From essence back to existence: Anthropology beyond the ontological turn

Abstract

This article takes a critical look at 'the ontological turn'. Illuminating 'the turn's' theoretical point of departure, and clarifying its anthropological implications, the article argues that two key problems arise if the theory is to be taken at face value. It points, first of all, to the difficulty in studying 'radical alterity', in the manner proposed by the new understanding of ontology within anthropology. If anthropology is, as the ontological turn advocates, not a study of multiple 'world-views' but of essentially different 'worlds' altogether, how, we ask, does one approach this methodologically? Put in other words, if we really believe in radically essential, fundamental ontological difference with what registers can we, then, conceive and describe ontological others in ways that do them ethnographic justice? Secondly, the article ponders the issues of radical essentialism and immanence advocated by the ontological turn, and shows how an anthropological endeavour that advocates incommensurable difference, as an analytical point of departure, may be problematic in relation to the impact that anthropology has outside academia. As history has so vividly shown us, anthropological constructions of radical alterity and ontological difference offer themselves, in social terms, all too easily to political constructions of Otherness.

El naturalismo accidental: críticas a un modelo teorético de legitimación socioecológica

“…En ese sentido, se asemeja a un absoluto que desprende resultados uniformes, homogeneizando formas de vida bajo generalizaciones parciales sin tener en cuenta transformaciones políticas, económicas, sociales, territoriales, o incluso la historia, de los diferentes contextos (Ramos, 2012;Bessire y Bond, 2014;Vigh y Sausdal, 2014;Kohn, 2015) 4 . El naturalismo se ha convertido, y por lo tanto reducido, en un desconocido "otro" etnográfico que se postula como salida a las argumentaciones antro-a406 pológicas de otra cosa, siendo elusivo al tomar en serio realidades etnográficas alternativas (Candea y Alcayna-Stevens, 2012, pp.…”

Occupying the Ontological Penumbra: Towards a Postsecular and Theologically Minded Anthropology

“…The resulting incommensurable multiple ontologies increase the possibility of essentializing ontology at the cost of an epistemologically and methodologically shared commonality, which is needed for doing anthropology successfully. Vigh and Sausdal argue that this also leads to "discard[ing] the notion of shared humanity" ( [64], p. 54) and puts the possibility and validity of an ethnographic encounter-and thus anthropology as a discipline-at stake: "How the proponents of the ontological turn are able to connect to incommensurable worlds, and translate them into understandable anthropological text, remains a mystery" ( [64], p. 57).…”

“…. [and our] shared being [is] central to lived life" ( [64], p. 67, emphasis in original). Even those who recognize the need to go beyond humans suggest that it is via a shared humanity that we can encounter nonhuman entities.…”

For Whom the Ontology Turns: Theorizing the Digital Real

“…One unhelpful entailment is that a turn can imply turning away from something else: in this case, "an epistemological turn, that dominated the last decades of the twentieth century" (Kelly 2014:264;see Paleček and Risjord 2013;Vigh and Sausdal 2014), and particularly the reflexive turn epitomized by Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986). The phrase "ontological turn" thus captures only half of a trajectory "from epistemological angst to the ontological turn" (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastell 2007:7;Toren and Pina-Cabral 2009).…”

“…Some will roll their eyes at the mere mention of this "turn." Not only has it been extensively reviewed (Bessire and Bond 2014;Course 2010;Laidlaw 2012;Ramos 2012;Vigh and Sausdal 2014), but there exist reviews of reviews (Pedersen 2012a) and even reviews of reviews of reviews (Laidlaw and Heywood 2013). Yet the ontological turn is more than an academic fad.…”