists. The first
group, formerly excluded from such an exhibition, represented to Jean-
Hubert Martin the neglected, invisible side of “art” production. They
had, as he saw it in 1989, fallen victim to the “double bind” of moder-
nity and colonialism: modernity excludes them because it recognizes itself
only in agnosticism while colonialism sees them as impure and inauthen-
tic since they are the hybrid offspring of contact with our civilization.
Magicians’ most famous work revealing the radical global relationality of
contemporaneous time was the juxtaposition of Richard Long’s minimal-
ist Mud Circle with an Aboriginal sand painting on the floor by a group of
Australian Yuendumu artists. With this juxtaposition, the curator intended
to relate all the objects in an imaginary dialogue rather than, for instance,
identifying either as an “influence” on the other or as utter rejection. He
grouped them together on an equal footing in order to demonstrate, in
the curators own term, cultural difference, the claim here being that the
other is a separate status, simply different, a difference that is evoked in a
positive manner.
Jean-Hubert Martin recalls selecting these other “artists” because
they in his mind came from “totally different cultures”, himself arguing
only for their universality in terms of creative impulse, thus opting for a
broader understanding of “art”. He remembers (Martin 2013) asking all
participants to answer the following question: What do you associate with
the entity called “art”? He himself chose to refer to all the artists rather
as “magicians”, avoiding the western centered connotations of the word
“artists”. The designation as magicians stood for artists in a metaphorical

sense that allowed for an inquiry into “creation”. By doing so the curator
was reflexively producing a kind of “productive misunderstanding” (see
also Tsing 2005; Viveiros de Castro 2004) when performing his artwork
as opposed to transparently mapping one distinct socio-cultural order
onto another (see Salmond 2013, 1).
Reflecting back on the exhibition in retrospect from the position of
someone being interviewed for the Karlsruhe publication project in 2013,
Jean-Hubert Martin observes how what he really wanted for the 1989
exhibition was to prove the existence of “art” and “artistic expression”
beyond the Western world. Explaining his exhibition as “an investigation
of creation in the world today”, he recalls having been fascinated by the
idea that objects with forms in the non-Western world most likely also are
charged with expressions, intensity, eroticism, even totemism or magic.
Martin’s approach is reminiscent of Descola’s (2013) more moderate
approach to ontology in which he deconstructs the supposedly universal-
ity of Western naturalism, suggesting anthropological analysis begin with
the “ontological filters” according to which a society can be positioned in
grids such as totemism as an alternative to Western naturalism. Likewise,
Jean-Huber Martin expressed openness toward approaching “their” world
as an alternative reality in the moderate ontological sense. He himself was
particularly taken by surrealism within the modern visual art. And surreal-
ism in this context implies the idea of something alternative, the notion
that for singular “truth” there is also always alternative “truths” (see
Howell 1991) or alternative realities (see Holbraad 2012). Rather than
engaging the presupposition that artifacts are analytically separable from
the significance informants seem to attach to them, then, Jean-Hubert
Martin held the wonderment in a state of suspension so as to resist the
urge to explain it away (see Henare et al. 2007). In the Magicians show,
we can detect a strong ethical or political drive to take people’s assertion
about the world seriously in a new way (see also Viveiros de Castro 2003).
Talking about creativity in terms of “art” would mean not understanding
the phenomenon in themselves, but as we see it. Suspecting such prob-
lems surely anticipated emergent ontologically inclined anthropology con-
cerned with the limited degree to which we can grasp “the other” through
our own concepts (see Viveiros de Castro 2004). It is also anticipatory of
an alternative relation between “us” and “them”, suggesting the possibil-
ity of a dialogical relationship between differences as opposed to assimilat-
ing differences to identity (see Adorno 1973).
210 M. THOMASSEN
At the time of the Magicians event, Jean-Hubert Martin was himself

highly aware of how global exhibitions up until this point classified cultural
artifacts from, for instance, West Africa as art and admired it for their aesthetic
qualities as “primitive art”. This was done by moving these objects out of
the anthropological context and into “art” or “aesthetic” contexts. The sig-
nificant MoMA 1935 exhibition in New York, for example, addressed black
African “art” based on an essentially formalist understanding of “negro art”,
the latter considered to be a large repository of previously unknown plastic
solutions founded on geometric forms of stylizations. This idea was again
repeated at MoMA 1984 in New York with a show called Primitivism in the
20th Contemporary Art: affinity of the tribal and the modern. At this event,
“primitive art” of “indigenous peoples” was proclaimed as representative
of the “authentic” art practice, amounting to an aesthetic appropriation
of objects as “pure form”. This meant translating them into an idiom of
modern art based on a Kantian value judgment of aesthetics as a universal
and timeless form, purified from content and cultural context. The subtitle
affinity of the tribal and the modern effectively translated alterity into affinity
to be celebrated as a proof of the universality and timeless formal value of
the modern canon, overcoming the traditional dualism between (western)
art and “ethnic” world art, emphasizing only the universalism of modern
art by embracing primitive formalism. James Clifford reported on this dis-
quieting quality of modernism, observing in particular modernism’s taste
for “appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting non-western
art in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical ‘human’ capaci-
ties” (Clifford 1988, quoted in Howell 1991, 235). To translate otherness
into conventional idioms such as “art”, Clifford remarked, is inevitably to
objectify it by imposing a certain form on a mode (or modes) of relational
dynamism that admit of no fixed borders (no autonomy of art) on their own
terms and within their own perspectives.
This resistance to ethnocentric translation, a central marker of the onto-
logical turn (see e.g. Salmond 2013), is in my opinion prefigured in the
Magicians project, triggered directly by a rejection of the MoMA 1984
Primitivism translation practice. The Magicians event aimed to ascertain
that when “tribal objects” enters “art” it is precisely on their own terms
that they should achieve their (universal) significance, as opposed to being
completely translated to a western ontology imagined to be universal.
Nonetheless, the Magicians event met with an almost unanimous rejec-
tion. Critics from the Global North found the juxtaposition of Richard
Long’s Minimalism with the earthwork of an Australian Aborigine group
to be an unacceptable transgression of art’s boundaries, undermining the

very autonomy central of modern Western art ontology. Critics from the
Global South found it unacceptable that Jean-Hubert Martin had not pro-
moted their artists to the first rank of modernism and that the event did
not represent the cultural heterogeneity of modernism from all over the
world, but rather stabilized the division in which the “self” represented
a modern, universal vision, while “the others” were still trapped in their
“pure” “spiritual” ethnic origins (see Araeen 1989). The artist, art critic,
and art curator Rasheed Araeen, editor of the art magazine Third Text and
himself one of the Global South magicians represented at the Magicians
exhibition, indicated sarcastically in retrospect that the central concern
of Jean-Hubert Martin seemed to reflect the same old-fashioned debate
about the relation between modernism and the tradition of others. It is
not perhaps generally known, he wrote in a rather ironic tone, that the
“other” has already entered into the citadel of modernism and has thus
challenged it on its own ground. Rasheed Araeen’s own exhibition The
Other Story in Hayward Gallery in London, the same year as Magicians,
highlighted the absence of non-European artists from the history of mod-
ern art in an appeal to rethink modernism and to write into British art
history the contribution and existence of its “other” silenced artists.
Annie Cohen-Solal, the chief curator of the Retour show at the
Pompidou Center in 2014 in critical honor of the Magicians event, vis-
ited herself the original Magicians exhibition in 1989. Cohen-Solal recalls
(2015) how she at first read Jean-Hubert Martin’s exhibition as a political
statement echoing Jean Paul Sartre’s violent accusations of the invisible
in the preface to Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 1961).
She quotes Jean-Hubert Martin, saying “[i]t sometimes happens that the
system of signs (carried by a work of art) does not match anything we
know, or else that its stylistic features largely fail to address western taste,
however elastic its frame may be. Those works of art are invisible” (Jean-
Hubert Martin 1989, quoted in Cohen-Solal 2015). She adds that she
imagined in 1989 that Jean-Hubert Martin had addressed the French
colonial past through the lens of Sartre, expecting Magicians to recast
Sartre’s metaphor of power through the opposition invisible/visible in a
political attitude. She selects yet another quote from Sartre, this one taken
from Black Orpheus: “What would you expect to find, when the muzzle
that had silenced the voices of black men is removed? For the white man
has enjoyed for 3000 years the privilege of seeing without being seen”
(Sartre 1948, quoted in Cohen-Solal 2015). With his metaphor of the
212 M. THOMASSEN
a ll-powerful gaze as a colonial representation, Cohen-Solal underlines how

Sartre was sending an early warning signal about the intolerable situation
of the all-powerful French empire. Clearly, she says, Sartre’s texts tell us
about globalization, the advent of the World, and a new perception of the
planet earth that we inhabit, in which the geopolitical spatial balance has
collapsed. This, she felt, was the real missing link in the Magicians project.
These critical remarks are exactly the critical points of departure for the
exhibition- and publication project Multiple Modernities 1905–1970 at the
Pompidou Center during 2013–2014. The event incorporates academic
reflection from the ontological turn, being set in a self-conscious postco-
lonial tone following a recursive mode that takes its key inspiration from
the writings of practitioners of Actor Network Theory (see Latour 2007).
The latter is offering a rather different view on ontology and ontological
differences, being less interested in ontological presuppositions, rather in
the emergence and formations of entities in relational networks. What is
constitutive of entities within this ontologically inclined argument is that
entities are constantly becoming within relations, enacted through rela-
tional practice (Remme 2014, 16), much like Deluezian multiplicities—
assemblages of becomings (Deleuze and Guattari 1987).
Multiple Modernities: From Alternative Realities

to Relational Entities
I next track the aesthetic politics in curator and editor Catherine Grenier’s
exhibition- and publication project (artwork) Multiple Modernities
1905–1970. Following the critical cues from Rasheed Araeen and Cohen-
Solal, this occasion is making space for the formally silenced as histori-
cal subjects radically interconnected in global relations, hot spots, hubs,
bridges, nodes, intersections, confluences, points of connection, networks
of exchanges and themselves coming into being within these translocal
circuits by their own ability to act and to make a difference by modifying
the present state of affairs. The exhibition is itself performed in such a
way that it is the relation between the objects exhibited that in a proces-
sual sense constitutes the artwork. What Actor Network Theory facilitates
for Multiple Modernities is to critically question modern lineal historical
ontology with its naturalized entities like culture, epochs, lineal progress,
and succession of artist movements to the more peripheral lava edges of
these cultural flows, substituting rather a cartography of global connec-
tions and transfers that stimulates becoming-processes everywhere.
Three Overlapping Pieces of Bronze

I stumbled upon this bronze sculpture in the opening room of the exhibi-
tion, juxtaposed to two other significant works, one of which was a painting
called Europe classified as belonging to social realism although its very being
was nothing but a synthesis of figurative and abstract elements, combining
modern expressionism, cubism, and symbolism. The other painting carried
the name The Four Races, classified as belonging to expanded realism, itself
coming into being as a result of combining different geometrical figures
from modern industry. Three overlapping pieces of bronze was strategically
placed between the two paintings. Belonging to magical realism, Hommage
à César Vallejo (its real name) consists of three overlapping pieces reconcil-
ing opposites by mixing them together. This bronze sculpture was created
around 1955–1960 as homage to the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. The
artist’s name is Alicia Penalba of Argentinian descent. By way of various
textual cues on the wall, the audience is informed that Penalba was well
acquainted with modern European visual art practice through extensive
traveling and exposure to art magazines traversing the globe. That, how-
ever, did not prevent her from also taking inspiration from South American
art traditions, particularly Amerindian use of local material such as stone
and wood. Another contextual cue tells us that by the time she completed
her sculpture she was going through a totemic phase in her own artistic
development. Totemism within the context of the visual arts is usually asso-
ciated with French surrealism during the 1930s, in which the encounter
with the “primitive” is a key issue. Flipping through one of the historical
art magazines juxtaposed to the sculpture, the audience is alerted to a keen
interest on the part of many South American visual artists at the time of
a certain magical power attached to the “primitive arts”. Using the myth
conveyed by fetish objects as models, the artists sought expressions that
would convey the primitive savagery repressed by traditional culture in an
effort to restore the innermost mythical and organic depths of humankind.
Penalba, as we understand it as audience, is an artist exploring totem-
ism within the context of South American magic realism, interested in
a kind of “genuine” primitivism that could contribute positively to col-
lective resistance against the colonial heritage while at the same time
supporting the case of American Indians fighting for recognition. In
her own essay (Grenier 2014b) for the Multiple Moderntities 1905–1970
publication project, the curator argues that the most potent expression
of this resistance is the Anthropophagic Manifesto by poet and i ntellectual
214 M. THOMASSEN
Oswald de Andrade from 1928: “Anthropophagy: Absorption of the

sacred enemy: For transformation into totem” (de Andrade 1928). She
quotes architect Flavio de Carvalho representing the “anthropophagics”
at the fourth Pan-American Congress for Architecture in 1930: “The city
of the naked man aims to resurrect primitive man released from west-
ern taboos (…), the savage with all his desires and curiosity intact, no
longer repressed as in the days of colonial conquest” (Grenier 2014b).
The curator refers to the manifesto as a provocative poetic manifesto
in that it suggested cultural cannibalism to be (in this case) Brazil’s
idiosyncratic path to modernism and simultaneously an antidote against
the hegemony of modern Europe. Brazilian modernists, she goes on to
argue, created the metaphor of anthropophagy in order to legitimate
their critical, selective, and metabolizing appropriation of European
artistic tendencies. Through an anthropophagic re-reading of (in this
case) Brazil’s multicultural history, de Andrade himself formalized a
new national artistic practice based on the appropriation of forms, thus
overturning the reception and assimilation of the outside into a creative
enunciation. This production could be read as an anthropophagic body
where the barriers between external and internal became evanescent.
Anthropophagy supposes an attack; to swallow voluntarily the domi-
nant culture for one’s own benefit and itself “becoming” what it is as a
result of the same recursive process. The visual language for performing
this cannibalism as a sort of “nomadic war machine” (see Deleuze and
Guattari 1986; see also Whitehead 2011; Viveiros de Castro 2015) was
according to Grenier a more figurative language, expressing references to
untamed and untouched local nature: neither Dadaism, nor Surrealism
or Realism but a conscious choice about a quintessential cleansing synthe-
sis between them, rooted in a hybrid aesthetic creating magic realism on
South American soil from their own values from start to finish.
“Synthesis”, according to curator Grenier (2014a), was the term that
was used in most of the many manifestos and declarations between 1905
and 1970. She makes the astute point that synthesis did not preclude
cultural differences but promoted the expression of specific identities by
means of a common language. The metaphor, she reveals, goes beyond
South America to point to a procedure characteristic of postcolonial art in
general. She observes how the metaphor of ingestion also was used by the
Chinese artist Dong Xiwen to describe the relationship of Chinese artists
with western modernity. She selects the following quote from the Chinese
artist: “We must not only pursue the mastery of various techniques of
western oil painting […] but also absorb it. We will change our own blood
through the digestion process. In other words, we need to transform
foreign intake so that it becomes our own national thing, with our own
national style” (Xiwen 1962, quoted in Grenier 2014a, 29). The curator
observes furthermore that we can find the same debate in Africa, as wit-
ness the metaphor of ingestion that the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka used
to refute Leopold Sedar Senghor’s concept of Negritude (Senghor 1964).
She refers to Soyinka’s term “tigritude”, citing the author: “A tiger does
not proclaim its tigerness. It leaps onto its prey and devours it” (Grenier
2014a, 29).
Synthesis, hybridity, ingestion, cannibalist becoming, and radical rela-
tionality are exactly the kind of truths that are performed and enacted
in the Multiple Modernities event, seen from an “exhibition as artwork”
point of view. The event itself can be described, as can the ontological turn
itself, as an anti-representationalist and anti-epistemic war machine (see
Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1).
The Global Contemporary: Anthropophagy

and Beyond
With the upheavals coming in the wake of globalization and its attendant
movements over the past 20 years, the era that witnessed the prevalence of
western canons in art history has come to a close. A global, contemporary
art of diverse origins has now taken its place (Volckers 2013, 18).
These are the opening lines in the preface of the textual ensemble of
the publication project Global Contemporary accompanying the exhibi-
tion The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989 in Karlsruhe dur-
ing 2011–2012. It goes on to observe that while art’s complicity with
contemporaneous social, religious, and cultural worlds has been long-
term, its complicity today nonetheless goes further since art now has more
to do with clarifying cultural identity than with aesthetic feeling. Sara
Giannini, an experienced international curator and art critic, makes an
interesting observation in her essay for the exhibitions publication project
(2013) that connects well with the metaphor of ingestion at the heart of
the Multiple Modernities event. A major aspect of the recursive rewriting
practice within global contemporary art today, she observes, is a definite
disappearance of boundaries defining the entity of art as a coherent whole.
She goes on to observe how contemporary exhibitions display a tendency
of embracing the most diverse practices, disciplines and objects, threaten-
216 M. THOMASSEN
ing to expand the art concept to such an extent that the entity we call art
no longer makes any sense. She even suggests that we can analyze this
dynamics through the symbolic structure of cannibalism, viewing global
contemporary exhibition practices as a cannibal system of relations with
the intention of rewriting the modern system of classification, eating up
modern certainties including some of its ontological postulates. Via dif-
ferent cues in the publication project the reader is made aware of how
Lévi-Strauss (1992, 387–388) on the last pages of Tristes tropiques, seems
to aim at rewriting Montaigne’s often-quoted essay “Of cannibals”, and
doing so through the distinction between the concepts of “anthropoph-
agy” and “anthropemy”—from the Greek émein, to vomit. “If Western
modern societies invented a specific way of dealing with otherness by
simply isolating it, excluding it—“vomiting” it—, societies that practiced
the ritual of cannibalism attempted to assimilate otherness through its sym-
bolic ingestion” (de Castro Rocha 2013; see also Viveiros de Castro 2014
[2009]). Viveiros de Castro has himself reported on this in his studies on
the Tupi-Guarani populations of Brazil, where cannibalism represents a
social bonding agent that lies in mutual movements of interiorization of
the external and exteriorization of the internal, arguing that Tupi-Guarani
societies are characterized by immanent relations to alterity, where the
embodiment of the “other” depend on going out from oneself (Giannini
2013, see Viveiros de Castro 2014 [2009]). From this viewpoint, the
cannibals’ desire of the other “perturbs the binary “same versus other”
opposition, which justifies the formation of identity in Western modern
culture” (Giannini 2013, 239).
Cannibalism, with its paradigm of incorporation and becoming, rep-
resents in a way the radical other that threatens the Western modern self
within a modernism guided by the principle of purification, rupture, and
critical partition of the relational continuum that actually forms human
societies (see Latour 1991). However, key to the Karlsruhe event is the
idea that the recurrences of conceptual couples, such as continuity and
discontinuity or partition and unification suggest that modernism and
cannibalism imply and belong to each other. Not a binary oppositional
relation, which would instead respond to the modern logic of exclusion,
but a participative opposition: something that is opposed to a part of itself.
Cannibalism opposes modernism, Sara Giannini suggests, which it nev-
ertheless has already incorporated within the movements of interioration
and exteriorization that characterizes it (Giannini 2013, 239–245).
Animism
“The exhibition at first divided me and then restituted me”. These words
come from an anthropologist who was invited to attend the exhibition in
order to share his reflections on it for the publication project (Hauschild
2013). The very first few minutes the exhibition made him aware of just
how deep anthropology’s current crisis is. Before his eyes, he sensed that
anthropological knowledge broke into two parts: on the one hand knowl-
edge about traditional societies and the alternatives that opposed them, and
on the other a critical micro-sociology which conducts field work research
on current social behavior and cultural productivity in a globalized world.
He immediately got a numbing feeling that the exhibition showed both
knowledge about traditional societies and the alternatives that opposed
them, as well as current behavior and cultural productivity in a globalized
world. But continuing his visit, he overcame the first numbing feeling, and
the longer he stayed in the exhibition, the more he rediscovered both—the
self-exploration of postmodern worlds as well as the “world of old”, the
“primitive”, both being displayed by artist from non-European societies.
Walking about inside the museum he observes how the exhibition gives
rise to forum-like structures (shops, parades, markets) and thus is a clear
reminder that the market existed everywhere long before the western
hegemony of the markets and financial world. Contemporary artists, he
writes in his essay, are here turning classic quantitative power relations
into qualitative stimuli and dialogues. The forum structures, the tents, and
market stands ingeniously declare to be assemblages, invitations to a form
of participation from which a politically correct audience in the West steps
back in horror. Before long, he finds himself standing in front of boots,
belts, saddles, holsters, military instruments, and oriental military turbans,
suspended freely in the air, as if their human wearers had evaporated. The
shoes, drums, headgear are all vaguely reminiscent of Javanese military
uniforms. They are neatly arranged in rows. Each small assemblage cre-
ates a person, who only becomes visible in the equipment, for the wearer
remains invisible. The individual wearers of the equipment seem second-
ary, the parade weapons and totems are all that count. He reads the paper
note next to the exhibit item, and is informed that the Indonesian artist is
responding to the split between tradition and modernity, religious diver-
sity, and syncretism in Java. Reminders of Islamic, Western and local tradi-
tions, the paper slip suggests the assemblage of the various objects makes
reference to the intermediate cultural position Java has always occupied: a
218 M. THOMASSEN
syncretism purporting to sustain a continuity of the most diverse influences

has been elaborated to perfection. The note ends with a question: “Do
the artist’s soldiers march in support of cultural diversity and against the
steady homogenization currently underway in the name of progress—or
are they parading their commitment to this latter?” Hauschild feels certain
not to refer to this as “anti-colonial” (2013, 230). He leaves the exhibi-
tion a changed man. I am finished now, he says, with postcolonial nega-
tive self-adulation, with the anti-anti-anti-relativism of mainstream North
American and Western Europeans. Western knowledge or economics is
neither superior nor inferior to the capacities and reserves of the rest of the
world. Works of art allow the unimaginable to become imaginable: there
are African financial geniuses, Venezuelan world strategies, and European
totemists and animists (2013, 232).
Animism is the name of a long-term exhibition- and publication project,
which recently (2010–2012) has been shown in Europe and New York. A
small part of this project is exhibited next to boots, belts, saddles, holsters,
military instruments, and oriental military turbans. Curated by Anselm
Franke, the Animism project gathered new works, already existing art
works and an extensive selection of archival materials such as documents,
photographs, books, and documentaries. The rich body of work was,
according to Giannini, brought together to investigate the premodern
concept of animism against the big divide between nature and culture
in the modern science, rethinking the question of animation by tackling
the “unquestioned discourse” of animism. One installation exhibited as
part of the Animism project contained (among several things) a vitrine-
display of Edward B. Tylor’s seminal work Primitive Culture (1871). The
main argument (Franke 2012) is that Edward B. Tylor’s seminal work set
in motion an “unstoppable and ongoing process concerning modernity’s
ontological fundaments”. In the vitrine next to Tylor lies a page from the
Dialectics of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
(1947)—a book in which animism according to the publication project
figures most prominently as a decisive and ultimately ambiguous hinge
failing to theorize animism in relation to the modern colonial narrative.
The main task of the Animism event is exactly to bring “animism”, and
hence “otherness” back into the “relational diagram of modernity”. What
is being revealed here is the relational constitution of the present in order
to understand that there are no given universals of the modern, only rela-
tional products. “Animism” is itself a different name for the primacy of
relationality, according to Anselm Franke. In a conversation with Eduard
Glissant—the key dynamic agent for the Global Contemporary event—,

