Relating with More-than-Humans:

Interbeing Rituality in a Living World

1st Edition Jean Chamel
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/relating-with-more-than-humans-interbeing-rituality-in
-a-living-world-1st-edition-jean-chamel/
Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of
Sustainability

Series Editors
Marc Brightman
Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Jerome Lewis
Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK

Our series aims to bring together research on the social, behavioral, and
cultural dimensions of sustainability: on local and global
understandings of the concept and on lived practices around the world.
It publishes studies which use ethnography to help us understand
emerging ways of living, acting, and thinking sustainably. The books in
this series also investigate and shed light on the political dynamics of
resource governance and various scientific cultures of sustainability.
Editors
Jean Chamel and Yael Dansac

Relating with More-than-Humans

Interbeing Rituality in a Living World
Editors
Jean Chamel
Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Yael Dansac
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

ISSN 2945-6657 e-ISSN 2945-6665

Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability
ISBN 978-3-031-10293-6 e-ISBN 978-3-031-10294-3
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive

license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively
licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is
concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in
any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.

The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks,

service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the
absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the
relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general
use.

The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the
advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate
at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Ueuaphoto / Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered

company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham,
Switzerland
Acknowledgements
This publishing project was born in a house lost in the hills that
surround Lyon, where we convened in July 2020 the panel
“(Re)connecting with Earth Beings: Ritual Innovation and Affective
Entanglements in Contemporary Ecopolitics”, hosted by the 16th EASA
Biennial Conference. The congress was supposed to be held in Lisbon
but went online due to COVID-19 pandemic. We thank Maria Dębiń ska
and her friends who hosted us in this magical retreat. We also thank
her, as well as Bertrande Galfré, for their involvement in the
organization of this panel and in the start of the volume publishing. We
are also grateful to the scholars who participated in this panel for their
contributions and the productive discussions that followed.
Editing this multi-author volume was a long but also very rewarding
process. It would not have been possible without the support and trust
of the publishers, especially Elizabeth Graber, and the series editors,
Marc Brightman and Jerome Lewis, who stood by us all along.
We are especially grateful to the authors. Each one of their chapters
offers the reader insight into a specific cultural context, illustrating the
great variety of modes of interaction between human and more-than-
human. The peer reviewers shall also be thanked for their assistance in
helping us to improve the quality of the volume and the content of
every chapter.
A very special thanks to Michael Houseman, for bringing his
expertise and contributing with an Afterword that makes this volume’s
contributions resonate harmoniously.
To our families for their loving support, reassurance and
encouragement.
Contents
1 Relating with More-than-Humans:​Interbeing Rituality and
Spiritual Practices in a Living World—An Introduction
Jean Chamel and Yael Dansac
Part I Living with More-than-Humans: The Role of Daily Rites
2 Inter-species Interaction Rituals in Yak Herding Practices in
Nepal
Théophile Johnson
3 Urban Wixárika and More-than-Human Beings: The Case of Tatéi
Niwetsika (“Our Mother Corn”) in Western Mexico
Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt
4 The Peasant and the Soil in Southwestern French Biodynamic
Agriculture:​A Ritualistic Creative Relationship Entangled in a
Holistic Commitment
Bertrande Galfré
Part II More-than-Human Politics: Belonging, Identity,
Indigeneity and the Rights of Nature
5 Human-Resource Connections as Articulations of Belonging in
Buriatia
Anna Varfolomeeva
6 “Behind-the-curtain Work”:​Animal Ingredients, Divine
Collaboration, and Ritual Substitution in West African Healthcare
Degenhart Brown
7 Ritual Animism:​Indigenous Performances, Interbeings
Ceremonies and Alternative Spiritualities in the Global Rights of
Nature Networks
Jean Chamel
Part III More-than-Human Spiritualities: Liminality, Embodiment
and Intimate Experiences of Personal Transformation
8 Escaping the Modern Predicament:​Nature as Refuge and
Community in Contemporary Health Practices in Wales, Sweden,
and Finland
 Ed Lord and Henrik Ohlsson
9 Crossing Thresholds with Nature Spirits:​Ritual Design,
Liminality, and Transformation in Northwestern France
Yael Dansac
10 Crystals as Other-than-Human Persons for New Spirituality in
Estonia:​Phenomenological​Relationality in Animist Materialism
Tenno Teidearu
11 Fragment of Afterword:​In Among the More-than-Humans
Michael Houseman
Index
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 A cauri is negotiating her dominance with me. (Photo: T.
Johnson)

Fig.​2.​2 The snow leopard in the yak pasture area.​(Photo:​T.​Johnson)

Fig. 2.3 Phurba and Dorze are milking a cauri that wouldn’t cooperate.
Dorze is petting her flank and calming her by whispering. (Photo: T.
Johnson)

Fig. 2.4 Phurba is approaching a bacca that is hard to catch. His hand is
catching the young’s attention. (Photo: T. Johnson)

Fig.​3.​1 El Buruato offerings with the Carrillo family.​(Photo:​C.​Garcia-

Weyandt, July 2021)

Fig. 3.2 Yuimakwaxa (“Drum Ceremony”) at Y+rata. (Photo: C. Garcia-

Weyandt, October 2019)

Fig.​4.​1 George in his garden, hoeing.​(Photo:​B.​Galfré, May 2020)

Fig.​4.​2 Jean on the “weeding bed” in the leeks.​(Photo:​B.​Galfré, May

2020)

Fig.​4.​3 Dynamization of the Silica Preparation; George teaches Noé the

woofer.​(Photo:​B.​Galfré, May 2020)
Fig.​4.​4 The gesture of the dynamization:​the vortex.​(Photo:​B.​Galfré,
May 2020)

Fig.​5.​1 Minibus passengers stopping near a sacred site on the way to

Orlik from Ulan-Ude.​(Photo:​A.​Varfolomeeva, 2021)

Fig.​5.​2 A view from the Sailak recreation area; Huzhir Enterprise is

visible next to the mountains.​(Photo:​A.​Varfolomeeva, 2021)

Fig. 6.1 Awinon étalage display. Lantassapé market. Lomé, Togo. (Photo:
D. Brown, October 2021)

Fig. 6.2 Awinon pharmacopée display. Lantassapé market. Lomé, Togo.

(Photo: D. Brown, October 2021)

Fig.​7.​1 Water ceremony, Earth Rights Conference, Sigtuna.​(Photo:​J.​

Chamel, May 2019)

Fig.​7.​2 Waters closing ceremony in Gordon Square during the

Flourishing Diversity Summit, London.​(Photo:​J.​Chamel, September
2019)

Fig.​8.​1 Finding a ‘close-but-remote’ niche in the woods with an

EcoConnect group.​Pembrokeshire, Wales.​(Photo:​E.​Lord, September
2018)
Fig.​8.​2 The interaction of elements, beings, and hardware/​tools
involved in making a hot drink in woodland.​Gower, Wales.​(Photo:​E.​
Lord, April 2018)

Fig.​8.​3 Forest bathers entering the portal to the forest in reverent

silence.​Evo, Finland.​(Photo:​H.​Ohlsson, July 2019)

Fig.​8.​4 The tea ceremony ending a forest bathing session, where

experiences are shared and gratitude expressed to the forest.​
Karjalohja, Finland.​(Photo:​H.​Ohlsson, August 2018)

Fig.​9.​1 A group practicing at Carnac megaliths.​(Photo:​Y.​Dansac,

December 2015)

Fig.​9.​2 Participants touching the local megaliths.​(Photo:​Y.​Dansac,

April 2018)

Fig.​10.​1 Daisy’s magnetite on the left and tourmaline on the right,

which is not finely polished and has a small bulge.​(Photo:​T.​Teidearu)

Fig.​10.​2 Christina’s bracelet with tiger’s eye stones.​(Photo:​T.​

Teidearu)
Notes on Contributors
Degenhart Brown
is a teaching fellow and a doctoral candidate in Culture and
Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA.
His research interests centre on how the production and consumption
of power objects inform epistemologies of cosmology, corporeality and
materiality in West Africa and its diasporas. He is currently working on
a dissertation exploring the ontological roles that sacred arts and
religious syncretism play in medical pluralism across southern Togo
and the Republic of Benin.

