Ontological Turn Research Articles

Ambivalence, Contradiction, and the Differentiation of Primordial Wholeness in Amazonian Cosmological Thought

In spite of the fact that the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology has championed the cause of indigenous cosmologies in Amazonia and elsewhere, the selective use of ethnographic material to promote this cause has had the effect of obscuring some of the most remarkable qualities of these intellectual systems. It will be shown here that the widely divergent interpretations of the Ge myth of the bird-nester, as presented by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Terence Turner respectively (the latter as part of his critique of the ontological turn), as well as the well-known earlier treatment of the same myth by Claude Lévi-Strauss as the key myth in his Mythologiques, arise from the fact that they are focusing on different aspects of the cosmological thought expressed by this myth—aspects that appear to directly contradict each other. This is because indigenous thought based on concepts of the differentiation of primordial wholeness accommodates these apparent contradictions in complex and sophisticated ways that have largely eluded these commentators.

Assembling the natural and the supernatural in Thai independent cinema: the ethno-cinematographic rhizomes of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

The article introduces the concept of “ethno-cinematographic rhizome,” inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s conceptual framework. This is a non-representational model of an ethno-social world built with time-images, non-hierarchical and characterized by multiplicity, which through memories, myths, fantasies, and dreams open up the actual to the virtual. The concept is applied to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema. Through the analysis of his most representative films, Tropical Malady (Sud Pralad, 2004), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Lung Boonmee Raluek Chat, 2010) and Cemetery of Splendour (Rak Ti Khon Kaen, 2015), I show how they are characterized by the rhizomatic assemblage of natural, daily-life profane components and by supernatural, spiritual and sacred components, which present us the Thai region of Isan. Apichatpong’s ethno-cinematographic rhizomes can help us to deepen in a contemplative and perceptual way our understanding of the ethno-cultural world of Isan, while connecting at a broader level with the “ontological turn” in anthropology by, among others, Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.

Understanding and formation-A process of becoming a nurse.

Nursing is a complicated and multifaceted profession that sets high demands in preparing nursing students for the profession. In today's education, the emphasis is often on knowledge and skills, that is, epistemology. In caring science another approach is sought, an approach based on human sciences in which knowledge will serve a more profound understanding, that is, the ontology. Consequently, the question of what this 'understanding' in clinical education is and how it is promoted in clinical nursing education becomes important to clarify. Therefore, the aim here is to explicate the phenomenon of understanding in clinical education as experienced by third-year undergraduate nursing students ready for graduation. This study, with a hermeneutic approach, is based on a secondary analysis of focus group interviews with undergraduate nursing students. The analytical expansion of the original material suggests three interrelated themes that illuminate the phenomenon of understanding in clinical education. These findings are deepened and enriched through philosophical abstraction. In the process of understanding, episteme, techne and phronesis can be viewed as inherent parts of the structure of thought in nursing. The perspective advanced in this study adds new aspects to the phenomenon of understanding and its meaning and significance in the dynamic process of formation and becoming in clinical education. The focus in clinical nursing education should be on learning reflective, critical thinking and the ways of being a nurse, rather than drilling students on particular skills. In the rapidly changing world of the 21st century, an understanding-based education is needed as a more meaningful and authentic approach. Therefore, an ontological turn in nursing education, through which the main focus shifts from a traditional epistemology to an epistemology in the service of ontology, is suggested. Further studies are needed in the development and implementation of an understanding-based, interpretative education in nursing.

What Are Pluriversal Politics and Ontological Designing?. Interview with Arturo Escobar

What is ontological design, and how do we define Pluriversal politics? In this long interview, Arturo Escobar describes the fundamental shifts in contemporary social theory placing life at the center of his scholarly inquiry. He discusses the reappearance of the debate about ontology through the ontological turn in social theory. His statement involves the idea that every design action has implications for the making of life, the kinds of worlds we construct, and how life is produced. Escobar introduces the concept of ontological design and the connected vision of his Pluriversal politics as the emerging areas of critical design studies. These approaches challenge the extractivist ideology of the Global North and its impactful action, which originated the actual crisis of climate, energy, biodiversity, inequality, poverty, and of social and collective meaning linked to the western capitalistic, patriarchal, colonial, supremacist mode of existence that has been spreading throughout the world through globalization and development.