Glissant makes it clear that the exhibition practice for this project should
be similar to that of creolization that resembles a state of perpetual change,
process and becoming (see Diawara 2013, 35–40). “Relation”, he argues,
is made up of all the differences in the world. This in turn is suggestive, he
notes, of immanent relations to alterity in which everything is happening
in a rhizome world of roots that intertwine, mix, mutually assist each other,
and with a rhizome logic of horizontal meandering, wild and spontaneous
organization (see also Tsing 2015).
To Anselm Franke, the idea is that in the question of animism lies also
a “kernel of colonialism” that stands for a mechanism that in his view has
served to legitimize colonial subjugation, often in ways not immediately
perceptible, precisely because it has become naturalized as part of how
we perceive experience and relate to things (Franke 2012). Animism and
otherness, then, are within this alternative narrative the sites that modern
history is silent about to the extent that the very narrative of the “the
modern Western” is built upon this silence as its fundament. What is being
mobilized in the Animism project is the very grounds on which such dis-
tinctions are made in anticipation of animism as an alternative way of
thinking and living.
According to the anthropologist Rane Willerslev, himself a part of the
Animism publication project (2012), there has recently been in anthropol-
ogy a development away from studies of the so-called old animism, in the
traditional sense of E.B. Tylor, toward a “new animism”. Central to the
approaches of new animism researchers is a rejection of previous scholarly
attempts to identify animism as either metaphoric—a projection of human
society onto nature as in the sociological tradition of Emile Durkheim—or
as some sort of imaginary delusion, a manifestation of “primitive” man’s
inability to distinguish dreams from reality, as in the evolutionary tradition
of E.B. Tylor. Instead, these scholars (see e.g. Descola 2013; Viveiros de
Castro 1998) have each in their own way sought to take animism seri-
ously by upending the primacy of Western metaphysics over indigenous
understandings and following the lead of the animists themselves in what
they say about spirits, souls, and the like. “Taking seriously” here sim-
ply means taking seriously what the indigenous people themselves take
seriously, which the old studies of animism did not (see also Holbraad
2012). Willerslev himself jokes about how his own indigenous interlocu-
tors (see also Willerslev 2011) themselves do not take animism too seri-
ously, that being the whole point of it. However, he supports the idea of
220 M. THOMASSEN
taking seriously, arguing along phenomenological lines that animist ontol-

ogy is essentially practical, intimately bound up with indigenous people’s
ongoing engagement with their environment and hence restricted to par-
ticular contexts of relational activity. This take on ontological priorities, he
argues, holds that for anthropological analysis, everyday life is the crucial
foundation upon which so-called higher activities of thinking or abstrac-
tion is firmly premised. By going down this phenomenological path we
would, for the first time he says, be able to take seriously the attitudes and
beliefs that indigenous peoples have about the nature of such beings as
spirits, souls, and animal persons and their relationships to them.
Concluding Remarks
Modernity has up until very recently established itself as a normality
by excluding its “other” (see Larsen 2009). Larsen identifies two main
strategies for this dominant subject’s exclusion practice. The allochronic
discourse is about denying coevalness (see Fabian 1983). Fabian refers
mainly to the relationship between anthropology and its others, but adds
that anthropology thus provides Western thoughts and politics with
deep-rooted images and convictions that amount to a kind of political
cosmology denying symmetrical interaction between subjects. The other
alternative strategy has been that of reducing difference to identity and
thereby assimilating the difference without positively acknowledging it for
its difference (see Adorno 1973; Larsen 2009). The myriad of diverse
arguments being grouped under the banner of ontology are all in so many
different ways refusing to cast differences in terms of (conventional) mod-
ern concepts and frameworks of difference, and by doing so challenging
this political cosmology (ontology). Exposing differences, they are antici-
patory of a new global that embraces heterogeneity built on a more “flat”
ontology. But how flat is it? The work of Multiple Modernities is after all
enforcing a particular brand of liberal democratic humanism upon those
regarded as other (see Salmond 2013; Povinelli 2012). I have elsewhere
referred to this process as “inclusion as exclusion” (see Thomassen 2015).
Art historian Terry Smith refers to it on a critical note as re-modernism
(Smith 2011, 2012). In other words, rethinking difference from the posi-
tion of symmetrical recursivity is no guarantee for a more permanent
decolonization of thought.
Could the same be said for the concept of a “carnivalizing identity”, sup-
posedly always processing beneficially everything that is not its own? This
question is raised in the Global Contemporary publication project by Gerardo

Moscuera (2013). Although this notion refers to anthropophagy in a criti-
cal sense (critical ingestion), we should be alert, he argues, to the difficulty
of such a pre-postmodern program since it does not take place in a neutral
territory but is subjected to a praxis, which tacitly assumes a contradiction
of dependency. Who really incorporates whom? It is necessary, therefore,
to examine whether the transformations that cannibals experience when
incorporating the dominant culture do not subsume them into it? Could
it not be the case that the appropriation satisfies the desire of the domi-
nant culture for a reformed, recognizable other who processes a difference
in the likeness, creating perhaps its perfect alterity (Moscuera 2013, 236)
that merely helps to facilitate the relation of domain without completely
breaking the difference that allows it to construct the hegemonic identity
by its contrast with an “inferior” other? The question remains therefore
whether or not local resistance to hegemonic powers like the ones we have
been addressing in this chapter actually redresses global social inequality
or merely creates new ideological hierarchies. No matter how plausible the
appropriating strategies, they might imply a rebound effect that reproduces
the same hegemonic structure, even if they contest it.
Interestingly enough, this is exactly the kind of emerging problems that
The Global Contemporary publication project is anticipating by engag-
ing in a continuous criticism, turning every situation into a question,
hence anticipating emerging problems in anticipation of new possibili-
ties, while at the same time undoing modern Western ontological catego-
ries of being, entities, truth. So what kind of new possibilities does the
The Global Contemporary event anticipate? Gerardo Mosquera identifies
a new trend in several art “worlds” today in which the prevalent cultural
strategies of appropriation and syncretism typical of postcolonial art are
increasingly being replaced by a new perspective that she calls the “from
here” paradigm. He makes the interesting observation that rather than
appropriating and critically re-functionalizing the imposed international
culture, transforming it to suit their own needs—as artists in postcolonial
situations have done until recently—artists are now more actively involved
in the first-hand creation of that metaculture (2013, 236). This is in my
interpretation exactly what went through the head of the anthropologist
faced with shops, parades, tents, market stands, boots, belts, saddles, hol-
sters, military instruments, and oriental military turbans, the point being
that the Indonesian artist in this case did his “art” unfettered from his own
imaginaries and position on a planetary scale, off the grid from modern art
222 M. THOMASSEN
history, making his own “art” now. This epistemological transformation,

the art critic and curator observes, consists in changing from an operation
of creative incorporation or translation to one of direct construction from
a variety of subjects, experiences and cultures, made from their personal,
historical, cultural, and social contexts.
Are we looking here at a turning point in time where we actually move
beyond anthropophagy and beyond the postcolonial? Is that why “global”
in “The Global Contemporary” is not synonymous with the totalizing
term “world” but rather denotes the space of a “multiplicity of worlds”
in societies and cultures at large? And is this the intended meaning of the
term (multiple) worlds, so often used by exponents of the so-called onto-
logical turn (see Hage 2012)? The following quote by the anthropologist
Mark Augé, a much-used dynamic agent for The Global Contemporary
project, found its way into the Global Contemporary publication:
The world’s inhabitants have become truly contemporaneous, and yet the
world’s diversity is recomposed every moment: this is the paradox of our
day. We must speak, therefore, of worlds in the plural “in order to cope”
with the coexistence of the singular entity implied by the word contempora-
neous and the multiplicity of worlds it qualifies. […] Every society is made
up of several worlds. (Augé 1999, 89, quoted in Belting 2013b)
This also applies to a multiplicity of “art” worlds in place of one indepen-

dent and unitary “art world” as we know it from the modern period. Many
visual “artists” today are working more toward finding their own point
of development, their own “patois”, their own “third world”, their own
“desert” within a “major” language (see Deleuze and Guattari 2009). The
exhibition itself is an enactment of this very idea. The audience is left with
the impression that differences can be seen as constructed through specific
plural modes of creating “artist’s” texts within a set of international idi-
oms and practices that are transformed in the process, and not by means
of representing cultural or historical elements characteristic of particular
contexts. Their specific “art” practices are in other words identifiable more
by the manner in which they refer to ways of making their art texts first-
hand than by outward projections of their contexts.
Although the “from here” paradigm does not indicate a rebellion or
an emancipation, it has according to The Global Contemporary project
“mutated the ping pong of oppositions and appropriations” and the alien-
ation of the subaltern subject, thus creating what the project calls a new
artistic-cultural biology. This means that difference lies in action (artistic
practices) more than in representation (see Holbraad 2012). This is in
turn closely related to the predicament that Paul Rabinow (2008) and
Marc Augé (1999) refer to as “contemporaneity”: an epoch of simultane-
ity, of juxtaposition and the fact that we are at a moment (see also Foucault
1984 [1967]). For much of the twentieth century, Rabinow argues, var-
ious movements that labeled themselves modernist were fixed on “the
new”—tied more or less explicitly to a philosophy of history in which the
new was better or at least the result of an inevitable developmental trans-
formation. If modernism was characterized by an insistent search for the
shock of the new, then contemporary ethos seeks neither to shock for its
own sake nor to eradicate historical reference. Rather, a practitioner taking
up a contemporary stance is perplexed about how to treat representation
(2008, 108). The perplexity, he goes on to argue, extends to what to do
with modernism (or counter-modernisms). Contemporary artists are in
Rabinow’s view experimentalists who refuse painterly dogma: “they don’t
build theories and they do not yield to a world view” (2008, 114–115).
For him, the invention of the Readymade was the invention of reality,
not any “worldview whatever”. Since then, painting has never represented
reality; it has been reality (creating itself). Neither observers nor practi-
tioners of the contemporary are as already noticed principally concerned
with the new, but rather the now. The mode is one of secession rather than
avant-garde, he explains. In addition, secession “marks, observes and styl-
izes in a recursive manner” (2008, 3, italics mine).
The principle of a recursive methodology in anthropology, in Holbraad’s
words, is about allowing the “substance” or “content” of ethnography to
impact on the terms of its own analysis (Holbraad 2012). I am reminded
of the image of the tattooed Igorot man from the Philippines (on the
front cover of Writing Culture) as he was up for display at the Saint Louis
world exhibition in 1904 (Clifford and Marcus 1986). The purpose of
those responsible for the exhibition was to demonstrate his radical differ-
ence—his strangeness—which in turn was used as a hallmark of political
authority on the part of the Western nation states. Addressing the episte-
mological question of representation, Writing Culture showed us how the
Igorot man was precluded from laying down the premises for the way he
was represented. To remedy this in an effort to decolonize social theory,
a plethora of new directions, approaches and claims has switched focus
from representation to ontology, opting for a more non-representational
approach to representation with a stronger focus on how people create,
bring forth, and perform their own worlds. An aboriginal sand painting by
a group of Australian Yuendumu artists next to Richard Long’s minimalist
224 M. THOMASSEN
Mud Circle, three overlapping pieces of bronze next to two interwar

European social realism paintings, boots, belts, saddles, holsters, military
instruments, and oriental military turbans next to Primitive Culture and
Dialectics of Enlightenment submerged in a vitrine—what is really going
on here? I think it is possible to argue that they all bear witness to the
transportation and preservation of objects causing a montage of other-
wise parted worlds, and where its politics can be viewed as the anticipa-
tion of this manifold of potentials for how things are about to be(come)
and could be—what Elizabeth Povinelli (2012) calls “the otherwise”. Does
it contribute to the decolonization of thought and the ontological self-
determination of the world’s peoples? I believe that contemporary Igorot
men and women are the only ones fit to really answer that question.
Acknowledgments I have presented part of this chapter once at the Institute

strategic project seminar at the Department of Social Anthropology in Bergen, and
twice as a whole at the Institute seminar at the Department of Social Anthropology
in Trondheim. I thank those who offered comments on those occasions, in par-
ticular Signe Howell, Marianne E. Lien, Tord Larsen, Jan Simonsen, and Stein
E. Johansen. Some of the ideas for this chapter have also benefited greatly from
insights and comments from Aihwa Ong and Charles Briggs while I was serving as
a temporary visiting scholar with the Berkeley department of social anthropology.
My deepest reverence goes to Bjørn Enge Bertelsen for several, very close, and
constructive editorial readings that made my contribution a reality.
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CHAPTER 10
Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different

Worlds to Osmotic Worlding
Kathinka Frøystad
Gone are the days in which anthropological research into radically differ-
ent societies could be justified as documenting “experiments in living”, as
famously phrased by MacBeath (1952). Today it hardly even suffices to
explain the importance of fieldwork as a means to unsettle well-established
analytical concepts and frameworks. The sense of urgency that character-
izes our present times has brought about a heightened quest for global
political relevance—for us all, here, now, in the future. Contemporary
anthropological studies of non-Western societies are thus increasingly
designed, justified, and discussed in terms of their potential to help iden-
tifying crisis-perpetuating blind spots of the rapidly globalizing Euro-
American lifestyles and nurture the imagination of alternative futures.
While there are many reasons to welcome this development, the question
I raise in this chapter is whether the anthropological approaches currently
promoted as essential for addressing a certain global crisis may inadver-
tently reinforce the thought pattern that underpins another but equally
acute global crisis.
K. Frøystad (*)
Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo,
Oslo, Norway

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_10
230 K. FRØYSTAD
Not that the quest for global relevance is entirely new. If Ernest
Gellner is to be believed, it extends all the way back to Malinowski: “He
[Malinowski] never wrote a book called ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific
and the Polish Question’, or even ‘The Sexual Lives of Savages and the
Polish Question’. But we should not be deceived. He did really” (Gellner
1995, 99). Ever since then the desirability of politically motivated anthro-
pology has ebbed and flowed, occasionally resulting in passionate debates
such as that between Roy D’Andrade (1995) and Nancy Scheper-Hughes
(1995) in Current Anthropology. What is indisputably new, however, is
the widespread sense of urgency, the growing requirement for political
relevance within the agencies that fund anthropological research, and the
mounting anthropological insistence that even research into the most
different of thought systems should be done for political reasons, be it
the epistemological self-determination of those we study (Holbraad et al.
2014; but see also Todd 2014) or for addressing the crises of our times.
Ghassan Hage (2012, 2015) attempts to sharpen the quest for politi-
cal relevance further by coining the conceptual dichotomy of anti- and
alter-politics, where anti-politics refers to approaches that challenge the
existing social order (Marxist anthropology being his primary example)
and alter-politics refers to the far more challenging task of imagining
sufficiently bold alternatives. In the present era of global warming and
unrelenting capitalist exploitation, he argues, the necessity of exploring as
radical alternatives as possible has become acute. As far as the climate crisis
goes, Hage is particularly stimulated by the potentialities suggested by
the Araweté of Brazilian Amazonia as described by Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro (1998, 1992 [1986]), the reason being the way in which its popula-
tion’s relations to animals and spirits challenge the entire Western nature/
culture distinction that perpetuates the climate crisis. Some of Viveiros
de Castro’s intellectual collaborators go even further and advocate his
ontology-oriented perspective (more about this shortly) not merely as
an alter-political project but also as a way forward for an entire discipline
allegedly suffering from hyper-fragmentation and analytical triviality. It is
particularly the latter position I challenge in the following pages.
It has already been argued that Viveiros de Castro and his followers’
mode of engaging with ontological alterity tends to produce essentializ-
ing, homogenizing, and thus distorting research (e.g. Vigh and Sausdahl
2014; Bessire and Bond 2014; Moore 2014; Graeber 2015). In this
chapter, I expand on this critique by arguing that its tendency to privilege
singular ontological “wholes” has the problematic side effect of depicting
ALTER-POLITICS RECONSIDERED... 231
ontological boundaries as far firmer than they necessarily are on the

ground, thus feeding into an occasionally lethal politics of religious dif-
ference that is every bit as worrisome as the climate crisis. The question
is thus: what should an alter-political anthropology intended to make us
rethink religious difference look like? The solution I offer here is to change
the attention from “different worlds” to “osmotic worlding”. Before
detailing what this shift entails and exemplifying its applicability to multi-
religious settings such as the North-Indian city of my own fieldwork, let
me explain what I find problematic about the “different worlds” position
for an alter-political anthropology of religious diversity, here exemplified
with the contributions of Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad.
Essentialization and Field Shrinkage

An unspoken premise for the anthropologists spearheading what this
volume somewhat inaccurately labels the “vistas” branch of the onto-
logical turn seems to be that non-Western ontologies are best stud-
ied one by one. For Viveiros de Castro this may have been reasonably
straightforward. Doing fieldwork among the Araweté of Brazilian
Amazonia, Viveiros de Castro had the privilege of studying a remote
and self-sufficient society that could easily be treated as a distinct unit
inhabiting an equally distinct ontological universe. Thus his monograph
From the Enemy’s Point of View (1992 [1986]), which emphasized the
cosmological underpinnings of Araweté social life, soon came to revolve
around the human aspiration to transcend humanity by being canni-
balistically devoured by the gods in order to ascend to their position.
His ethnography shows the Araweté (which he typically refers to as a
homogeneous community) to have been far more preoccupied with the
difference between humans and gods than between various kinds of
humans, or between humans or animals. Some years later, Viveiros de
Castro developed this argument further in his seminal article on perspec-
tivism (1998), which argues that, according to Amerindians, both ani-
mals and spirits see themselves as human just like humans do, their only
difference being their physicality. Here his unit of analysis had expanded
from the Araweté to Amerindians in general at the same time as the
argument about human/non-human distinctions was liberated from the
burden of specific ethnographic observations and repackaged as poetic
generalizations written in the obsolete grammatical tense that Fabian
(1983) famously terms “the ethnographic present”. In this way Viveiros
232 K. FRØYSTAD
de Castro generalized, essentialized, and de-temporalized Amerindians

in a single literary step. It was this step that helped turn the Araweté and
other Amerindians into the quintessential “other” of Western thought
in a way that made it possible to rethink the nature/culture distinction
as profoundly as in the structural approach of Philippe Descola (2013,
2014). Despite the importance of such exercises, it is crucial to keep in
mind that the more an ethnographic description is distilled to serve an
alter-political objective (here: of addressing climate change), the more it
will filter out exceptions, disagreements, and change. Its adverse side is
thus a production of what I term “ontological prisons”: unless an eth-
nographic observation or interlocutor conforms to the ontology that is
being distilled, it is quietly filtered out. It is thus the distilled ontology
and its ability to put Western thinking into sharp relief that is of primary
interest in the “vistas” branch of the ontological turn, not the actual
practices of the people inhabiting it, nor even the people themselves.
Martin Holbraad’s admirable effort to understand truth-making from an
ontological vantage point adds yet a problem to the list. In Truth in Motion
(2012), Holdbraad undertakes a close-up study of Cuban divination and its
truth-claims. Positioning himself in a neighborhood of Havana, Holbraad’s
main approach consisted of spending as much time as possible with a handful
of diviners within the Ifá tradition, which is one of Cuba’s many divinatory
traditions. Holbraad’s main interest being their truth-claims, his ethnogra-
phy delves deeply into their ritual practices and interpretative deliberations.
By examining what the diviners take truth to mean, how they come to see
certain things as indubitable, and which steps anthropologists should take
to analyze such processes without imposing their own analytical apparatus
onto a different mode of reasoning, Holbraad crafted an unusually thought-
provoking and elegantly written book. For anthropologists dealing with
religious plurality, however, the downside is that its explicit focus on divin-
ers made the author remarkably inattentive to clients. That many of them
were quick to move from one diviner to another until they were satisfied
with the answers they received somehow never made the way from a passing
remark to an analytical point. In this way, the plurality of divinatory tradi-
tions in Cuba and the porousness between them were virtually filtered out
of the study; Holbraad’s field was drastically “shrunk” to a divination room,
a move that gives his study a rather hermetic feeling. Indeed, Holbraad’s
ambition to distill the ontology of Ifá truth-making was so profound that
even the diviners’ own doubts were filtered out of the analysis after having
been briefly mentioned in passing (see also Bråten, Chap. 5). Of course, this
“sitting-at-the-feet-of-an-expert” method is not uncommon for anthropol-

ogists of religion working in plural settings. What makes Holbraad stand
out is his attempt to give virtue to this method by labeling it as “ontogra-
phy” (in contrast to ethnography) and promoting it as the way forward for
the entire discipline. Given the thoroughness of his arguments, his trans-
formative ambition is not easily dismissible as Cambridge-originated male
chutzpah, though the masculine thrust of the entire “vistas” direction (post
Strathern) and its heavy reliance on male interlocutors could well have war-
ranted more critical reflections than they have attracted so far. From the
perspective of a potential alter-political anthropology of religious plurality,
however, my main worry is that the field shrinkage inherent in Holbraad’s
prescriptive ontography makes ontological overlaps, porousness, and cross-
ings disappear almost completely from view. And that, I suggest, is exactly
the opposite of what an alter-political anthropology of religious plurality
ought to highlight in the present global context.
To illustrate what kind of features a sitting-at-the-feet-of-an-expert
method can leave out, I turn briefly to Caterina Guenzi’s otherwise
interesting study of astrological fortune-telling in the holy Indian city of
Banaras (Guenzi 2012), which pertains to a region with which I am far
more familiar. Besides filtering out the common tendency of even conser-
vative Hindu Brahmans to consult diviners well beyond the Hindu ranks
when faced with difficult existential dilemmas, Guenzi’s approach makes
her overlook the frequent practice of referring to fortune/fate not with
the Sanskrit term bhagya, which was the term favored by the author’s
astrologer interlocutors, but with the Persian/Urdu word qismat, the
fuzzy semantic field of which underpins the ontological flexibility sug-
gested by the plural practices of her category of clients. My own Brahman
acquaintances, for instance, would certainly be almost equally comfortable
with consulting a tantric specialist, a numerologist, a palmist, or even a Sufi
Muslim spiritual teacher (pir) as a Brahman astrologist. In terms of meta-
phors, one could thus argue that, if plural societies can still be conceptual-
ized as salad bowls (in contrast to melting pots), “vistas” anthropologists
looking for radical alterity are only interested in the tomato pieces, their
only interesting feature being the DNA that generates their “tomatoness”.
While this approach may certainly yield interesting studies, I have consid-
erable problems with it as a concerted research agenda, let alone as a way
to salvage anthropology (if that is required) or imagine alternative political
futures—at least if we add religious bigotry to the list of the current crises
anthropologists currently need to address.
234 K. FRØYSTAD
Coincidentally or not, the propensity of the “vistas” practitioners of the

ontological turn to direct the analytical gaze at a single ontology at the
time while isolating them as bounded universes holds an uncanny similar-
ity to the commitment to boundedness, faithfulness, and purity within
the Abrahamic religions. Originally this commitment was so profound
that Jewish institutions denounced deviations as minim, Christian ones
as heresy, and Islamic ones as shirk, transgressors risking capital punish-
ment. True, such radical penalties are nowadays hardly imposed outside
aspirant Islamic theocracies such as Daesh, also known as The Islamic
State. Yet deviators are still ex-communicated from close-knit Christian
and Muslim congregations, and even Christian initiators of interreligious
dialogue restrict their engagement to verbal exchange, ritual participa-
tion across religious boundaries evidently being still beyond the pale. I
am not suggesting that the ontological orientation of Viveiros de Castro,
Holbraad, and other “woldview” representatives of the ontological turn
necessarily has a Christian or Abrahamic bias. Even so, their prescriptions
for a future anthropology of radically different ontologies fall almost too
well in line with the Abrahamic obligation of religious purity, thus making
them susceptible to critique for perpetuating the problematic tendency to
model anthropological theory-building on modes of thought rooted in
Christianity (cf. Asad 1993) even while doing more than perhaps anyone
else to avoid it. Given the religious bigotry that presently dominate news-
paper headlines worldwide, I would argue that an alter-political anthro-
pology of religious plurality would do well to look beyond Abrahamic
religions for sufficiently radical alternatives to the sharp distinctions not
only between insiders and infidels/others but also to the ontological dis-
tinctions that underpin them.
An additional reason why a Viveiros de Castro- or Holbraad-inspired
analysis would be insufficiently “alter” for an alter-political anthropol-
ogy of religious plurality is that it conforms too closely to the way in
which religions are typically researched and taught in non-anthropological
university departments. Take my own department, for instance. At the
Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University
of Oslo, where we teach area studies and religious studies, all the courses
and study programs are on one world religion at the time. Though spe-
cialists of Christianity occasionally venture over to Judaism, scholars
of Islam to Christianity and Indologists to Buddhism and Sikhism, the
boundary between Abrahamic and non-Abrahamic religions is virtually
absolute whether in research or in teaching. Besides reflecting the ancestry
of religious studies in theology, this is also a result of the methodological

propensity to take as the unit of study an ancient text or text corpus, a
religious movement, a ritual space, a handful of ritual experts, or a public
festival—but hardly ever their clients, participants, or the society in which
they live, which requires a far more anthropological methodological rep-
ertoire. Lay practitioners are thus typically left to anthropologists, and if
anthropologists were to follow Viveiros de Castro or Holbraad in privileg-
ing “pure” ontologies, the entire academia would miss out on a unique
opportunity to craft alternative perspectives that enable us to trace the
messiness, gray zones, and overlaps that characterize religiously diverse
societies in many parts of the world. Such gray zones are by no means only
social, as vaguely suggested by Hage (2015). From Holbraad’s Havana to
the Indian city in which I work, they can also be ritual and concern deeply
ontological quests for certainty and future control. In order to proceed
from this fairly banal insight to crafting an alter-political anthropology of
religious plurality, we need to look far beyond the “vistas” branch of the
ontological turn.
Osmotic Worlding
What if we shift the focus from the tomatoness of the tomato pieces in
our metaphorical salad bowl to a model that brings religious plurality
more clearly into view, but without leaving our interest in ontological
engagement behind? If so, we can imagine a video-animated field dot-
ted with ontological nodes around which people cluster. Press play, and
most people begin an electron-like swirl around their respective nodes.
But some venture off to other nodes, whether briefly, extensively, repeat-
edly, or even permanently. Whatever their trajectory, they all undertake a
worlding of sorts, without which they would disappear from the field, and
if their worlding entails movement between major nodes, we may con-
ceptualize their movement as osmotic. This is roughly how I have come
to think of ontological engagement in the multi-faith Indian neighbor-
hood in which I work. My sources of inspiration derive from assorted
readings. The conceptualization of pluri-religious societies as a field is
borrowed from John Burdick’s study of Pentecostalism in Brazil (1993),
which describes the features that either attract people to, or alienate them
from, Catholicism, Umbanda, and Pentecostal churches, all in a variety of
branches. The addition of nodes is inspired by my research collaborator
Radhika Chopra (2015), who is developing the field model to analyze the
236 K. FRØYSTAD
malleable iconography of religious souvenirs sold in the bazaar outside

the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Whereas souvenirs display strong Khalsa
Sikh characteristics immediately outside the Golden Temple gates (the
Sikh node), they have more Hindu traits near the Durgiana Temple (the
Hindu node) of the bazaar. So far the panoramic view of the field model.
The concept of worlding, which shifts the focus to the people who
move about in the field, is inspired by Anna Tsing. In an insightful arti-
cle on sense-making, Tsing utilizes this concept to capture the perpetual
incompleteness of the way in which people make sense of whatever they
strive to understand (2010). Whether in the case of Matsutake scientists,
evolutionary anthropologists, or her own recent research, she accentu-
ates the never-ending effort to connect the dots and fill the gaps in ever
unconventional ways rather than the resultant conclusions that over time
may develop into established truths and truth-producing procedures. In
this way, Tsing’s approach to worlding shares an emphasis on incomplete-
ness and becoming with Heidegger’s earlier use of this concept, though
the latter was mainly concerned with what the notion of worlding could
contribute to the philosophy of personhood (cf. Pina-Cabral 2014).
Given this description of worlding, the notion of “osmotic” worlding
might at first seem to be a contradiction in terms. Osmosis is a chemi-
cal process denoting the penetration of solvents through semi-permeable
membranes (including cellular walls) in ways that even out the concentra-
tion on both sides of the membrane. While I see no point in exaggerating
the similarity between humans and liquids, their parallel lies in their ability
to traverse boundaries that turn out to be more penetrable than they look.
By adding the metaphor of osmosis to the notion of worlding, I want
to accentuate that many people who follow unusual trajectories in their
pursuit of tricky analytical questions or profound existential dilemmas, are
often acutely conscious of making a transgression of sorts. Though walls
may be penetrable, they do not disappear. The walls are there and yet
not there. This doubleness is essential and makes it easier to understand
an additional point underlined by Tsing, which is that worlding can be
simultaneously orienting and disorienting. Applied to the scholarship of
religious plurality, the notion of osmotic worlding thus foregrounds the
way in which members of certain plural societies may conceptualize their
surroundings as plural and one simultaneously. While they typically come
across as plural in terms of identity, political discourse, and ritual conven-
tion, they can still come across as one in terms of commitment to a com-
mon humanity subject to an all-encompassing divine order and thus in
terms of certain kinds of ritual efficacy as well. Many of those who swirl
about in contemporary multi-faith fields such as my own North-Indian
neighborhood are strongly characterized by this gestalt-like perspective on
the religious and ontological diversity in which they swim. In the follow-
ing sections, I foreground this gelstalt-like, osmotic character of interreli-
gious worlding to exemplify what an alter-political anthropology drawing
on Hindu engagement with religious difference can look like.
Milanganj Between Plurality and Inclusivism