Jean Chamel
is an anthropologist and a senior Swiss National Science Foundation
(SNSF) researcher at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, from
which he holds a PhD in Religious Studies (2018). His thesis examined
the discourses and practices of the precursors of the theories of
collapse (collapsologie) in French-speaking Europe. After investigating
the global movement for the rights of nature that promote the
attribution of legal personality to non-human entities, with the
invention of ritual practices connecting humans and more-than-human
persons, he works on sensitive, ritualized and aesthetic relationships
with the high Alpine mountains and glaciers. Chamel has taught at the
National Museum of Natural History in Paris, the University of
Lausanne and the Universidad Nacional Autó noma de México (UNAM)
in Mexico City.

Yael Dansac
is a postdoctoral researcher at Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of
Religions and Secularism, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She
holds a Doctorate in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the É cole
des Hautes É tudes en Sciences Sociales, France. Her research interests
centre on the cultural, structural, creative, somatic and emotional
dimensions of contemporary spiritual practices held in archeological
sites. Her recent publications explore the relationships between ritual
creativity and ritual design, alternative spiritualities’ particular
aesthetics and modes of representation, and the experience of the
sensing body as a culturally constructed phenomenon. Dansac has also
conducted ethnographic research in Mexico and has taught at the
University of Guadalajara.

Bertrande Galfré
is a PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative
Sociology (LESC) at Paris-Nanterre University, France. She studies
biodynamic agriculture practiced in southwestern France near the
Pyrenean mountains, with the lenses of ritual anthropology and
anthropology of gestures.

Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt

is Assistant Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies at Kalamazoo College,
Michigan, USA. She has taught courses such as body, land and labour,
and plant communication/kinship. She also teaches a writing seminar
exploring dreams, storytelling, poetry, art activism and personal
narratives as sources of knowledge and social change. She is the
coordinator and co-founder of Proyecto Taniuki (“Our Language
Project”), a community-based project in Zitakua, Mexico. In the Taniuki,
she collaborates with urban Indigenous communities in language
revitalization efforts. She is part of La Red para el Fortalecimiento de las
Lenguas Indígenas de Nayarit (FOLINAY). Her research areas include
Indigenous knowledge systems, land pedagogy, urban Indigenous
peoples of Mexico, Indigenous art and performances, languages
ideologies, corn relations and ontology. Cyndy’s ancestral homeland is
in San Juan Sayultepec, Nochixtlá n, Oaxaca, México. She is a mother, a
poeta, an immigrant, a first-generation college student and former
community college transfer student. She holds a PhD and Master’s
Degree in Culture and Performance, and a Bachelor’s Degree in
Anthropology, all from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Michael Houseman,
anthropologist, is a Professor Emeritus (chair of African religions) at
the É cole Pratique des Hautes É tudes, Université Paris Sciences &
Lettres (PSL), France. He has undertaken field research among the Beti
of Southern Cameroon, in Bénin, in French Guiana and in France. He has
written extensively on kinship and social organization, and on initiation
and ritual performance. His current areas of interest include
ceremonial dance and emergent forms of ritual practice. His
publications include Naven or the Other Self. A Relational Approach to
Ritual Action (1998, with C. Severi) and Le rouge est le noir. Essais sur le
rituel (Presses Universitaires le Mirail, 2012).

Théophile Johnson
is an anthropologist and photographer who works on pastoralism
technical systems and their influence on human-animal relationships,
particularly in yak herding extensive systems in Manang, Nepal. He is a
PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative
Sociology (LESC), Paris-Nanterre University, France. From an
anthropological point of view, he aims to search what humans and
animals share at a fundamental base for communication and dwelling
and how multiple species are able to build hybrid communities into
domestication processes. Using ethology’s methods, he also studies the
behavioural responses of the animals in human action and their
influence into the herd’s social organization. With photography and
writing, he aims to document the variety of pastoralist cultures.
Working as a shepherd himself since teenage, he uses his own
experience as a way to gain competence on his fieldworks.
Ed Lord
is Lecturer in Mental Health Nursing at Swansea University, Wales, UK;
his teaching is mostly focused on nurse education at undergraduate and
postgraduate levels. His research interests are in the intersection of
social theory, environmentalism and mental health. He completed an
MSc by research in Geography and Social Theory prior to commencing a
PhD in 2016. Ed Lord’s PhD research was funded by a fellowship from
RCBC Wales and explored the experiences of people taking part in
ecotherapy as an intervention for mental health in South and West
Wales. Prior to his move into research and education Ed Lord worked
as a nurse in National Health Service (NHS)’s acute inpatient mental
health settings in England and Wales for over a decade.

Henrik Ohlsson
is a researcher and lecturer in the study of religion at Sö dertö rn
University in Sweden. He is interested in human-nature relations from
historical, ethnographic and phenomenological perspectives, with a
focus on the spiritual or existential dimensions of those relations. For
his PhD thesis, he conducted field research in the Nordic countries
among people engaged in organized practice for a deepened connection
with nature. His thesis was connected to a larger project studying
nature relations and secularity in the Baltic Sea region and includes
researchers in Sweden, Estonia and Denmark. His earlier academic
interests include issues concerning secularization in general and a
particular focus on state policies towards religion in post-Soviet Central
Asia.

Tenno Teidearu
is a researcher at the Estonian National Museum and a PhD student of
Ethnology in the Department of Ethnology at the University of Tartu,
Estonia. His PhD research concentrates on the use of crystals, especially
the practice of wearing crystals in New Spirituality, and their
commerce, and esoteric shops in Estonia. His anthropological research
focuses on New Spirituality in the theoretical framework of material
religion, vernacular religion and consumption of religious commodities,
and the theoretical and methodological approach of his research is
influenced by the fields of material culture studies and consumption
studies in anthropology. His research concerns human interaction with
crystals as objects and natural materials, which is based on practices
and embodiment, their material agency and commerce and purchasing
of crystals at esoteric shops, and esoteric shops as significant material
and sensuous environments in general.

Anna Varfolomeeva
is a postdoctoral researcher at Helsinki Institute of Sustainability
Science (HELSUS) and Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Her postdoctoral project focuses on Indigenous conceptualizations of
sustainability in industrialized areas of the Russian North and Siberia.
Anna received her PhD (2019) from Central European University,
Budapest, and previously worked at the School of Advanced Studies,
University of Tyumen, Russia. Anna is the co-editor of the volume
Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia–
Mongolia Border (with Alex Oehler, 2019), and has written on
indigeneity in Russia, care in human-resource relations and the
symbolism of stone extraction.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
J. Chamel, Y. Dansac (eds.), Relating with More-than-Humans, Palgrave Studies in
Anthropology of Sustainability
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3_1

1. Relating with More-than-Humans:

Interbeing Rituality and Spiritual
Practices in a Living World—An
Introduction
Jean Chamel1 and Yael Dansac2
(1) Université de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
(2) Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

Jean Chamel
Email: jean.chamel@unil.ch

Yael Dansac (Corresponding author)

