Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research

"Animism" Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology [and Comments

and Reply]
Author(s): Nurit Bird-David, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Alf Hornborg, Tim Ingold, Brian
Morris, Gisli Palsson, Laura M. Rival, Alan R. Sandstrom
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 40, Supplement: Special Issue: Culture. A Second Chance?
(Feb., 1999), pp. S67-S91
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2991332
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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement, FebruaryI999
Research.All rightsreservedOOII-3204/99/40supp-0002$3.00
FoundationforAnthropological
? I999 byThe Wenner-Gren

Whereverthereare Nayaka, thereare also devaru, for

"Animism" Revisited Nayaka want to have them and always findthem.

KARRIYEN

The concept of animism, which E. B. Tylor developed

Personhood, and
Environment, in his I87I masterworkPrimitiveCulture,is one ofan-
RelationalEpistemology1 thropology'searliest concepts,if not the first.2The in-
tellectual genealogyof centraldebates in the fieldgoes
back to it. Anthropologytextbookscontinue to intro-
duce it as a basic notion,forexample,as "the beliefthat
by NuritBird-David inside ordinaryvisible, tangible bodies there is nor-
mally invisible,normallyintangiblebeing: the soul ...
each culture [having]its own distinctiveanimistic be-
ings and its own specific elaboration of the soul con-
cept" (Harris i983:i86). Encyclopediasof anthropology
"Animism"is projectedin theliterature as simplereligionand a commonlypresentit, forinstance,as "religiousbeliefs
failedepistemology, to a largeextentbecauseit has hitherto
been viewedfrommodernist In thispaperprevious
perspectives. involvingthe attributionoflifeor divinityto such natu-
theories,fromclassicalto recent,are critiqued.An ethnographic ral phenomena as trees, thunder,or celestial bodies"
exampleofa hunter-gatherer peopleis givento explorehow ani- (Hunter and Whitten I976:1i2). The notion is widely
misticideas operatewithinthe contextofsocial practices,with employed within the general language of ethnology
attentionto local constructionsofa relationalpersonhoodand to
withecologicalperceptions
its relationship ofthe environment. (e.g.,Sahlins I972:I66, i8o; Gudeman I986:44; Descola
A reformulation oftheiranimismas a relationalepistemology is i996:88) and has become importantin otheracademic
offered. disciplines as well, especially in studies of religion(as
beliefin spirit-beings) and in developmentalpsychology
NURIT BIRD-DAVID is SeniorLecturerin Social Anthropology
at (referring to children's tendencyto consider thingsas
theUniversity ofHaifa(MountCarmel,Haifa3I905, Israel). living and conscious). Moreover,the word has become
Bornin I 95I, she was educatedat HebrewUniversity ofJerusa- a part of the generalEnglishvocabularyand is used in
lem (B.A., I974) and at Cambridge University (Ph.D., I983). She
has been ResearchFellowofNew Hall and SmutzVisitingFel- everydayconversationsand in the popularmedia. It ap-
low at Cambridgeand a lecturerat Tel AvivUniversity. Her pub- pears in many dictionaries,includingsuch elementary
licationsinclude"The GivingEnvironment" (CURRENT ANTHRO- ones as the compact school and officeedition of Web-
POLOGY 3I:I89-96), "Beyond'The OriginalAffluent Society':A ster'sNew WorldDictionary(i989), which definesit as
CulturalistReformulation" (CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 33:.25-47),
"the beliefthat all life is producedby a spiritualforce,
"Hunter-Gatherers' KinshipOrganization: ImplicitRoles and
Rules,"in Intelligenceand Interaction, editedbyE. Goody(Cam- or that all natural phenomena have souls." It is found
bridge:CambridgeUniversity Press,I995), and "Economies:A in mainstreamcompendiasuch as the Dictionaryofthe
Cultural-Economic Perspective"(International Social Science Social Sciences (Gould and Kolb i965), which sums it
JournalI54:463-75). The presentpaperwas submitted9 Ix 97 up as "the belief in the existence of a separable soul-
and accepted5 xII 97; thefinalversionreachedtheEditor'soffice
i6 I 98. entity,potentiallydistinctand apartfromany concrete
embodimentin a living individual or material organ-
ism." The term is presentedin dictionariesof the oc-
cult: the Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits (Guilei
i992), forexample,definesit as "the systemofbeliefs
about souls and spiritstypicallyfound in tribal socie-
ties," and the Dictionary of Mysticismand the Occult
(Drury i985) definesit as "the belief,common among
many pre-literatesocieties, that trees,mountains,riv-
ers and othernatural formationspossess an animating
power or spirit."