Let me introduce the setting with the multi-faith soundscape that seeped
into my fieldwork apartment during my 2013 and 2014 visits. Every
morning well before daybreak, the neighborhood was awakened by an
out-of-tune hymn from an ancient Vedic scripture blasting out from a
rusty loudspeaker. Though it was still pitch dark, the Arya Samaj temple
was already invoking the powers of the universe. As dawn began to break,
Vedic recitals gave way to the calling of two poorly synchronized azaan
calls for Islamic prayer. As these calls fell silent, one could suddenly hear
the soft hymns (kirtans) from the Sikh temple. Had they been there all
along? Little by little mundane sounds took over: the press press press (iron
iron iron) announcement of the ambulating ironing man, schoolboy chat-
ter, scooters driving off. In-between one could hear the ting ting ting
of the tiny bells used in Hindu worship emanating from nearby home
temples before the neighborhood fell silent again. But only until noon,
when the brass bells in the Kali temple were rung so ferociously during the
mid-day aarati (fire worship) that they virtually drowned the next Islamic
prayer call duet announcing the second daily prayer, the dhuhr. By lunch-
time my head was almost spinning from the sheer plurality of this multi-
faith soundscape, though the permanent residents were so accustomed to
it that they hardly bothered to distinguish the sounds unless they actively
had to listen for something.
My street was located in a working-class neighborhood I here call
Milanganj, or “Mixedville”. Within five minutes’ walk from my apartment,
there were two Sikh temples, two mosques, and a plethora of Hindu tem-
ples spanning from the landmark Arya Samaj temple (which discourages
idol worship) to street-corner temples devoted to the popular m onkey god
Hanuman, home temples aside. Five minutes further ahead there were two
churches, and in five additional minutes one would find three Sufi shrines,
one of which was mediaeval and occasionally attracted people from afar.
238 K. FRØYSTAD
The residents of Milanganj made their living as factory workers, shopkeep-

ers, errand boys, milkmen, vegetable wholesalers, domestic servants, tailors,
basket weavers, government employees, beauticians, and beggars, to give a
few examples from my own circle of acquaintances. Designating the neigh-
borhood as working-class thus glosses over a wide variety of livelihoods and
living standards. People living in most other parts of the city nevertheless
scoffed at Milanganj as “not good”, a class term that not only invokes the
modest social standing of its residents (cf. Frøystad 2005, 2006) but also its
congestion, potholes, outmoded market, and plethora of garbage heaps in
which pigs, dogs, and cows competed for edibles.
Its surrounding city—Kanpur—is home to almost 4.2 million people,
whereof 82.7 percent Hindus, 15.7 percent Muslims, 0.9 percent Sikhs,
and 0.3 percent Christians as well as a minuscule percentage of Jains,
Buddhists, and Parsis (Zoroastrians), the religious minorities concentrated
in the central parts of town (Census of India 2011). The multi-faith com-
position of Kanpur and many other cities in the central parts of the densely
populated state of Uttar Pradesh developed over centuries. Despite the
location of Kanpur in the Hindu heartland, mid-way between the pilgrim
towns of Banaras and Mathura, the surrounding region has been sub-
ject to Islamic influences for almost a millennium—initially by wandering
Islamic or Sufi mystics and later by the Nawabs who ruled this area from
the neighboring city of Lucknow. Most of the Sikhs in Kanpur arrived as
Partition refugees from Pakistan in 1947−1948 along with Hindu Punjabi
refugees. While some Muslim families in turn left for Pakistan, the majority
stayed on. Contextualizing religious plurality chronologically, one cannot
help being reminded of how even the most cordial of interfaith relations
can be politicized into “critical events” (cf. Das 1995) that stick to family
histories and collective memories, from where they can be invoked by the
slightest trigger. Living in Milanganj, where many of the Sikh refugees had
settled down only to be brutally re-victimized during the 1984 anti-Sikh
riots, where the entire neighborhood later witnessed the 1992 Hindu−
Muslim riots up close, and where the newspapers during my fieldwork
were replete with stories of paid conversion and alleged “love jihad” in
which Muslim boys allegedly allured Hindu girls into marriage to increase
the country’s proportion of Muslims, I was often reminded of how quickly
religious boundaries can be politicized in a violent manner.
It is difficult to summarize the multi-faith character of Kanpur with-
out resorting to the deeply entrenched categories of “Hindu”, “Muslim”,
“Sikh”, and so on. As historians have pointed out, such identities were
not always as clear-cut as today. Many Indians had a fairly open-ended

religious identification until the British colonial government in 1871 initi-
ated its decennial census, for which every Indian family was made to reg-
ister as subscribing to only one of its pre-defined religious categories (see
e.g. Sarkar 1996, 279; 1999). As colonialism matured, religion-based per-
sonal laws were codified, and Muslims were granted a separate electorate,
religious identities grew increasingly fixed. The crystallization of religious
identities was further amplified by the polarization that grew forth dur-
ing the Independence movement and reached a violent peak during the
chaotic Partition period. Today there is hardly any fuzziness left in terms
of religious identity. Residents of Milanganj identify more strongly with
the religious background of their parents than with their own ritual pref-
erences, suggesting a thorough naturalization that almost turns religious
identity into a question of ancestry and blood. People are thus acutely
aware of which religious spaces, ritual demeanors, and clothing styles that
are “theirs”, and which that belong to the other religious communities
with which they share urban space. This is what makes ritual engagement
across religious boundaries so osmotic. And yet there are at least two
modes of ontological engagement that undermine this osmotic character.
One is the all-engulfing process of worlding, which I exemplify in the
final section. The other—which I summarize briefly here—is the age-old
propensity for inclusivism in Hindu thought, which is arguably of equal
ontological significance as the truth-claims that a “vistas” anthropologist
of the Holbraad caliber could have documented by shrinking his fieldwork
in such a multi-faith neighborhood to a particular religious tradition or
ritual space.
In the scholarship of Hinduism, the Hindu tendency to appropriate
non-Hindu elements has been a recurring topic for decades. While some
scholars make do with briefly characterizing Hinduism as a “sponge” reli-
gion, the most influential optic has probably been that of “inclusivism”.
Originally launched by Paul Hacker in a posthumous article (1983), inclu-
sivism captures the tendency of Hindus to subsume new elements into their
own cosmological universe, thus resulting in an ontological flexibility that
has a profound effect on religious tolerance. As Halbfass explains it, “[T]
he central and pervasive element in Hacker’s definitions and exemplifica-
tions of ‘inclusivism’ is the practice of claiming for, and thus including in,
one’s own religion or worldview what belongs in reality to another, foreign
or competing system” (Halbfass 1988, 411). Anthropologists who have
done research into these matters have generally been more case-specific,
240 K. FRØYSTAD
but Michael Carrithers’ “polytropy” concept (2000) is worth mentioning

given its attempt to capture the general tendency not only of his Digambar
Jain informants but also of Hindus to bow in many (poly) different direc-
tion (tropos), which also explains his critical position in the 2008 GDAT
debate on the ontological turn (Carrithers et al. 2010), in which a group
of British anthropologists famously voted over the motion “Ontology is
just another word for culture” (see Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). I
cannot help wondering if Carrithers’ critique would have had more impact
if he had moved on to quote the well-known historian Percival Spear, who
early on argued that the sponge-like character of Hinduism “provides a
first lesson in the ‘otherness’ of Hindu ideas from those of Europe” in
which “the Western love of definition and neat pigeon-holing receives its
first shock” (1949, 57).
During my fieldwork in Milanganj, my Hindu interlocutors strove hard
to get these points across to me. Some stated that Allah and God are
merely different names for Brahma or Paramatma, the Absolute, just like
they claimed amin and amen to have the same linguistic root as om, the
eternal sound in Hinduism. Others opined that there are many paths to
salvific moksha (unification with the Absolute and liberation from further
rebirth), and that each person must choose the way with which he or she
feels most comfortable. Some elaborated that Hinduism is the Sanatana
Dharma (eternal truth/order) whose very antiquity makes it the origin
of all other religions. When speaking about Christianity, many believed
that Jesus had spent part of his life in Kashmir, where he had been trained
as a yogi, which in effect made them consider Christianity an offshoot
of Hinduism on par with Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. As for Islam,
the Hindu nationalist historiography according to which the Golden Age
of Hinduism is “scientifically” found to have covered ever larger parts
of the world had become so widely disseminated by 2014 that quite a
few of my interlocutors believed that, inside the Ka’aba in Mecca, there
was an ancient Shiv ling (phallic representation) which turned Muslims
into unwitting worshippers of Shiva. A few Hindu nationalist “historians”
make similar claims for the Vatican in Rome and Westminster Abbey in
London, though I am yet to hear these claims in Milanganj. Though such
explanations of Hindu inclusivism could be wildly inconsistent, this was
never a problem since they were never juxtaposed. Nor was Muslim or
Christian denial of the alleged Hindu origin of their religious traditions
ever mentioned, and given the political sensitivity of such questions, I did
not press the point.
The most intriguing attempt to explain Hindu inclusivism occurred

when a Hindu acquaintance and his Muslim friend nodded in full
agreement that sab ka malik ek (everyone has the same Lord), by which
the Hindu inferred that, behind all the religious traditions created by
humankind there is but one supreme god, whereas his Muslim friend
must have inferred that Allah ek hai, uska koi sharik nahi (Allah is one
and has no rival). This was not merely an exquisite example of religious
tolerance by méconnaissance (in the sense of Bourdieu 1977, 171); it
also suggests the slippage from assertions of inclusivism to blasphemy,
which is a punishable offense in India, and which may cause considerable
violence if violated. An interesting corollary of the Hindu propensity for
inclusivism was however that, even Hindu nationalists expressing strong
resentment against Muslims (or Christians) hardly ever did so by rebut-
ting Islamic (or Christian) doctrines or figures the way one frequently
hears in contemporary Euro-American anti-Muslim discourses. More
than once I have seen hardline Hindu nationalists seeking blessings
or advice from representatives of the religious traditions they claim to
detest, albeit in a concealed manner. This brings me over to the second
mode of ontological engagement that undermines the osmotic char-
acter of cross-religious ritual engagement, which I will soon approach
through an ethnographic example of worlding. Before delving into my
ethnography, I must however make a brief return to the question of
methods and models.
The Kali Temple Octopus

How to design a fieldwork dedicated to the study of ritual engagement
across conventional religious boundaries? This was the main methodologi-
cal question I grappled with when planning my present research in 2013.
It was clear that I did not want to follow the common tendency of reduc-
ing a multi-faith neighborhood to a study of a singular religious tradition,
movement, or site the way I later learned that Holbraad had done. Nor
did I want to replicate the many studies of shared religious spaces such as
Sufi dargahs, though the studies of Werbner (2003), Flueckiger (2006),
Bigelow (2010), and Mohammad (2013) certainly made it tempting to do
so. What I wanted to do was to follow people as they participated in ritual
activities of various kinds across conventional religious boundaries, and to
do so sufficiently closely to understand the ontological underpinnings of
their motivations.
242 K. FRØYSTAD
As I searched for a vantage point that could become my “starting

node” in my imaginary multi-religious field, I happened to visit a Kali
temple I had noticed during an earlier visit to Milanganj. This temple did
not only turn out to become a fascinating starting point; the crossings
I was able to observe by following its protagonists around happened to
be so plentiful and analytically potent that I ended up recruiting most
of my interlocutors in this temple itself. The resultant methodological
approach thus became what I now think of as an “octopus method”
that began with the head (the Kali temple) and extended out through
its arms across to a series of other ontological nodes or ritual traditions,
past or present. Shifting back to the panoramic multi-religious field for
a moment, it was evident that Hindu temples in general and the Kali
temple in particular had more and longer arms than most of the other
nodes in Milanganj. Given the Muslim and Christian prohibition against
shirk and heresy, ritual crossings starting from mosques or churches were
rare and secret, whereas crossings from Hindu and Sikh temples were
common and conducted fairly openly except perhaps from Arya Samaj
temples.
Let me add a brief word of caution against treating the field model too
spatially. A ritual site will probably always be subject to contested mean-
ing, particularly in religious traditions characterized by multiple texts, dei-
ties, and protagonist communities. This was certainly the case in the Kali
temple. Though worshippers were in full agreement about the goddess’
ability to intervene in their lives and thus in the necessity of satisfying
her by regular worship, they often expressed disagreement about how she
should be worshipped: Was it appropriate to give her lipstick and bindis
(red forehead stickers) as offerings? Was it appropriate to stuff her mouth
with sweets, or should one rather maintain a respectful distance? Was it
really possible to be possessed by her, or was possession mere nautanki
(drama) to attract attention? Such questions were regularly discussed in
ways that reveal clear disagreement between the many castes and regional
communities who patronized the temple, which serves as a reminder that,
though my multi-ontological field is clearly spatial as a model, it can never
fully correspond to the visual representation one would obtain by drawing
a map of the neighborhood in which one marks its religious shrines. The
field and the field site thus comprise different analytical orders, which is a
point that even a sitting-at-the-feet-of-an-expert anthropologist is bound
to know.
The Priest and the Owls

Time to exemplify. But which case to choose? The young Muslim man who
began to go to church to find out whether Christianity was less restrictive
and thereby more attractive to him than the Barelvi Islam of his parents?
The Christian tribal woman who, four years into her love marriage with a
low-caste Hindu, now felt completely at ease with Kali worship after hav-
ing become convinced that Kali was not only another form of Durga but
also of Mother Mary? Her husband, whose guru gained his otherworldly
insights because he has been possessed by a Muslim jinn (spirit) ever since
he sat down to defecate under a peepal tree (Ficus religiosa) as a 12-year
old? The female Kali temple volunteer who had only been able to con-
ceive a baby when following the advice of a Sikh seer of bathing in the
pond of her native village, rinsing off in the gurudwara’s washing section
and prostrating in front of the Guru Granth Sahib? The Muslim couple
from Lucknow who traveled all the way to the Kali temple in Milanganj in
gratitude for the assistance extended by the goddess in a time of dire need?
My octogenarian Hindu nationalist host who, despite having lectured me
about the wickedness of Muslims and the futility of my research, rushed
to the gate to give alms to a wandering Sufi mystic whereupon he bowed
respectfully to receive his blessings? Each of these cases, and so many more,
could well have been elaborated as instances of osmotic worlding that hold
up an alter-political mirror suggesting how awkwardly Westerners and pro-
ponents of the “vistas” branch of the ontological turn alike have come to
deal with religious difference. But let me rather detail the case of a Brahman
Hanuman priest, which has the bonus of concerning a religious custodian
who theoretically ought to represent an ontological purity of sorts.
Panditji, as I call him (using the term of respectful address for Hindu
priests and Brahmans) serves a small Hanuman shrine within the premises
of the Kali temple, just like his father did before him. Hanuman is the mon-
key god of the famous Ramayana epic, here depicted as a brightly painted
stone relief dressed in a red and golden robe. Every Tuesday, which is when
Hanuman is most fervently worshipped in this part of India, Panditji sits
in the Hanuman shrine throughout the day to receive the worshippers’
offerings of sweets, flowers, and incense sticks on behalf of his patron deity,
distributing blessed leftovers (prasad), sacred ash (vibhuti), and drops of
purifying Ganga water along with occasional mantras in return. The rest of
the week Panditji’s schedule is relaxed, something that also enables him to
follow in his father’s footsteps by taking up a side-profession as a tantrik.
244 K. FRØYSTAD
A tantrik is a ritual specialist consulted for problems too grave to be

overcome by the pledges, sacrifices, or worship ceremonies typically famil-
iar to non-specialists. A runaway husband, a failure to become pregnant,
an enduring property dispute, a son who constantly fails his exams, a per-
sisting health problem, and a daughter-in-law who keeps slitting her wrists
are all problems of the kind that an average tantrik can diagnose and devise
a ritual cure for. There are also tantriks reputed to help clients in harm-
ing their enemies, but Panditji claimed not to deal with black magic (kala
ilm). Drawing on long experience, advice from fellow practitioners and
regular consultation of ritual manuals (usually the Agni Purana or a vol-
ume of incantations addressed to Goddess Durga), Panditji’s prescriptions
normally consists of going to a particular temple on a particular weekday
to sacrifice a set of items suitable for the problem and deity in question
along with some cloves (laung) and non-synthetic camphor (desi kapoor).
If correctly performed, the sacrifice will please the deity and inspire him or
her to intervene by dissolving the problem in question.
In contrast to Panditji’s priestly work, his tantric profession is not a
uniquely Hindu tradition. Tantrism has been influenced by Sufi mysti-
cism at least since the twelfth century (Samuel 2008, 335), and mystics of
different denominations dealing with similar problems frequently consult
one another. Thus, on several occasions, I accompanied Panditji to visit
Sufi dargahs to ask for advice. The graver the problem, the more impor-
tant it was to obtain accurate advice. In his younger days, Panditji claimed
to have inadvertently “killed” two sickly children after having given their
mother a poorly researched ritual prescription, a tragedy that still haunts
him. The dargahs we visited displayed a striking contrast to Panditji’s
temple quarters and the dingy bedroom he used as consultation quarters.
Here were no images of gods and goddesses, no sounds of bells or loud-
speakers, no bright yellow, orange, or red. Instead there were serene stone
graves covered with green cloth, Islamic calligraphy, and photographs of
the Ka’aba, all enveloped in a soothing silence and a faint smell of country-
made perfume that had been sprinkled over the graves as sacrifice to the
immortal pirs whose bodies were buried there. Despite the stark ontologi-
cal contrasts reflected by these material differences, Panditji and the pirs
were in full agreement that persistent, inexplicable problems were typi-
cally caused by possession of ghosts or malevolent spirits, whether these
were labeled bhuts or prets, as Hindus would say, or jinns, as in Muslim
parlance. They also agreed that, most people who displayed external signs
of possession were merely “doing drama” (natak karna). And though
their treatment of bona fide possession typically differed since Sufi rituals
are directed at Allah and his helpers rather than at Hindu deities, it often
involved similar “props”, such as the use of a brick wrapped in cloth to
solve property disputes. Just how intertwined tantrik practices could be
with the South Asian Sufi tradition was evident in the rite de passage that
both Panditji and his father had undergone in order to acquire the super-
natural powers required of a tantrik.
The venue in both cases had been one of the dargahs that Panditji
occasionally frequented. Here both had devoted 40 consecutive days to
sit at the feet of a particular Sufi Muslim mystic who used to live there—
not just to learn from him, but also to acquire supernatural abilities (sid-
dhis). Siddhis involve the capacity to transcend natural laws, for instance
by reading other peoples’ minds, communicating with gods, spirits or
ghosts, understanding the speech of animals, traveling from one place to
another with the speed of light, changing one’s bodily appearance, endur-
ing extreme heat or cold, surviving without oxygen, food or water, and so
on. Siddhis are sought-after qualities for tantriks and gurus alike, which
is why guru hagiographies are replete with miracle narratives. To acquire
siddhis one has to devote at least 40 days to as continuous ritual practice
(sadhana) as possible, preferably at a liminal place. Following his father,
Panditji had chosen the graveyard in-between the dargah and its concomi-
tant mosque. Not only did the tomb around which the shrine had been
built radiate an immense healing power (barkat) from its long-deceased
pir; its adjoining graveyard was a place where a plethora of spirits hovered
about, as they did a few hundred meters downhill, where remnants of
other dead occasionally floated slowly downstream the holy Ganga, which
in turn was a liquid goddess. This graveyard was thus liminal in more ways
than one, and their preference for a graveyard rather than a cremation
place as a suitable venue to seek siddhis did not necessarily represent much
of a transgression to them. Interestingly, this graveyard was also where
Panditji’s father’s devotion to Hanuman originated. As Panditji summa-
rizes his father’s sadhana, Hanuman suddenly entered his body on the
39th day, thus making him run shouting and waving out of the place. This
made him understand that it was Hanuman who was his true master, which
is why he initiated the construction of a Hanuman shrine at the back of
what was then a modest Kali temple next to their rickety two-room family
home, thus expanding his profession from a mere family priest to a temple
priest. Yet this experience did not prevent Panditji’s father from travers-
ing the boundary between Hinduism and Sufi Islam throughout his life,
246 K. FRØYSTAD
a practice now continued by his son. Panditji does so in a slightly more

concealed way, however, fearing that his involvement with tantrism and
Sufism could be off-putting to his Punjabi clients, many of whose parents
or grandparents were forced to choose between converting to Islam and
fleeing their homes during Partition. Here the osmotic character comes
in with full force. As for Panditji, he was unwilling to reveal the outcome
of his own 40-day sadhana since boasting of one’s own siddhis can make
them disappear. What was clear that he still felt uncertain about a number
of things, as when he suddenly began to see owls.
One day Panditji whisperingly told me that he had begun to see owls—
not just once or twice, but several times. Believing owls to signify the pres-
ence of Shaitan, this worried him deeply. His knowledge about non-human
powers, though never confined to the ontological world of his temple and
the scriptures he relied on in his priestly work, was suddenly unsettled, and
he had to reorient himself. I was surprised by his fear of owls. Ever since I
began doing fieldwork in India 22 years earlier, I had only heard Hindus
associating owls with stupidity. Dimwitted people are routinely referred
to as owls (ullu) in Hindi and Urdu alike, and “son of an owl” (ullu ka
pattha) is a standard expression for a complete idiot. But seeing owls is evi-
dently different, especially when they appear again and again. One would
perhaps have thought that a priest who had literally grown up in a temple
and could read Sanskrit with ease would have consulted Hindu scriptures
to ascertain the meaning of owls. Goddess Lakshmi, for instance, uses an
owl as her means of transport, which helps ensure her steadfastness, and
in the Bhagavad Gita owls indicate unwaveringness. Panditji was nonethe-
less clear about his association of owls with Shaitan (satan) despite the
lack of such an entity in the Hindu pantheon. Granted, naughty children
are often referred to as shaitani (satanic), but Hindu evil is distributed
across such a bewildering number of demons, rakshas, and asuras that it
is virtually impossible to imagine a singular opposition to an equally sin-
gular benevolent god, as in the Abrahamic religions. So how did Panditji
come to associate owls with Shaitan? My colleagues specializing on the
Middle East claim that there is little in Islam to associate owls directly
with Shaitan. Throughout the Middle East, h owever, owls are seen as an
omen of death. Given the distant roots of South Asian Islam in the Middle
East, such associations may well have circulated in Sufi environments of
the kind frequented by Panditji. Whatever their origin, Panditji was clearly
distressed. His next step was thus to seek an expert opinion on how he
could keep owls at bay.
The following Thursday, Panditji and I went off to another Sufi shrine
to visit a bookseller who came by every Thursday to sell travel-size Korans
and other Islamic literature. The men knew one another from earlier vis-
its and spent considerable time exchanging pleasantries before Panditji
felt sufficiently comfortable to reveal his ignorance and ask for a man-
ual that could detail a ritual that kept owls at bay. Looking in his bag
of books too specialized to be displayed, the bookseller eventually sug-
gested a thick volume titled Amliyate Sulemani: Nakshe Sulemani ka Bhag
5-10 (The Rituals of Suleiman: Incantations of Suleiman, section 5-10),
which contained a collection of spells ascribed to Prophet Suleiman (King
Solomon in the Judeo-Christian tradition), who is reputed for his magic
capabilities due to his control over the wind, jinns and demons (Zorgati
2015). Reorientation at last? A worlding back on track? Unfortunately
not. Although the main text was written with the Devnagari script with
which Hindi and Sanskrit are written, its ritual prescriptions and incanta-
tions were all written in the Arabic script used by Muslim Urdu-speakers,
which Panditji was unable to read. This was not the first time his effort
at osmotic worlding had been blocked by his lack of knowledge of Urdu.
One year earlier he had given up a search for another Arabic incantation
that could help a client solve a violent property dispute for the very same
reason. In theory Panditji could well have asked the bookseller or the pirs
he consulted to either read the relevant incantations out loud or to write
them down for him in Hindi. Yet he could not divulge how desperately he
needed this knowledge without losing face. He was after all a ritual expert
himself, and one representing a far older and more superior religious tradi-
tion at that! The only option left was to wrap up the meeting by claiming
that the book was either too expensive, insufficiently detailed, or not that
interesting anyway. Panditji thus returned equally empty-handed from the
owl-related visit as he had done from the property-related visit. But he
still encountered owls, and he still feared their message. Could it be that
his much awaited grandchild, who now was gestating in his daughter-
in-law’s womb, would never see the light of day? Fortunately not. But
only two weeks after our visit to the bookseller, Panditji’s mother passed
away. Although she was too old to represent a “bad death”, her passing
confirmed Panditji’s suspicion that owls were indeed harbingers of mis-
fortune and thus represented a satanic force. In this way, the disorienta-
tion that prompted his unconventional worlding effort at simultaneously
ascertaining and preventing what the owls could be communicating, was
eventually rewarded with reorientation despite his linguistic full stop.
248 K. FRØYSTAD
As my fieldwork progressed, Panditji eventually conceived of a way