Reflections on Posthuman Ethics. Grievability and the More-than-human Worlds of Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia

Posthuman feminism grows out of interdisciplinary discourse exploring relational metaphysics. It is set apart from other approaches in the broader ontological turn by its central ethical claim: by actively forming kinship or alliances among human and non-humans, we can overcome major challenges of today's world and create a better future. Archaeologists and anthropologists are well situated to investigate this claim, as we already work with worlds unstructured by western dichotomies. This paper explores one such past world—Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia—to ask how alternative more-than-human relationships may work in practice. Specifically, we examine the relations among swords, animals, houses and humans in the first millennium ce, assessing ethical commitments within Butler's framework of grievability. We argue that the picture that emerges is fundamentally relational and unfamiliar, with complex articulations of bodies and personhood criss-crossing human–object divides; however, the ethical commitments of this world leave us deeply uncomfortable. Thus, although we welcome posthuman feminism's call to ontological openness, we caution against too easy an association between more-than-human kinship and ethical projects.

Meaning and fate of critique in the Ontological Turn

Abstract: The paper explores the meaning and fate of the category of critique within the so-called “ontological” or “speculative turn”. First, the article addresses the question of knowing what could give consistency to the very concept of a contemporary ontological turn, in order to present, in a second moment, the tension that, since Kant, constitutes the relationship between critique and ontology. Finally, the paper explores - particularly in the work of Quentin Meillassoux - the possibility of a new ontology that claims to be both non-dogmatic and immune to the neutralization of ontology carried out by critique.

Phallus in the Practice of Brahmacharya

This article focuses on the place of phallus/penis in the practice of brahmacharya, the Hindu concept of celibacy. Contrary to the supposed irrelevance in the ascetic sphere, the article argues how brahmacharya seeks to embody the potent concept of the phallus. In following the ontological turn, this article seeks to move away from the notion of phallus as only a representation or a symbol; to rethink the concept in its relation to penis in order to argue for an embodied idea of phallus and the theoretical possibilities it garners in the sphere of asceticism. Engaging into an ethnographic study in the “ascetic” spaces of bayam samitis (traditional gyms) and akharas (place of wrestling), the article seeks to understand the phallus through the everyday bodily practices of brahmacharya in an attempt to argue how men’s efforts to embody the phallus is aspired for and constantly undermined in these austere everyday practices.

Heathen hermeneutics

Translation—both multi- and intra-lingual—is vital to anthropological method. Drawing a distinction between two opposing modes of translation (“domesticating” versus “foreignizing”), this paper considers the ontological and ethical consequences of these two interpretative strategies, in particular by critically engaging with the doctrine of Donald Davidson, the theoretical inspiration for João Pina-Cabral’s work, World. I argue, instead, in favor of a “pagan” or pluralizing conceptual method, inspired by Feyerabend, Lyotard, and Hans Peter Duerr, and I suggest that their approaches demonstrate that even the polymodal ontology of Latour is lacking in plurality. In conclusion, I consider how the notion of foreignizing translation relates to the method associated with the ontological turn in anthropology.

Review: Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds, by Jayna Brown

Review: <i>Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds</i>, by Jayna Brown

Commentary on “Meaning and fate of critique on the Ontological Turn”

Commentary on “Meaning and fate of critique on the Ontological Turn”

The Black Situation: Notes on Black Critical Theory Now

Abstract This essay argues that what some critics have dubbed an ontological turn in Black critical theory—the tendency to theorize racial antagonisms in general and antiblackness in particular as a function of the “being” of the West—reflects a more general pessimism endemic to our historical moment. That pessimism has been catalyzed by the collapse of meaningful alternatives in the postcolonial, post-communist moment, which results in occluded or obscured pathways to collective striving and worldmaking. One important response to the ontological turn has seen critics turn to Black culture to highlight peculiar modes of subjectivity shaped, but not defined by, ongoing racial antagonism. As Black particularity in this account remains implicit or intuitive, insofar as Black particularity remains a given rather than theorized, this tendency proves to be the other’s flipside rather than alternative. This essay concludes by proposing that rather than studying culture to understand Black life, one study Black life to understand cultural production. The titular “Black situation” is its term for historical materialist analysis attuned to the complex modalities through which racial antagonism appears in daily life as well as the compulsions that impede sovereign individual agency.

