The ontological turn is an increased interest in
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophy, philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, Becoming (philosophy), becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into Category ...
within a number of
philosophical
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
and academic disciplines during the early 2000s. The ontological turn in anthropology is not concerned with anthropological notions of
culture
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...
,
epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epi ...
, nor
world view
A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...
s.
Instead, the ontological turn generates interest in being in the world and accepts that different world views are not simply different
representations of the same world. More specifically, the ontological turn refers to a change in theoretical orientation according to which differences are understood not in terms of a difference in world views, but a differences in worlds
and all of these worlds are of equal validity.
Definitions
Ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophy, philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, Becoming (philosophy), becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into Category ...
is the study of reality as constructed in both human and non-human worlds.
Conversely, ontology has also been understood as a process of "becoming". Finally, ontology has also been defined as the set of historical circumstances through which individuals comprehend reality. However, this last definition in particular has garnered significant critics due to its similarity to definitions of culture.
Philosophical influence
The field of ontology corresponds to the philosophical study of being. This focus on being draws on
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centu ...
's insights into the specific nature of what it means to "be" in the world. Heidegger's theorizing on the fundamental nature of being drew on ontological ideals that emerged from the traditions of the
Platonic school. In this view, the mind or the experience of being a human, does not refer to a singular entity. Instead, the mind refers to a collection of events, life events, or material objects an individual experiences. Thus, ontology relates the experience of being in the world. Further, interest in ontology is associated with a greater understanding of
existence
Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being.
Etymology
The term ''existence'' comes from Old French ''existence'', from Medieval Latin ''existentia/exsistentia' ...
,
reality
Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, re ...
,
becoming, and how these concepts relate to broad categories of entities.
In anthropology
Within the field of
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...
, ontological ideas first began emerging around the 1990s. However, the first influence of ontological understandings within anthropology emerged in the work of
Roy Wagner
Roy Wagner (October 2, 1938 – September 10, 2018) was an American cultural anthropologist who specialized in symbolic anthropology.
Background
Wagner received a B.A. in Medieval History from Harvard University (1961), and a Ph.D. in anthropol ...
,
Marilyn Strathern
Dame Ann Marilyn Strathern, DBE, FBA (née Evans; born 6 March 1941) is a British anthropologist, who has worked largely with the Mount Hagen people of Papua New Guinea and dealt with issues in the UK of reproductive technologies. , and
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro (born 1951) is a Brazilian anthropologist and a professor at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
He has published many books and articles which are considered important in anthropol ...
. Following these initial deliberations, the ontological turn took hold of British anthropology. From there, North American anthropologists began considering how ontology might be useful in ethnographic research. The application of ontological frameworks really gained popularity following 2010 and were brought to national anthropological attention at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the
American Anthropological Association
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, where ontology became the focus of several sessions there.
After the conference one of the oldest and prominent anthropology blog, ''
Savage Minds'', declared ontology to be "the next big thing" in anthropological theory. This burgeoning interest in ontology spawned a number of articles that highlighted the usefulness of ontological premises in anthropological research.
The concept of ontology and what people mean by ontology is diverse; therefore, tracing the ontological turn in anthropology remains difficult. However, if ontology refers to the study of reality then ontological anthropology incorporates theoretical and methodological elements of anthropology to a study of being or existence.
Ethnographies are the most widely utilized method in anthropological research. While, in a theoretical sense, anthropology has contributed greatly to the concept of culture. These two elements in anthropology have broadened philosophical notions of ontology so that ontological anthropology is not simply about the world; rather, it is about the experience of being a human in the world.
Moreover, ontological anthropology is explicitly concerned with how humans communicate and interact with a host of non-human actors. For example, as a trained
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize ...
turned anthropologist,
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is an American Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department and Feminist Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a prominent scholar in the field of science and technology studies. S ...
insists on including other beings, both human and non-human, in her accounts of living with pets. Finally, ontological anthropology is not claiming that individuals or communities are living in distinct universes and by crossing into a different setting you are suddenly in a different reality.
Instead, ontological anthropologists are claiming that we "should allow difference or alterity to challenge our understanding of the very categories of nature and culture themselves".
Other turns in anthropology
Anthropology as a field has experienced a number of turns in its history, including the
linguistic turn
The linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the early 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy and the other humanities primarily on the relations between language, langua ...