to overcome the language problem that hampered his osmotic practices.
Frustrated by repeated failure to access the desired ritual prescriptions and
incantations in ways that enabled him to use them, Panditji finally came up
with the idea of making candid cell phone recordings of other people read-
ing them. In a visit to a renowned jharewala (remover of spirits), Panditji
tested it out. Though the jharewala was from the Hindu Jat community,
he attracted sufficient Muslim clients to have developed an exorcism rit-
ual with Islamic chants directed at Muslims. Since Muslims were more
likely to be possessed by Muslim jinns than by Hindu spirits, the jharewala
explained, Islamic verses were likely to have better effect on them. Citing
the pretext that his accompanying “Kitty from foreign” (me) wanted to
hear them, Panditji asked him to exemplify, whereupon he pressed the
record button underneath the desk. It will require another field visit to
find out where this will take him. What seems certain is that, just like Tsing
holds worlding to be orienting and disorienting at once, osmotic worlding
simultaneously confirms and negates religious difference in a way that falls
well outside the radar of the proponents of the ontological turn commit-
ted to radical alterity. What seems equally certain is that both the onto-
logical turn and the project of crafting an alter-political anthropology of
religious plurality would have much to gain by directing their attention to
the ways in which Hindus relate to alterity, which perhaps is best under-
stood as not acknowledging it at all.
Concluding Remarks
If the aim of the ontological turn has been to “recalibrate the level at which
analysis takes place”, as Morten Axel Pedersen (2012) quotes Magnus
Course to have correctly observed, we must also ask ourselves what this
recalibration does. Intellectually stimulating—check. Unsettling our analyti-
cal foundations—check. Making anthropologists from the most different of
subfields and regional specializations talk to one another again—check, this
volume being a case in point. But what the “vistas” branch of the ontologi-
cal turn can hope to accomplish politically is a completely different ques-
tion. As Todd (2014) remarks, the praiseworthy battle for epistemological
self-determination can easily flip over to epistemological colonialism as long
as its forerunners merely keep quoting one another instead of the indig-
enous thinkers who have made similar arguments for ages. The overwhelm-
ing dominance of male informants combined with sweeping generalizations
has moreover resulted in the most gender-blind analyses I have encountered
for decades. And as I have argued in this chapter, the tendency to analyze
ontologies separately and distill their principles while overlooking their per-
meability falls all-too-neatly in line with the Abrahamic preponderance for
religious purity that underpins exclusionary religious politics in disturbingly
many parts of the world. Its most promising alter-political project so far has
undoubtedly been to relativize the naturalism (Descola 2013, 2014) inher-
ent in Western conceptualizations of human/non-human relations, which
require thorough reworking to curb the dangers of the anthropocene. The
task of crafting an alter-political project must thus become far more con-
scious of which alter-political project it is supposed to address. The “one
size fits all” model implicit in certain arguments for the ontological turn can
be dangerously counterproductive.
To its credit, the ontological turn appears to contain its own solution.
As Pedersen states, its recursive principle makes it contain “within its con-
ceptual make-up the means for its own undoing” (2012). Following this
perspective, the shift I have proposed from “different worlds” to “osmotic
worlding” does not necessarily dismantle the entire “vistas” branch of the
ontological turn as much as it recursively reformulates its foundational
model. Following the Hindu principle of inclusivism, the “vistas” branch
is not necessarily different from the branches of the ontological turn more
finely attuned to worlding; it can rather be made to encompass them to the
extent of letting them overturn itself from within, almost like a sprout ger-
minating from a seed which then dries up and dissolves into dust.
More specifically I have argued that, if we are to join Ghassan Hage’s aim
of using anthropological scholarship to hold up a mirror that reminds us that
“we can be other than what we are” (Hage 2012, 300), the primary aim of an
alter-political anthropology of religious plurality must be to demonstrate that
we can conceptualize religious difference differently. For such an endeavor,
the view of ontologies as generalizable, bounded, and forever in mutual con-
trast, which permeates the writing of Viveiros de Castro and Holbraad, would
block our search for radical alternatives. The methodological way forward is
to emphasize plurality, movement, and becoming, as I have exemplified by
following my Hindu acquaintances’ osmotic sense-making and ritual world-
ing across a number of sites, problem areas, and religious traditions. The sheer
number of osmotic trajectories one may encounter in Indian settings ought
to make it abundantly clear that there are indeed radically different ways of
dealing with ontological differences than what most Westerners and radical
alterity anthropologists appear to believe. Yet there is no reason to romanti-
cize them. Osmotic practices can easily flip over to stereotyped vilifications, as
when the Hindu priest who regularly consulted Sufi Islam dismissed clients
asking for help to finish off (khatam karna) enemies by saying that, “For such
evil work, you have to approach a Muslim!”
250 K. FRØYSTAD
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CHAPTER 11
“It Seems Like a Lie”: The Everyday Politics

of World-Making in Contemporary Peru
Astrid B. Stensrud
“It seems like a lie, but that’s how it is”, Miguel said after telling a story
about two tractors.1 Educated as an engineer, he was working as daily
manager in the Water Users’ Organization of Colca Valley (Junta de
Usuarios Valle del Colca). We had just been helping Luís, the leader of the
local peasant community, to carry some tree plants for a forestation proj-
ect and were sharing InkaCola and beer outside a small shop in Chivay, a
town in Colca Valley and capital of Caylloma province in Arequipa region,
Southern Peru. The pine trees were given as a donation from a Canadian
nongovernmental organization (NGO), and Luís’ wife Maria—a vendor
at the main market in Chivay—said that they should make a t’inka (giving
drops of beer to the earthmother and mountain-lords called Apus) for the
trees so that they would grow nicely. This suggestion prompted Miguel
to tell about the tractors. The Water Users’ Organization had for a long
time tried to get financial support for various projects of forestation in
the headwaters and rainwater harvesting (micro-dams as replacements for
disappearing glaciers), as well as means to buy necessary equipment for
their work in the office and in the field. After several years of petitions:
A.B. Stensrud (*)


DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_11
254 A.B. STENSRUD
knocking on office doors, meetings with politicians and bureaucrats, wait-

ing, soliciting, demanding, presenting documents and project proposals,
the organization finally received a donation of vehicles from the regional
government: a car, four motorbikes, and two tractors. The tractors—
one red and one blue—were owned by the Water Users’ Organization
and rented out to the members, that is, the peasant farmers of the valley.
However, they had noted a difference between the tractors. The blue one
had worked well since the beginning and it had produced an income to the
organization. The red tractor, on the other hand, was for a long time caus-
ing nothing but trouble; it broke down all the time and they had to spend
money on repairs. Miguel, together with the two other persons working
at the organization’s main office—the economist Sara and the secretary
Monica—figured out that the problem was a lack of t’inka, also called
ch’alla, which according to the main Quechua dictionary simply means the
sprinkling or spattering of liquid matter (Academia Mayor 2005).2 When
they received the blue tractor, they had made a proper ch’alla by pouring
six big bottles of beer over it while invoking the local mountain-lords and
other earth-beings, before they started to use it. However, when the red
tractor arrived, they had been very busy and had not prioritized making a
ch’alla. As soon as they decided that this must be the problem, Sara and
Monica took charge, bought beer and made the ch’alla for the red tractor.
“After this, it has worked well”, Miguel said with a smile; “it seems like a
lie, but that’s how it is” (parece mentira, pero es así).
Through his statement, Miguel implicitly told me that he knew that I
would think about this as a “lie”, or just a funny story, and he was probably
also saying that he also thought of it in those terms sometimes. As an engi-
neer working with projects of development, he participates in the world of
science, but he also participates in practices that make other worlds emerge:
worlds made of entities, beings, and relations that are not acknowledged as
real by science and the modern Peruvian state. The story shows the complex-
ity of contemporary life in the Andes, where “indigenous” and “modern”
worlds are not separate units, but emerging realities and always overlapping
and partially connected. Hence, Miguel was very much aware that seen from
a scientific perspective, what he told us was impossible and not a valid expla-
nation for the functioning of a tractor, yet on the other hand, it happened
and it was real. Based on 13 months of ethnographic research in Colca Valley
in 2011 and 2013–2014, I will argue that we can understand the ch’alla
and other similar practices as world-making efforts that connect the world
of development projects and modern technology with earth-beings that give
“IT SEEMS LIKE A LIE”: THE EVERYDAY POLITICS OF WORLD-MAKING... 255
force and power to things and enable them to work well.3 These practices take
place in a changing environment, where the impacts of global warming and
climate change are manifest as melting glaciers, declining water supplies, and
seasonal irregularities (Bates et al. 2008; Vuille et al. 2008; Oré et al. 2009;
Vergara et al. 2011). International NGOs and state institutions are interven-
ing to promote strategies for adaptation and mitigation. While the global cli-
mate models and solutions seem distant and abstract, farmers in Colca Valley
seem to find it easier to identify with more hands-on projects and practices
relating to the known surroundings: planting trees, building micro-dams and
other infrastructure, and giving gifts (called iranta) to the mountain-lords
who are the owners of the water (Stensrud 2016). Through these practices,
realities emerge. How can we imagine a tractor-with-ch’alla? It is not the
same as a tractor without ch’alla; it is something more and something else.
It has become a different and better entity, a “thing-with-bonus”, because
it has become with the protection and force from the earth-beings. Miguel
knows this, but he also knows that the existence of tractor-with-ch’alla is not
accepted everywhere; it cannot be included in official paperwork and bureau-
cracy or in reports from development projects. These tensions have to be
negotiated on a daily basis, and through these negotiations, the worlds that
Miguel live in are continuously being made; it is not a question of either this
or that world, but of the relationships that Marilyn Strathern (1991/2004)
calls “partial connections”. The worlds are partially connected because they
are “neither singular nor plural, neither one nor many” (1991/2004, 54),
but always overlapping in different degrees.
I will in this chapter take the complexity of partially connected world-
making practices (some of which are usually called animistic practices) and
connect it to the political in the work of Jacques Rancière (1999, 2010) in
order to think that these practices manifest two worlds in one. The chapter
will explore the possibility of opening up politics and the public to world-
making practices. This question seems to become increasingly urgent
in these times of climate change and water scarcity, when the politics of
resource management requires a negotiation between different definitions
of “environment” and “nature”. Is it possible to achieve what Marisol de
la Cadena calls an indigenous cosmopolitics (or a pluriversal politics), which
“would accept what we call nature as multiplicity and allow for the con-
flicting views about that multiplicity into argumentative forums” (de la
Cadena 2010, 361)? For Rancière, politics “consists in re-figuring space,
that is in what is to be done, to be seen and to be named in it” (Rancière
2010, 37). I argue that the current anthropology of emerging ontologies
256 A.B. STENSRUD
could benefit from a closer engagement with the kind of politics proposed
by Rancière, who demonstrates that politics is not only about the distribu-
tion of resources in a world we share, but about changing the space and
possibility of politics itself. I suggest that including different entities and
“natures”, and making them visible and acknowledging them as political
actors, would change public space and the very constellation of partially
connected worlds that we all live in.
World-Making Practices and Ontological Openings

I translate the t’inka, ch’alla, and iranta as communicative and relational
world-making practices from where humans and other-than-humans
(earthmothers, watermothers, mountain-lords and other entities, beings,
and bonus-things like the tractor-with-ch’alla) emerge in the practice.
These practices enact the possibility of fertility, goodwill, and protection:
the possibility of harvesting potatoes, safeguarding the water supply in a
spring, protecting the wellbeing in a house, making a profitable business,
or making sure that a tractor will endure and work well. State actors and
engineers working in development projects usually see these practices as
the cultural spice that adds color and flavor to life in the Andes; cultural
idiosyncrasies that have to be tolerated when working with Quechua-
speaking peasants. Miguel is an engineer who not only recognizes and
tolerates, but who engages with different practices, which I suggest are
world-making efforts, in his daily work and life.
In social anthropology, the entities and beings that emerge from these prac-
tices have generally been seen as cultural interpretations of what we usually call
“nature”, seen as a reality existing “out there”. What is called “the ontological
turn” started to a large degree as a reaction to the hegemonic idea that took
for granted that different human societies culturally construct worldviews of
the same universal “nature” that is neutral and external to human activities.
One notable exception from the analytical separation of culture versus nature,
or human versus nonhuman, was Gregory Bateson (1972) who argued that
the mind should not be understood as confined within individual bodies and
separate from the surrounding environment. His insistence on looking at
humans as parts of larger “ecologies of mind” made Kohn (2015, 315) call
him “one important ontological anthropologist”.
The so-called ontological turn in anthropology has emerged from vari-
ous turns, critiques, and directions in the social sciences. In the late 1990s,
a general critique of the Cartesian binary of mind–body and the Western
dualism of culture–nature (e.g. Latour 1993; Descola and Pálsson 1996;

Ingold 2000) was followed by a new interest in the term “animism”.
Rethinking relations between humans and nonhumans led to questioning
the conceptualizations of different ways of living in the world. Eduardo
Viveiros de Castro (1998) was one of the first to criticize the socio-
centric metaphoric model of animistic worldviews and to understand
animism—and the more Amazonian-specific version “perspectivism”—
as ontology. Viveiros de Castro proposed that there are multiple natures
instead of multiple cultures. Others who started to reinterpret animism
in the 1990s and 2000s are Philippe Descola (2006), Bird David (1999),
Morten Pedersen (2001), and Rane Willerslev (2007). This new interest
in rethinking animism came in a period where several other approaches to
human–nonhuman relations were explored in social anthropology, related
to actor-network theory and science and technology studies as well as
theories inspired by feminist critique and Deleuzian philosophy. Examples
of ground-breaking concepts that not only blur boundaries but also
incorporate different entities in one are Marilyn Strathern’s dividual per-
sons (1990), Donna Haraway’s cyborgs (1991), Bruno Latour’s actants
(2005), and Annemarie Mol’s body multiple (2002).
The various turns toward ontological questions have experimented with
different ways of describing, conceptualizing, and understanding other
worlds not only by “taking them seriously” but also by passing through what
is studied (Holbraad et al. 2014). Nevertheless, when writing about differ-
ence, there is always a risk of erasing differences within an “indigenous pop-
ulation” (Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). I propose that a way to avoid
the essentialist trap that often presents itself when describing radical cultural
difference is to follow Annemarie Mol’s (1999, 2002) lead in focusing on
how realities emerge from heterogeneous relational practices. This is mainly
a methodological endeavor, which implicates a radical shift in perspective.
By following different practices, we can learn about how reality emerges
and how different entities are brought into being: “reality does not precede
the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather shaped
in these practices” (Mol 1999, 75). This focus entails seeing emergence,
instead of relations between units. Instead of seeing the Andes as composed
of indigenous, Spanish, and mestizo cultural units that can be connected,
we can see how worlds are continuously emerging and partially connected
(de la Cadena 2015). Mol directs our attention to the coexistence of what
is markedly different; of living as a part of what is other, and points out that
“once we start to unravel ontology-in-practice there are no longer any stable
258 A.B. STENSRUD
variables” (2002, 143). Her book The body multiple is a study of how the
practices of doctors, patients, and laboratory scientists in a Dutch hospital
enact multiple, but overlapping, versions of the illness atherosclerosis.4 In
Colca Valley, a dynamic approach that focuses on world-making practices
and what emerges from them can contribute to a more nuanced under-
standing of everyday and public life, including collective efforts of respond-
ing to the threats of climate change.
I suggest that by imagining “ontological openings” rather than a
“turn” (de la Cadena 2014), we can also open up a space to experiment
with new understandings of difference, and the possibility of critically
examine disagreements and other kinds of politics (Rancière 1999, 2010).
One opening within “the ontological turn” is inspired by postcolonial
world anthropology, political ecology, and engaged activism, mainly in
Latin America: combining a critique of the hegemony of modern poli-
tics and science with the ethnography of indigenous practices and politics
has resulted in some theoretical contributions to what ontological politics
might look like. Mario Blaser has defined “political ontology” as “the
power-laden negotiations involved in bringing into being the entities that
make up a particular world or ontology”, and suggests that it also refers to
the field of study that focuses on these negotiations and on “the conflicts
that ensue as different worlds or ontologies strive to sustain their own exis-
tence as they interact and mingle with each other” (Blaser 2009, 11). A
different politics of nature often includes disagreement on the definition of
nature itself. Marisol de la Cadena (2010, 2015) has written about earth-
beings in Cusco, and especially about the powerful mountain Ausangate
who emerged as an active part in the protests against a mining project near
a pilgrimage site. Many of the local people opposing the mine, includ-
ing the mayor, declared that their motivation was in part to prevent the
wrath of Ausangate, who would be angry and could kill a lot of people in
accidents (de la Cadena 2010, 339). De la Cadena argues that the current
emergence of Andean indigeneity with earth-beings demanding a place in
politics may imply “the insurgence of those proscribed practices disputing
the monopoly of science to define ‘Nature’ and, thus, provincializing its
alleged universal ontology as specific to the West” (De la Cadena 2010,
346). On a more general level, Holbraad et al. (2014) have argued that
the ontological turn “is not so much a means to externally-defined politi-
cal ends, but a political end in its own right”; it is a “a non-skeptical elici-
tation of this manifold of potentials for how things could be”, or what
Elizabeth Povinelli (2014) calls the “otherwise”.
The practice of defining nature differently and relating to other-than-

human beings in work places and in the public space does not always imply
an explicit conflict like in the protests against the mine in Cusco; it might
as well be everyday practices of life and prosaic worlds—different lives and
different worlds—that are taking place in the same spaces. Thinking with
Rancière (2010, 37), who defines politics as “the manifestation of dissen-
sus as the presence of two worlds in one”, I suggest that these encounters
of different—and partially connected—practices, can be seen as everyday
politics of world-making. Different practices enact different worlds; these
worlds are fragmented, overlapping, and changing, and they can all coex-
ist as part of each other through negotiation. The negotiations and the
tensions involved in them are what make world-making practices “politics
of the everyday”. Returning to Miguel and the different practices of the
irrigation organizations in Colca Valley, I will in the next section describe
how different worlds are partially connected.
Relational Water Worlds

Miguel was born in Chivay by parents who are smallholding farm-
ers and members of the local irrigation association, and went to study
engineering in the city of Arequipa. He is one of a few with university
degrees who have returned to work in Chivay to contribute to his home
town. For many years, he worked as daily manager in the Water Users’
Organization of Colca Valley, where around ten thousand peasant farm-
ers are members through their irrigation associations. Approximately 80
percent of the economy in Chivay depends on agriculture, although the
number of cultivated fields is declining. Many farmers give up due to
tough conditions in the market as well as harsh weather conditions that
are increasingly articulated in terms of climate change. The changing
climate translates mostly into water-related problems: decreasing water
supply in the springs, dry pastures, and rain that behaves differently by
starting late and pouring down intensely in shorter periods (Stensrud
2016).
Irrigation has always been important in the arid Colca Valley, but it
becomes even more crucial with the shortened rain seasons, and the irriga-
tion associations are important actors in local economic and political com-
munity life. The Colca farmers are proud of their hydraulic infrastructures,
which constitute a complex network of hundreds of kilometers of canals
and pipes, connecting the springs, lakes, glaciers, small dams, and reser-
260 A.B. STENSRUD
voirs with the pastures and fields. The infrastructure is built and maintained
in collective work parties, where all members are obligated to participate
in order to have the right to use water. Every August, each association
organizes the main cleaning of their irrigation infrastructure, followed by
festive celebrations when the farmers receive the water, which has been
withheld during the work, in the newly cleaned channels. People drink the
water with joy when it arrives, and pours chicha (maize beer) into it, and
celebrates by playing music and dancing around in the reservoir. During
the cleaning work, a paqu (ritual expert)—accompanied by a small group
of trusted members of the irrigation association—go up to the mountains
to make pagos to the springs. Pagos, which in Colca are also called iran-
tas, are packages of food, drink, coca leaves, and miniatures given to the
earth-beings, which also often include the canals and reservoirs. Humans
have to relate respectfully to the various entities in their surroundings, and
infrastructure cannot be seen as separate from the entangled world of soil,
water and earth-beings, where all things and beings are intrinsically inter-
connected through their sharing of substance (Allen 1997). The earth-
beings are neither inherently good nor evil. They are, however, powerful
and they can be quite unpredictable, vengeful, and dangerous, especially
when they are hungry (see also Ødegaard, Chap. 3).
In ritual practices in Colca Valley today, water emerges as a sentient and
responsive being, respectfully called Mama Choqueshisha or Yakumama.
In daily speech, people normally refer to the names of lakes and springs
and their properties. In August 2011, I was invited to accompany a group
of six men—including a paqu—from one of the irrigation associations of
Chivay, who were going up to the mountains to make iranta to the high
springs, located above 4000 m of altitude. By each spring, we made the
same ritual: the man in charge from the association made a fire, while the
paqu sat down by a stone table where he would prepare the ingredients to
the iranta. First, some herbs were put on burning coal on a stone plate,
and we all blew the smoke to the table, the spring, the rock, and the hill.
Then, he put an alpaca fetus on the table and gave out pieces of llama fat
(untu) to everyone in the group. All of us should roll a ball of untu and
blow our samay (breath, life essence, vital force) into it and give our samay
to various beings by invoking their names: to the place, to the spring, to
the Lord Santiago (who controls the lightening, so that he would not
send a lot of lightening, but only rain), and finally to the machulas (the
ancestors). Thereafter, we all made k’intus (bouquet of three coca leaves),
to which we also gave our samay invoking the place-beings, so that they
would protect and help us. Next, we made t’inka with wine to the spring,
the mountain, and the iranta, which by now was finished. They placed
the iranta package in the fire, and the wood made a crackling sound. That
sound indicated that the earth received the iranta and that they had done
it well. “When it starts to burst, it is a proof, a sign that the earth is receiv-
ing”, one of the men explained to me. Afterwards, the paqu placed tiny
ceramic goblets with chicha, sweet wine, and holy water in a box in the
earth beside the spring. When I asked why he did that, he answered: “It is
for here, for the spring, to drink. This will be preserved here and it is for
the whole year. It is … how should I put it … — it is [her] pago. Like we
sometimes toast [drink], they are also thirsty”.
In this world, the springs eat, drink, and respond to human action,
and thus emerge as living beings (see also Ødegaard about the flow of
vital substances between humans and nonhumans in the Andes, Chap. 3).
Water—in the rain, springs, streams, rivers, lakes and the ocean—is not a
passive element that is acted upon by humans; water takes part in sociality
and work activities. When people in Colca say that “water is life” it is not
metaphorical. Water is essential for the production of food and bodies and
is related to as an animate substance and a female life source that connects
humans, plants, animals, and spirits. Water enables life and practices, and it
also emerges from these practices as a living being who “participates in the
universe” (Valderrama and Escalante 1988, 206). Henceforth, water can
respond when it is called upon by specific techniques. “To call the water”
(llamar al agua) is a technique that performs the hydrological cycle in
order to call the water from the ocean and make clouds and rain. Before
burning the iranta, the paqu performed this calling at each of the springs
in our tour of pagos in August 2011. He used seawater that had been
brought in a bottle all the way from the Pacific Ocean, and he poured
it into a small container, covering it with a piece of cotton. After t’inka
and invocations, he placed these items—together with a starfish from the
ocean—into the spring. The paqu told me that the seawater “will call for
more water”, and explained that the cotton was “clouds, so that there will
be rain”. He continued: “This is water from the ocean. It will be absorbed
by the mountain and all of this spring, so that the water will continue
to come out.” By focusing on these practices, the world itself appears as
emerging, as always becoming in different versions, as multiple realities.
These worlds are partially connected; they are fragmented and partial in
the sense that they are enacted through practice and thus always subjected
to potential change.
262 A.B. STENSRUD
Let us go back to Miguel who told the story about the tractors. He
grew up in Colca Valley, where everything is related, connected, and alive,
and in the city of Arequipa, he achieved a university degree in engineering,
where everything is taken apart in units that can be examined, counted,
and reassembled (e.g. when he measures the water in liters per second).
On the one hand, he relates to water and water-bodies as living beings:
Miguel told me that the springs have life and powers, he knows stories
about things that have happened at particular springs, and he is cautious
when approaching them. On the other hand, he relates to water as fluid
matter that can be quantified and counted in units of liters per second.
However, he does not move from one world and back, and he is never
in-between: he lives in both simultaneously, yet it is always partially, since
they overlap and cannot be clearly separated in real-life experience and
practice. It can best be described by saying that he lives in more than one
but less than two worlds (cf. Strathern 1991/2004; Haraway 1991; Mol
2002). These worlds emerge from his different practices in everyday life at
home and at work, and there seems to be constant tensions and attempts
at making coherence, for example, by trying to find a scientific explanation
to why the calling of rainwater works. He told me the following:
In the time of the Incas, it is told that the chasquis [runners and messen-
gers] went down from the mountains to the ocean, where they did a pago
to the ocean. Afterwards, they took seawater in pitchers, and they put one
pitcher on each mountaintop, from the ocean to the highlands. And then
rain clouds were formed, and the clouds followed the seawater to the high-
lands, where it rained. Today, when they make pagos to the water springs,
they put seawater in [the spring]. They bring water from the sea in bottles.
There must be a scientific reason; we should look for a scientific explanation.
For example, when the clouds follow the seawater, it could be because the
seawater contains ions?
By suggesting that the ions in the seawater attract the rain clouds, Miguel
made an attempt to explain why the calling works in a way that science
could accept. In his work as an engineer, he tries to subordinate one world
to another, but he does not succeed. As long as he lives and works in
Colca and participates in different world-making practices, the worlds will
be connected, although it is only partially. His effort to make connections
can also only be partially successful, because the two worlds can never be
the same. There will always be excesses that cannot be encompassed in
both worlds.
Slowing Down and Doing Difference