Email: yael.dansac@ulb.be

There is little doubt that the formidable scientific revolution that took
off in the eighteenth century—after several centuries of early
developments—significantly increased the capacity of the Moderns to
know and understand their world, their Earth and its inhabitants, or
what they used to classify as “nature”. But it seems that the more we,
Europeans or North Americans of the early twenty-first century, know
about nature, thanks to the most advanced tools and methodologies of
modern Western science, the less we are able to relate with nature.
Many factors can explain this predicament, such as the position of
exteriority taken by science, defined by observation and not
engagement, that implicitly engenders distance and separation. The
modern Western ontology that splits the world between the cultural
realm of humans and the rest, “nature”, can also explain such
estrangement. Radical environmentalists, however, increasingly
challenge this “Great Divide”, by contesting the exteriority of humans—
a position that can be summed up by their famous motto “we are not
defending nature, we are nature defending itself”. They also find
inspiration from debates within academic circles, especially those
concerning the “ontological turn”, though it remains a contested
concept.
What is no longer debated, especially thanks to the seminal works
of Bruno Latour (1993), Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998), and
Philippe Descola (2013), is the plurality of nature. The idea of one
unique nature, along which many cultures are organised, is gone.
Following the provincialisation of the concept of nature has emerged
the need for a semantic redefinition to designate beings that are not
human. The expressions “non-humans”, “other-than-humans”, or “more-
than-humans” (Abram 1996) have the important advantage of
containing in their plurality a multiplicity of forms, which are not
limited to the “living”, nor even the “visible” (or the “physical”). But they
also have the great disadvantage of designating what is not, or not only,
human. These terms remain thus somehow anthropocentric and fail to
really supersede the concept of “nature”, which stays hidden in the
closet.
To go beyond “nature”, since looking for its semantic substitutes is
not enough, our aim is to explore how humans, in various cultural
contexts, relate with other entities. A first version of the title of the
book was actually “Relating to More-than-Humans” but we decided to
replace the preposition by a “with”. It may appear to be an error of
translation as we are not native English speakers, but it is a deliberate
change to underline our intended focus on more horizontal
relationships, though asymmetry will always remain, nolens volens.
Words matter and it is crucial to challenge familiar expressions, whom
obviousness implicitly reproduce power imbalances. We also aim at
following the path opened by Tim Ingold, for whom life is not a feature
to be attributed to existing objects or subjects but is instead what
emerges from their interrelations (2006). The processual approach that
characterises the “ontology” or “poetics of dwelling” Ingold promotes
and his insistence on relationality (2000) advocate for focusing on
relations between “Earth Beings”—if we humbly adopt the expression
popularised by Marisol de la Cadena through her work with Runakuna
in Peruvian Andes (2015). In fact, many indigenous worldviews and
Western contemporary spiritual practices create different realities by
sharing the world with more-than-human beings. Critically, through
such relationality, other-than-human beings bestow their human
counterparts with knowledge, agency, and reflexivity.

Relating Through Rituality

Interbeing relationships can take many forms, but we decided in this
book to focus on rituality, because rites and rituals can constitute an
important component of daily life and a specific space to observe and
understand relationships with more-than-humans. Above all, rituals,
contrary to appearances, never remain unchanged and are constantly
evolving to take into account changes in societies.
The starting point of this book is the panel “(Re)connecting with
Earth Beings: Ritual Innovation and Affective Entanglements in
Contemporary Ecopolitics” that we coordinated at the 16th European
Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Biennial Conference in
Lisbon in July 2020 (following a first panel co-organised by Jean
Chamel and Bertrande Galfé at the International Union of
Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) Inter-Congress held
in Poznan, Poland, in August 2019). We actually came across two case
studies during the panel that perfectly illustrate our point on rituality.
Since they are not part of the nine ethnographies that constitute the
content of this volume, we briefly present them here to discuss several
recurrent issues of the volume.
The first ritual case study was presented by our colleague Maria
Salomea Dębiń ska who co-organised the EASA panel with us (after we
met in Poznan). This case study was featured in her 2021 article
“Witnessing from Within. Hyperobjects and Climate Activism in
Poland.” Dębiń ska had been involved in an “Interspecies Community”, a
collective of artists, academics, and activists that had the objective to
create in Warsaw a registered religious organisation in order to
instrumentalise the legal privileges granted to Polish Churches to
protect the environment. As she explains, “to have a religion legally
recognized one has to prove that one has a doctrine and a form of
worship” (2021: 457). Therefore, the collective decided to invent a
composting ritual called Mszak. Face masks, costumes, banners (all
made of recycled materials), and scripture and litany were invented for
an event that took place in May 2019 in the Botanical Garden on
Museum Night:

At 11 p.m. we took the wheelbarrow to the temple. We hid under

a piece of plastic foil, recycled and sewn together, representing
all things slimy and oozing, without which life is impossible. It
felt very intimate to be lying together under this thin layer
separating us from the crowd. We were folding, waving,
breathing, and laughing. Then we put on black masks and stood
around the barrow, while one of us sat on top of the temple
announcing that on the sixty-sixth Saturday of the Great
Compost (a play on the Polish word post which means “fasting”)
the time has come for the Mszak (a play on the words msza,
meaning “holy mass,” and mszak, meaning “bryophyte” or
“moss”). (457)

The ritual went on with the recitation of their “composting litany”,

which combined an anti-capitalist discourse “with a celebration of
decomposition and rot”:

It imitated the style of Polish folk religious songs, which made it

sound a little frivolous. The litany summoned the powers of
decomposition by invoking images of rot, mold, putrefaction,
and decay. It was trashy and funny; it recognized death as a
necessary part of life and turned composting into the central
element of the ritual. The metabolic processes that make up the
circle of life were juxtaposed to capitalist exploitation of bodies
and ecosystems, but also to the Western drive towards
classification, both processes that arrest change and produce the
illusion of a stability of categories. (2021: 457–458)

Invented and performed by a group of artists, academics, and cultural

animators, the Mszak ritual turned out to be more than a parody of
Catholic rituals, in a political attempt to challenge the privileges of the
religious status that solely benefits the Catholic Church, to become a
profound and sincere kind of “playful spirituality” (458).
The second ritual took place during the EASA conference, in the
afternoon following our panel: Maria Dębiń ska was staying with a few
friends she had met within the Interspecies Community in a house lost
in the hills that surround Lyon, and she invited us and Bertrande to join
them in order to enjoy exchanges “in real life” since the conference was
held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A young female Polish
artist who was staying in the house had created a mobile of found
objects, suspended and linked by an old hemp rope, and forming a
tetragon. Among the objects comprising the tetragon were an animal
skull and the rusted section of a farm tool. The young artist suggested
we perform a ritual for Arnica, an endangered species. The ceremony
would also be driven by the idea of celebrating nature, with the
involvement of the mobile. The choice to mourn for Arnica remained a
bit enigmatic, but we understood that the idea of mourning derived
directly from the Mszak ritual, during which a speaker recited a list of
species that had become extinct. A photographer within the group also
wanted to install a camera trap in the woods near the mobile to
automatically photograph humans (our group to begin with) and non-
humans alike that would pass by, but some technical issues made it
impossible.
For this Arnica ritual, there was no litany, no prepared sequence of
gestures, and no rehearsal. The motto was improvisation. We started by
walking down under the house towards a wooded ravine, following the
mobile in single file, before climbing up a little bit on the opposite side
of the ravine. We were quiet and tended to adopt a collected attitude,
though we didn’t forbid ourselves to speak sometimes, in hushed
voices, and to laugh at funny situations. Then the mobile was hung from
a branch, and we stood still and quiet in front of it. So far, not much had
happened. Then one of us decided to get out of line and came silently
close to the mobile, touched it very smoothly with the ends of his
fingers, kind of danced very slowly with and around it, making it turn
around itself as well and finally came back to the line of the ritual
participants. This inspired a few others to approach the mobile and to
improvise some corporeal ways of relating with it, also silently and
smoothly.
 We then left the mobile there and came back to the house, down and
then up again in the woods, with more small talk, debriefing informally
about the ritual. One of us was not really convinced that the exercise
had meaning and potential effects, and preferred to observe indirectly
rather than participate. Deeply involved in biodynamic agriculture, she
explained that for her powerful rituals are not crafted out of creativity
and improvisation, but are rather part of a whole system of meaning,
with gestures that practitioners do not even consider as rituals.
Were the parodic performance and the improvised happening
actually rituals to start with? Aren’t rituals dependent on calendric
repetition, collectively agreed-upon effects, and some form of structure
or choreography, questioned very accurately our colleague Degenhart
Brown after reading a first draft of this text? A first answer is yes, they
are rituals since their initiators define them as such. “Mszak ritual” and
“Arnica ritual” are emic terms and therefore they cannot be discarded
that easily. Their one-off nature, even improvisational for the second, is
neither problematic if we adopt the definition proposed by Catherine
Bell, for whom

ritualization is a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated

to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to
other, usually more quotidian, activities. As such, ritualization is
a matter of various culturally specific strategies for setting some
activities off from others, for creating and privileging a
qualitative distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane,’
and for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to
transcend the powers of human actors. (Bell 1992: 74)

In both cases, the distinction with quotidian activities is well marked

and “orchestrated”, notably with the clear inspiration from religious
ceremonies.