, the
reflexive turn, the
temporal turn, the
affective turn, the
literary turn, and the
post-human turn. The ontological turn presents differences in cultural phenomena not as different interpretations of a singular, natural world. Rather, the ontological turn in anthropology suggests that there are alternate realities and other ways of beings that exist in parallel with our own. The proponents of this movement claim that this way of framing cultural difference is the first attempt anthropologists have made in taking the beliefs of their
interlocutors "seriously" or "literally". Critics of the ontological turn argue that claims of different worlds tend towards
essentialism
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...
.
Narrow turn towards ontology
The works of French authors
Philippe Descola
Philippe Descola, FBA (born 19 June 1949) is a French anthropologist noted for studies of the Achuar, one of several Jivaroan peoples, and for his contributions to anthropological theory.
Background
Descola started with an interest in philos ...
and
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
, and Brazilian author
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro (born 1951) is a Brazilian anthropologist and a professor at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
He has published many books and articles which are considered important in anthropol ...
gravitated towards what has been termed "a narrow ontological turn".
This narrow ontological turn produced much concern and curiosity within North American anthropology.
Descola's beyond nature
Philippe Descola
Philippe Descola, FBA (born 19 June 1949) is a French anthropologist noted for studies of the Achuar, one of several Jivaroan peoples, and for his contributions to anthropological theory.
Background
Descola started with an interest in philos ...
in his work among the
Amazonian Achuar suggested that the category of nature is not a human universal and therefore, should not be considered a line of anthropological inquiry.
The domain of "nature", Descola argues has emerged from modern, Western notions that intend to posit "nature" as ontologically real. Instead, Descola claims that "Other civilizations have devised different ways of detecting qualities among existents, resulting in other forms of organizing continuity and discontinuity between humans and nonhumans, of aggregating beings in collectives, of defining who or what is capable of agency and knowledge".
Meaning Descola treats animism not as some sort of mistaken belief, but as an extension of social relationality to nonhuman actors. In this sense, Descola utilizes ontology as an elementary analytical tool to explore how worlds are constructed in a manner that is distinct from the way anthropologists generally discuss worldviews. Descola proposes that anthropology can utilize ontological frameworks to best account for how worlds are composed.
Viveiros de Castro's perspectivism
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
Eduardo Batalha Viveiros de Castro (born 1951) is a Brazilian anthropologist and a professor at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
He has published many books and articles which are considered important in anthropol ...
utilizes a framework perspectivism in his synthesis of Amazonian ethnographic literature. His discussion of Amazonian understandings takes into account how perspectives of human versus nonhuman are not inherently different. Viveiros de Castro's reflections on perspectivism lead him to conclude that we are dealing with a perspective that is fundamentally different from those which inform Western academic thought. Viveiros de Castro's approach inherently takes an ontological approach that "allows him to see more clearly the ways in which anthropology is founded on a nature/culture divide that posits nature as a sort of universal, unitary, and existent ground and culture as the infinitely variable form of representing nature."
Latour's modes of existence
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
argues that researchers should not sort entities into the "social" world and the "natural" world. Latour argues that instead of predetermining what things are deemed as part of society and what things are deemed as part of nature, social scientists should view these categories as complex negotiations between people and their world. This resistance to the division between the social and natural is integral to ontological anthropology.
Reception
Haidy Geismar, one of the critics of ontological anthropology, has claimed that in presenting others not as having different cultures, but in having different worlds, is just a novel form of essentialism. Further, many critics of ontological anthropology have demonstrated that this framework does not take difference as seriously as it claims to. Specifically, Pierre Charbonnier, Gildas Salmon, and Peter Skafish have brought attention to the fact that many ontological anthropologists have drawn similar conclusions to anthropologists not using ontological frameworks, while also utilizing much of the same theoretical bases in their arguments.
However, the ontologists have responded that many of these critiques are merely attempts to reproduce the
status quo
is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, political, religious or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the current state of social structure and/or values. ...
. In response to turn towards ontology a Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory's debate was held on 9 February 2008 in Manchester, on the motion 'Ontology is just another word for culture'.
Speaking for the motion were Michael Carrithers (Durham) and Matei Candea (Cambridge), and against Karen Sykes (Manchester) and Martin Holbraad (University College London). The final vote - 19 in favour, 39 against and six abstentions - reflected a general consensus that between culture and ontology, ontology might have something to contribute.
Marshall Sahlins in the forward to ''Beyond Nature and Culture'', echos this consensus in his claim that ontology "offers a radical change in the current anthropological trajectory—a paradigm shift if you will—that would overcome the present analytic disarray by what amounts to a planetary table of the ontological elements and the compounds they produce".
Sahlins celebrates how anthropology, through this ontological focus, will return to its true focus - the state of being other.
References
{{reflist
Ontology