Is it possible to describe what the tractor-with-ch’alla is? When Miguel
described the practices that made the tractor-with-ch’alla, he safeguarded
his conclusion by suggesting that it might “seem like a lie”. I suggest that
it is practically impossible to describe what something is through a so-
called clear and neutral description; one can only describe practices and
effects, like Miguel did. Attempts to contain something in a specific cat-
egory will always involve translations and thus produce excesses. Although
the inhabitants of Colca mostly speak Quechua and Spanish, and usu-
ally use the word pago (“payment”) to describe the packages given to
the earth-beings (see also Stensrud 2011), they also often use the word
iranta, which comes from Aymara. According to Adelaar (2004, 278), a
direct literal translation would be “to introduce small objects”; a transla-
tion that convey a very prosaic and descriptive meaning. However, iranta
has earlier been translated by anthropologists working in Colca Valley in
more religious terms as “food for the gods” (Valderrama and Escalante
1988, 109). Iranta is also often translated to “offering” and “sacrifice”
while the words t’inka or ch’alla are usually translated to “libation”. When
the Quechua terms, which describe these practices in everyday and prosaic
ways, are translated to Spanish and English terms with religious connota-
tions, the translators contribute to produce so-called indigenous religion
as a real existing thing. When world-making practices become “indige-
nous religion”, everything in these practices that were not about religion
at all are being excluded.
Close attention should be given to translations and what translation
practices make. One way of doing this is to “slow down reasoning”, as
argued by the Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers (2005). Her con-
cept cosmopolitics has nothing to do with a Kantian cosmopolitanism. The
prefix “cosmo-” indicates the impossibility of appropriating or represent-
ing all of “what is human in man”; cosmos is neither the universal nor the
universe or any particular world. For Stengers, cosmos is “the unknown”,
and a space for hesitation in the construction of a common world. I sug-
gest that this is a question of politics: the need to slow down in order
to not take the meaning of the things we see for granted. Translation is
inherently present at every step in ethnographic research practice, exceed-
ing language as a way to translate worlds, not only words (Hanks and
Severi 2014). The question is how to think rather than recognize. It is
not uncommon for ethnographers to experience moments of existential
264 A.B. STENSRUD
panic when they are confronted with different claims of truth and real-
ity, and also recognize the truth of different claims. Helen Verran (2011)
argues that anthropologists and other scientists should hold on to this
“epistemic disconcertment”. Instead of translating sameness, we should
be “doing difference together” (Verran 2011). To make unacknowledged
difference explicit and visible is akin to what Rancière sees as the political.
This would start by acknowledging disagreement, in which the interlocu-
tors both understands and do not understand the same thing by the same
words: “Disagreement is not the conflict between one who says white and
another who says black. It is the conflict between one who says white and
another who also says white but does not understand the same thing by it
or does not understand that the other is saying the same thing in the name
of whiteness” (Rancière 1999, x). Viveiros de Castro addresses similar
issues in his discussion of the “equivocation”, which is not just a failure to
understand, “but a failure to understand that understandings are necessar-
ily not the same, and that they are not related to imaginary ways of ‘seeing
the world’ but to the real worlds that are being seen” (Viveiros de Castro
2004, 11). These equivocations can be controlled in order to learn from
them. In other words, we can—and should—dwell in the space of the
equivocation; not unmake it, but emphasize or potentialize it. He argues
that “to translate is to presume that an equivocation always exists; it is to
communicate by differences, instead of silencing the Other by presuming
a univocality—the essential similarity—between what the Other and We
are saying” (Viveiros de Castro 2004, 10). The starting point should thus
be to assume perspectival difference rather than sameness in encounters
with other people. This should not be confused with assuming essential
difference between people, but difference in perspectives and the worlds
that emerge from people’s practices.
The Iranta on Facebook: Political Openings

in the Public
Most irantas and pagos in Colca Valley are made privately. Depending
on the purpose, they are made within a house—either a family home or a
business locale—or on a field, or by a water spring, with just a few selected
members of the irrigation association present. The paqu is in charge,
but all present participate by making the k’intus of coca leaves and small
balls of llama fat and placing them on the package, by sprinkling alco-
hol on it (t’inka) and blowing their samay onto it before placing it on
the fire where the earthmother Pachamama (and/or the mountain Apus,
the watermother Yakumama, or the specific place-being) eats the food.
Ideally, the humans should not watch and disturb while the earthmother
eats, especially not women, lest she will become jealous. A few rituals are
performed with the whole community present, like the celebrations of the
watermother Yakumama after the cleaning work of the irrigation canals in
August. In later years, more rituals are performed publicly in the Andes,
either as tourist attractions or as part of political movements. In Peru, the
Andean indigenous movements have not had the same force in the last two
decades as in Ecuador and Bolivia. Nevertheless, ex-president Alejandro
Toledo emphasized his indigenous roots in his presidential campaign in
2001, and the making of a pago was part of his inauguration ceremony at
Machu Picchu. My question is what happens when specific world-making
practices are moved from the private sphere to the public and political
spheres? And what kind of public is articulated through these practices?
Also in Colca Valley, the making of irantas has been brought out to
public view in recent years. In March 2014, the United Nations’ World
Water Day was celebrated for a whole week with different events: work-
shops, seminars, and a procession where farmers and school children
marched with banners on the main public plaza in Chivay. One day, an
iranta ceremony was performed on this plaza. The original idea by the
organizing committee—consisting of representatives from the local state
administration of water (Administración Local de Agua Colca-Siguas-
Chivay), the Water Users’ Organization of Colca Valley, the municipality,
and the NGO DESCO—was to create public attention and conscious-
ness about the World Water Day, the general importance of water and
the local water culture. The objective was also—as stated on the munici-
pality’s Facebook page—to make a ritual of gratefulness to Yacumama
and Pachamama, so that the water and the earth will provide good har-
vests this year, and the “revaluation of the ancestral culture”. However,
the iranta took on an even more immediate purpose, since there had
been three months of drought since December, in what was supposed
to be the rain season. The crops were suffering and the farmers worried.
As most farmers buy seeds and fertilizers on credit, and few have insur-
ances and savings, they risk losing it all if the harvest fails. According to
the farmers’ observations, the weather seasons have become less stable
during the last decade, and it is getting harder to anticipate the weather.
Making irantas is one way of gaining a sense of control in times of
uncertainty.
266 A.B. STENSRUD
The iranta was made on a table in the main plaza, where everyone was
welcome to watch and participate, even tourists, who often spend a day in
Chivay after hiking in Colca Canyon. A paqu was in charge of preparing
and assembling the iranta, and in the closest circle were the representatives
from the state water administration, the board members of the Water Users’
Organization and the leaders of the local irrigation associations, as well as the
vice-mayor and a couple of aldermen from the municipal council. Various
paths of action, global narratives, international politics, and transfers of money
and ideas had led up to this day. Since the new Law on Water Resources (LWR)
was passed in 2009, the National Water Authority ANA (Autoridad Nacional
del Agua) has held the overarching responsibility for the management of all
kinds of water all over Peru. Both ANA and the LWR have emerged as part
of the Integrated Water Resource Management paradigm that is promoted by
international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations. An
important part of the integrated management is the fostering of a new “water
culture”, as defined by the ANA and the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation
Program, by giving value to water and educating farmers and other citizens
(called “water users” in the new law) in responsible and water-efficient prac-
tices in irrigation and household usage (ANA 2010).
The idea of enacting the iranta publicly was partly intended to acknowl-
edge the existing local water cultures. Gabriel, one of the engineers work-
ing in the state administration of water—who like Miguel was born in
Colca Valley and educated in Arequipa city—talked enthusiastically about
the celebration of water in August, when people drink the first water that
arrives, kneel, and praise the water: “That is water culture!” On this partic-
ular day in March 2014, the paqu prepared the ingredients for the iranta,
with the participation of the authorities and several passersby, both locals
and tourists. After giving the samay, with special attention to the local
mountain Cotallaulli who overlooks the town, the iranta was burnt on
the plaza. The stones on the ground cracked and broke with a lot of noise,
something which startled some of the onlookers and was positively com-
mented on by others. The paqu also placed a starfish from the sea into the
main fountain. A few hours after, the rain started pouring down. It had
worked! It was the topic of conversation around town the whole after-
noon. Some farmers commented later, however, that the rain had been
too strong, it had come with lightening, and it was too short, concluding
that the iranta had not been well prepared. Nevertheless, the municipal-
ity found it worth mentioning on their Facebook page that it had rained
shortly after the ritual. Gabriel was one of the first to post pictures of the
pago and the rain on Facebook, commenting that “After the pago, a rain
from God, like a blessing”. Under another picture he wrote: “The pago to
the water, which was carried out successfully and afterwards a good rain
fell, in the locality of Chivay, yesterday 7 March, we hope that the rains
continue, to ensure the water resources for the present crop year.”
What happens when these world-making practices and relations to
earth-beings are made public? I suggest that when they are presented in
the language of religion and cultural representation, like on the municipal
Facebook page, where they were described as “ritual” and “ancestral cul-
ture”, the practices are in a way made harmless and irrelevant because they
are bounded, defined, and put safely to rest in a known category that refers
to the past. Hence, they are presented as unchanging, and by implication
unable to create change and rebel against the hegemonic order of things. I
noticed how people often distanced themselves from these practices when
talking to others, by placing the practices safely in the past: “This is what our
ancestors used to do.” The reason for this need to assert distance was prob-
ably because of the social hierarchies that are legitimized by ideas of race and
levels of education, as well as discriminating practices throughout public life
in Peru. Looking at people’s actual practices, however, reveal continuous
efforts to maintain relations to other beings and to make coherent worlds.
When the other-than-human beings—like the Pachamama, Yakumama and
Apus—are invoked, consulted, and supplicated in search for a solution to
a specific problem (in this case drought), then their presence as real beings
is acknowledged. When emerging as parts of the public space, they are also
making politics. Rancière’s definition of politics is that of breaking with the
configuration whereby parts are defined and making a place for “the part of
those who have no part” (Rancière 1999, 30). He explains:
This break is manifest in a series of actions that reconfigure the space where
parties, parts, or lack of parts have been defined. Political activity is whatever
shifts a body from the place assigned to it or changes a place’s destination. It
makes visible what had no business being seen, and makes heard a discourse
where once there was only place for noise; it makes understood as discourse
what was once only heard as noise. (Rancière 1999, 30)
Making world-making practices and relations to earth-beings visible in the

public, is close to what Rancière sees as the political, which “consists in
re-figuring space, that is in what is to be done, to be seen and to be named
in it” (Rancière 2010, 37), and “making what was unseen visible; in mak-
ing what was audible as mere noise heard as speech” (Rancière 2010, 38).
268 A.B. STENSRUD
A public iranta is in many ways the same as private irantas, but at

the same time they are very different, simply because they emerge in the
practice: different people participate, different pleads are made and for dif-
ferent aims and purposes. The earth-beings see this and they also become
different in these public relations. In fact, no iranta is the same as another;
each is unique in that it is always performed by a specific person for a
specific purpose. Furthermore, all practices—and thus all worlds—are dif-
ferent and always changing. Being flexible and pragmatic is what makes
practices and worlds endure, instead of being relegated to a distant and
harmless past.
Conclusion
Practices of inclusion and coexistence should be openly and thoroughly
discussed in today’s world where processes of globalization interact with
regional identity politics and environmental concerns. Accelerated change,
global warming, and ecological crises are pressing a sense of urgency upon
humans all over the planet. At the same, it is pertinent to slow down
reasoning and create a space for hesitation (Stengers 2005) about what
we are doing, both as people living in a globalized world and as schol-
ars engaging in ethnographic practice and generating knowledge about
multiple worlds. “Ontology” is a tricky term, which should only be used
after careful considerations of the analytical and political implications.
Questions of ontological multiplicity demand much more than simply
replacing the concept of “culture” with “ontology”. It requires a shift in
methodology and analytical perspective; a shift from an epistemological
to a praxiographic inquiry (Mol 2002). This implies taking practices seri-
ously and seeing what these practices enact and which worlds emerge from
them; it implies not seeing units and relations between them, but (partial)
connections and emergence.
In Colca Valley, different entities and realities—like the tractor-with-
ch’alla—become “what they are” in everyday practices, interactions and
translations, with all kinds of doubts, uncertainties and inconsistencies.
These entities and worlds are not stable and uncontested units, but con-
tinuously made, unmade, and remade. With the ch’alla, the tractor (and
other things) change; it becomes with the earth, it becomes different,
better, connected to the force of the earth and with a powerful potential
that today is called “productivity”. Hence, the ch’alla is not a symbolic
act because it has real effects in the world; it made the tractor function.
In the partially connected worlds of development and relationality, the

tractor emerges as both tractor and tractor-with-ch’alla at the same time;
it is not either or, but depends on the practice in which it is enacted.
Similarly, the iranta in the plaza and on Facebook is not only an iranta,
but an iranta that defies the spatial arrangement of the public as usual; an
iranta requires the presence of earth-beings in the public and challenges
the requirements from development projects, mitigation plans, adaptation
strategies, and governmental institutions. In times of uncertainty, prac-
tices that create a sense of security and control become important. Asking
for rain by making and giving iranta to earth-beings is a complementary
practice to writing and delivering petitions to the government asking for
tractors and money for micro-dams.
Not only can anthropologists see the inclusion of irantas in the pub-
lic space, or tractors-with-ch’alla in development projects, as examples of
emergent politics of the everyday, but anthropology might become a polit-
ical project in itself by making these practices, entities, and worlds visible.
This can be done by taking translations seriously, by letting the excesses
alter our concepts, and by making other worlds visible. Holbraad et al.
(2014) argue that by presenting alternatives to declarations about what
“is” or imperatives about what “should be”, or what “could be”, “being
political” becomes an immanent property of the mode of anthropological
thought itself. “Doing difference” (Verran 2011) by making it explicit and
productive through controlled equivocation (Viveiros de Castro 2004)
is akin to making politics by dissensus (Rancière 2010). What anthro-
pologists can contribute is showing that worlds are continuously emerging
through people’s everyday practices, with always-existing doubts, para-
doxes, and apparent contradictions. When disagreeing practices and dif-
ferent worlds are made part of the same public, there are openings for
changing the order of things, as well as challenging the hegemonic idea of
modernity as disenchanted.
Notes
1. All personal names in this chapter are pseudonyms. The research leading to
this chapter has received funding from the European Research Council
(ERC Grant Agreement no. 295843) and the Norwegian Research Council
(NFR project no. 222783). The author would like to thank Marisol de la
Cadena, Christian Sørhaug and Synnøve Bendixsen for their constructive
comments on the text.
270 A.B. STENSRUD
2. T’inka and ch’alla are often used as synonyms in daily speech. However,
according to some of my interlocutors, the two words describe slightly dif-
ferent practices: t’inka is used to describe the act of sprinkling drops of
alcohol in the air or on objects, invoking the earth-beings, and it is often
performed for new things that are bought, so that they will last longer.
Ch’alla is used more generally to describe the practice of pouring drops of
beer on the earth (and on the floor or on things) or emptying whole glasses
of beer by throwing them on the ground.
3. The analysis is also informed by insights gained from more than two years of
ethnographic research in Cusco in 2001–2002, 2006–2007, and 2008.
4. Mol prefers the word “enact” because it suggests, “in the act, and only then
and there, something is—being enacted” (Mol 2002, 33).
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CHAPTER 12
Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt

in the Context of Ontological Inquiry
Eldar Bråten
This anthology is concerned with “difference” and “alterity” in the context

of “ontology”. In other words, contributors address the most central theo-
retical notions propounded by the “ontological turn” in anthropology, aim-
ing to “recalibrate” the concepts and approaches involved (see Bertelsen and
Bendixsen, Chap. 1).1 All of these terms are highly vested, philosophically
speaking, carrying an enormous weight in debates about reality. Beyond
the meaning that the term “ontology” has acquired in recent anthropology
(to be discussed below), questions about ontology are directed at nothing
less than “being” in its total scope—also incorporating the dimension of
“becoming” that is now a rather singular rallying point for the ontologi-
cal turn (see e.g. Latour 2005; Henare et al. 2007; Scott 2007; Holbraad
2012; Viveiros de Castro 2012). I take the term to capture both the ontic—
everything there is in the world and the novelties that arise, as well as the
ontological in a more analytical sense—concerning the properties of all this
being and becoming (Heidegger 2000 [1927]). While “difference” may
appear as a more straightforward concept, poststructuralist philosophy has
refocused the term and brought it center stage. Following Deleuze (1994)
E. Bråten (*)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2_12
274 E. BRÅTEN
and insisting on the “unruliness” of difference so to speak—its transgressive,

nonpredictive, and generative character—the term lends itself to notions
of “alterity” or “radical alterity”. And “alterity” and “radical alterity” are
concepts far too tempting for anthropologists to resist. In a time of crisis,
some scholars have embraced these notions as an opportunity to reinvent
anthropology in the context of a philosophy—some claim a world—of non-
reducible multiplicity and eternal becoming.
In this chapter, I will complicate the matter further. Following Martin
Holbraad (2012), I include another, highly vested concept, namely “truth”.
As Holbraad notes, contemporary anthropologists and even adherents
of the ontological turn are surprisingly reluctant to address questions of
truth (2012, 47–48). One would believe that truth issues arise automati-
cally from queries of deep difference and the character of being, but this is
not so. Questions of “correct” versus “incorrect”, absolute versus relative
truth, objective versus nonobjective reality accounts, and so on have now
for long—several decades in fact—largely fallen outside the anthropologi-
cal horizon. Holbraad’s promising attempt to remedy this situation is the
point of departure for this chapter. Given the poststructuralist inspiration
in much of the ontological turn—which, I hold, results in a deep form of
relativism—it is highly interesting to understand how one of its leading
scholars conceptualizes “truth”, a term with all kinds of universalist and
absolutist overtones.
Through a close reading of the monograph Truth in Motion on Ifá
divination in Cuba (2012), I will in the following try to expose and chal-
lenge the deeper assumptions that underlie Holbraad’s arguments. First,
I attempt to bring out his particular take on truth, and the closely related
notion of “doubt”. It is a major ambition of the monograph to detail an
“ontographic” approach based in a “recursive methodology” (see below),
and, unsurprisingly, Holbraad’s reasoning is geared at destabilizing the
accustomed “Western” or “modern” renderings of truth that also under-
pinned earlier—pre-constructivist—perspectives in anthropology. While
this approach may overcome the evasion of truth issues at one analytical
level, I argue that Holbraad fails to address the deeper paradoxes that arise
when truth is seen in the context of ontological questions about differ-
ence. My second aim is thus to suggest an alternative approach to truth,
and I do so from a realist rather than a poststructuralist position. This
reformulation emerges from a scrutiny of the analytical choices Holbraad
makes in arriving at the concept of Ifá truth, and a “heterodox” reading of
his ethnographic account. In crucial respects, it seems that the empirical
READING HOLBRAAD: TRUTH AND DOUBT IN THE CONTEXT... 275
material Holbraad presents supports quite other inferences than the ones
he draws. Finally, having established diverging takes on “truth”, I will
return to the question of how renderings of difference and ontology are
affected by the introduction of a truth dimension into our analyses.
A note on presentational problems is necessary before embarking on
the discussion. Taking an outsider’s view of the ontological turn, and
holding that their core term “ontology” is, basically, “yet another word
for culture” (Carrithers et al. 2010), I have a constant urge to place
Holbraad’s concepts and assertions in quotation marks. What is framed
as truth, doubt, ontology, alterity, recursive approaches, and so on within
the reasoning of ontologically oriented anthropology—or to illustrate my
point, “ontologically” oriented anthropology—may appear as something
quite different from the realist position I assume below. For example, I
would tend to read Holbraad’s “truth” as truth assertions, and his “ontol-
ogy” rather as culture, that is, pertaining to epistemological dimensions
(despite his and other adherents’ explicit ambitions to go beyond episte-
mology; see Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). However, in the text I
have struggled to minimize the use of quotation marks, restricting them to
passages where they seem necessary for intelligibility. For instance, I write
ontological anthropologists when referring to adherents of the ontologi-
cal turn, not “ontological” anthropologists (and the “ontological” turn).
My discussion mainly pertains to the perspectivist stream of the onto-
logical turn; the critique leveled at Holbraad here could equally apply to
the reasoning of Viveiros de Castro (2012). Other major strands of “the
turn”, notably Actor Network Theory (Latour 2005) and the study of
“ontopraxis” (Remme 2016, see also Scott 2007; Remme, Chap. 5) pose
different theoretical problems and need to be discussed elsewhere.
Truth in Anthropology
Holbraad traces the anthropological attitude toward truth in the idiom of
the binary culture versus nature, identifying three major periods in disci-
plinary history (2012, 19–36). First, in evolutionist perspectives, culture
was seen as a corollary of nature, the “level” of cultural advancement being
intimately tied to the “underlying” stage of human nature. Anthropology
here assumed a supreme position relative to other people’s truth claims by
way of its embedding in the “nature” of Western civilization. This con-
ceptually integral bond between culture and nature was effectively cut by
diffusionist perspectives that saw cultural creation as an independent or
276 E. BRÅTEN
semi-independent force in human life. This shift did not undermine claims
to intellectual supremacy on the part of anthropology, however. Holbraad
argues that the discipline now reconfigured itself as part of the cultural
uniqueness of Western civilization, an important feature of which was its
knowledge-generating drive through scientific inquiry. Relative to other
people’s truth claims, anthropology could now assume a dominant posi-
tion in terms of the superiority of science.
In the next phase, that of social or cultural constructivism, this hierarchi-
cal position is undermined. Inspired by among others post-positivist phi-
losophy, scholars came to question modernity as such. As a driving force of
“progress”, science and its claims to objective knowledge was, of course, a
major target. Accordingly, there was—and still is—a serious attempt, cer-
tainly within anthropology, to “give voice” to alternative epistemologies
across the globe. It is at this stage that questions about truth tend to slip
from the scholarly horizon, Holbraad notes, especially after the exhaus-
tion of the “rationality” debate (e.g. Winch 1964; Evans-Pritchard 1976
[1937]; Tambiah 1990). Reluctant to assume the intellectual supremacy
that evolutionism and diffusionism allowed, anthropologists now largely
evaded the problem altogether.
The ontological turn in anthropology can be seen as a next phase of
disciplinary development, further dismantling the nature/culture binary
and preparing the ground for a deep rethinking of anthropological supe-
riority in terms of a focus on alterity and the methodology of “recursive
analysis” (Holbraad 2012, 36–46). In Holbraad’s view, David Schneider
(1968) took the first major step in this direction by effectively decon-
structing the defining field of study in the discipline: anthropology’s focus
on the “nature” of kinship. Schneider’s attribution of kinship to culture
represented a deep challenge to any universalizing, naturalist claim in
anthropology. However, as Holbraad notes, Schneider did not take the
next logical step which would be to dismantle culture in the same incisive
way. It took an even more radical scholar to accomplish this task: Roy
Wagner. One could argue that the ontological turn in anthropology was
initiated by Wagner’s ethnographic analyses of the Daribi and his more
general works, not least The Invention of Culture (1981). Wagner in turn
has inspired other central scholars in the shift toward “ontology”, not least
Marilyn Strathern (e.g., 2004), Viveiros de Castro and Holbraad himself.
However, as noted, Holbraad claims that also these eminent thinkers are
evasive about the fundamental question of truth. While accentuating dif-
ference and reviving interest in “ontology”, they refrain from discussing
concomitant questions about the status of truth, and it is Holbraad’s novel

move to try to align these core issues in his analysis of Ifá divination.
Holbraad’s Approach to Truth
Holbraad’s analysis proceeds in three steps. First, he establishes the phe-

nomenon to be queried in terms of a productive interlinking of ethno-
graphic reality and anthropological theory, and we should acknowledge
the novelty of this methodological approach: Holbraad favors a search for
alterity that entails a particular focus on the paradoxes that emerge during
field research, the points at which the conceptual tool-kit of anthropol-
ogy seems most unable to represent field experiences. Hence, research
does not aim at providing a broad or “representative” view of the people
under study, but to discover the theoretically most challenging aspects of
their lives. It is a question of gearing analysis toward the most productive
ethnographic-theoretical junctures, and Holbraad focuses his study on the
interlinking of practices of divination and the issue of truth.
After establishing the logics of Ifá divination, the next analytical step
is to let this ethnographic practice challenge anthropology recursively
at the level of concepts—specifically, how Cuban diviners’ operation of
truth may transcend and thus potentially transform conceptions of truth
in anthropology. While this may seem a well-established anthropological
practice as old as the discipline itself (think of Mauss’ study of the gift,
1990 [1925]; and see Kapferer 2013), Holbraad and other adherents of
perspectivism (most notably Viveiros de Castro 2012) argue that their
novel step is to theorize difference from the position of alterity. Unlike
previous scholars who tended to conceive of informants’ statements as cul-
tural representations of the world (as “worldviews” or “beliefs”), the shift
to “ontology” accords a much stronger reality status to peoples’ claims:
Referring to multiple natures rather than cultures, we acquire a differ-
ent vantage point from which to challenge established anthropological
thinking. Crucially, it is not a case of translation—that is, of substituting
“our” cultural or analytical categories for “theirs” within a frame that, on
another level, is defined by “our” categories—but of bringing the differ-
ence to bear on the comparison. In Viveiros de Castro’s phrasing, it is a
question of accomplishing “controlled equivocation” rather than cultural
translation (2004). Combining this focus on alterity with the drive to seek
out the most paradoxical aspects of ethnography, indeed warrant the term
“radical alterity”.
278 E. BRÅTEN
The final analytical step entails taking recursive potentials to a meta-

level: to explore the disciplinary dynamics in terms of the premises that
the ethnographic study brings out. More specifically, in Holbraad’s study,
the question is how the truth quest of diviners and anthropologists could
be brought recursively into relation with each other. Here Holbraad notes
apparent similarities between babalawos (Ifá diviners) and Western intel-
lectuals: Both are deeply committed to the search for truth, but in diverg-
ing ways, and in what we could call the “inverse valuation” that Holbraad
favors, the recursive move consists in letting diviners’ truth practices
inspire those of anthropologists.
“Statements That One Cannot but Believe”

