Rethinking Animism: Thoughts from the Infancy of Our Discipline

Stringer, Martin D.

doi:10.2307/2661147

Cited by 55 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Numerous scholars recently have argued that indigenous peoples throughout much of the North (and elsewhere) interacted with and understood animals in ways that fundamentally differ from modern Cartesian understandings (Bird-David, 1990;Bird-David, 1999;Descola, 1992;Fausto, 2007;Gutherie, 1993;Harvey, 2006;Ingold, 1986Ingold, , 1996Ingold, , 1998Ingold, , 2000Pederson, 2001;Stringer, 1999;Viveiros de Castro, 1998;Willerslev, 2007). These diverse ways of engaging with and understanding the world have been grouped under the term animism.…”

Section: Interpretive Approachmentioning

confidence: 96%

Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

Losey

Bazaliiskii

Garvie‐Lok

et al. 2011

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

134

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a b s t r a c tInterpretations of dog burials made by ancient foraging groups have tended to be based upon our own relationships with such animals and modern western cosmological and ontological concepts. Osteological studies of early dogs often focus only on issues of taxonomy, and as a result very little is known about these animals' life histories. Eastern Siberia has produced many Holocene dog burials, but these are typically not well described and the explanatory frameworks provided for them are very underdeveloped. Here we examine in detail two Cis-Baikal canid burials, one of a wolf and the other a dog, both in large Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer cemeteries. We link the mortuary treatment of these animals to other cultural practices, particularly the treatment of the human dead, and broader patterns in Northern human-animal relationships. This interpretive model is combined with detailed osteobiographies for the canids and contextual information for these and other dogs and wolves from Middle Holocene CisBaikal. It is argued that canids here were understood and treated in a variety of ways. We suggest that some animals with unique histories were known as distinct persons with 'souls' and because of this at death required mortuary rites similar to those of their human counterparts.

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Section: Interpretive Approachmentioning

confidence: 96%

Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

Losey

Bazaliiskii

Garvie‐Lok

et al. 2011

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

134

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Aaltola 2008). And while in anthropology this view of the non-human has historically been associated with animistic belief systems, and so described in large part in mythic and religious terms (Stringer 1999), reformulations of animism now tend to emphasize traditional peoples' relational view of their interactions with the non-human, involving mutual respect and obligations (Bird-David 1999;Descola 2013;Harvey 2005Harvey , 2015.…”

Section: Non-humans As Kinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinship appeals and conservation social marketing

Qirko

2017

Biodivers Conserv

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Increasing environmental problems and the need to obtain public support to help address them make effective appeals in conservation fundraising campaigns indispensable. However, social marketing messages based on data, characteristics of focal species, selfinterest, and moral responsibility tend to work best on targeted, and so limited, audiences. As conservation organizations reach out to broader audiences, they will require strategies that appeal to more potential donors. This paper argues that use of kinship symbolism to describe non-human species should make conservation marketing campaigns more effective. Evolutionary theories of altruism predict the power of kinship-recognition cues in encouraging and reinforcing sacrifice in non-kin, unreciprocated contexts, and these cues can be manipulated in marketing campaigns to protect threatened species and resources. People often behave altruistically toward ''fictive'' kin, and the labeling of non-humans as kin in many traditional, small-scale societies appears to be associated with environmental resource management. Characterizing non-human species, and even non-living resources, as kin to humans in marketing campaigns may promote a willingness to contribute to conservation-related causes.

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“…I will exemplify this point by addressing one of anthropology's earliest concepts, if not the first, namely the ‘soul’ that, as Edward B. Tylor (1958 [1871], vol. 2: 2, 429) pointed out, sits at the heart of ‘animism’: the ‘primitive’ inclination to ‘impute a soul to that which empirically does not have one’ (Stringer 1999: 552). I will show how the animist soul is impregnated with virtual force, which effectively situates it outside the zone of empirical investigation.…”

Section: The Virtually Realmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frazer strikes back from the armchair: a new search for the animist soul*

Willerslev

2011

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

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The question which runs throughout this talk can be stated in stark form: is it a mistake to take our interest in an ethnographic phenomenon in the direction of empirical investigation when what is really needed with respect to its clarity is an imaginative contemplation of it? It is my overall argument that the Malinowskian recourse to ethnographical evidence is misguided. As an example, I take the animist conception of ‘soul’. I will show how it is essentially an imaginary issue. Rendering it intelligible, therefore, involves launching a speculative investigation into the source of its origin. This finds an echo in Frazer, the last survivor of the old ‘armchair school’. His style of anthropology was marked by a deliberate speculative interrogation of cross‐cultural ethnography – a process whereby abstract thinking gives force and meaning to ethnographic observations. Résumé La question qui sert de fil rouge à ce propos peut être formulée crûment: est‐ce une erreur que de transposer notre intérêt pour un phénomène ethnographique vers une investigation empirique, alors que pour le mettre en lumière, il nécessiterait en réalité une contemplation imaginative? L'auteur affirme, de manière générale, que le recours aux preuves ethnographiques selon les principes de Malinovski n'est pas pertinent. Il propose comme exemple la conception animiste de « l'âme » et montre pourquoi il s'agit pour l'essentiel d'une question imaginaire: pour rendre cette question intelligible, il faut donc s'engager dans une investigation spéculative de ses origines. Cette approche fait écho à Frazer, dernier avatar de l'ancienne armchair anthropology. Son style anthropologique se caractérise par un questionnement délibérément spéculatif des divers comptes‐rendus ethnographiques: un processus par le biais duquel la pensée abstraite apporte force et signification aux observations ethnographiques.

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Rethinking Animism: Thoughts from the Infancy of Our Discipline

Cited by 55 publications

References 9 publications

Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

Kinship appeals and conservation social marketing

Frazer strikes back from the armchair: a new search for the animist soul*

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