Amazingly,the century-oldTylorianconcept appears
in all these diversesources (popularand academic, gen-
eral and specific) revised little if at all. Animism, a
igth-centuryrepresentationof an ethnographicallyre-
searchablepracticeparticularlyconspicuous among in-
digenous peoples but by no means limited to them,is
depicted by them all as an "object" in-the-world.The
I. I am indebtedto IngridJordt insightsand
forher penetrating survivalof the Tylorianrepresentationis enigmaticbe-
commentary. I thankTim Ingoldforinstructivecomments,some
ofwhichwill await follow-upwork.I acknowledgewithpleasure
commentson earlierdraftsgenerouslyoffered by KalmanAppl- 2. Primitivecultureled Tylorto an appointment as Readerin An-
baum,Debbi Bernstein, in OxfordUniversity,
Eva Illouz,SteveKaplan,YoramCarmeli, thropology thefirstsuchpositionin theaca-
Nira Reiss,and Zvi Sobel. demicworld(PreusI 9 8 7: I 3 IJ.
S67
 S68 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

cause the logic underlyingit is today questionable. Ty- digenous identities and, in partial ways, of parts of
lor was not as rigida positivistas he is oftenmade out Western identities, too.) The argument will develop
to be (see IngoldI986:94-96; Leopoldi980). However, throughthree subsequent sections to its twofoldcon-
he developed this representationwithin a positivistic clusion: a freshvisit to the animism concept and to the
spiritual/materialistdichotomyof igth-centurydesign indigenousphenomena themselves.It will posit a plu-
in directoppositionto materialistscience, in the belief rality of epistemologiesby refiguringso-called primi-
(and as part of an effortto prove this belief) that only tive animism as a relationalepistemology.The perspec-
science yielded"true" knowledgeofthe world.Further- tive to be employedis presentednot as more valid than
more,the moral implicationsof this representationare any otherbut as one now needed in studies of the com-
unacceptablenow. Tylorpositedthat"animists" under- plex phenomena which Tylor denoted as "animism."
stood the world childishlyand erroneously,and under The firstpartoffersa criticalperspectiveon the "tex-
the influenceof i9th-centuryevolutionismhe read into tual conversation"(to use Gudeman and Rivera's [I990]
this cognitiveunderdevelopment.Yet the concept still term)relevantto animism to date,singlingout forclose
pervasivelypersists. attention thetheoriesofTylor(i 958 [I 877 ]), Durkheim
Equally surprisingly, the ethnographicreferent-the (I96o[I9I4], i9i5), Levi-Strauss(I962, I966 [i962]), and
researchableculturalpracticeswhich Tylor denotedby Guthrie(I993). It is arguedthatpositivisticideas about
the signifier/signifiedof "animism"-has remained a the meaningof"nature,""life," and "personhood"mis-
puzzle3 despite the greatinterestwhich the subject has directedthese previous attemptsto understandthe lo-
attracted.Ethnographerscontinue to cast freshethno- cal concepts.Classical theoreticians(it is argued)attrib-
graphicmaterialfarricherthanTylorhad (orcould have uted their own modernistideas of self to "primitive
imaginedpossible) into one or more ofthe Tyloriancat- peoples" while assertingthat the "primitivepeoples"
egories"religion,""spirits,"and "supernaturalbeings" read theiridea of selfinto others!This led the theoreti-
(e.g.,EndicottI979, Howell I984, MorrisI98I, Bird- cians to prejudge the attributionof "personhood" to
David I990, Gardneri99i, Feit I994, PovinelliI993, natural objects as empiricallyunfounded and conse-
RichesI994). At the same time,theyhave commonly quently to direct analytical effortto explaining why
avoided the issue of animism and even the termitself people did it and why and how (againstall appearances)
ratherthanrevisitthisprevalentnotionin lightoftheir their "belief" was not a part of theirpractical knowl-
new and rich ethnographies.4 edge but at best a partoftheirsymbolicrepresentations
A twofoldvicious cycle has ensued. The more the or a mistaken strategicguess.