Ritual Creativity and Contemporary Spiritual

Practices
What did we learn from these two cases? First of all, rituals and ritual
creativity are not limited to indigenous, religious, or alternative
spiritualities contexts, but can be also found in political, artistic, and
even academic milieux. Both cases also illustrate how rituals are
generally forged from bits and pieces of existing ceremonies. Indeed,
since the 1960s, anthropologists began to focus on the emergence of
spiritual practices that challenged their common idea of rituals as non-
dynamic phenomena rooted in traditional beliefs and techniques. It was
at this time that Victor Turner (1969) highlighted the creative and
innovative potential of rituals, emphasising their flowing, processual,
and subversive effects. According to Ronald Grimes (1992), this
reinvention of ritual called into question the very criteria that defined
an action as ritualistic. Engaging in a revisited theory of ritual, he
suggests that traditional features can be understood as both invented
and creative without losing sight of their historical and cultural
processes. Grimes’ analysis attempts to conciliate tradition and
invention by emphasising that they are engaged in a dialogical relation
rather than mutually exclusive. In this sense, he calls for rituals to be
conceptualised not as timeless and motionless structures but as
dynamic phenomena that draw continuously on their sources and
tributaries in order to reinvent themselves (Grimes 1992: 23–24).
Taking an innovative approach to ritual as both conservative and
transformative process, Catherine Bell (1992: 25) has identified the
social relationships and dichotomies rituals support: continuity and
change, collective and individual experience, as well as thought and
action. Bell also calls our attention to the roles that the body and
structural power play in ritual, inviting us to ponder what makes us
identify some acts as rituals, and what such a category does for the
production of knowledge about other cultures.
The composting ritual is conceived as parodic and therefore
intentionally copy Catholic features, with shifts and wordplays. It is less
evident with the arnica ritual, but still participants attune themselves to
a collected attitude, as it is required during formal ceremonies, which
are often religious but can also belong to the political or civic realms
(Bellah 1967). The arnica ritual was also presented as a moment of
mourning, like the Mszak, and that explained the choice of a relevant
attitude. We can actually note that mourning is a recurrent feature of
many invented rituals, for instance, present in the practices associated
with ecopsychology, such as the Work that Reconnects developed by
Joanna Macy (Chamel 2021: 450), but also central to the ceremonies
organised in Iceland, Switzerland, or Oregon for disappeared or
disappearing glaciers. It is true that rituals are often thought of as
practical ways to enact transformation, following the classical works of
Arnold Van Gennep (2013) and Victor Turner (1969), and funeral is the
most evident ritual to acknowledge the end of an epoch or any loss.
Dębiń ska does not give details on how litanies and gestures
emerged to build up the Mszak ritual but the processes of improvised
invention were obvious during the arnica ritual, through specular
interactions. The attitudes and gestures of one person influence the
attitudes and gestures of all, through an immediate and perpetual
adjustment that makes the outcome of the ritual somehow impossible
to anticipate. The arnica ritual offers a privileged window upon the
processes of ritual uncertainty and doubt highlighted by Fedele (2014)
in her analysis of contemporary crafted rituals. During practice, both
emerge as powerful tools against meticulous ritual structures and rigid
patterns of behaviour, allowing participants to feel less restrained by
long-lasting religious traditions and talk more openly about their
doubts.
The Mszak ritual and the arnica ritual represent just a glimpse of a
far-larger phenomenon taking place in plural, increasingly secularised
Western contexts and beyond. In the last 40 years, the emergence of
alternative spiritual practices has continued to shape our
understanding of rituals, confronting scholars with contemporary
holistic ideologies, self-development practices, and body-mind
techniques, which mobilise aesthetics and modes of representation
characterised by the idiosyncratic and unexpected juxtaposition of
heterogeneous elements (Houseman 2016: 213–215). Drawing from
different religions, indigenous traditions, and esoteric ideologies,
“alternative spiritualities” have challenged traditionality as a
fundamental value, driving scholars to conceptualise their innovative
and creative processes as ritualistic features. Several chapters of this
volume provide fieldwork accounts of their diversity, instability, and
exposure to secular influences, highlighting how these rituals transform
and adapt to multiple cultural contexts (Fedele 2013). The
identification of their ritual structure provides insights into many
aspects related to their transformation processes (Houseman 2011a:
700). In fact, “the conscious elaboration of new rituals, or the
reinterpretation of existing ones” is associated “with the expressly
subversive aim of bringing about cultural change” (Magliocco 2014: 1).
In her exploration of ritual effects, Dębiń ska quotes David Graeber, for
whom Pagans often “seem to be engaging at the same time in a ritual
and the parody of a ritual; the point where laughter and self-mockery
are likeliest to come into the picture is precisely the point where one
approaches the most numinous, unknowable, or profound” (Graeber
2009: 220–221, cited by Dębiń ska 2021: 458). As noted by Houseman
(2016: 221), the playful nature of these practices allows participants to
engage in creative enactments without holding back, leading to changes
in perception through which newly generated realities are experienced
as subjectively real.
Lineage associations, fabricated traditions, and revitalisation of
ancient practices, among other creative strategies, often serve the
purpose of conjoining the spiritual dimension of contemporary rituals
with social and political activism. They also provide innovative usages
concerned “with knowing how to behave appropriately toward persons,
not all of whom are human” (Harvey 2005: 17). For example, advocacy
efforts to protect more-than-human beings repeatedly reappropriate
indigenous traditions and animistic worldviews as means of providing
legitimacy to specific demands such as legal personality attribution.
Therefore, ritual creativity acts as an instrument of transformation and
production of values, behaviours, and practices regarding more-than-
humans. Our focus on multi-species ritual interactions considers the
ways rituals create their own realities. Social relationships between
humans and more-than-humans are often organised by hierarchies,
protocols, and objectives, which grant a function or an ability to each
participant within a collective. The capacity for non-humans to
communicate (Descola 2013), to cure a physical or spiritual illness
(Turner 2006), or to recreate ways of relating to the Earth and all its
inhabitants (Harvey 1997) simultaneously determines more-than-
humans’ intrinsic properties and roles in a given cultural context. For
example, Native American Ojibwe considers animate and inanimate
beings as persons with whom they relate (Hallowell 1960: 24). Nayaka
hunter-gatherers of South India perceive their environment as an
assembly of sentient beings who provide and need care, therefore
overriding the subject/object divide of Cartesian lifeworlds (Bird-David
1999). The Nayaka establish shared relationships with non-human
beings, stressing the connectedness of everyone.
In nature-based spiritualities practiced in Western societies, non-
human beings’ attributes and roles sometimes seem contradictory.
Practitioners pursue a symmetric relationship with non-human entities
by considering them as their partners, while simultaneously seeking a
sense of connection and belonging to nature sometimes personified as
a transforming power (Taylor 2000: 277). Therefore, they conceive
their ceremonies as structurally organised spaces where humans and
non-humans can achieve common objectives, from the re-establishing
of harmonious relationships to the re-implementation of a sensory
communion between the two. However, as noted by several authors in
this volume, the ultimate objective—or at least consequence—of such
rituals is the accomplishment of individual and collective goals related
to personal development. In this sense, more-than-humans are often
instrumentalised as tools for human ends while simultaneously being
regarded as partners. There is therefore sometimes a discrepancy
between discourses about horizontal, egalitarian, relationships, and the
reality of practices that are ultimately not so different from the usual
unequal intercourses.

