Anthropology and What There Is: Reflections on 'Ontology'

Heywood, Paolo

doi:10.3167/ca.2012.300112

Cited by 57 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, the authors above deploy the notion of ontology in diff erent ways and to diff erent eff ects, as both internal discussions and external commentators have shown (Latour 2009;Carrithers et al 2010;Jensen et al 2011;Heywood 2012;Laidlaw 2012). Th ey diff er in what they emphasize of Western, Modern or Euro-American ontology but also, and more generally, in the extent to which their use of regional designations (when they do use them) are substantive or merely heuristic.…”

Section: Naturalism and The Ontological Turnmentioning

confidence: 94%

Internal Others: Ethnographies of Naturalism

Candea¹,

Alcayna-Stevens²

2012

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Naturalism and The Ontological Turnmentioning

confidence: 94%

Internal Others: Ethnographies of Naturalism

Candea¹,

Alcayna-Stevens²

2012

The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…I show how resource extraction ties into the Secoya's view of the cosmos as being in constant transformation; hence, how leaky matters and uncontrolled flows become matters of special concern. In so doing, the chapter speaks to an ongoing theoretical debate concerning the alleged 'essentialism' of the ontological turn in anthropology (Heywood 2012;Pedersen 2012;Bessire 2014;Vigh and Sausdal 2014;Cepek 2016;Holbraad and Pedersen 2017) and how the concern for ontological questions in the context of resource extraction is sometimes-mistakenlytaken as an argument for the claim that oil is a spirit for (at least some) indigenous peoples in the Ecuadorian Amazon (Cepek 2016). Rather than taking this mistaken perception as the point of departure for a critique of an anthropological interest in ontological questions (see Cepek 2016), I argue that oil is dealt with in the spirit of oil, namely as a matter of uncontrolled transformation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador

Krøijer

2018

Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The chapter by Krøijer considers the devastating consequences of the penetration of the extractive frontier into indigenous territories in Ecuador. She examines the strategies followed by the Sieko-pai for dealing with the transformations to their world caused by decades of oil exploitation. Instead of assuming essences, Krøijer pursues the analytical implications of specific ontological enquiries about oil flows, and how indigenous communities make their lives in a world saturated by extractivism. Documenting the Sieko-pai’s similar considerations about the incorrect treatment of both oil and blood as potential disruptions of positive ‘flows’ between their territory‚ body‚ and powerful ‘others,’ she contributes to current debates around the ontological analogy between oil and the so-called blood of subterranean spirits. Krøijer describes how living with oil extraction hinges on and expresses the Sieko-pai’s flexible ability to deal with transformations and the leaky reality of resource enclaves.

show abstract

“…Independently of whether new materialist outlooks are to be regarded as actual truth claims or 'catalysts to a changed perspective' (Washick and Wingrove 2015, 65), their reliance on scientific evidence in questioning earlier accounts indicates that truth aspirations are not ruled out. They are rather shifted to a meta-ontological level (Heywood 2012), where at stake are not claims about the 'whatness of things' (Woolgar and Lezaun 2013) -their stable identity -but about their contingency, their endless becoming, their continuous emergence and sinking. From this perspective, the material turn results less revolutionary than it seems: rather than a radical departure, it looks a further iteration of the Western metaphysical tradition that Foucault calls the 'analytics of truth': the search for an access to universal truth.…”

Section: The Other Side Of New Materialist Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catching up with things? Environmental sociology and the material turn in social theory

Pellizzoni

2016

Environmental Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Environmental sociology was born to study the interaction of human societies with the material world, yet the concept of matter has been neglected. Possibly for this reason, the material (or ontological) ‘turn’ taking place in social theory hasinvolved the discipline more marginally than other fields. The relevance of new materialist positions to environmental sociology is addressed. On one side, the realism/constructionism diatribe is sidestepped by an understanding of knowledge and materiality as mutually constituted and incessantly remoulded, and of agency as distributed among human and nonhuman entities, hence humble and non-dominative. On the other, the traditional idea of critique is replaced by a case for affirmative, embodied practices, arguably exemplified by emergent environmental mobilizations. At a closer look, however, new materialist standpoints result embroiled with the Western metaphysical tradition, neglecting how today non-dualist modalities may end up supporting, rather than opposing, exploitative orientations like those emergent in biotech and climate policy. Environmental sociology should address the new theoretical tide with care, working on and with non-dualist standpoints without forgetting the unbridgeable gap between matter and its ontologies. To this purpose the theoretical\ud heritage of the discipline, and namely Adorno’s negative dialectics, may turn out valuable

show abstract

Anthropology and What There Is: Reflections on 'Ontology'

Cited by 57 publications

References 0 publications

Internal Others: Ethnographies of Naturalism

Internal Others: Ethnographies of Naturalism

In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador

Catching up with things? Environmental sociology and the material turn in social theory

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About