termis used in its old Tylor-iansense,withoutbenefitof The second part of the paper offersan ethnographic
criticalrevision,the more Tylor's historicallysituated analysis of the phenomenonwhich Tylor termed"ani-
perspective is taken as "real," as the phenomenon mism" largelydrawnfrommy work with hunter-gath-
which it only glosses, and as a "symbol that stands for erer Nayaka in South India.5 A case is developed
itself"(Wagneri98 I). In turn,anthropology'ssuccess in throughthe ethnographicmaterial,startingfromHallo-
universalizingthe use of the termitselfreinforcesde- well's remarkable I960 "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior,
rogatoryimages of indigenouspeople whose rehabilita- and WorldView" and circumventingthe "spirit/body"
tion fromthem is one of its popular roles. and "natural/supernatural"modernist dichotomies
This paper attemptsa solution generallydrawingon that have oftenlanded otherethnographersin "spirit,"
a synthesis of currentenvironmenttheory (insisting "supernatural,"and "religion"descriptions.Nayaka de-
that the environmentdoes not necessarily consist di- varu (superpersons)are tackled as a concept and a phe-
chotomouslyof a physicalworld and humans) and cur- nomenon,both composite and complex, in a threefold
rentpersonhoodtheory(assertingthatpersonhooddoes manner.First,using Strathern's(i988) notionofthe "di-
not necessarilyconsist dualisticallyofbody and spirit). vidual" (a person constitutiveof relationships),after
These dualistic conceptionsare historicalconstructsof Marriott's (I976) "dividual" (a person constitutiveof
a specificculturewhich,forwant of a betterterm,will transferable particlesthatformhis or her personal sub-
henceforthbe referredto by the circumlocution"mod- stance), I argue that devaru are dividual persons. They
ernist." ("Modernist" signals eitherthe dichotomous are constitutiveof sharingrelationshipsreproducedby
opposite of "primitive" nor the equivalent of "scien- Nayaka with aspects of theirenvironment.The devaru
tific"but ideas and practicesthat dominatedthe Euro- are objectificationsof these relationships and make
Americanculturallandscape fromthe I7th to the 20th themknown.Second,drawing on Gibson(I979) andIn-
century.Furthermore,"modernist self-concepts"will gold (i992), I positthatin anothersense devaruare a
be used as an objectificationofwhat is oftenonlya frag- constitutivepartof Nayaka's environment,born of the
ment ofpeoples' compositeidentity,a partoftheircon- "affordances"of events in-the-world.Nayaka's "atten-
sciousness, while "local person-concepts"will be used tion" ecologically perceives mutually responsive
as an objectificationoffragmentsoftoday's complexin-
5. Fieldworkwas conductedin I978-79 andwas followedby a re-
3. It is regarded
"one oftheoldestanthropological
puzzles"byDes- visitin I989. Researchwas supportedbya SmutzVisitingFellow-
cola (i996:82). ship,an Anthony WilkinStudentship,an H. M. ChadwickStudent-
4. An exceptioncomingclose to revisitingthenotionis Hallowell ship,andfundsfromtheJerusalem FoundationforAnthropological
(ig60); a liminalexceptionis Guthrie'srecentrevisit(I993), Des- Studies and the HorovitzInstituteforResearchof Developing
cola (i992, i996) contrasts"totemicsystems"and "animic sys- Countries.For ethnographic backgroundsee Bird-David(i989,
tems"but does notlook deeplyintoanimismas such. i996).