Circulations and Refracting Rituals

Another aspect to be considered is how cultural, social, and economic
reconfigurations taking place across the globe are accentuating the
multi-faceted dynamics of rituals. Frontiers within spiritual practices
are increasingly porous and permeable, allowing the exchange of
heteroclite elements and producing eclectic and hybrid rituals. Thomas
J. Csordas has addressed this issue, highlighting that spiritual practices
deriving from foreign contexts and often lacking a grounding in local
culture and traditions are crossing geographical and cultural spaces,
conveying what he defines as “transportable practices” and
“transposable messages” (Csordas 2009: 4–5). Both terms refer to
ritual forms that can be easily transmitted and require limited
knowledge of the original context. Circulations of ritual forms are
therefore common between socio-cultural contexts and are also
increasingly diverse, with a growing trend of Western practitioners
drawing inspiration from indigenous cosmogonies and ceremonies,
while rituals that could be, at first glance, perceived as “traditional” are
in fact deeply influenced by the Western world. In all cases, these
circulations always give rise to new and unexpected forms.
Michael Houseman (2011b: 261–263) explored the ritual mode of
attentiveness that allows participants to experience alternative
spiritual practices as emulations of ceremonies that are perceived as
“traditional”. He proposed the terminology of refracted rituals, to be
opposed to the more “traditional” rituals that he described as
condensed. The latter are made of complex actions performed by the
participants whose sense and purpose remain mysterious to them
because of their ambivalence: the same action can express
contradictory objectives and relations. Houseman gives the example, in
some regions, of the mother traditionally slapping her daughter when
come her first menses: the exact meaning of the slap is never explicated
but it still produces effects and is reproduced from generation to
generation. Refracted rituals also contain structural indeterminacy and
ambivalence, but they concern the participants’ attitudes and feelings
rather than the activities they execute. For example, in alternative
spiritual practices, summoned entities—archetypal figures held as
exemplary and often ascribed as pre-Christian, indigenous, or non-
Western—are presumed to affect the participants’ personal attitudes
and beliefs rather than the actions they performed. Refracted subjects
experience different, contrasting identities at once. On the one hand,
those of summoned entities whose emulations are embodied through
ceremonial actions, and on the other hand, those of participants
themselves, affected by the performances derived from these
emulations (Ibid.: 262–263). Distinguishing condensed rituals from
refracted rituals, Houseman focuses on the qualities that mark them as
distinctive kinds of actions and experiences. He explores patterns of
behaviour and the nature of relationships created through the
enactment of ritual condensation, and acknowledges personalised
creativity, self-aware reflexivity, and prevalence of immaterial
representations of summoned entities as concomitant characteristics of
ritual refraction. Interestingly, the parodic purpose of Mszak does not
make it fit with what Houseman (2011b) calls “refracting rituals”, since
apparently participants come without the expectation of being touched
by the process. But at the end, some are, somehow against their will,
which can be more easily associated with “ritual condensation”. This
may be an effect of the contradictory combination (“condensation”) of
mockery and experiences of communitas. A contrario, the arnica ritual
looked more like a “refracting ritual”, but without much effect following
probably a lack of preparation, expectation, and projection.
Are invented rituals influencing day-to-day life, and therefore
changing the nature of relationships between humans and more-than-
humans? Or are new rituals—or ritualised activities—involving more-
than-humans just the consequences of deep changes within human
communities? Given the paradoxical complexity of this question, we
posit that the way rituals are framed and reconfigured cannot be
distinguished from how human societies see and interact with non-
humans.
This volume comprises nine case studies that illustrate how humans
relate to non-human entities in a large variety of cultural contexts.
Aiming to provide a global understanding on the ritual processes
involved and to emphasise the particularities and junctions among
these case studies, we divided the volume into three main sections:
daily interactions, political implications, and spiritual engagements.
Part I is entitled “Living with More-Than-Humans: The Role of Daily
Rites”. It highlights the day-to-day relationships between human and
non-human beings through the analysis of cooperative interactions,
knowledge systems, kinship relations, and ritual practices across
societies located in the Nepalese Himalayas, Mexico, and south-western
France.
Chapter 2 by Théophile Johnson on yak herding systems in Nepal as
cooperative interactions constructed over time is a very useful
introduction to contemporary negotiations with more-than-humans.
Drawing on participant observation, interviews, and detailed
ethnographic descriptions, Johnson places the reader at the centre of
ritualised and daily repeated interactions between the herder and the
yaks. Seeking to explore local practices of pastoralism and bio-semiotic
behaviours, he scrutinises interaction rites existing between various
species and analyses the negotiations taking place between those
species during domestication processes. Importantly, Johnson pays
attention to different practices showing the collaboration between the
shepherd and the yaks and proposes a typology of interactions between
humans and non-humans, including ritual identifications, confirmatory
ceremonies, maintenance practices, and funeral events. He also
explores the non-violent strategies set in place by the shepherds to
protect the yaks from predators who are also part of this living
environment. In his chapter, Johnson shows that yak pastoralism is an
extremely rich case for studying domestication and its possibilities in
terms of animal agency in bio-semiotic mechanisms.
Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt’s (Chap. 3) sharp analysis on Tatéi
Niwetsika or “Our Mother Corn” among Wixá rika families living in West
Mexico offers a framework on how to live life in relationality with non-
human beings. Using descriptions regarding ritual practices where
relationships with Tatéi Niwetsika are maintained and analysing how
more-than-human beings such as maize shape Wixá rika’s personhood,
being, and existing, Garcia-Weyandt takes us into the core of kinship
relations organising Wixá rika daily interactions and examines the
agency of maize in Wixá rika systems of knowledge. She convincingly
argues that becoming a devout kinsperson of Tatéi Niwetsika (“Our
Mother Corn”) in the Wixá rika context entails that families maintain
her genealogy through cultivation practices, produce and consume
culinary representations based on maize as main ingredient, pass down
oral tradition, remember Tatéi Niwetsika’s teachings through memory
and embodied practices, and make bodily offerings during the
cultivation and harvesting cycles.
Part I of the volume ends with Chap. 4 by Bertrande Galfré based on
her fieldwork among biodynamic peasants living in south-western
France. She centres on the ritualised preparations of soil advanced by
biodynamic agriculture, a practice which was developed by an esoteric
movement called Anthroposophy founded in the early twentieth
century and promotes an agriculture of care aiming to reach a
symbiotic welfare for human and non-human beings. Using detailed
descriptions of biodynamic practices performed in a collective farm in
Pyrenean’s piedmont, Galfré carefully analyses how peasants interact
with more-than-humans through specific gestures and actions. She also
shows how practices are driven by the peasant’s social, political, and
spiritual commitments, and how links are built and maintained among
different actors engaged in the welfare of the agricultural organism’s
foundations. Analysing the farmer’s role in the improvement of the
harmony and equity between animal, plants, humans, cosmic, and
terrestrial forces, Galfré offers an understanding of biodynamic
agriculture as a practice to preserve and improve the farm’s general
welfare.
Part II of the volume is entitled “More-than-Human Politics:
Belonging, Identity, Indigeneity and the Rights of Nature”. It centres on
the cultural and political dimensions emerging through human and
non-human interactions through detailed analysis of senses of
belonging, traditional healing techniques, and non-human beings’ legal
personality attribution in Buriatia, West Africa, and during events for
the rights of nature mainly taking place in Europe.
Drawing on her extensive fieldwork among the residents of the
South-Central Siberian landscape of Oka, Chap. 5 by Anna Varfolomeeva
focuses on the influence of mineral resources in local societies’ sense of
belonging, creation of patterns of ritualised interaction, and
establishment of affective bonds between ‘Okans’ and their landscape.
Using both semi-structured and unstructured biographical interviews,
Varfolomeeva discusses how Okans simultaneously articulate their
connections with a specific place and their sense of belonging when
addressing local resource extractions or when engaging with minerals
directly. She carefully analyses how minerals such as graphite, gold, and
jade are animated and related to non-human beings considered to
inhabit this particular territory. Varfolomeeva illustrates how Okans
relate to more-than-humans in a context permeated by political
tensions and calls for rethinking local conceptions of belonging beyond
the established dichotomies of dominance or mutualism. She also
addresses mining as an activity which permeates identity
configurations and ritual interactions and does not restrain to
economic and political relationships.
Chapter 6 by Degenhart Brown offers insight into specific animal
ingredients markets located in Togo and the Republic of Bénin and calls
our attention to one of the key topics of animal-derived medicine
practices in West Africa today: their role in the interpretation and
reconfiguration of human and other-than-human relationships.
Drawing on detailed analysis of interactions taking place in Awinon
community markets, Vodun systems of knowledge regarding illness,
and diverse ritual practices involving animal parts consumption, Brown
elucidates how animal-derived medicines provide salient ways for West
African populations to assert their identities, traditions, and healthcare
requirements in the face of rampant globalisation. He analyses the
ritual and creative strategies used by Awinon merchants to accentuate
the spiritual and healing potentials of animal ingredients and highlights
the crucial role of these practices in local communities. Brown also
questions a research corpus which regard multi-species relations and
traditional healing practices as mystical frameworks, superstitions and
archaic beliefs, and demonstrates how in this uncertain context where
economic inequalities between societies across the world are
exponentially growing, communities across West Africa turn to
traditional knowledge and valorise ritual interactions with non-human
beings.
Jean Chamel’s (Chap. 7) enquiry carried out at the heart of networks
seeking to promote the rights of nature provides a useful introduction
to interbeing ceremonies, ritual animism, and alternative spiritualities.
His discussion centres on the ongoing efforts to grant legal personality
to non-human beings such as water bodies, forests, or the Earth as a
whole. Observing ceremonies organised within rights of nature events
taking place in Europe but also in Quito, and involving more-than-
human entities, Chamel analyses how participants seek to re-establish
their relationships with the non-human beings whose legal personality
is being defended. Using detailed descriptions of animism-inspired
rituals that draw inspiration from diverse indigenous cosmogonies, he
identifies how these practices draw on the legitimacy of indigenous
leaders, and how they become reformulated and institutionalised
through ritual creativity processes. Chamel also questions the core
argument of the movement for the rights of nature as a multi-sited and
online initiative seeking to re-establish animistic and holistic
relationships with the living world and invites the reader to understand
this movement as a banner to promote an ecocentrism that is no longer
fully naturalistic, without being truly animistic.
Part III of the volume entitled “More-than-Human Spiritualities:
Liminality, Embodiment and Intimate Experiences of Personal
Transformation” illustrates contemporary forms of relating to more-
than-humans in Western societies. It focuses on the liminal
interactions, transformation experiences, and phenomenological
relationalities constructed among humans and non-human participants
in alternative spiritual practices in Wales, Sweden, Finland, north-
western France, and Estonia.
Searching to contribute to a re-evaluation of the classical and widely
used terms liminality and communitas in ritual studies, Chap. 8 by Ed
Lord and Henrik Ohlsson explores participants’ relations with non-
human beings in the context of therapeutic nature practices, such as
ecotherapy, forest bathing, and forest therapy. Their fieldwork was
conducted in three geographical and cultural contexts with much in
common but also notable differences: Wales, Sweden, and Finland.
Applying a comparative analysis of their respective fieldworks, Lord
and Ohlsson call our attention to one of the key values granted by
practitioners to alternative spiritual practices performed in natural
environments: their capacity for providing them with experiences
regarded as having the potential of momentarily dissipating the
pressures and tensions of modern life. For interviewees, nature takes
the form of a liminal space where the burdens of social structures
temporarily dissolve, and practitioners can access a living world
inhabited by more-than-human beings. Lord and Ohlsson accurately
demonstrate that the concepts of liminality and communitas contribute
to our understanding of the practitioner’s experience of more-than-
humans in alternative spiritual practices.
Chapter 9 by Yael Dansac centres on alternative spiritual practices
performed in the megalithic landscapes of north-western France. Her
detailed analysis of the ritual design followed by different groups
explores the construction of intimate experiences of personal
transformation resulting from the practitioners’ interaction with non-
human beings considered to inhabit this territory. Drawing on
interviews, observations, and descriptions of the rituals’ organising
principles, Dansac demonstrates how practitioners engage in different
bodily techniques whose purpose is to create liminal spaces in which
humans relate to non-human beings regarded as the guardians of the
restorative and beneficial powers of the megaliths. Seeking to identify
how participants assimilate summoned entities, she highlights
collective strategies applied to reflect on them as animated beings who
are equal to humans in diverse aspects while simultaneously being
distinct because they have non-human powers and capacities. In her
case study, interbeings interactions are first and foremost activated
when the practitioner displays body postures and behaviours related to
a state of “openness”.
The volume’s tour of the world finishes in Estonia with Chap. 10 by
Tenno Teidearu on crystals as other-than-human persons in New
Spirituality. Teidearu takes us to the heart of the problem of what the
purpose of animist materialism is and how it illustrates another
dimension of human and more-than-human interactions. Using both
interviews and ethnographic observations in local esoteric shops, he
discusses how Estonian women who have embraced alternative
spiritualities incorporate semi-precious stones considered to have
spiritual qualities into their everyday lives. Teidearu convincingly
argues that bodily engagements with crystals allow these women to
support their human capacities and qualities to solve personal
problems and bring change to their lives. He also highlights that the
combination of corporeal perception, interaction, intimacy, bodily
proximity, and dependency can produce and shape the subject’s
phenomenological relationality with these objects regarded as living
beings. Drawing on the practice of wearing crystals, Teidearu
demonstrates that relationality and communication between humans
and more-than-humans is not static, rather, it evolves over time and
through continual interaction and therefore has temporal and material
dimensions.