Black swan -or- black boxed economics: applying ontology, Keynesianism, and constructivism to policy and market analysis

ABSTRACT What are black swans? And why are mainstream economists so often surprised by financial crises? Furthermore, have supply-side responses to crises merely deepened economic inequality and instability? Rather than simply comparing theories and methods – economics’ ‘ontological turn’ posits that what is foremostly required is an audit of prevailing theories’ metaphysical commitments. That is, to interrogate what economics presumes there is to observe, interact with, and know. Seeking to garner greater analytical purchase over the ‘real-world’, the ontological turn has also birthed several multidisciplinary syntheses – namely, Austrian-materialism (Lewis, P., 2005. Boettke, the Austrian school and the reclamation of reality in modern economics. The Review of Austrian Economics, 18 (1), 83–108.) and Keynesian-critical realism (Lawson, T., 2003. Reorienting economics. New York: Routledge.). Alternatively, and in support of the constructivist claim that social dynamics ultimately drive economics, this paper resituates and extends Wesley Widmaier’s (2004) vision of a Keynesian-constructivism within the broader ontological turn. Herein, this paper interrogates the concepts of black swans vis-à-vis post-Keynesian understandings of business cycles, demand-side logics, and Modern Money – en route to establishing new analytical frameworks.

When prey is winik (person): the relationship between people, animals, and their Masters in Lacandon hunting

The Lacandon Maya of Chiapas (Southern Mexico) conceive animals as subjects endowed with a soul (pixan) and agency. Therefore, they are considered to be ‘persons’ (winik) whose mode of living is analogous to the humans’: they’re socially organized, they work in their milpas, they perform rituals and worship their gods. The attribution of personhood to animals becomes an ethical problem during hunt, when the Lacandon hunter kills a prey considered to be a ‘fellow man’. Consequently, the hunt needs to be ritually justified and takes the form of a contract established between the hunters, the animals and the entities who protect them – the gods, the animal masters. It will be shown how the extension of the concept of personhood to animals influences Lacandon hunting ceremonialism, and how the theories proposed by the ‘Ontological Turn’ allowed to shed light on the Northern Lacandon hunt.

Towards a pragmatist anthropology: Objectivity, relativism, ethnocentrism, and intropathy

In this article, I discuss central concerns that have run throughout the history of anthropology since the beginning of the twentieth century, culminating in the recent ontological turn. These are relativism, incommensurability, ethnocentrism, and what I call intropathy. I also explore how the epistemic principles of ‘objectivity’ and ‘relativism’ share the same representationalist foundations, and argue how the ontological turn, despite the claims of its proponents, still reproduces some representationalist ideals of inquiry. Based mainly on the ideas of Richard Rorty, I propose a fully antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist alternative for anthropology that effectively avoids the traps of traditional epistemology and thus disengages the very terms that engender the relativism/objectivism dichotomy.

Brief Mention

Brief Mention

Strange Animals, and What to Do with Them

In Chile, intercultural education, at least ideally, is concerned with the learning from indigenous people, and as such, anthropology is at the center stage. One of the aspects learning might learn from anthropology has to do with plurality, and more specifically, how to embrace plurality without reducing it at the same time. If sustainability has any stake in this, it would have to do with learning how to continually sustain plurality. Viveiros De Castro is a founding part of a relatively recent anthropological tradition called recursive anthropology, sometimes also referred to as the ontological turn. His ethnography consists of a proposal for Amerindian cosmology and his methodology proposes a way to sustain plurality. I propose to treat both aspects. First, we would like to describe his Amerindian cosmology, and we are specifically here interested in its different approach to nature. Secondly, we will describe his methodology in its relation to his ethnography, and here we will be specifically concerned with thinking his method as a pedagogical project involved with intercultural learning.