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" RevisitedI S69

changes in thingsin-the-worldand at the same time in of a particularmodernsect" (I958 [I87 I]:Io). Under the
themselves. These relatednesses are devaru in-the- probableinfluenceof his knowledgeof modernspiritu-
world,met by Nayaka as theyact in, ratherthan think alism, Tylor arguedthat in the savage view everyman
about, the world. Lastly, I argue that devaru perfor- had, in additionto his body,a "ghost-soul,"a "thin un-
mances-in which performers in trance"bringto life" substantialhuman image," the "cause oflifeor thought
devarucharacters,withwhom theparticipantssocialize in the individual it animates," capable "of leaving the
(talking, joking, arguing,singing,sharing or just de- bodyfarbehind" and "continuingto exist and appearto
mand-sharing,and asking for advice and help)-are men afterthe death of that body" (quoted in Stocking
social experiences which are nested within (not di- i987:i92). Being "a confirmedscientificrationalist"(p.
chotomizedfrom)social-economicpractice.These per- i9i), Tylor suggestedthat this view was a delusion, in
formancesare pivotal in both "educatingthe attention" the same way that he regardedthe spiritualseances of
to devaru in-the-world(Gibson I979) and reproducing his time as a delusion.
devaru as dividual persons. Tylor's work was probablyalso influencedby obser-
The thirdpartof the paper theorizesanimism as ani- vations of children (see Stocking I97I:o . He argued
misms, arguingthat hunter-gatherer animism consti- that the "savages" were doubly mistaken,believingin
tutes a relational(not a failed)epistemology.This epis- their own "ghost-souls" but like children attributing
temology is about knowing the world by focusing the same to thingsaround them. Durkheim (I9I5:53)
primarilyon relatednesses,froma relatedpoint ofview, neatlymade the point as follows:
within the shiftinghorizons of the relatedviewer. The
knowinggrowsfromand is the knower'sskills ofmain- For Tylor,this extensionof animism was due to the
tainingrelatednesswith the known. This epistemology particularmentalityof the primitive,who, like an
is regardedby Nayaka (and probablyother indigenous infant,cannot distinguishthe animate and the inani-
peoples we call hunter-gatherers)as authoritative mate. Since the firstbeings of which the child com-
against otherways of knowingthe world. It functions mences to have an idea are men, that is, himself
in othercontexts(includingWestern)with,against,and and those around him, it is upon this model of hu-
sometimes despite otherlocal authoritativeepistemol- man naturethat he tends to thinkof everything....
ogies. Diversifyingalong with person-conceptsand en- Now theprimitivethinkslike a child. Consequently,
vironmentalpraxis, animisms are engenderedneither he also is inclinedto endow all things,even inani-
by confusionnor by wrongguesses but by the employ- mate ones, with a natureanalogous to his own.
ment of human socially biased cognitiveskills.
Tylor's view conformedwith the contemporaneous
identificationof earlypeople with the child state of so-
Animism in the ModernistMirror ciety(animatingsociety!)and with the identificationof
contemporaneous"primitives"with earlypeople and so
SirEdwardBurnett Tylor(I83 I-I9I7), thefounding fa- with the child state too. However,while arguingthatin
therof anthropology,took his notion of animism from thinkinglike a child the primitive"endow[s] all things,
the I7th-centuryalchemist Stahl, who had himselfre- even inanimate ones, with a nature analogous to his
vivedthetermfromclassicaltheory(TylorI958 [I87I]: own," Tylorread into the primitiveview the modernist
9). Drawing on secondhand accounts of "primitive" spiritualistunderstandingof "one's own nature," not
peoples (to use the period's term),Tylor observedthat the primitive'sor the child's sense of "his own nature."