Acknowledgements
A grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation awarded to Jean
Chamel made the writing of this introduction possible.

References
Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-
than-Human World. New York: Vintage Books.

Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bellah, Robert. 1967. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96 (1): 1–21.

Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. “‘Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and
Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40 (S1): S67–S91.
[Crossref]

Cadena, Marisol de la. 2015. Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds.
Durham: Duke University Press.
[Crossref]

Chamel, Jean. 2021. “Waiting for the Ecological Apocalypse: From New Age
Millenarianism to Collapsologie in French-Speaking Europe.” Journal for the Study of
Religion, Nature and Culture 15 (4): 441–461.
[Crossref]

Csordas, Thomas J. 2009. “Introduction: modalities of Transnational Transcendence.”

In Thomas J. Csordas (ed.), Transnational Transcendence. Essays on religion and
globalization, 1–29. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[Crossref]

Dębiń ska, Maria Salomea. 2021. “Witnessing from within: Hyperobjects and Climate
Activism in Poland.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 11 (2): 445–60.
[Crossref]

Descola, Philippe. 2013. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
[Crossref]

Fedele, Anna. 2013. Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in
France. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2014. “Doute et incertitude dans les nouveaux rituels contemporains.” Social
Compass 61 (4): 497–510.
[Crossref]

Graeber, David. 2009. Direct Action: An Ethnography. Edinburgh; Oakland; Baltimore:

Ak Press.

Grimes, Ronald L. 1992. “Reinventing ritual.” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal

75 (1): 21–41.

Hallowell, A. Irving. 1960. “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View.” In Stanley
Diamond (ed.), Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, 19–52. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Houseman, Michael. 2011a. “Trying to Make a Difference with Ritual Design.” In Udo
Simon, Christiane Brosius, Karin Polit, Karin, Petra Rosch, Corinna Wessels-Mevissen
et Gregor Ahn (eds.), Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual IV. Reflexivity, Media,
and Visuality, 699–706. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

———. 2011b. “Refracting Ritual: An Upside-down Perspective on Ritual, Media and

Conflict”. In Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hü sken, Udo Simon, Eric Venbrux (eds.), Ritual,
Media, and Conflict, 255–284. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[Crossref]

———. 2016. “Comment comprendre l’esthétique affectée des cérémonies New Age
et néopaïennes ?” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 174: 213–237.
[Crossref]

Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling
and Skill. Routledge.

