The Future of a Discipline: Considering the Ontological/Methodological Future of the Anthropology of Consciousness, Part IV: Ontological Relativism or Ontological Relevance: An Essay in Honor of Michael Harner
Anthropology of Consciousness September 1, 2012 DOI: 10.1111/j.1556-3537.2012.01062.x (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that ontological relativism, like cultural relativism before it, functions as another frame for explaining away ethnographic reports of other-than-human consciousness. Contends that anthropology should attend to the relevance rather than the relativism of such consciousness, and proposes Michael Harner's work as a welcome alternative. |
Abstract
Abstract: For more than 100 years, anthropologists have collected ethnographic research among communities who assert that the spirits, animal allies, and other entities of the unseen world are “really real,” yet we have historically contextualized this information under the umbrella of cultural relativism rather than taking the veracity of these claims seriously. In the last decade, some anthropologists claim that our discipline has finally undergone an ontological turn, which opens a door for anthropologists to finally take claims of nonhuman sentience seriously under the umbrella of ontological, rather than cultural, relativism. This paper takes issue with ontological relativism as just one more frame for explaining away the stories of other‐than‐human consciousness that ethnographers report and suggests that there is an urgent need to consider the relevance, rather than the relativism, of other‐than‐human consciousness. It looks to Michael Harner's work as a welcome alternative to ontological relativism and encourages opening our minds to a reconsideration of what is “really real.”