many of them attributedlifeand personalityto animal, At issue at the timewas how religionhad evolved and
vegetable,and mineral alike. He developed a theoryof how it oughtto be relatedto science. This evolutionary
this phenomenonin a series of papers writtenbetween question engagedTylor,who suggestedthatmodernre-
i866 and I870 that culminated in Primitive Culture. ligion had evolved in stages fromanimistic beliefs. By
Tylor offereda situated perspective,limited by the them early peoples had tried to explain the world to
time's ethnography and theory,and it should be studied themselves,and these beliefs had "survived" into the
in its context. present and (re)appeareduniversally among children
As he developedhis theoryofanimism,Tylortook an and "primitive"people and in certainmoderncults. In
interestin the modernspiritualistmovement,fashion- Tylor'sview, as one ofhis commentatorsput it, "it was
able at the time. He even went to London fromSomer- as thoughprimitiveman, in an attemptto create sci-
set for a month to investigate spiritualist seances ence, had accidentally created religion instead, and
(StockingI971). In I869 he arguedthat "modern spiri- mankindhad spent the restof evolutionarytime trying
tualism is a survival and a revival of savage thought" to rectifythe error"(Stockingi987:I92).
(quotedin StockingI97I:90). This argument probably In Tylor's view, animism and science (in a "long-
influencedhis view of "savage thought,"which he had waged contest" [i886], quoted by Stocking i987:I92)
acquired only fromreading.In an odd reversal,he con- were fundamentallyantithetical. Consequently, ani-
structedthe originof "savage thought"fromhis first- mistic beliefs featuredas "wrong" ideas according to
hand knowledge of what he presumed was its rem- Tylor, who clinched the case by explainingin evolu-
nant-modern spiritualism.He even consideredusing tionaryterms(as was the custom at the time) how the
the term"spiritualism"ratherthan "animism" but de- primitivecame to have this spiritualistsense of his
cided againstit because it had "become the designation "own nature."Tylorsuggestedthatdreamsofdead rela-
S701 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999
tives and of the primitivehimselfin distantplaces had
led him to formthis selfidea. The thesis projectedthe
primitiveas delirious as well as perceivingthe world
like a child.
Tylor's theoryhas had deep and lasting influenceon
anthropologicaltheory.It was pivotal in its time, and
subsequent theories developed in dialectical relations
with it in turnbecame themselvesinfluentialtheories
in dialectical relationswithwhich further theorieswere
formulated.I point to one criticaltheoreticaltrendper-
tinent to my studyby means of several examples (se-
lected fortemporaldiversity,not necessarilycentrality
in the field)fromclassic theoriesto recentones. My ex-
amples chronologically advance from Emile Durk-
heim's work on religion (I960 [19I4], I9I5) through
Claude Levi-Strauss'swork on totemismand the "sav-
age mind" (I962, I966 [I962]) to a recentwork on an-
thropomorphism by StewartGuthrie (I993).
Durkheim rescued the primitivefromthe Tylorian
image of a delirious human, but in doing so he em-
broiled himselffurtherin the modernistself model(s).
In an articlesignificantly entitled"The Dualism ofHu-
man Nature and Its Social Conditions" (I960 [I9I4]),he
argued that the primitive self model is "not a vain
mythologicalconceptthatis withoutfoundationsin re-
ality" (p. 329)- that"in everyage" man had had a dual-
istic model originatingfroma basic and universalsocial
experience,the simultaneoussense ofbodilysensations
and being part of society. The primitiveself model, in
his view, was a specificcase of this (modernist)univer-
sal model. He arguedthat the primitivemakes abstract
societytangibleto himselfby a totem and so views his
own self as dualistically consisting of body/totemic
parts (ratherthan body/mindin the modernistview).
Durkheimrestoredcredencein the primitiveselfmodel
but remained critical,along with Tylor, of its attribu-
tion to otherthan human entities.He still cast this at-
tribution(again, with Tylor) as the erroneous mental
operationof a child.
