Editing Animism (section)

=="New animism" non-archaic definitions ==
Many anthropologists ceased using the term ''animism'', deeming it to be too close to early anthropological theory and religious [[polemic]].{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xii}} However, the term had also been claimed by religious groups—namely, Indigenous communities and [[nature worship]]pers—who felt that it aptly described their own beliefs, and who in some cases actively identified as "animists."{{sfn|Harvey|2005|pp=xii, 3}} It was thus readopted by various scholars, who began using the term in a different way,{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xii}} placing the focus on knowing how to behave toward other beings, some of whom are not human.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xi}} As religious studies scholar Graham Harvey stated, while the "old animist" definition had been problematic, the term ''animism'' was nevertheless "of considerable value as a critical, academic term for a style of religious and cultural relating to the world."{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xv}}

=== Hallowell and the Ojibwe ===
[[File:Hombres ojibwe.jpg|thumb|Five [[Ojibwe]] chiefs in the 19th century. It was anthropological studies of Ojibwe religion that resulted in the development of the "new animism".|upright=1.2]]
The ''new animism'' emerged largely from the publications of anthropologist [[Alfred Irving Hallowell|Irving Hallowell]], produced on the basis of his ethnographic research among the [[Ojibwe]] communities of [[Canada]] in the mid-20th century.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=17}} For the Ojibwe encountered by Hallowell, ''[[personhood]]'' did not require human-likeness, but rather humans were perceived as being like other persons, who for instance included rock persons and bear persons.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=18}} For the Ojibwe, these persons were each willful beings, who gained meaning and power through their interactions with others; through respectfully interacting with other persons, they themselves learned to "act as a person".{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=18}}

Hallowell's approach to the understanding of Ojibwe personhood differed strongly from prior anthropological concepts of animism.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=19}} He emphasized the need to challenge the modernist, Western perspectives of what a person is, by entering into a dialogue with different worldwide views.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=18}} Hallowell's approach influenced the work of anthropologist [[Nurit Bird-David]], who produced a [[Academic journal#Scholarly articles|scholarly article]] reassessing the idea of animism in 1999.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=20}} Seven comments from other academics were provided in the journal, debating Bird-David's ideas.{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=21}}

=== Postmodern anthropology ===
More recently, postmodern anthropologists are increasingly engaging with the concept of animism. [[Modernism]] is characterized by a [[Cartesianism|Cartesian]] [[Cartesian dualism|subject-object dualism]] that divides the subjective from the objective, and culture from nature. In the modernist view, animism is the inverse of [[scientism]], and hence, is deemed inherently invalid by some anthropologists. Drawing on the work of [[Bruno Latour]], some anthropologists question modernist assumptions and theorize that all societies continue to "animate" the world around them. In contrast to Tylor's reasoning, however, this "animism" is considered to be more than just a remnant of primitive thought. More specifically, the "animism" of modernity is characterized by humanity's "professional subcultures", as in the ability to treat the world as a detached entity within a delimited sphere of activity.

Human beings continue to create personal relationships with elements of the aforementioned objective world, such as pets, cars, or teddy bears, which are recognized as subjects. As such, these entities are "approached as communicative subjects rather than the inert objects perceived by modernists."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Hornborg |first=Alf |s2cid=143991508 |title=Animism, fetishism, and objectivism as strategies for knowing (or not knowing) the world |journal=Ethnos |year=2006 |volume=71 |issue=1 |pages=22–4 |doi=10.1080/00141840600603129}}</ref> These approaches aim to avoid the modernist assumption that the environment consists of a physical world distinct from the world of humans, as well as the modernist conception of the person being composed dualistically of a body and a soul.<ref name="Bird-David 1999 S68"/>

[[Nurit Bird-David]] argues that:<ref name="Bird-David 1999 S68" />

{{Blockquote|text=Positivistic ideas about the meaning of 'nature', 'life', and 'personhood' misdirected these previous attempts to understand the local concepts. Classical theoreticians (it is argued) attributed their own modernist ideas of self to 'primitive peoples' while asserting that the 'primitive peoples' read their idea of self into others!}}

She explains that animism is a "relational [[epistemology]]" rather than a failure of primitive reasoning. That is, self-identity among animists is based on their relationships with others, rather than any distinctive features of the "self". Instead of focusing on the essentialized, modernist self (the "individual"), persons are viewed as bundles of social relationships ("dividuals"), some of which include "superpersons" (i.e. non-humans).