What, then, can Ifá teach us about truth? Crucially, Holbraad argues
that within the confines of divination, truth is conceived as indubitable.
Oracular truth is absolute truth; there is simply no space for doubt in the
operation of Ifá, they are “statements that one cannot but believe” (2012,
xxi, emphasis in original). As Holbraad underlines (2012, 71–73), this
strong assertion appears paradoxical given that divinatory verdicts do not
seem to refer to an abstract world beyond empirical verification (akin to
analytical propositions in philosophy), but to the factual, everyday world
where, to a degree, claims can be “tested” for their truth value (analo-
gous to synthetic propositions). Daily, commonsensical life is a site for
doubt, and the question is how to understand the indubitability of Ifá.
Holbraad attempts to solve this paradox of truth-without-doubt by adopt-
ing a non-representational view of epistemology, arguing that it is only
when people’s statements are seen as representations (“beliefs” etc.) that
the question of doubt can arise. The problem of doubt is an effect of the
nature/culture divide, since drawing this distinction entails questioning
the correspondence between the two poles: to what extent human rep-
resentations (culture) “fit” what is given in nature. This is the engrained
Western—and classical anthropological—way of approaching truth. In
contrast, Holbraad claims that Ifá diviners collapse this very distinction
in their assertions that oracular verdicts are absolute. The issue of doubt
simply does not arise, he argues, and it follows logically that Ifá must be
based on a non-representational operation of truth.
The next question is how we can conceptualize this peculiar—“alter”—
way of conceiving truth: What is entailed given that oracles cannot be
doubted? Holbraad’s answer is that we deal with definitions of reality,
rather than representations (2012, 214–215; later in the book he intro-

duces the term “infinition”). Ifá divination invents worlds (sensu Wagner
1981) by way of performative practices that generate novelty. When a
person is drawn into these practices, the representational doubts that char-
acterize daily life are canceled in the face of the absoluteness of oracular
truth and the person is effectively redefined by way of Ifá praxis. It is not
a question of an independent subject standing on the outside of divina-
tion, assessing its truthfulness, but of a performative trajectory that sub-
sumes subjects, effectively changing the persons involved. In Holbraad’s
phrasing, it is a case of “motile” truth (2012, 144–172), realities that, in
a sense, come into being through the movement of truth operations—
hence, the monograph’s title Truth in Motion.
The recursive lesson for anthropology is thus to reframe “truth” as inven-
tion and to trace the wider implications of this shift in theory and method-
ology. Holbraad introduces a neologism to pinpoint this move: Ifá diviners
are in the business of “infinition”, he claims, and so is good anthropology
(2012, 220). The term serves two purposes. First, it evokes an inventive
ontology, the qualities of which resemble grammatical infinitives: We associ-
ate to the agentive, processual, or performative potentials of verbs. Second,
motile truths are “infinite” in the sense of having no end point; it is a case of
open and unstable inventions. This productive coupling of ethnography and
theory undergirds the approach Holbraad labels “ontography”.
Holbraad’s Construal of Ontology:

A Critical View
However, As Holbraad’s study amply illustrates, the recursive approach
itself is not freed from requirements of interpretation. Even if we accept
the empirical claim that Ifá divination is driven by a non-representational
logic and the theoretical claim that alterity at base cannot be “translated”,
doing ethnography nevertheless entails interpreting human practices in
order to represent them in argument and writing. Arguably, Holbraad
makes a series of analytical choices along the way from observations in
the field to recursive lessons and a critical perspective ought to make these
steps visible in order to assess their value. This is especially pertinent given
the high ambitions of ontological anthropologists: Unsatisfied with the
usual conveyance of ethnographic specifics, they aim at “ethnographic
theory”, a reconfiguration of anthropology through ethnography. In this
section, I will thus investigate the steps by which Holbraad reaches his
280 E. BRÅTEN
conclusions: What are the analytical choices that allow Ifá divination to be
represented the way it is? I will in particular be concerned with the follow-
ing core theoretical questions:
1. What is the ontic scope of assertions about indubitable truth? In

which domains of reality are truths indubitable and where are they
not?
2. How to conceptualize the interrelationship of diverging truth
claims? Where and how does one “reality” shift into another, so to
speak? And, critically:
3. How to construe multiplicity as such—the very existence of diverg-
ing and possibly conflicting truth claims?
The Ontic Scope of Truth Claims

First, we note that Holbraad’s ethnography contains ample evidence that
people do doubt—and not only mundane occurrences but also diviners and
their Ifá practices. Holbraad is quite explicit about this fact: “Certainly, in
Cuba […] there are plenty of people who do not ‘believe’ in the oracles at
all. Ideological Communists and converted Christians are most vehement in
this respect in Cuba” (2012, 68). Moreover, also people who actively seek
oracular advice seem to approach the diviners and their verdicts with a degree
of hesitation: “[A] significant proportion of Cuban practitioners attend divin-
ers’ consultations in what may best be described as an agnostic or half-hearted
spirit, explaining, for instance, that, although they are interested in what the
diviners have to say, they are not ‘really’ sure whether to believe them” (2012,
68). In order to establish Ifá as an indubitable truth practice, then, Holbraad
must—sociologically speaking—adhere to the persons who are most insistent
on absolute truth, that is, the diviners. This entails a substantial restriction
of ethnographic focus: As doubt—and thus, presumably, a representational
logic—is an apparent element in relations among diviners and clients, Ifá
cannot be construed as indubitable at this level of practice. Moreover, since
diviners also doubt each other, the issue is even more complex. This is, in
fact, a rather central feature of Holbraad’s ethnography: Doubt is integral to
the assessment of other diviners’ verdicts, and there are also indications that
individual babalawos may doubt themselves, that is, the extent to which one
is competent to understand the oracular verdicts properly. This acknowledged
incompetence in self and other is why important rituals always require several
diviners: It increases the probability of reaching truth (2012, 120).
More generally, Ifá diviners seem to rely on a concept of stratified truth

that affects several aspects of their practice. At one level, Holbraad shows
that Ifá stands in a superior relationship to other divinatory traditions in
Cuba, not least Santería (2012, 85–86). The latter is associated with femi-
ninity and construed as less reliable than the supreme, masculine oracles of
Ifá. But there also seems to be stratification among deities within Ifá, thus
also, presumably, among the oracular verdicts they manifest. This is evident
in myths that accord a superior position to Orula, a deity that is the final
source of appeal—or, in Holbraad’s words, characterized by “superior trans-
parency and impartiality” (2012, 86). Holbraad’s ethnography does not
provide enough material to investigate this dimension in full, but we note
the implications for our discussion of truth: If Santería is a “lesser” form of
divination, we must assume that the tradition’s oracular verdicts are “less
than indubitable” compared to those of Ifá oracles, and the same goes for
oracles within Ifá. If Orula is seen as the “transparent” and “impartial” one;
other oracles must necessarily convey more “hazy” and “partial” truths.
These ethnographic facts do not by themselves undermine Holbraad’s
argument, however. Oracular truth may be construed as indubitable
beyond “failing” practitioners and we may even operate with degrees of
truth among deities or oracles where only the highest ensures indubitable
truth. Ifá can still be absolutely true in “last instance”, so to speak. But
when we query the ontic scope of indubitability itself—in what domains
of reality doubt is unthinkable—Holbraad’s argument seems to lose some
of its force. Clearly, it would be problematic to claim that Ifá as such—that
is, the overall tradition—is pervaded by a notion of indubitable truth.
Evidently, doubt penetrates many of the social situations of Ifá, and we
would thus have to look for indubitability in other ontic domains. Going
deeper into Holbraad’s reasoning, it seems that he mainly anchors indubi-
tability in the cultural logic of Ifá, in its “conceptual universe” (2012, 14).
We could say that Ifá is primarily explored in its capacity as a semiotic, or
even philosophical, system, and that its most interesting element—truth-
without-doubt—is established through a rather restricted set of ethno-
graphic data: the verbal assertions of diviners.
The Interrelationship of Truth Claims

Holbraad also has a rather non-sociological and abstract take on the issue of
the relative truth value of different “ontologies”; the only contrast drawn
is between the phenomenon under study (Ifá) and anthropological theory.
282 E. BRÅTEN
These are seen to conflict, while the conflicting truth claims that character-
ize the ethnographic situation fall outside the horizon.2 Holbraad’s analysis
is not geared at questions of diverging or conflicting truths as these play
out empirically in social interaction and discourse, despite the fact that
a host of Cubans are skeptical about or antagonistic toward Ifá as such,
note the views of Communists, Christians, and hesitant clients mentioned
above (2012, 68).
This choice is justifiable, given the theoretical emphasis on paradoxi-
cal alterity. Nevertheless, Holbraad thus fails to address a most impor-
tant ontological issue, concerning the effects of social encounters among
diverging epistemologies, what, so to speak, “travels between ontologies”
(Bessire and Bond 2014, 446). As Marshall notes (in Alberti et al. 2011,
903), ontological anthropologists are generally weak on relational aspects,
tending to project “ontologies” as pop beads on a string (but see de
Cadena 2010; Vilaça 2015), and Holbraad’s analysis offers no way out of
this problem. It is important to emphasize that this is not only a question
of providing more complete accounts of people’s daily lives, although that
is an important objective. The issue is theoretical and goes to the core of
our discussion: By evading questions about contrast, contest, and conflict
among diverse truth claims, we fail to address deeper questions about the
ontological status of truth.
We may point to two reasons for this evasiveness: First, the strong ethi-
cal or political drive among ontological anthropologists more generally,
a commitment to take people’s assertions about the world seriously in
a new and radical way (see Bertelsen and Bendixsen, Chap. 1). Trying
to escape the degrading of “non-modern” worldviews that characterized
earlier anthropology, adherents of the approach insist on a radical sym-
metry in the acknowledgment of diverging epistemologies (or, in their
view, “ontologies”). The aim is, as Viveiros de Castro has famously put it,
the “permanent decolonization of thought” (2011, 128; see also Stengers
2011). Hence, anthropology should not play diverging truth claims out
against each other from an allegedly superior intellectual position but turn
alterity back on the discipline itself and the environment from which it
has arisen. The wider motivation is to explore the political potentials of
alterity, the possibly world-changing effects of recursively acknowledging
“the otherwise” (Povinelli 2011). Ethnography is thus actively enrolled
in the attempt to convey other “configurations” and “futures” beyond
modernity, capitalism, environmental crisis, and other aspects of the cur-
rent situation (see Hage 2012; Kapferer 2013). It is important to note
one theoretical implication of this stance: A basic shift in reasoning from

ontology in the classical philosophical sense of “how things are” to an
anthropological one of “how things could be” (Holbraad et al. 2014).
Here, we arrive at the core problem of meta-theory, which has been
commented upon by several critics (e.g. Heywood 2012; Vigh and Sausdal
2014): The degree to which the ontological turn itself contains implicit
meta-perspectives that encompass and thus subvert attempts at symmetri-
cal recursivity. I will only note here that focusing on socially situated epis-
temic encounters rather than differences in abstract principles necessitates
a minimal degree of meta-theory concerning the interrelationship of epis-
temologies. We need to understand how diverging or conflicting claims to
truth are being mediated at the empirical level in the course of social life,
and as a next analytical step it would be interesting to investigate what this
mediation may reveal about truth.
We may, logically, envisage one extreme where diverging worldviews
refer to so disparate worlds (socially, culturally, or experientially) that
questions about “real truth” do not arise as a matter of ethnographic fact.
However, it would certainly not be difficult to find examples at the oppo-
site extreme: where diverging worldviews are profusely in conflict about
the same phenomena—and where the outcome of mediation may have
considerable impact on peoples’ lives and well-being. Take for instance
resistance against biomedical approaches to ebola (Fairhead 2014), or the
effects of indigenous concepts of sexuality, illness, and healing on the AIDS
epidemic (Liddell et al. 2005). To avoid overstating a difference between
“the West” and “the rest”, we could note similar controversies in “our”
society, for instance, between evolutionary theory and creationism—an
antagonism that also affects anthropology: The American Anthropological
Association found it necessary to issue a statement on the matter (2000).
The ontological turn’s political ideals could certainly be challenged
through such a realist shift where focus is on epistemic encounters in
the context of sociopolitical and economic power—as it indeed has been
(Bessire and Bond 2014; Vigh and Sausdal 2014; see also Frøystad,
Chap. 10). However, since my concern here is to explore the theoretical
rather than the political implications of ontological anthropology, I let this
important issue rest.3
The second reason why central adherents of perspectivism are reluc-
tant to address questions of epistemic interrelationships seems to par-
adigmatic, sensu Kuhn (1962). As a theoretical system of axioms and
inferences, perspectivism seems to be constructed in a way that inspires
284 E. BRÅTEN
this analytical constriction. I am particularly thinking of Viveiros de

Castro’s axiom of multinaturalism (2012), which posits multiple worlds
in a deep, ontological sense. It follows that these worlds are “objectively”
incompatible, impossible to bring into correspondence through (cul-
tural) translation, at best graspable through recursive analysis. What we
have, is multiple worlds in continual “invention”, none of which arises
above others in ontological superiority, so to speak. The approach entails
a hypostatization of questions of truth from their ethnographic embed-
ding to a detached, philosophical space where “intellectuals” (anthro-
pologists, babalawos and others) may exchange views on principles. The
“real” battle of truth, in my view, the one that plays out where diverging
truth claims meet in the course of people’s everyday interactions, recedes
into the background.
It is interesting to observe that ontological anthropology has been
underway sufficiently long that some of these contentions are worked
into recent contributions as explicit response to critique. For instance,
Holbraad addresses questions about the scope of truth claims by arguing
that his take on alterity:
has no mentalist, culturalist, or other “territorial” implications: the onto-

logical multiplicity that it posits […] is in no way to be distributed across
different people’s heads, cultures, habituses, or what have you. That is the
territorialized imaginary of belief and representation. […] At issue only are
the conceptual divergences that we need to posit (that is, infine) in our
analyses in order to make sense of the (otherwise) territorialized data that
interest us. Ontologies, then, are not phenomena out there to be found.
They are the analytical artifices through which such searches proceed.
(2012, 254–255)
This statement is striking in two ways: First, it indicates that Holbraad

evades the problem of boundaries by attributing questions about ontic
scope to a representational logic. While, obviously, questions about the
scope of beliefs become irrelevant in a non-representational perspective,
it is still unclear why we cannot investigate the range and interrelation-
ships of the diverse worlds that perspectivism posits. Second, we note the
greatly diminished role of ethnographic facts (“phenomena out there”)
in this perspective. “Ontology” seems not to pertain to reality at all (the
ontological), but to the intellectual quest for knowledge, that is epistemol-
ogy. Empirical realities are thus transformed or reduced to an analytical,
propositional level of “artifices”.
Actually, Holbraad takes this “de-territorialized” approach (see also

Kapferer 2013) to its logical extreme, arguing that recursive lessons about
invention and infinition are not stemming from the content of ethnog-
raphy at all, but from the very fact of alterity: Any instance of deep dif-
ference would challenge anthropology to “invent” new concepts (2012,
42–43). Holbraad makes this point in relation to Wagner’s study of the
Daribi, which is the original ethnographic site of the discovery/invention
of “invention”. Holbraad is suspicious about the seemingly “miraculous-
looking coincidence” (2012, 42) between ethnographic fact and theo-
retical position in Wagner’s reasoning, but then resolves this “miracle”
by displacing it to a meta-level emptied of ethnographic content. It is
not the content of Daribi life—Daribis’ cultural emphasis on invention—
but Wagner’s encounter with alterity that made him (thus anthropology)
invent “invention”.
I cannot but note a strikingly similar “coincidence” in Holbraad’s
own work: The fact that the Ifá concept of truth so neatly underwrites a
core premise in the ontological turn, namely that reality is fundamentally
a case of irreducible becoming. The operation of oracular truth seems
to be a paradigmatic case of the perspectival shift that many ontologi-
cal anthropologists attempt to establish: from structure and convention
to invention, and from being to becoming. Vigh and Sausdal intimate
a similar correspondence in the ontological turn more generally, asking
why “all ontologies apparently converge in and resonate with the theories
of Deleuze—the turn’s philosopher par excellence?” (2014, 57–58). I am
certainly not implying that Holbraad is appropriating Cuban ethnogra-
phy in the service of his position or that the analysis is contrived, but it
is important to keep in mind that recursive methodology is, necessarily, a
two-way process; it involves an interchange of perspectives across spaces of
difference. Although the overall ambition is to turn the tables and let the
“other” encompass the exchange, the “self” of anthropology is necessarily
retained at some level. We must not forget that it is the anthropologist—
not her informants—that performs the recursive analysis. What I imply, is
that the “miraculous-looking coincidence” in Holbraad’s study may be
the result of an over-emphasis on difference as radical alterity, the cultiva-
tion of difference as paradox.
The inclination toward the abstract also pervades Holbraad’s ethnographic
analysis. Preempting the kind of critique I level against his study—based on
the visibility of doubt in Ifá praxis—Holbraad displaces indubitability to an
ontic domain beyond all empirical manifestation of the oracles:
286 E. BRÅTEN
There is certainly a sense in which practitioners can perfectly well “not

believe” in any given divination, or indeed in divination in general. However,
[…] the object of disbelief in such cases is not the truth of divination […]
but rather its divinatory character. (2012, 71)
Or, as he succinctly sums up this point: “To doubt oracular truth is to

doubt whether it is oracular” (2012, 69). Apparently, the “truth of divi-
nation” would continue to exist no matter how pervasive doubt is at the
level of social praxis—secured by the singular fact of babalawos’ assertions
about indubitability.
In sum, questions about truth and doubt are not discussed in the con-
text of peoples’ everyday concerns and interactions, but transposed to a
“de-territorial” domain of philosophical exchange, ethnographic com-
plexity is subordinated to the theoretical notion of deep difference (para-
doxical alterity), and indubitable truth appears as an axiomatic principle
beyond any empirical evidence of doubt. One may in earnest ask what
remains of ethnography in this attempt to develop “ethnographic theory”.
Truth Claims in the Context of Multiplicity
Evading questions about ontic scope and epistemic interrelationships,

Holbraad necessarily projects a relativistic view of truth. Despite babala-
wos’ insistence on indubitable—absolute, nonrelativistic—truth and
Holbraad’s ambition to take this concept seriously in the refashioning of
anthropological theory, his meta-theory bespeaks a multitude of possibly
incompatible truths or worlds. It is only his close focus on one form of
truth practice, and one that is construed as indubitable, that may give the
impression that we deal with truth as a singularity. Taking a realist view-
point, I argue that Holbraad’s analysis does not deal with questions about
truth at all, that is with truth as such, the ontology of truth—but with one
particular epistemological truth claim. Only a meta-theory that resolves
epistemic incompatibilities could convince us of the opposite; that the
study contributes to our exploration of ontology.
This is so because unless we are able to specify where indubitable truth
begins and ends, as it were, we are unable to account for the indubita-
bility of truth—that is, indubitability as an ontological property of truth.
Remember that Holbraad starts from the viewpoint that Western truth
claims are dubitable because truth “among us” is construed as representa-
tional. Obviously, then, indubitability does not extend to the whole world;
it is not a universal feature of truth to be indubitable, so to speak. Unless

we debunk the representational viewpoint wholesale—claim that it is
false everywhere, even “among us”—truth must necessarily be construed
as multiple and thus relative. But debunking the representational view
because it is false would in fact be an instance of applying the representa-
tional view; we end up in an impossible paradox. Conversely, to assume
at the meta-theoretical level that truth is relative—which, I argue, fol-
lows from first principles in perspectivism—entails undermining the core
assertion of Ifá practitioners: babalawos’ claim that truth is indubitable.
Paradox again.
Truth Claims in a Critical Realist Perspective