Introduction: The “Ontological Turn” in Russian Anthropology: Turning towards Materiality, Nonhuman Agency, and Hybridity

The authors in this thematic issue reflect on the current “ontological turn” in Russian social sciences and humanities, and especially on the influence the turn exerts on various anthropological sub-disciplines and research domains. This introduction reviews publications in Russian academic journals, article collections, theses, books, and book chapters that best illustrate current ontological preoccupations in Russian anthropology. The ontological turn encompasses diverse interests and topics and is often labelled as “material,” “object-oriented,” “speculative-realist,” or “praxiographic.” In fact, we are dealing with multiple interdisciplinary “turns” that intersect and overlap, while interlinking many domains of the biological sciences, geographical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In Russia, the ontological turn (actor-network theory, material semiotics, symmetrical anthropology, sociology of translation, object-oriented ontology, speculative realism) unfolds in different domains of research that can be grouped into four main fields: 1) medical anthropology, body studies, and death studies; 2) urban anthropology; 3) anthropology of science and techno-anthropology; 4) museum anthropology and material culture studies. The contributions to this issue illustrate current research in medical anthropology, body and death studies, urban anthropology, technoanthropology, museum studies, as well as Siberian ethnography using the perspectivist model.

Organ Transplantation in Russia: An Anthropological Perspective

This article offers an anthropological perspective on organ transplantation in Russia. The author employs approaches and principles of medical anthropology and ontological turn in anthropology and attempts to present a novel human-object history of organ transplantation. This research focuses primarily on human collectives, such as medical communities and the rest of society, but also on certain objects, including donor organs and the infrastructure created by the technology. The article discusses the following questions: How does transplantation technology transform the medical community? How is it built into the social and cultural context? How is it perceived by the rest of society? How do some doctors try to adapt this technology to the traditional values of Russian society? This research was conducted at two large Russian organ transplantation centers. The analyzed materials include anthropological and medical publications, and mass media sources.

The Anthropology of Ontology in Siberia: A Critical Review

The dissolution of the Soviet Union opened a new phase in the anthropological study of Siberia, as researchers from Western Europe, North America, and Japan joined their colleagues of the former Soviet Bloc in the field. This occurred just as a number of new trends emerged in the field of anthropology, including those referred to as “the ontological turn” or “the anthropology of ontology.” To what extent could the latter, originally developed on the basis of research in Amazonia, be applied to Siberia? In this article, we offer a critical re-reading of contributions by some of the authors who have attempted to apply ontological perspectives to Siberian materials. The works we review include both comparative studies of the ontologies of different people, including Siberians, and ethnographies of particular Siberian communities. In conclusion, we illustrate certain criticisms that have been made of ontological approaches by examining how two of the authors under review – Philippe Descola and Rane Willerslev – have drawn on classic ethnographies of northeastern Siberia, particularly the works of Waldemar Bogoras on the Chukchi.

Energy and the ethnography of everyday life: A methodology for a world that matters

Ecological sustainability is identified as one of the greatest challenges of the present, which the social sciences are called to engage with. The radical nature of the crisis requires researchers to question, update, and experiment with methods, approaches, and tools. The aim is to better grasp the phenomena under study, but also and foremost to produce forms of knowledge that are capable of productively reshaping socio-ecological relations. In this article, I focus on the ethnographic study of everyday energy transitions. Critically building on the ‘ontological turn’, I address this concrete level of experience in its complexity: how symbolic constructions become intertwined with bodily and material processes; the interrelation between micro- and macro-level of organisation; the non-discursive, affective, dimensions of energy assemblages. Multisensory, multimodal, and multimedia engagement might re-position the researcher not only in the field of inquiry but also generally in the process of talking with everyday life and its ecologies.