Annual Review of Anthropology· 2015Q1· Review
Anthropology of Ontologies
- 443citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2015year
Short summary
Anthropological inquiry into 'ontology' is a diagnostic response to the limitations of traditional social constructionist frameworks in addressing the entangled human/nonhuman problems of the Anthropocene.
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Key points
- The 'turn to ontology' in anthropology is a response to the perceived inability of traditional frameworks to address Anthropocene challenges.
- Traditional anthropology, rooted in a humanist 'linguistic turn' and social constructionism, struggles with entangled human and nonhuman problems.
- The Anthropocene epoch necessitates new conceptual tools for ethical and political inquiry beyond exclusively human concerns.
- An ethnographically inspired, nonreductionistic ontological anthropology is proposed as a means to provide these new tools.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The turn to ontology, often associated with the recent works of Philippe Descola, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and Bruno Latour, but evident in many other places as well, is, in Elizabeth Povinelli's formulation, “symptomatic” and “diagnostic” of something. It is, I here argue, a response to the sense that sociocultural anthropology, founded in the footsteps of a broad humanist “linguistic” turn, a field that takes social construction as the special kind of human reality that frames its inquiries, is not fully capable of grappling with the kinds of problems that are confronting us in the so-called Anthropocene—an epoch in which human and nonhuman kinds and futures have become so increasingly entangled that ethical and political problems can no longer be treated as exclusively human problems. Attending to these issues requires new conceptual tools, something that a nonreductionistic, ethnographically inspired, ontological anthropology may be in a privileged position to provide.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Annual Review of Anthropology, 2015 · DOI ↗
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Field: Geography, Planning and Development
Geography, Planning and DevelopmentSocial Sciences