[[File:Autel animiste. Village Bozo, Mopti, Bandiagara, Mali. Date du cliché 25-12-1972.jpg|thumb|left|Animist altar, [[Bozo people|Bozo]] village, [[Mopti]], [[Bandiagara]], Mali, in 1972|upright=1.2]]
Stewart Guthrie expressed criticism of Bird-David's attitude towards animism, believing that it promulgated the view that "the world is in large measure whatever our local imagination makes it." This, he felt, would result in anthropology abandoning "the scientific project."{{sfn|Guthrie|2000|p=107}}

Like Bird-David, [[Tim Ingold]] argues that animists do not see themselves as separate from their environment:<ref>{{cite book|last=Ingold |first=Tim |author-link=Tim Ingold |url=https://archive.org/details/perceptionenviro00ingo |title=The Perception of the Environment: Essays in livelihood, dwelling, and skill |publisher=[[Routledge]] |year=2000 |place=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/perceptionenviro00ingo/page/n56 42] |url-access=limited}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=Hunter-gatherers do not, as a rule, approach their environment as an external world of nature that has to be 'grasped' intellectually ... indeed the separation of mind and nature has no place in their thought and practice.}}

[[Rane Willerslev]] extends the argument by noting that animists reject this Cartesian dualism and that the animist self identifies with the world, "feeling at once ''within'' and ''apart'' from it so that the two glide ceaselessly in and out of each other in a sealed circuit".{{sfn|Willerslev|2007|p=[https://archive.org/details/soulhuntershunti00will/page/n40 24]}} The animist hunter is thus aware of himself as a human hunter, but, through mimicry, is able to assume the viewpoint, senses, and sensibilities of his prey, to be one with it.{{sfn|Willerslev|2007|p=[https://archive.org/details/soulhuntershunti00will/page/n43 27]}} [[Shamanism]], in this view, is an everyday attempt to influence spirits of ancestors and animals, by mirroring their behaviors, as the hunter does its prey.

=== Ethical and ecological understanding ===
Cultural ecologist and philosopher [[David Abram]] proposed an ethical and ecological understanding of animism, grounded in the [[Phenomenology (psychology)|phenomenology]] of sensory experience. In his books ''The Spell of the Sensuous'' and ''Becoming Animal,'' Abram suggests that material things are never entirely passive in our direct perceptual experience, holding rather that perceived things actively "solicit our attention" or "call our focus", coaxing the perceiving body into an ongoing participation with those things.{{sfn|Abram|1996}}{{sfn|Abram|2010}}

In the absence of intervening technologies, he suggests that [[sensory experience]] is inherently animistic in that it discloses a material field that is animate and self-organizing from the beginning. [[David Abram]] used contemporary [[Cognitive science|cognitive]] and [[natural science]], as well as the perspectival worldviews of diverse indigenous oral cultures, to propose a richly [[Pluralism (philosophy)|pluralist]] and story-based cosmology in which matter is alive. He suggested that such a relational [[ontology]] is in close accord with humanity's spontaneous perceptual experience by drawing attention to the senses, and to the primacy of sensuous terrain, enjoining a more respectful and ethical relation to the more-than-human community of animals, plants, soils, mountains, waters, and weather-patterns that materially sustains humanity.{{sfn|Abram|1996}}{{sfn|Abram|2010}}

In contrast to a long-standing tendency in the Western social sciences, which commonly provide rational explanations of animistic experience, Abram develops an animistic account of reason itself. He holds that civilised reason is sustained only by intensely animistic participation between human beings and their own written signs. For instance, as soon as someone reads letters on a page or screen, they can "see what it says"—the letters speak as much as nature spoke to pre-literate peoples. Reading can usefully be understood as an intensely concentrated form of animism, one that effectively eclipses all of the other, older, more spontaneous forms of animistic participation in which humans were once engaged.

{{blockquote|To tell the story in this manner—to provide an animistic account of reason, rather than the other way around—is to imply that animism is the wider and more inclusive term and that oral, mimetic modes of experience still underlie, and support, all our literate and technological modes of reflection. When reflection's rootedness in such bodily, participatory modes of experience is entirely unacknowledged or unconscious, reflective reason becomes dysfunctional, unintentionally destroying the corporeal, sensuous world that sustains it.{{sfn|Abram|1996|p=[https://archive.org/details/spellofsensuousp00abra_0/page/303 303]}} }}

=== Relation to the concept of 'I-thou' ===
Religious studies scholar [[Graham Harvey (religious studies scholar)|Graham Harvey]] defined ''animism'' as the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others."{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xi}} He added that it is therefore "concerned with learning how to be a good person in respectful relationships with other persons."{{sfn|Harvey|2005|p=xi}}

In his ''Handbook of Contemporary Animism'' (2013), Harvey identifies the animist perspective in line with [[Martin Buber]]'s "[[I and Thou|I-thou]]" as opposed to "I-it". In such, Harvey says, the animist takes an I-thou approach to relating to the world, whereby objects and animals are treated as a "thou", rather than as an "it".<ref>{{cite book |last=Harvey |first=Graham |title=The Handbook of Contemporary Animism |year=2013 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |place=London, UK}}</ref>