Durkheim also read his own modernist(biologistic)
kinship into accounts suggestingthat "primitivepeo-
ples" regardedas kin and friendssome entities that
were animated by them. Drawing on richer ethno-
graphicsourcesthanTylor's,he notedthat"primitives"
believed thatthebonds betweenthemand these natural
entitieswere "like those which unite the membersof a
single family"(I 9I 5:I 39): bonds of friendship,interde-
pendence, and shared characteristicsand fortunes(pp.
i58-6o).6 To explain this,he arguedthat theymistook
the spiritualunityof the totemicforce,which "really"
existed,fora bodily unity of flesh,which did not. He
himself obviously mistook their kinship forhis mod-
ernist constructionof it as shared biological matter
(flesh,blood, DNA, or whateverother finerbiological
connection will be discoveredby scientists [Schneider
TCO(,P. TQP4Ali
6. Durkheimdistinguishedbetweennaturalentities,or"individual
totems,"regarded and kin,and "grouptotems,"thearti-
as friends
ofnaturalentities,worshipped
factualrepresentations in celebra-
tions.
Claude Levi-Strauss addressed the anthropological
category "totemism," which encompasses aspects of
the phenomenonwhich Tylor termed"animism." His
work provided the firstmodern explanation that ac-
cepted indigenous knowledge of the world. However,
the explanation rested on dissociatingthat knowledge
fromtotemic notions, reducingthe latter to symbolic
representations.Levi-Straussdid not question the au-
thorityofthe Westernobjectivistview ofreality,which
accepted a priorithe nature/societydualism. To reha-
bilitate the Durkheimian primitiveshe arguedthat in-
digenous peoples perceivedthe world in this way, too.
They perceived the discontinuitybetween nature and
society and viewed nature itselfas a world of discrete
objects; then they used nature as "something good to
thinkwith" about societal divisions.They drew analo-
gies between things in nature and groups in society
(I962). They concernedthemselveswith the same rep-
resentationsof thingsin the world as Westernersdid,
but their "totemic thought" fancifullyintermingled
these representationswith mysticaltales, like the bri-
coleur, whereas our "scientific thought" logically
sortedthem out, like the engineer(i966 [I962]). The in-
digenousaccounts ofkinshiprelationshipswith natural
entities,Levi-Straussargued,only evinced the analogi-
cal and totemicnatureof theirthought-neitheran er-
roneous epistemologynor an adequate alternativeto
our own. He criticizedearliertheoryforplacing indige-
nous peoples on the "nature" side of the dualistic
nature/culturesplit. However, while he correctively
placed themon the "culture" side, he placed the dualis-
tic split itselfinside their"savage mind" (I966 [I962]).
He did not explain animismbut explainedit away. Ani-
mists by his theorydid not perceive the natural world
differently fromothers.
A recent attempt at a solution to the century-old
problemwhy people animate what we regardas inani-
mate objects is that of StewartGuthrie(I993),who de-
fines animating thingsin these words: "Scanning the
worldforwhat most concernsus-living thingsand es-
pecially humans-we findmany apparentcases. Some
ofthese proveillusory.When theydo, we are animating
(attributinglife to the nonliving)or anthropomorphiz-
ing (attributinghuman characteristicsto the nonhu-
man)" (I993:62). The expression"attributinglifeto the
nonliving"at a strokerelegatesanimisticbeliefsto the
categoryof "mistake," regressingfromthe earlier ad-
vance made by Levi-Strauss.Guthrieregardsmodernist
meanings of such notions as "life," "nonliving," and
"human" as naturallygiven.7
Guthriereduceswhat Tylorofferedas a universalcul-
turalcategory(Preus I987) to a universalbiological one.
He views animistic thinkingas a natural "perceptual
strategy"forthe survivalof any animal (pp. 38, 4I, 47,
54, 6i):
7. Guthrieperceptively discussesthe boundaries"life"/"nonliv-
ing" and "human"/"animal"as theyare diverselydrawnacross
cultures(e.g.,I993: 86-89, II2-I3), buthe makesthisobservation
in supportof his argumentthatit is difficult be-
to differentiate
tweentheseentities.