———. 2006. “Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought.” Ethnos 71 (1): 9–20.
[Crossref]

Harvey, Graham. 1997. Contemporary Paganism. Listening People, Speaking Earth. New
York: New York University Press.

———. 2005. Animism: Respecting the Living World. London: Hurst.

Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.

Magliocco, Sabina. 2014. “Introduction: Ritual creativity, emotions and the body.”
Journal of Ritual Studies 28 (2): 1–8.

Taylor, Bron. 2000. “Deep ecology and its social philosophy: A critique.” In Eric Katz,
Andrew Light et David Rothenberg (eds.), Beneath the surface: Critical essays in the
philosophy of deep ecology, 269–299. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Turner, Edith. 2006. Among the Healers: stories of spiritual and ritual healing around
the world. Westport: Praeger Publishers.

Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-structure. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.

Van Gennep, Arnold. 2013. The Rites of Passage. Routledge.

[Crossref]
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. 1998. “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian
Perspectivism.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (3): 469–88.
[Crossref]
Part I
Living with More-than-Humans: The
Role of Daily Rites
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
J. Chamel, Y. Dansac (eds.), Relating with More-than-Humans, Palgrave Studies in
Anthropology of Sustainability
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10294-3_2

2. Inter-species Interaction Rituals in

Yak Herding Practices in Nepal
Théophile Johnson1
(1) Paris-Nanterre University, Nanterre, France

Théophile Johnson
Email: johnson.theophile@gmail.com

Introduction
Research on domestication (St Hilaire, 1861) revealed very early that
domestication is a process characterized by an unstable equilibrium
that requires relationships to be updated on a daily basis. Feralization
thus refers to the ecological and social adaptation of domesticated
species when they lose their relationship with humans. This chapter
focuses on the means used to avoid feralization and on the maintenance
of domestic relations between humans and yaks in an extensive
farming system that relies heavily on the autonomy of the animals to
survive in the Nepalese Himalayas. Indeed, it has been shown that, to be
possible, cohabitation between humans and large mammals in
extensive systems requires mechanisms to induce cooperation or, as
Charles Stepanoff has called it, “joint commitment” (2012). These
relationships are closely dependent on the environment and thus form
a relational triad.
By following symbolic interactionism and by taking into account the
postulate of hybrid communities (Lestel 2008) in pastoral
environments, which considers that the hybridity of inter-species
relations is a cultural fact that can lead to cognitive innovations (1998),
we will focus our observations on the communication interactions
between herders and their yaks. This study is based on a participant
ethnography split into two five-month fieldwork visits conducted
between 2017 and 2018 in Manang, Nepal. I stayed in six camps with
thirteen shepherds, both men and women, of all cultural backgrounds,
whether Gurung, Dolpali, Sherpa, Ghale, Tamang or Kami. I
nevertheless stayed in a privileged way with Purba and his wife Poltu
with whom an apprenticeship situation (Downey et al. 2014) was
initiated. The master’s thesis that resulted from this ethnography
focused on the techniques of the shepherds that they use to relate to
their herd and the types of knowledge and skills they require to keep it.
During these ten months spent in the company of the shepherds, the
recurrence of certain interactions that all the shepherds pointed out to
me, the situations of embarrassment brought about by my errors in the
help I tried to provide, led me to attempt to define the role of these
interactions in the setting up of the process of cooperation between the
shepherds and their yaks. Thus, in this chapter, the description of these
interactions is derived from a corpus of direct and participatory
observations collected during the collective movements of the herd
produced by the herders, milking, tying the young every evening on a
rope and the distribution of salt. These observations were then
confronted during semi-directive interviews which focused on the
reactions to the reading of my field observations. This ethnography
finally led me to identify certain stereotyped and daily repeated
interactions which, as I would like to show in this chapter, can be
considered as interspecific interaction rituals that humans and animals
use to communicate and maintain a stable relationship over time and
which lead to the development of a hybrid community organized by
bio-semiotic interactions.
After reviewing how the notion of ritual can be a heuristic for the
study of the ways of communication between men and animals inside
domestication processes, we will go further into the ethnography of the
Manang herders. We will observe the intimate relationships that
develop between a shepherd and his yaks. We will then see, from
aggression to cooperation, how the passage from one to the other is
frequent and depends on the interaction framework according to Ervin
Goffman’s concept (1991). Finally, we will see several types of
interaction rituals that we have tried to organize into a non-exhaustive
typology.

Interaction Rituals
The anthropological theory of ritual has evolved considerably since
Emile Dhurkeim. Without going back over the review by Frederik Keck
(2004) on the notion of ritual in anthropology, let us summarize that it
tends to be extracted from the religious field and extended to everyday
interactions (Goffman 1982), to play or to the regulation of emotions
(Collins 2005). The ethologist John Smith (1977) identifies “formalised
interactions” that organize ritual gestures, both in animals and in
human interactions. The contexts in which they can be observed are
often the same: greetings, seductive approaches, challenges and
contestations (Lecomte 2019).
Everyday rituals, or rituals of daily life from Ervin Goffman’s
expression (1982), shape social behavior in animals first, as his
ethological inspiration to Julian Huxley indicates, and then in humans
in the ways of greeting, politeness, meals and postures of dominance.
Indeed, at first, ethologists extended in the same way the application
range of interaction rituals that Julian Huxley (1966) defines in this
way: “Biologically, a ritual is an adaptive formalization or channeling of
emotionally motivated behavior and responds to the pressure of
natural selection (…) in order to promote a more elaborate signaling
function both intra—and inter-specific” (ibid.). As Bernard Conein
(1992) explains in his discussion of the contribution of ethology to
sociology:

When Goffman borrowed the notion of ritualisation from

ethology, he sought to link the analysis of communication more
closely to that of the actual bodily behaviour of the protagonists.
(…) Huxley and Lorenz sought in the analysis of model micro-
behaviour and patterns of action in which social intelligence
played a minor role. The success of classical ethology, which
explains its fascination with Goffman’s microsociology, is to have
been able to break down animal behaviour into micro-units in
order to establish, with complete accuracy, what an animal does.
 (…) The inadequacy of the ritualisation model was that it did not
take into account the social properties of interaction. (Conein
1992)

If we finally follow Erving Goffman’s minimal acceptance of the

situation in which the ritual is implemented, the animal as well
performs ritualised actions in a social ‘frame’ (Lecomte 2019). As he
defined it “I argue that any definition of situation is constructed
according to organising principles that structure events—at least those
of a social character—and our own subjective engagement. The term
‘frame’ refers to these basic elements” (Goffman 1991: 9).
Charles Stepannoff (2015) even comes to compare the modes of
communication to spirits in shamanic rituals to a type of
communication known as “analogue” which aims to share experiences
with non-humans. As he proposes, “religious rituals can be compared to
other situations of communication between humans and non-humans.
This is the case with human-animal communication, where humans
exchange signals and sometimes cooperate with animals (game,
livestock, pets)” (ibid.). There are many examples of interspecific
communication in nature (attack signals, distress signals, exchange of
environmental signals between sympatric species). “The general
question to be asked is: what are the implications for humans of
communicating, of sharing experiences with non-humans? What are
the consequences for communication and interaction of the fact that
the participants are not supposed to belong to the same community, but
to profoundly, ontologically distinct universes? How does one construct
a common world with such beings?” (Stepanoff 2015).