In contrast, a critical realist perspective on truth would be committed to
an objectivist ontology, that is, to the classical perspective of one nature
and many human intakes, and thus to a representational logic (see Bhaskar
1997, 1998; Graeber 2015). In this perspective, the paradoxes are resolv-
able in that all human knowledge is inherently fallible (Bhaskar 1998, 201).
This is so because assuming an objective, transcendent world does not entail
assuming epistemological transparency. Empirically, we know that truths
about the world change continually, even in the most objective of knowl-
edge quests, like in the natural sciences. In terms of a realist meta-theory,
then, we would assume disputability as a universal attribute at the epistemo-
logical level. This is, so to speak, an objective property of knowledge due to
its inherent fallibility. Crucially, this does not rule out assertions about indis-
putable truth at the ontological level, however. In my view, both naturalists
in the Western tradition (in the sciences and more generally) and Cuban
diviners operate with indisputability at the ontological level: Both are con-
vinced that there is an unquestionable world “out there”.
There is no space to address the theoretical implications of these
intriguing contradictions here, but I will try to illustrate the problem eth-
nographically, by exploring the boundary between representational and
inventive principles as they seem to play out in Holbraad’s presentation of
Ifá. The irony is that his take on truth does not follow unequivocally from
his ethnographic account, at least not for this reader; it seems possible to
learn quite different recursive lessons from the way babalawos operate.
I am certainly not in a position to critique Holbraad’s account on the
basis of ethnographic expertise on Cuba, but will, nevertheless, venture
a different interpretation in order to make my theoretical points clearer.
288 E. BRÅTEN
As mentioned, Holbraad notes the apparent similarity between babala-

wos and Western intellectuals: Both are committed to the pursuit of truth
(2012, 106–107, 237–259). This observation is an overall inspiration for
the monograph. What is striking, however, is that babalawos seem to think
more like natural scientists than ontological anthropologists!
Take for instance the account of the initiation of Javier, Holbraad’s
main informant. In the process, Javier’s grandfather Mateo, a Santería
diviner, established that Changó was Javier’s guardian divinity. However,
Mateo was not entirely convinced by the verdict of his own oracle, and
wanted to have it “ratified by the oracle of Ifá” (2012, 83). This was later
done, but the woman appointed to be Javier’s godmother during his ini-
tiations was hesitant about the Ifá verdict and proceeded to “confirm” it
(2012, 84) using her own oracle. In this and other instances, it is clear that
babalawos acknowledge their own and others’ shortcomings and work to
overcome them. As they say, “memory cannot be trusted” (2012, 105),
and following the path of Ifá entails constant competence building in the
art of divination; it is “a lifetime of study” (2012, 104).
In short, babalawos seem to embrace the basic tenets of philosophical
realism in their knowledge practices. As noted above, they act as if there
is a reality “out there”, outside of human conceptualization—this is the
ontological corollary of the premise of indubitable truth. In babalawos’
conception, this reality is transcendent in the sense of being mythical and
divinely created, not of human making. And it is real and true in the most
fundamental sense, exactly because it is divinely created. In this sense, Ifá
is indubitable, or as they also put it, “everything is in Ifá” (2012, 115)—it
is ontological in the philosophical sense of incorporating the truest aspects
of being. However, the human grasp of this transcendent world is far
from perfect. Holbraad’s account makes clear that, like realists, babalawos
acknowledge that their competence is incomplete, contingent, and fal-
lible. This is why “ratifications” and “confirmations” may be necessary to
establish oracular truths, and, as mentioned, why important rituals require
the attendance of several babalawos. It also partly explains the endemic
mistrust in relations among diviners. In fact, Javier initiates his relation
to Holbraad with this warning: “How would you know who’s telling you
the truth? A lot of people say they know these things and then they tell
lies” (2012, 77). We may read this as an allegation that fellow babalawos
actively mislead people, but we may also allow for a more moderate inter-
pretation: that not all babalawos are seen as equally competent.
Unlike adherents of the ontological turn, then, babalawos do not seem to

collapse the distinction between epistemology and ontology. Quite to the
contrary, I think that their concept of indubitable truth necessitates a dualis-
tic conception, in the same way as it does among Western naturalists. While
the relativistic meta-theory of perspectivism disposes us to ignore the rela-
tion between world and knowledge, there is no such escape once we posit
indubitable truth at the ontological level. Here my inferences are diametri-
cally opposite of Holbraad’s: Asserting indubitable truth is not equivalent
to establishing an indubitable world. Assuming that it does would be a case
of what Bhaskar denotes “epistemic fallacy” (1997, 26–35): To presume
(wrongly) that the human grasp fills out the world, so to speak. In my view,
claiming indubitable truth at the ontological level rather entails question-
ing any human assertion about reality, even oracular ones, and Holbraad’s
ethnography seems to indicate that this is also the case among Ifá practitio-
ners. Even though “the truth of divination” (2012, 71) may be construed
as indubitable (ontologically so), no manifestation of divinity comes with a
guarantee of truth and is thus inherently open for doubt (epistemologically).
While it would not be a motive in a realist approach to “back up” analysis
by non-Western alterities the way ontological anthropologists prefer, it is nev-
ertheless interesting to observe the similarities between the different episte-
mologies. To be more pointed, it is exactly the similarities that are interesting:
the degree to which babalawos seem to be “scientific” or “realist” in their
truth quests. Rather than alterity, this bespeaks human commonalities.
Conclusion: Difference and Ontology

My conclusion, then, is that Holbraad’s analysis seems overdetermined by a
relativistic meta-theory of difference that favors an exaggeration of alterity.
Collapsing the analytical distinction between epistemology and ontology, it
follows logically that Ifá divination must be construed as indubitable, and
this assertion is underwritten by an important—but, as we have seen, very
restricted—ethnographic datum: diviners’ verbal assertions about indubitabil-
ity. To be very precise: When babalawos assert indubitable truth, this datum
has to be interpreted as non-representational—it follows from first principles.
I have suggested that a critical realist re-interpretation of the ethnogra-
phy—retaining the distinction between epistemology and ontology—pro-
vides a very different rendering of diviners’ truth claims. In short, when
babalawos assert indisputability they refer to a transcendent domain that
posits all kinds of epistemological problems for them. Since, as they put it,
290 E. BRÅTEN
“Ifá fits in no one head” (2012, 120), representational problems seem

inherent to their practices: How to know that this or that oracular verdict
is true and not a misrepresentation? To the extent we can talk about indu-
bitable truth, then, it seems to be a result rather than a premise of Ifá praxis:
In a world characterized by doubt, Ifá practices succeed to the extent they
manage performatively to establish convictions about verdicts—indubita-
bility. Thus, rather than a case of genuine alterity, Ifá could be seen as a
culturally specific mechanism aimed at countering a widespread, if not
universal, human challenge: people’s propensity to doubt—their critical
faculty in a sense (see Vigh and Sausdal 2014; Graeber 2015).
Taking this perspective, Truth in Motion could be read more positively
as a representative of a less radical mode of ontological reasoning, the
approach that Scott (2007, 18–24) and Remme (2016; Chap. 5) denote
“ontopraxis”. In its drive to understand how “ontologies” articulate with
peoples’ everyday concerns and practices, this approach seems well equipped
to address how human convictions are being created performatively in a
nontransparent, unpredictable, insecure world. To some extent, Holbraad
demonstrates in his ethnographic account how Ifá techniques of divina-
tion accomplish conviction among the people involved, at least in situations
where divination is at work. As he puts it, it is a question of “rendering
otherwise transcendent divinities immanent” (2012, 122)—this-worldly—
through performative techniques. In this ontic domain, we no doubt deal
with motile inventions, which, if they succeed, may transform the lives of
persons, both clients and diviners. Conviction is created to the extent oracu-
lar verdicts are seen as edicts, “not as options but as obligations” (2012, 87).
But I have implied that we need to broaden the view and look at Ifá in
its sociological context and thus clients and diviners as total persons—as
people “who still ride buses, make art, take antibiotics, and go to work”,
as Bessire and Bond have put it (2014, 443). And in that perspective,
practices of divination must be seen as contingent upon the doubt that
pervades people’s lives more generally. Theoretically, we need to acknowl-
edge that, despite diviners’ appeal to indubitable truth, Ifá practices may
fail to convince people. Or, as I have argued more generally: Assertions of
indubitable truth do not by themselves guarantee indubitability. It is only
when unduly abstracted that assertions can be viewed as “ontological” in
this sense, and this is the major fault-line in Holbraad’s overall argument.
Finally, what are the implications of this rethinking of “truth” for our
rendering of difference, alterity and ontology—the main foci of this anthol-
ogy? The question cannot be addressed fully here, but let me round off by
pointing out the most obvious points. First, I have been concerned with
the problem of whether alterity is a feature of ethnography or perspective,
suggesting that “alter-ness” may be an effect of ontological anthropolo-
gists’ preferred methodology. Prioritizing the most paradoxical traits in
their field material and turning these points of alterity back on anthro-
pological theory, there is a tendency to treat the favored phenomena in
isolation, to cultivate their alterity as it were. This inclination is what I
have dubbed the restricted ontic scope of analyses and the ignorance of
epistemic interrelationships. While several critics have pointed to the eth-
nographic misrepresentations that may follow from this approach (Bessire
and Bond 2014) my point has rather been theoretical: It is necessary
to study paradoxical alterity in its articulation with mundane and com-
monsense features of its ethnographic context in order, not only to avoid
excessive exotification but also to gain a better foothold to assess ontologi-
cal questions. In my critique of Holbraad, I have shifted focus from intel-
lectual assertions of indubitable truth at an abstract level—a conception
which allegedly rules out doubt—to an exploration of how truth claims
seem to be related to doubt empirically within and beyond Ifá practices.
Second, our take on truth is closely intertwined with how we construe
ontology. Favoring a critical realist perspective, I have particularly warned
against the tendency to blur or collapse the distinction between ontology
and epistemology. As we have seen, Holbraad does so in his analysis of
babalawos’ assertions, and on a more general level, the same is implied by
scholars who embrace the notion of multinaturalism. We necessarily end
up ontologizing the worlds that people around the globe create for them-
selves: Theoretically, they are construed not as cultural but as ontological
“reals”, since we allegedly deal with inventions (Holbraad) or perspectival
positions (Viveiros de Castro 2012), not representations.
I have argued that it is only when cultural “worlds” are treated in ana-
lytical separation that this strong ontological claim holds. As noted, the
perspective is challenged empirically by the fact that diverging or conflict-
ing world constructions actually meet in the course of social life—and if
this is not the case in particular ethnographic instances, we cannot base our
theory on these exceptions. Moreover, the perspective is also challenged
on the philosophical level (where truth claims “meet” in the abstract)
in that we cannot escape questions of logical incompatibility. The fact of
logically disparate worlds necessarily raises questions of meta-theory (see
Heywood 2012)—how to resolve logical contradictions between disparate
truth claims. It is—yet again—only by collapsing the distinction between
292 E. BRÅTEN
ontology and epistemology that incompatibility may appear as a nonprob-

lem, by insisting that difference is a question of variable nature, rather
than cultural construction. But note that this is accomplished through an
ethnographic erasure of existing knowledge traditions that work on the
basis of the opposite principle: one nature and all sorts of epistemological
challenges in uncovering the truths about it. As I have attempted to show,
we cannot assume that this is only a characteristic of “our” orientations;
even babalawos seem to operate with a distinction between ontology and
epistemology.
On the most general level, I imply that anthropology might profit from
taking one step back from the ontologists’ strong notion of alterity. My
critique is inspired by two alternative perspectives that, I believe, provide
an ontologically sounder view of difference: First, I argue for a critical real-
ist position that retains a notion of epistemology while being centrally con-
cerned with ontology. In this I come very close to the reasoning of David
Graeber who has recently (2015) critiqued the ontological turn from the
position of Bhaskar’s critical realism. I maintain that doubt about reality
assertions is a widespread human phenomenon and that our theorizing
ought to reflect this empirical fact. This is accommodated in the criti-
cal realist perspective in that all human knowledge—including science—is
seen as contingent upon sociocultural dynamics and thus inherently fal-
lible. Second, I believe that this perspective should be complemented at
the ethnographical level by the approach of ontopraxis which is centrally
concerned with empirical processes of world creation. While critical real-
ism’s distinction between ontology and epistemology opens for a study of
the interrelationship of truth and doubt, ontopraxis provides the means to
explore how doubt is overcome in the course of social performativity, how
culturally constructed worlds come to be convincing for people.
Notes
1. I thank the editors for very constructive comments on my text and theoretical
position. I am also grateful for many interesting exchanges on “ontology” with
several other colleagues, not least Anne Karen Bjelland, Tone Bringa, Vigdis
Broch-Due, Annelin Eriksen, Anette Fagertun, Kathinka Frøystad, Lars
Gjelstad, Ørnulf Gulbrandsen, Ståle Knudsen, Olaf Smedal, and Mads Solberg.
2. The only exception is, as mentioned, Holbraad’s discussion of Ifá’s relation
to Santería (2012, 85–86), but also this interrelationship is largely investi-
gated at the philosophical level.
3. See Cultural Anthropology Online’s debate on “the politics of ontology”
(Holbraad and Pedersen 2014) for some positions.
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Postscript: Taking the Ontological
Turn Personally
Adam Reed
What does the Ontological Turn actually do? One straightforward answer,
examining the fine and diverse selection of chapters in this volume, is that
it generates a sense of difference between us. The observation is simple but
I think nevertheless important. Regardless of the phrasing of the debate,
which, in the language of the volume editors, pitches a claim for the posi-
tive consequences of “ontologising difference” against a counterclaim that
such a move would essentialise difference, everyone might acknowledge
that here is a construction which enables anthropologists to differentiate
themselves and to imagine that in those differences it is possible to map
out polarised orientations to the discipline. While such differences are ulti-
mately grounded in our shared and assumed status as anthropologists, the
Ontological Turn does seem to draw out positions that take on a quality of
incommensurability. To me, one of the most striking aspects of the debates
is precisely the degree to which they illustrate our capacity to talk past one
another. For instance, the Turn has thrown up, or revitalised, dramatic
oppositions about where politics and critique lie in anthropology, about
what is description and what is analysis. In other words, it feels like this is
a distinct moment in the history of anthropology, or at least one of those
debates that is likely in the future to be made to constitute a moment, to
act as a narrative device in the continuing story we tell ourselves about the
evolution of the discipline.
Adam Reed (*)

Department of Social Anthropology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2
296 Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally
Its clearly affective dimension reinforces this sense of the Ontological

Turn as an event; the debate has heat, engenders strong passions. Indeed,
if it is a moment, it often seems like an angry one. That collegial anger
may be one of the chief artefacts of the Turn, but it is also what seems to
sustain it, to oil the machine that ensures the reproduction of difference.
It is the strength of this affective reaction that has surprised and interested
me the most. While I admire the works of those identified as the authors
of the Ontological Turn, it is not exactly how I would choose to express
my anthropology (I have made no explicit deployment of their ontologi-
cal register, for instance). Likewise, although I can appreciate the works of
many of those who have taken against it, I feel alienated from the energy
that drives much of their response. All of this then leaves me wanting
to know more about how anthropology manufactures difference within
itself, or how that sense of difference is productively achieved? The ques-
tion assumes that the differences generated by the Ontological Turn are
an accomplishment, and that they will inevitably be displaced.
******
In her ethnography of Fijian bureaucrats and activists, Riles (2000)
identifies the “network” as an orienting form. Those preparing to attend
the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, she tells us,
liked to imagine their actions operating through a combination of national,
regional, and international institutional linkages. Objects and persons, the
latter figured for instance as “focal points”, that circulated along these
channels were literally taken to be of the network. Part of the power of
this form was precisely its ability to allow bureaucrats and activists from
diverse backgrounds, within and beyond Fiji, to figure themselves as part
of a shared organisational space that did not require a contextual principle
of collective life (such as culture or kinship) to make sense of their inter-
actions. However, Riles observes, the formal network was never enough;
bureaucrats and activists constantly invoked it alongside of or in tension
with an informal network, which they defined as the “personal” con-
nections of networkers (2000, 60). Indeed, she suggests that the latter,
founded on an acknowledgement of the difference between networkers
and their status as independent persons, was crucial to the ability of the
network to sustain itself. Serving as “the inside or outside of the other”
(2000, 69), networks, and personal relationships, Riles claims, existed in
tandem as part of the very character of the network form, allowing those
involved to always envisage two simultaneous versions of their interactions.
Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally 297
As Riles highlights, like other artefacts of late modern institutional life,

the network is also a thoroughly indigenous form for anthropologists. It
has long been a category of social analysis, but is also a form that anthro-
pologists regularly deploy to understand relationships between themselves.
This is the case when discussing both the genealogy of anthropological
ideas and their contemporary spread. In this regard, the Ontological Turn
may be read as exemplary. As well as publishing manifestos and posi-
tion papers, the key authors of the Turn have actively pushed their ideas
through organising a series of public events, which, I would argue, have
been largely concerned to display the Turn as a network of scholars. Take
for example the roundtable panel organised by Holbraad, Pedersen, and
Viveiros de Castro at the 2013 American Anthropological Association
Conference in Chicago. Attracting a large audience, this event followed
a series of publications that had in effect attempted to reveal a vertical
network to the Ontological Turn, to demonstrate an ancestral line or tra-
jectory of scholars that might be taken to have inspired its emergence.
Indeed, a few of those ancestors, present that day and sitting in the front
row of the roundtable audience, were name-checked in the organisers’
opening comments. However, the roundtable itself spotlighted attention
on the Ontological Turn as a horizontal network of scholars. Positioned
on a raised platform along one side of a table and facing the audience,
Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro had literally collected together
ten anthropologists. Most of the hour was taken up by going down that
line and allowing each one in turn to stand and speak, to give their own
diverse versions of a positive response to the Ontological Turn.
As already hinted, perhaps even more impressive has been the capac-
ity of the Ontological Turn to draw other anthropologists into align-
ment based on their opposition or even enmity to these ideas. For some,
this has manifest itself in formal declarations of negative response, for
instance, by authoring a rebuttal of the Ontological Turn or by par-
ticipating on the opposing side in published debates. However, the
majority of those opposed seem drawn into far more ad hoc, transitory
networks. I have been struck, for example, by the galvanising effect
of the off-the-cuff remark or jibe at the Ontological Turn’s expense,
whether uttered in department seminars, conference panels, or more
informal meetings of anthropologists. The sympathetic reaction to such
passing comments is manifest in nodding heads and in the way they
spark further comment from others but also in their straightforward
meme-like repetition (during the same Chicago conference at which
the roundtable was organised, a jibe uttered by Paul Stoller in another

panel about what he termed the “Ontological Turn-off” seemed to
gather this kind of momentum). To me, one of the most remarkable
aspects of these ad hoc networks is precisely the elision of difference
they often required; subject colleagues who never previously agreed
about anything seemed to suddenly find in the Ontological Turn a
basis for a common antagonistic stance.
But in some ways the counter-networks of scholars generated by the
Ontological Turn is less interesting than another feature of its informal
opposition or critique: the much repeated accusation that the Ontological
Turn is in fact best understood as a set of relationships between scholars
who know each other “personally”. Perhaps most obviously embodied in
the publicly recognised and longstanding “friendship” between Holbraad
and Pedersen, this dimension of the Ontological Turn is seen to carry
an unusual degree of explanatory potential. Indeed, the “revelation” of
personal connection has been a recurring and expanding motif of criti-
cism in the informal mode. Especially in British anthropology, this has
taken on the character of a complaint about the way anthropological ideas
develop and grow through personal relationship and the ways in which
those relationships are supported by institutional hosts. In this account,
the Ontological Turn is formed out of friendship and acquaintanceship
first established at Cambridge and then spread outwards through those
same networks of personal connection. The identification of these rela-
tionships, which are taken to come historically before the Ontological
Turn and hence to stand outside it and yet at the same time constitute
the inside of the network, can also be used to explain how its knowledge-
making works. As the weblog Proctontology went to some lengths to dem-
onstrate, and the general whisperings of British anthropologists appear to
confirm, the Ontological Turn can be seen as built up out of the practice
of Cambridge friends citing each other. Much like in the example pro-
vided by Riles, the personal here is taken to stand for a certain kind of
closure within the network of scholars or a restricted access to the process
of knowledge production, including the process of publication.
I am aware that I am fully implicated in this charge. Indeed, in many
ways my identification with the Ontological Turn may be most convinc-
ingly read as driven through personal relationships mediated through
Cambridge; it is precisely on this basis, for instance, that I earned a dis-
appointing brief mention in Proctontology. Although I contributed to
Thinking Through Things, which as our own volume editors observe

(see Introduction) appears to be the first anthropological publication to
actually name the “Ontological Turn”, I had no role in the formal discus-
sions that led up to it. Instead, I was sent the volume proposal and asked
if I wanted to proffer a chapter. The invitation was a direct outcome of
acquaintanceship, of the post-seminar college bar discussions I had with
other PhD students. In fact back then, I do not actually recall the invo-
cation of a Turn at all. To me, Thinking Through Things was just a vol-
ume put together out of the conversations between peers and friends; its
recorded place in the emergence of the Ontological Turn appears largely
the artefact of retrospective work. Likewise I find myself now increasingly
drawn-in to the Ontological Turn by association. My invitation to act as
a discussant and to provide one of the postscripts to this volume perhaps
serves as a further example of this. I am, as it were, an outlier in the infor-
mal network that is taken to lie behind or outside of the Turn’s formal
network of scholars.
One of the dilemmas for the proponents of the Ontological Turn is that
although the network of scholars emerged out of friendship, and may be
taken to continue to draw its strength from those relationships, in order
for the Turn to succeed it must appear as more than personal. Holbraad,
Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro, for instance, did not want the audience
at their roundtable to read the horizontal network of scholars on display
as sets of personal relationship, or to start differentiating between them
on the basis of degrees of acquaintanceship (i.e. those born out of close
or distant friendship, out of shared institutional history, and those born
out of shared commitment to the project). If informal criticism partly rests
on the revelation of personal connection as a form of conspiracy, on the
work of shining a light on what is taken to be the hidden insides of the
Ontological Turn, advocacy is compelled to do the opposite, to struggle
to try and put the personal out of sight or back inside the formal network.
Of course ironies abound. Why does personal connection only have an
explanatory purchase on the network of scholars broadly supportive of the
Ontological Turn? Anthropology is after all a small subject community; it
would be possible to reveal informal networks of friendship and the medi-
atory role of dominant institutional hosts in all directions, behind each
shift in anthropological knowledge. Similarly, one might reasonably ask,
how is it that the Ontological Turn comes to stand for Cambridge anthro-
pology? As the debates in Anthropology of This Century demonstrate, it
has always been possible to locate counter-networks of scholars cutting

across that institutional relationship. The focus then tends to remove our
attention from the ways in which personal connection can also be read
as animating the tone of engagement between those in formal opposi-
tion. The publication of a critique of the Ontological Turn, for instance,
is typically made more interesting by the knowledge that the author is a
colleague or friend of one of its proponents; among other things, it allows
an audience to speculate whether personal connection might survive a
divergence in the network of scholars. I imagine authors publishing in
this volume, who operate from within the twin institutions of Norwegian
anthropology, might locate equivalent frissons of the personal in reading
across the competing perspectives on offer. This is the stuff of informal
discussion, but the possibility of its public surfacing is another legacy of
the Ontological Turn.
******
Indeed, perhaps the most daring or disturbing aspect of the form that
antagonism to the Ontological Turn has taken is precisely centred on
the convergence of personal and formal modalities of critique. For me,
this is best exemplified in the brief rise to prominence of Proctontology.
Combining vitriolic attacks on the ontologies programme with expressions
of personal antipathy, the anonymous weblog might have gone largely
unnoticed but for the sympathetic reaction its posts often informally drew
out from an anthropological audience. These were, I was told on more
than one occasion, a refreshing experiment in narrative form, taking a
genre of provocative “put-down” criticism found online and reapplying
it in an academic context. Indeed, for some it seemed that the revelation
of personal connection opened the possibility that formal anthropological
argumentation might now include critique of individual personality. Of
course, the proposal of what we might term Animosity Anthropology was
only imaginable for a fleeting moment (it would be intriguing to think
how anthropological debate might actually get reconfigured as a conse-
quence!), but the prospect of the conflation of what is normally kept sepa-
rate—formal networks of scholars and personal connection, debate and
expressions of personal dislike—seemed to indicate an implosion of the
network form and a threat to its capacity to be seen twice.
If this future is unrealisable we might nevertheless ask, how will the
Ontological Turn end? Perhaps, as is often and imperceptibly the way,
debates will simply take a new turn. Perhaps the proponents of the
Ontological Turn might kill it themselves, or retrospectively declare it was

really about something else. It is also possible that its end will lie with what
happens in its informal network. Perhaps new personal connections will
emerge that reorient the direction of anthropological ideas. Or perhaps
the end will emerge out of a break in personal connection. Given the ways
the Ontological Turn has been compelled to confront the personal as its
defining quality, this seems most appropriate. Indeed, the completist-in-
me would love to see it end where it perhaps began, at the level of friend-
ship and with a dramatic, preferably melodramatic, dissolution of the focal
point’s personal connection.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of the contributing authors to the

volume, but especially its editors, Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and Synnøve Bendixsen.
I am also grateful for the comments and criticisms provided by Shari Sabeti and
Tom Yarrow.
Reference
Riles, A. 2000. The Network Inside Out. Michigan: Michigan University Press.
Index1
A 182, 205, 233, 248–9, 274,

Achuar people and culture, 78, 139 277, 285
Actor-network theory, 20, 57, 103, and truth and doubt, 273–7, 279,
127, 142, 257 282, 284–6, 289–92
Adorno, Theodor, 218 and visual arts, 205, 210, 216,
Affect, 27, 147–8, 160, 164–6, 168, 219, 221
170, 296 Amaq Bakri (blasphemy trial testifier),
Agamben, Giorgio, 18 89–91, 93, 97–9, 101–2, 104
Agency, 16, 26, 30, 43, 44, 48, 57–8, American Anthropological Association
67, 71, 78, 83, 121, 140–2, 161, (AAA), 27, 57, 60n4, 283, 297
164–5 Andes. See Kharisiri (Andean non-
Albert, Ethel, 31n1 human beings); Peru, world-
Allen, Catherine J., 72, 260 making in
Alterity, 3–6, 8–13, 16, 19, 21–2 Animism, 30, 32n3
26–31, 32n5, 230 animistic practices, 31, 255
and blasphemy trials, 91–2, 100–3 and Cartesian dualism, 93
and Ifugao (the Philippines), Chewong animism, 43–59
115–26, 128 definitions of, 43, 70, 118
and kharisiri, 65–84 and Ifugao (the Philippines), 98,
paradoxical alterity, 31, 277, 282, 116–28
286, 291 and kharisiri, 67, 70–1, 78
radical alterity, 21, 29, 31, 56, and metamorphosis, 50, 53–6,
59, 70–1, 91, 102–3, 113–28, 60–1n7
Note: Page number followed by ‘n’ refers to notes.

