Ontologies as Embodied Social Practices
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) July 1, 2026 Julia Turska, Charbel El-Hani, I. Ludwig et al.
This article combines philosophy and anthropology to examine how ontologies—understandings of what exists—are lived through embodied practices rather than treated as abstract concepts. Drawing on Tim Ingold's ecology of life and ethnographic fieldwork with an artisanal fishing community in Siribinha, Brazil, the authors focus on Caipora, a forest being that regulates human-nature relationships. The ethnography reveals Caipora's embodied manifestations in hunting, intergenerational conversations, and religious practices, showing that its ontology is central to social and practical life. The authors argue that ethnography is an effective method for generating insights about ontologies understood as embodied and socially entangled.