A Yak Older than the Shepherd, When a Yak Shapes

the Shepherd
We felt the snow coming. The icy wind from the heights blew across the
interstices of the tent and whispered to us that the storm was coming.
While we were resting and dreaming to the sound of the storm’s roar,
five yaks, with their imposing heavy build, approached the tent. We
hear their grunts all around our shelter. Their request is clear and Pau
Roti, who understands what is happening, hastens to get dressed to
satisfy them: they are looking for salt. Without delay, we leave the tent
to give them some.
Pau Roti approaches slowly, and the yaks perfectly calm in front of
him. His step is light and silent but confident, without hesitation. A few
meters away from the first one, he put his hand forward after having
dipped it in the salt bag. Thulo Rato (the big red one) with his broken
right horn slowly stretches his neck to reach the hand without moving
his massive body that he is holding back. As he moistens his tongue
with salt, he leaps backward, head down and performs a series of small
jumps with his body arched. The others move aside startled. Pau Roti
enters the circle they form and places several handfuls of salt on a stone
polished by the tongues of yaks for nearly a hundred years. The yaks
wait for him to finish, and as soon as he moves away, they rush at it and
fight for the biggest share with great blows of horns in the flank, they
fight, head against head and we hear their blows resounding in the
whole valley. The big red one dominates them all and takes a large
portion of the salt. The younger ones, smaller in size, do not dare to
approach him and wait until he is satiated before taking their share.
Pau Roti tells me that he has known the big red one for twenty years,
when he first arrived in the village. This yak saw him become a
shepherd, and he confides to me that he will be very sad when he dies.
He has seen the youngest born and is quite familiar with them all. He
also tells me that there is no risk around the camp, but you have to be
very careful when you come across the horde on the pastures (Jaṅgalī
maa) because they can be aggressive. When the salt is finished, the yaks
set off again at a slow pace, together toward their solitude.

From Aggression to Cooperation

A few days later, I decide to pay a visit to the horde on the highest
plateau; their domain is at the top of the cliff which overhangs Yak
Kharka. I pass the last fold of the mountain which hides me from the
plateau. I had become used to the cauri’s cooperation and when these
males began to charge me I even didn’t try to run away at first. It seems
that, as Pau roti warned me, when the free yaks are on the pastures,
they protect their territory and scare away foreigners who approach
them (Fig. 2.1). This was also the information that I had been given by
the yarsagumba gatherers who all were really scared about meeting
during the day yaks onto pasture.

Fig. 2.1 A cauri is negotiating her dominance with me. (Photo: T. Johnson)
The day after this traumatic experience, the yak that had attacked
me came among the cauri. I didn’t recognize him at once and tried to
throw stones at him to make him join the herd. At first he did not react.
I then approached him and threw the starting hooting “Ah!” and “Chhe!”
but without any result. I tried to scare him by running after him, but he
didn’t move. Only then did I recognize who I was dealing with. We
looked at each other for a moment, and I froze, remembering the scene
from the day before. He then slowly went back in the opposite direction
to the herd, alone.
Unlike during the rut, male yaks do not respond to stone throwing
and hooting by joining the herd, but go in the opposite direction. It is
then impossible to bring them back to the camp, reminding us once
again that whatever happens the shepherd only produces the signal to
return to camp. It is only followed by effects if the yaks want it and hear
the ritual gesture that the shepherd proposes. When a single yak joins
the herd, it does not become cooperative.
In contrast, when the rutting yaks join the herd, they adopt the
same cooperative behavior as the cauri. This change in behavior is
extremely marked. They respond to stone throwing and hooting, in
reply to the signal of the herders, join the herd and follow it back to
camp. This contrast between male and female behavior and the ability
of males to change their attitude upon joining the herd make yak
pastoralism an extremely rich case for studying domestication and its
possibilities in terms of animal agentivity in bio-semiotic mechanisms. I
was constantly surprised by the shepherds’ radical change in behavior,
which seemed quite normal to them. But what are the mechanisms at
play so that these semiotic atmospheres are set up? What are the
relevant factors that cause these changes in yak behavior, ranging from
cooperation to rejection and even aggression? In order to maintain a
domesticated relationship in a pastoral space and practice that relies on
the animal’s cooperation, herders must enter into a set of daily
interactions. We will see in what way we may call these “ritual”.

Cycles
Winters are long and often harsh in Manang. This difficult climate and
in recent years, predators’ attacks have caused the death of a large
number of yaks, often reducing the size of the herds by half or more. In
Manang and Tanki, four herders (gothalo) and their yak herds share the
village pastures, stretching from Ghunsang to Thorong Phedi, along the
valley (4000–5000 m high) that runs north from the village and up the
hillsides (daada) above them. In this valley, six seasonal camps
(Kharka) are inhabited alternately by different herders. Each of these
camps is dedicated to a species. However, Purba and Khansar, two yak
herders, have joined forces and mixed their herds at the Ledar camp.
They mix their herds during the day, but tie their young separately for
the night, thus maintaining the identity of each herd. During the
Summer, three yak herders from Manang gather at Pripche, on the
heights of Ghunsang. Snow covers the land from October to March. In
spring, some snowfall still occurs, but this is the mildest season. From
June the monsoon rains that accumulate on the peaks plunge the
pastures into fog and rain, sometimes for several weeks. This rainy
season is the richest period for grass. It is during this season that the
cauri are strongest and it is also the only season during which the
shepherds can milk the cauri without risking to weaken them or their
young. Autumn is the hottest season, but also the driest. The grass is
often scarce and the herd’s range becomes wider and wider. The
transhumance is also determined by the needs of the cauri which
cannot stand the heat. Thus, as autumn approaches, the shepherds go
up to higher altitudes with their herds and come back down when the
first snows arrive, thus completing the pastoral cycle.
Yaks have their own rhythms. Like all other mammal species, yaks
are governed by circadian rhythms that alternate between day and
night, feeding, digestion and movement phases. But many other
physiological aspects shape the rhythms of daily activity. Shepherds
adapt themselves to the rhythm of ruminants in order to stay with
them. Unlike us, ruminants must feed for more than ten hours a day and
alternate between stubble phases during which the ruminants chew
after their grazing the stubble grass. The seasons are marked by
rhythms that have their own particularities. Autumn is calm like the
herd, which stretches out over large areas, without moving. Spring is
excitement, vivacity. Summer is heavy, humid and Winter is hard. There
is a musical score of actions according to the seasons that is reflected
even in the approach of a shepherd to his flock. This sense of rhythm is
even imposed in the transformation of the raw material. The shepherds
churn the butter by counting in rhythm the five hundred strokes of the
churn necessary before adding the hot water that will separate the milk
from the butter. If the strokes are not regular, the efficiency of the
process suffers.
Through walking, shepherds and yaks alike survey the same
territory, undergo the same unevenness, twist their ankles on the same
slope, experience the emptiness on the edge of a ridge and discover the
mountain together. The shepherd leads his flock to the corners and
areas that he has identified for the quality of its grass and the herds, by
the march of the pasture, slow down that of the men. The step of the
shepherd gets closer to that of his flock and he begins to observe
differently in the silence that inhabits the space left between each step.
The story goes that it was a shepherd who discovered the yarsagumba.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
THE FOUR-POUND SHIPPING BASKET
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF
MUSHROOMS AND MUSHROOM SPAWN ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in
these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it
in the United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of
this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept
and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and
may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the
terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of
the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as
creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research.
Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given
away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with
eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject
to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
 PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or
any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree
to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from
the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in
paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people
who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a
few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic
works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.
See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with
Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in
the United States and you are located in the United States, we do
not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing,
performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the
work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of
course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely
sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of
this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its
attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without
charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the
United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms
of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying,
performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this
work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes
no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in
any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™
work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or
with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is
accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
 This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived

from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a
notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright
holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the
United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must
comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted
with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of
this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a
part of this work or any other work associated with Project
Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you
provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work
in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in
the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
 copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe
and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating
the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may
be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to,
incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a
copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or
damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer
codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except

for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph
1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner
of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party
distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this
agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and
expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO
REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF
WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE
FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY
DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE
TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL,
PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE
NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you

discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it,
you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by
sending a written explanation to the person you received the work
from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must
return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity
that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a
replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work
electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to
give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in
lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may
demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the
problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted
by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the
Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability,
costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or
indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur:
(a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b)
alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project
Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.
It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and
donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a
secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help,
see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,

Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can
be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the
widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small
donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax
exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and
keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in
locations where we have not received written confirmation of
compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of
compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where

we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no
prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in
such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of
other ways including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how
to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.