Animism

The “old animism” and its problems

E.B. Tylor’s 1871 Primitive Culture defined animism as belief in spirits — and treated it as the earliest, most-primitive form of religion that “rational” modern thought had progressed beyond. This framing dominated Western anthropology for over a century.

Problems with the old framing:

• Patronizing — treated Indigenous worldviews as cognitive errors awaiting correction
• Mistranslation — assumed Indigenous frameworks were trying (and failing) to do what Western metaphysics does
• Belief-focused — treated animism as a set of beliefs about spirits, missing the relational practice
• Universalizing — flattened distinct Indigenous traditions into a single “animism” category

The “new animism”

Beginning in the 1990s-2000s, anthropologists began rearticulating animism without these problems:

• Graham Harvey — Animism: Respecting the Living World (2005) — animism as the practice of relating to a populated world
• Eduardo Viveiros de Castro — Amerindian perspectivism; the recognition that humans are one perspective among many
• Tim Ingold — animism as engaged perception of an alive world
• Many others — Nurit Bird-David, Tim Watkins, [[linda-hogan|Linda Hogan]]

The new framing emphasizes:

• Relational rather than belief-based — animism is how one relates to the world, not what one believes
• Personhood beyond humans — many beings (animals, plants, places, sometimes objects) have personhood
• Practical and lived — animism is operational; how decisions are made, how relationships are maintained
• Sophisticated, not primitive — Indigenous animistic traditions are highly developed cognitive and relational systems

Animistic recognitions

Animistic worldviews typically include:

• Animals as persons — capable of relationship, communication, agency
• Plants as persons — including specific plant teachers and elder species
• Place-as-person — mountains, rivers, lakes, springs as beings
• Weather and natural-phenomena agency — wind, storm, drought as having will
• Ancestors as ongoing community — death does not end relationship
• Sometimes — celestial bodies, manufactured objects, particular places have personhood

Living animistic traditions

Animism is foundational to:

• All Indigenous American traditions in some form
• Most African Indigenous traditions
• Australian Aboriginal Country relationships
• Ainu (Japan)
• Sámi (Northern Europe)
• Many Asian Indigenous peoples
• European folk traditions — partly preserved (Gaelic, Sámi) partly suppressed
• Shinto (Japan) — kami; arguably animistic
• Various Pacific traditions

Why this matters

Animism is the ontological framework underlying most ecological-spiritual traditions worldwide. The Western framework of nature-as-resource emerged partly through suppressing animistic alternatives; the ecological crisis is partly the consequence of that ontological narrowing.

For 0mn1.one’s framing of “all forms of life” and “every form of life,” animism is foundational ontological infrastructure — the recognition that [[0mn1one|the platform]]‘s [[mission-district-sf|mission]] addresses beings, not just resources.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Shares approach with: [[kincentric-ecology]] · [[indigenous-foodways]] · [[deep-ecology]]
• Supersets: [[haudenosaunee-thanksgiving-address]]

Sources

• Animism: Respecting the Living World, Graham Harvey (Columbia, 2005, 2nd ed. 2017)
• Cannibal Metaphysics, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
• Animism, Religion of Living Things, Bird-David et al.
• Multiple Indigenous-philosophy publications

Rooted in life.