1

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40475-2
304 INDEX
Animism (cont.) truth and ontological inquiry,

and perspectivism, 257 273–4, 285, 288
Sasak animism, 98 and visual art, 206–13
scientific animism, 71 and world-making, 257–8
technological, 18 Beings. See also animism
and visual arts, 217–20 and anthropomorphism, 43–6, 50, 58
Animism (visual arts exhibition and bā’i (Ifugao other-than-human
project), 217–20 beings), 117–28, 130n9
Anthropomorphism, 43–6, 50, 58 and Chewong ruwai
Araeen, Rasheed, 207, 211, 212 (consciousness), 44, 47, 50,
Arts. See Visual arts 52–5, 61n8
Asad, Talal, 5, 94 in-between, 91, 98–100
Assemblages, 6, 11, 16, 19, 91, 127, Kharisiri (Andean non-human
161–2, 164, 169–70, 172, 175–6, beings), 65–84
207, 212, 217 and metamorphosis, 50, 53–6,
assemblage theory, 142–3 60–1n7, 148
and Chewong people and culture, Peruvian, 254–63, 267–9
44, 50, 52 Bendixsen, Synnøve, 1, 45, 59, 113,
and kharisiri, 67, 71 114, 163
and Warao householding practices, Bennet, Jane, 18–19, 140–1, 163
137–56 Bergson, Henri, 19
Augé, Mark, 222–3 Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge, 1, 45, 59, 113,
Auto-critique, 3, 5, 28 114, 163
Bessire, Lucas, 22, 92, 105, 108n16,
114, 282, 290, 291
B Bhaskar, Roy, 31, 287, 289, 292
Badiou, Alain, 1 Blaser, Mario, 115, 127, 258
Barad, Karen, 2, 18, 161, 168 Blasphemy trial (Lombok, Indonesia),
Barnes, Barry, 185, 188 89–106
Barth, Fredrik, 31–2n2, 190 Bloch, Maurice, 32n2, 160
Bateson, Gregory, 189, 256 Boas, Franz, 168, 181
Beatty, Andrew, 107n13 Bond, David, 22, 92, 105, 108n16,
Becoming, 11, 82, 115–28, 161, 168, 114, 282, 290, 291
192, 206–7, 212–16, 219, 249, Bourdieu, Pierre, 164, 189, 241
261, 273–4, 285 Bråten, Eldar, 31, 273
Becoming with, 57, 150–2, 236 Brookfield, Harold, 184, 186
Being, 6–7, 21, 32n4, 51, 54, 70–1, Bruegel, Pieter, 193
103, 115–17, 119, 122–5 Buddhism, 94, 234, 238, 240
modes/ways/manners of, 6, 48, 70, Bulmer, Ralph, 184–5
82, 99–100, 102, 147 Burdick, John, 235
Buren, John, 32n4
INDEX 305
C decolonization, 15, 207, 220,

Cadena, Marisol de la, 5, 66, 70, 72, 223–4, 282
115, 126, 127, 255, 257, 258 postcolonialism, 5, 72, 91, 138,
Candea, Matei, 12, 24–5 212, 214, 218, 221–2, 258
Canessa, Andrew, 77 Computer numeric control (CNC)
Cannibalism, 214–16, 221, 231 machines, 162, 165, 171–4, 176
Carnival, 148, 220 Conklin, Harold, 183
Carrithers, Michael, 6, 240, 275 Continuous worlds, 187, 188, 190,
Cartesian dualism, 4, 43, 68, 93, 182, 192–4, 197
185, 196, 256 Cooper, David, 192
Catholicism, 80, 124, 145–6, 154, 235 Course, Magnus, 14–15, 23, 248
Chavez, Hugo, 144, 150 Critical anthropological thought, 5,
Chewong people and culture, 43–59 21, 67
consciousness, speciesness, Cuba, 22, 27, 232, 274, 277, 280–2,
relatedness, and vision, 51–3 285, 287. See also Ifá divination
cosmology, 49–51 Cultural critique, 4, 9, 161, 167–70
cosmo-rules, 46, 51–6 Cultural intimacy, 123, 129n7
metaphysics and ontology, 46–8 Cultural Production of the Educated
myth of Bongso and the Person (CPoEP) model, 163–6,
elephants, 47–8 168
and perspectivism, 44, 49–50, Cultural relativism, 181, 185–7
57, 61n9 Cultural Studies, 160–1, 164, 175
post-humanism and human Cyborgs, 257. See also Robots and
exceptionalism, 56–9 robotics
ruwai, 44, 47, 50, 52–5, 61n8
separation and metamorphosis, 54–6
shamanic qualities and power, 53–4 D
Chopra, Radhika, 235 D’Andrade, Roy, 230
Christianity, 13, 58, 82, 84n4, 93, De Andrade, Oswald, 214
107n11, 123–5, 146, 234, 238, Decolonization, 15, 207, 220,
240–3, 247, 280, 282. See also 223–4, 282
Catholicism; Pentecostalism DeLanda, Manuel, 18, 143
Chronically unstable ontology, 113–28 Deleuze, Gilles, 7, 11, 16, 33n8, 143,
Classification, 191–3 164, 207, 212, 214, 222,
Clifford, James, 206, 210 274, 285
Climate change, 232, 255, 258, 259 Derrida, Jacques, 100
Cohen-Solal, Annie, 207, 211–12 Descartes, René, 170, 185. See also
Colonialism, 65, 74, 138–9, 155, 169, Cartesian dualism
208, 211–14, 218–19, 221–2, Descola, Philippe, 2, 46, 61n9, 78,
239, 248 118, 129n3, 139, 209, 232,
anti-colonialism, 218 249, 257
306 INDEX
Difference, 9–13, 68–73, 161–3, Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, 106n5, 188

263–4, 273–5, 277, 283, Essentialization and field shrinkage of
285–6, 289–92 anthropology, 231–5
Discourse, 8, 17, 28, 59, 70, 100–1, Ethnographic present, 231
105, 155, 160, 188, 218, 220, Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan,
236, 282 43, 61n11
Domination, 11–12, 67, 83, 147 Externality, 155–6
Dong Xiwen, 214–15
Dressler, Markus, 90, 94, 105
Durkheim, Emile, 197–8n8, 219 F
Dwelling, ontology of, 170, 181–96 Fabian, Johannes, 220, 231
Facebook, 264–7, 269
Fanon, Frantz, 211
E Fay, Brian, 189–90
Education, 159–76 Fenwick, Tara, 174
automatic machine and sensuous Fetishes, 129n2, 213
ways of knowing, 170–2 Fischer, Michael J., 5, 27, 159,
and computer numeric 161, 167–8
control (CNC) machines, Foucault, Michel, 8, 106n6
162, 171–4, 176 Franke, Anselm, 218–19
Cultural Production of the Educated Frøystad, Kathinka, 30–1, 229
Person (CPoEP) model,
163–6, 168
general studies, 161 G
generative critique of academic- Gaia, 4, 20
vocational divide, 173–5 Gell, Alfred, 25
moped corner, 166–7 Gellner, Ernest, 181, 230
ontological turn in educational Gibson, James J., 186, 191
studies, 167–70 Giddens, Anthony, 189
school smartness, 162–3, 173 Gjelstad, Lars, 30, 159, 162, 165
Technology and Industrial Global warming, 230, 255, 268
Production (TIP) program, Goodman, Nelson, 141
161–2, 164, 172 Gose, Peter, 75
vocational education, 159–76 Graeber, David, 6, 10–11, 28, 31n1,
Edwards, Richard, 174 129n2, 292
Enmeshment, 16, 57, 123, 152, 155 Grenier, Catherine, 212–15
Entanglement, 18, 57, 114, 123, Group for Debates in Anthropological
138–42, 151–2, 154–5, 163, Theory (GDAT, University of
166–7, 172, 176n4, 260 Manchester), 11–12, 240
Equivocation, 116, 264, 287 Guattari, Felix, 16, 143, 207, 212,
controlled equivocation, 24–5, 128, 214, 222
269, 277 Guenzi, Caterina, 233
INDEX 307
H Truth in Motion, 3, 8, 31, 232, 274,

Hacker, Paul, 239 279, 290
Hage, Ghassan, 4–5, 9–12, 21, 67, 72, and worldviews, 13, 45, 231–35,
83, 121, 182, 230, 235, 249 239, 282–3
Halbfass, Wilhelm, 239 Horkheimer, Max, 218
Hannerz, Ulf, 162 Households and householding
Haraway, Donna J., 17, 57, 142, practices, 137–56
161, 257 Howell, Signe, 29, 43, 210
Hardt, Michael, 5 Hugh-Jones, Stephen, 148–9
Harris, Marvin, 183 Human exceptionalism, 19–20, 22,
Hastrup, Kirsten, 9, 23, 24, 185 44–6, 56–9
Hatt, Beth, 162 Hurd, Elizabeth Shakman, 103
Hauschild, Thomas, 217–18 Husserl, Edmund, 2
Heidegger, Martin, 2, 6, 30, 32n4, Hybridity, 208, 214–15
187, 189, 236, 273
Heinen, Dieter, 139, 144, 152, 155
Helmreich, Stefan, 57, 147 I
Henare, A. M., 2, 3, 8, 17, 90, 92, Ifá divination, 69, 232, 274,
107n7, 207–9 277–82, 284–91
Henley, Paul, 139, 144, 152, 155 Ifugao (the Philippines), 98, 115–28,
Herzfeld, Michael, 123, 129n7 129n6
Hesse, Mary, 188 and alterity, 113–15, 119, 123,
Hesse net, 188 126, 128
Heywood, Paolo, 4, 23, 33n10 bā’i (other-than-human beings),
Hinduism, 94, 106n3, 107n8, 233, 117–28, 130n9
236–49 ontological dynamics, 117–24
Kali temple, 237, 241–5 Pentecostalism, 124–8, 129n8, 130n9
priest and the owls, 243–8 India, 233, 235–49
tantrism, 233, 243–6 Indonesia
Holbraad, Martin blasphemy trial (Lombok), 89–106
and alterity, 12, 31–2, 92 Council of Ulama (MUI), 95–6,
and Cartesian dualism, 68–70 102–4, 107n10, 108n19
and conceptualization, 92 Javanism 107n13
and infinition, 32n7, 279, 285 Ingestion, 214–16, 221
and ontography, 8, 233, 279 Ingold, Tim, 17, 30, 59, 123, 141,
and ontological turn, 2, 12, 14, 21, 163–7, 170–2, 176, 181–97
25–6, 31–2, 68–70, 90, 92, Inversion, 79, 101, 105–6, 188–9,
105, 113–15, 126–8, 258 191, 196
and representation, 25 Islam, 89–106, 195, 217, 234, 237–8,
and revolution, 22 240–1, 243–9
truth and doubt, 273–99 barzakh, 98–101
308 INDEX
Islam (cont.) L
blasphemy trial (Lombok, Laidlaw, James, 4, 23
Indonesia), 89–106 Larsen, Tord, 220
fatwa, 95–6, 102, 104, 108n18–19 Latour, Bruno, 2, 26, 27, 71, 91,
Hadith, 103, 107n15 102–3, 141
Night Journey, 97, 99, 107n15 and actor-network theory, 20, 103,
Qur’an, 98–9, 103 127, 142, 257, 275
Sunni, 89, 91, 98 Inquiry into the Modes of Existence,
An, 3–4, 20
and symmetric anthropology, 24
J We Have Never Been Modern, 11
Jainism, 238, 240 Lave, Jean, 170
Johnson, Mark, 53 Law, John, 2, 127
Judaism, 234, 247 Levinson, Bradley A., 160–1, 163–4,
168, 175
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 184, 216
K Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 21, 56–9,
Kanpur, India, 238–41 61n11, 184
Kant, Immanuel, 19, 155, 210, 263 Linnaeus, Carl, 191
Kapferer, Bruce, 2, 118, 121, 129n3, Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R., 6
165, 206–7 Löfgren, Orvar, 191
Keane, Webb, 91, 93, 100, 101, Lombok, Indonesia, 89–106
105–6, 106–7n7, 107n14 Long, Nicholas James, 166
Kharisiri (Andean non-human Long, Richard, 208, 210–11, 223–4
beings), 65–84, 84n3–4, 84n8 Lovelock, James, 4
and alterity, 65–84 Lund Skar, Sarah, 80
and animism, 67, 70–1, 78
and ánimo, 72–4
appearance of, 73–4, 84n7 M
conversion capacity of, 81–2 MacBeath, Alexander, 229
historical continuities, 74–6 Malaysia. See Chewong people and
and “other”, 66–8, 71–2, 78–81, 83 culture
other names for, 68 Malinowski, Bronisław, 32n5, 137,
and perspectivism, 67, 71, 78–9, 81 138, 154–5, 183, 230
and predation, 78–81 Mandair, Arvind, 90, 94, 105
and representation, 66–72, 77 Marcus, George, 5–6, 159,
significance of fat, 77–8 161, 167–8
Kierkegaard, Søren, 58 Marshall, Yvonne, 282
Kirksey, S. Eben, 57, 147 Martin, Jean-Hubert: Magicians of the
Kluckhohn, Clyde, 31n1 Earth, 207–11
Knowing the world, 3–6 Mauss, Marcel, 32n6, 197–8n8, 277
Knudsen, Are John, 30, 181 Mazard, Mireille, 32n3
Kohn, Eduardo, 7–8, 26–7, 57–9, 69, Mead, G. H., 192
115, 182, 256 Mead, Margaret, 160, 167–8, 175
INDEX 309
Mechanical school workshop, 161–76 Ontological turn, 2–6, 8–13, 15, 16,
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 189 21–31, 32n2, 33n5, 33n10, 57,
Metamorphosis, 50, 53–6, 60–1n7, 148 67, 68, 70–1, 84n2
Mittermaier, Amira, 99–101 and blasphemy trial, 90, 92
Mol, Annemarie, 2, 16–17, 22, 66, and Cartesian dualism, 43, 68, 93,
71, 127, 151, 161, 162, 168, 182, 185, 196, 256
257, 268, 270n4 and chronically unstable ontology,
Moore, Henrietta, 166, 205 113–28
Moped corner, 166–7. See also in educational studies, 167–70
education and household practices, 140–1,
Moscuera, Gerardo, 221 147, 154–5
Multiculturalism, 14, 15, 70 materialities approach, 12, 16–19
Multi-faith community, 237–41 and osmotic worlding, 231, 235–7,
Multinaturalism, 14, 15, 57, 70, 90, 241, 243, 247–9
148, 284, 291 politics approach, 13, 19–22
Multiple Modernities 1905-1970, and relativism, 182, 190
212–15, 220 and truth and doubt, 273–6, 283,
Multiplicity, 6–8, 10, 17, 71, 162, 285, 289, 292
182, 212, 222, 255, 268, 274, within visual arts, 205–24
280, 284, 286–7 and world-making in contemporary
Multispecies ethnography, 57–8, 147 Peru, 257–8
Museu Nacional (Rio de Janeiro), worldviews approach, 13–16
12, 14 Ontology of dwelling, 170, 181–96
Ontology, usage of in anthropological
literature, 1, 31n1
N Osmotic worlding, 231, 235–7, 243,
Negritude, 215 247–9
Negro, Antonio, 5 Other, 6, 9–10, 15–16, 21, 23, 25,
Nielsen, Morten, 9–10, 24, 120 78, 91, 102, 210–11, 174, 196,
Nongovernmental organizations 120–21, 216, 218–20, 232, 264,
(NGOs), 151, 254–5, 265 285
Norway, education in, 159–76 and kharisiri, 66–8, 72, 79, 83
radical otherness, 32n3, 44–5
Otherwise, anthropology of the, 26,
O 45, 72, 100, 113–28, 129n5,
Ødegaard, Cecilie Vindal, 29, 65 207, 258, 282
Ontography, 8, 233, 274, 279
Ontological anthropology, 6–7,
19–20, 26–27, 91, 92, 101, 105, P
108n16, 163, 205, 283–4 Palas (North Pakistan valley), 183, 194–7
Ontological closures, 113–15 Paradoxical alterity, 31, 277, 282, 286,
Ontological openings, 126–8, 258, 269 291. See also Alterity
Ontological prisons, 232
310 INDEX
Partial connections, 71–2, 84, 160, 248–9, 274, 277, 285. See also
169, 172, 174, 176, 255, 268 Alterity
Pedersen, Morten Axel, 2, 12, 13, Radical relationality, 206, 215
23, 25, 28, 117, 248, 249, 257, Ramos, Alcida, 23, 70–1
297–9 Rancière, Jacques, 31, 255–6, 258–9,
Pentecostalism, 124–8, 129n8, 264, 267, 269
130n9, 235 Raunig, Gerald, 33n8
Perceived environment, 183–4 Realism, 8, 190, 213–14, 224, 288, 292
Perspectivism, 12–16, 61n9, 90, Reed, Adam, 6, 295
189–91, 289 Relativism, 181, 185–7
and Chewong people and culture, Religion. See individual religions
44, 49–50, 60n4, 61n9 Religion-making, 89–106
definition of, 49–50 Remme, Jon Henrik Ziegler, 30, 98,
and Kharisiri, 67, 71, 78–9 113, 212, 275, 290
Viveiros de Castro and, 13–16, 21, Richardson, Kathleen, 18
23, 26, 49–50, 78, 81, 147, Ricoeur, Paul, 2
231, 257, 275–7, 283–4, 291 Robots and robotics, 17–18, 33n8, 257
Peru, world-making in, 253–69 Russian matryoshka dolls, 25
Picard, Michel, 94, 107n8
Pickering, Andy, 57
Postcolonialism, 5, 72, 91, 138, 212, S
214, 218, 221–2, 258 Salmond, Anne, 19–20, 25–26, 27,
Post-humanism, 18–21, 29, 44, 45, 69, 129n4
56–9, 90, 182 Santos-Granero, Fernando, 149–50
Postma, Dirk, 161, 168–9 Sapir, Edward, 23, 185–6
Poststructuralism, 161, 197, 273–4. Sartre, Jean-Paul, 211–12
See also Structuralism Sasak people and culture,
Povinelli, Elizabeth, 26–7, 100, 116, 90, 96–106, 106n3
123, 129n5, 224, 258, 282 Sausdal, David, 71, 106n5, 107n7,
Primitivism in the 20th 113, 114, 182, 197n5, 285
Contemporary Art, 210 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, 230
Putnam, Hilary, 141 Schneider, David, 276
Schooling, 159–76
School smartness, 162–3, 173
Q Schutz, Alfred, 2
queer performance, 18 Science and technology studies (STS),
16, 127, 257
Scott, Michael W., 2, 7, 26, 93, 105,
R 115, 290
Rabinow, Paul, 223 Senghor, Leopold Sedar, 215
Radical alterity, 21, 56, 59, 70–1, 91, Serres, Michel, 18
102–3, 113–28, 182, 205, 233, Shamans and shamanism, 15, 27,
107n7, 148, 150–1, 156
INDEX 311
and Chewong, 46–8, 52–4, 60n7 truth in anthropology, 275–7

and kharisiri, 74, 76–8 Tsing, Anna L., 7, 8, 57, 127, 153,
Sikhism, 234, 236–8, 240, 242, 243 236, 248
Singularity, 6–9, 11 Turner, Terrence, 149
Sørensen, Estrid, 169 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 43, 49,
Sørhaug, Christian, 30, 137 218, 219
Soyinka, Wole, 215
Stengers, Isabelle, 2, 10, 21–2, 127,
263, 268 U
Stensrud, Astrid B., 31, 253 Uexküll, Jacob von, 186
Strathern, Marilyn, 2, 4, 13–14, 31,
66, 71, 84, 128, 174, 187, 189,
233, 255, 257, 276 V
Structuralism, 23, 184–5, 197. See also Venezuela. See Warao people
Poststructuralism and culture
Sufism, 95–6, 99–100, 107n15, 233, Verran, Helen, 160, 169, 172–4, 176,
237–8, 241, 243–7, 249 264, 269
Surrealism, 209, 213–14 Vigh, Henrik, 71, 106n5, 107n7, 113,
Swancutt, Katherine, 32n3 114, 182, 197n5, 285
Synthesis, 143, 213–15 Vilaça, Aparecida, 12, 13, 78, 82, 118
Visual arts
Animism, 217–20
T Global Contemporary. Art Worlds
Taussig, Michael, 65–6 after 1989, 215–23
Taylor, Charles, 24 Magicians of the Earth (Jean-Hubert
Telle, Kari, 29, 89 Martin), 207–12
The Invisible Committee, 2 Multiple Modernities 1905-1970,
Thinking from materials, 164 212–15, 220
Thomassen, Martin, 30, 205 ontological turn within, 205–24
Todd, Zoe, 230, 248 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo
Toren, Christina, 53 and American Anthropological
Transfiguration, 115, 128 Association Conference
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 9 roundtable (2013), 297, 299
Truth and doubt, 273–99 and animism, 69–71
Holbraad’s approach to truth, 277–8 and cosmological deixis, 15
interrelationship of truth claims, 281–8 definition of anthropology,
ontic scope of truth claims, 280–1 92, 101, 105
truth claims in a critical realist definition of ontology, 7
perspective, 287–9 and difference, 10
truth claims in the context of and equivocation, 24–5, 264,
multiplicity, 286–7 269, 277
312 INDEX
From the Enemy’s Point cosmology, 146–8, 151

of View, 231 dugout motorboats, 150–2
and “illegal move”, 129n2 external relations, 153–4
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (cont.) householding practices and
and multinaturalism, 14, 15, 70, 90, assemblage analysis, 139–44
148, 284 and Nabarao (spirit river people),
and ontological turn, 2, 6–8, 10, 146–7, 150
11, 13–17, 23–8, 113–15, and Orinoco River Delta, 144–6
126–8, 230–1, 234–5 structure of household, 144
and Other, 10, 15, 216 War machine, 7, 28, 33n8,
and permanent decolonization of 214, 215
thought, 207, 282 Wastell, Sari, 90
and perspectivism, 14–15, 21, 23, Water resources, 253–6, 259–67
26, 44, 49–50, 78, 81, 147, Weiner, Anette, 24
231, 257, 275–7, 283–4, 291 Weismantel, Mary J., 68, 84n8
and predation, 78–81 Wenger, Etienne, 170
and transformation versus Whorf, Benjamin L., 23, 185–6
metamorphosis, 60–1n7 Wilbert, Johannes, 143, 144, 151
and translation, 23 Willerslev, Rane, 6, 18, 102, 121,
and “war machine”, 7, 28, 33n8, 214 219, 257
and Yanomamö spirits, 116, 127 Willis, Paul, 167, 174, 175
Vocational education, 159–76 Willis, Roy, 185
Vygotsky, Lev, 171 Worlding, 127, 231, 235–7, 239, 241,
243, 247–9
World-making, 138, 141, 149,
W 151–2, 154
Wagner, Roy, 25, 32n7, 69, 128, in contemporary Peru, 253–69
276, 285
Wahid, Abdurhahman, 107n9
Warao people and culture, 137–56 Y
canoes, 140, 143–4, 151–3, 155 Yanomamö spirits, 116, 127
clothes, 146–50

Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference

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CRITICAL

BJØRN ENGE BERTELSEN and

More information about this series at

Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956840

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Cover image © John_ Woodcock / Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology:

2 The Relationality of Species in Chewong Animistic

3 Alterity, Predation, and Questions of Representation:

4 False Prophets? Ontological Conflicts

5 Chronically Unstable Ontology: Ontological Dynamics,

6 The Hold of Life in a Warao Village: An Assemblage

7 Disrupting Book Smartness: Critical Ethnography

8 Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold’s “Ontology

Part III Politics 203

9 Ontological Turns Within the Visual Arts: Ontic

10 Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to

11 “It Seems Like a Lie”: The Everyday Politics of World-

12 Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt in the Context

Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally295

Synnøve Bendixsen is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of

research on historical transformations of social inequality in Norwegian

Christian Sørhaug is an associate professor of Social Science at Department

Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology:

A longitudinal review of the anthropological literature will show that

B.E. Bertelsen (*) • S. Bendixsen

© The Author(s) 2016 1

of previous positions in anthropology and related disciplines? And, more

Knowing the World: What and How

of science Bruno Latour’s An Inquiry into the Modes of Existence (2013

constituted, enacted and analyzed. For some, as anthropologist Ghassan

Singularity or Multiplicity: Ontology

As is well known, there has been much temperature in exchanges about

the nonreductive ethnographic exploration of realities that are not neces-

Again, the political impetus underlining this sense of urgency—and an urgency

world” comes very close to a related term, namely “ontography”—to describe

Alterity and Difference, or the Engines

Given that the ontological turn shuns singularity—or at least universal-

necessitates a radically other approach to difference and variety: if difference

recognizing legitimate authority (even across ‘worlds’), it proposes that

beyond “culture” or “epistemology”. Argues anthropologist Aparecida

and non-human. For the third, politics, an emphasis on ontological (as

Where the latter [multiculturalism] [is] founded on the mutual implication

This shifting of perspectives between human and animal is predicated on

to Thinking Through Things, Henare et al. (2007) contends that meanings

anthropologist Kathleen Richardson (2016) investigates the concept of

differently, matter is at the heart of her “non-anthropocentric figure of

concerned with salvaging anthropology from the funeral pyre of an idea

ontological turn in anthropology has made the study of ethnographic dif-

Recalibrations. Assessments, Critiques and Exits

put ­differently, what we as anthropologists do when we speak for and

Yet, such critique simplifies or ignores that, for instance, perspectiv-

relations of externality. Studying householding as emerging events per-

feeding into a lethal politics of difference. Drawing on ethnography from a

3. A novel and intermediate position—straddled between the claim of radical

human capacity to transform the world, is offered by philosopher Gerald

Helmreich, S. 2016. Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of

Nielsen, M. 2013. Vi bebor mangfoldige verdener. For udsagnet [We Live in

Sayre, N.F. 2012. The Politics of the Anthropogenic. Annual Review of

The Relationality of Species in Chewong

Part III Politics 203

Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally295

put differently, what we as anthropologists do when we speak for and

c ontemporary anthropology that dissolves the division between humanity

iscursive constructs. Talal Asad (1993), among others, has criticized

ultiple discourses. Historical entanglements and modern discourses

ers who initiated a preliminary investigation into his “beliefs”, introduced

identified as being characteristic of modernity, largely conceived as an