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" RevisitedI S7I

We not infrequentlyare in doubt as to whether I930s) and especially his paper "Ojibwa Ontology,Be-
somethingis alive. When we are in doubt,the best havior,and WorldView" (i960) are provocativestarting
strategyis to assume that it is ... riskingover-inter- pointsforour reassessmentoftheoriesofanimism.Hal-
pretationby bettingon the most significantpossibil- lowell observed that the Ojibwa sense of personhood,
ity . . . because if we are wrongwe lose little and if which theyattributeto some naturalentities,animals,
we are rightwe gain much.... Animism,then,re- winds, stones,etc., is fundamentallydifferent fromthe
sults froma simple formof game theoryemployed modernistone. The lattertakes the axiomatic split be-
by animals rangingat least fromfrogsto people.... tween "human" and "nonhuman" as essential, with
[it]is an inevitableresultof normal perceptualun- "person" being a subcategoryof "human." The Ojibwa
certaintyand of good perceptualstrategy.... The conceives of "person" as an overarching category
mistake embodied in animism-a mistake we can within which "human person," "animal person,"
discoveronly afterthe fact-is the price of our need "wind person," etc., are subcategories.Echoing Evans-
to discoverliving organisms.It is a cost occasion- Pritchard'saccount of Azande magic (I937), Hallowell
ally incurredby any animal that perceives. furthermore argues that, contraryto received wisdom
and in the absence of objectivistdogma, experienceit-
This cognitive evolutionist explanation of animism
self does not rule out Ojibwa animistic ideas. On the
seems ingeniouslysimple. Assuming,with Tylor,that
contrary,he argues(a pointreiteratedby laterethnogra-
animisticinterpretations are erroneous,Guthrieargues phers [see
Scott I989, Feit I994]), experienceis consis-
that the making of animistic interpretationsitself is
tent with their reading of things,given an animistic
partof"a good perceptualstrategy."Animisticinterpre-
dogma.
tations are "reasonable" errorsthat "we can discover
Hallowell's contributionis to freethe study of ani-
only afterthe fact."
misticbeliefsand practicesfirstfrommodernistperson-
But Guthrie's thesis is weak in its own terms.8We
concepts and second fromthe presumptionthat these
lapse into animistic expressionsunderuncertainty,but
notions and practicesare erroneous.However,the case
we use such expressionsmore, and more consistently,
needs to be furtherpursued. He states that the Ojibwa
when we regularlyand closely engage with thingswe
sense of personhoodis different without exploringits
are not doubtfulabout: plants we grow,cars we love,
sense far enough, perhaps because, although the con-
computerswe use. (Guthriehimselfmentionsthese ex-
cept goes back to Marcel Mauss's work of I938,9 before
amples.) Even professionalethologists,who are trained the I960s
researchinto the "person" as a cross-cultural
to regardtheirstudyanimals as objects,regardthem as
categoryhardlyexisted.He argues that Ojibwa engage-
personsthe more theyinteractwith them (see Kennedy
ment in the worlddoes not rebufftheir
I992:27). The theoryin any case does not resolvethe but does not explainhow the beliefs animisticviews
are engenderedand
classic enigma of so-called primitivepeople's mainte-
perpetuated.I shall pursue his insightthroughethno-
nance of animistic beliefs. At best, the question re-
graphic material largely drawn from my work with
mains why (iftheyretrospectively recognizetheirani- Nayaka, a
hunter-gatherer communityof the forested
mistic interpretationsas mistakes) they culturally
Gir Valley in the Nilgiriregionof South India.'0My ob-
endorse and elaborate these "mistakes." At worst,the
jective will be to understandthe senses of what they
theoryfurtherdowngradesindigenouscognitiveability,
call devaru,a concept which is not just a foreignword
fornow theycannot do even what frogscan do, namely,
requiring translation but enigmatic to positivistic
"afterthe fact"recognizetheir"mistakes." In this case,
thought. Neither "spirits" (derivingfrom the spirit/
the theoryeven regressesfromthe advances made by
bodydualism ofthe modernistperson-concept)nor "su-
Tylor.
pernaturalbeings" (mirrofingthe Westernidea of na-
ture)" is an appropriateEnglish equivalent, though
these are the common translationsofcorresponding no-
Local Senses of Devaru tions in otherstudies.'2Hallowell's alternative"other-
than-humanpersons" escapes these biased notions but
Personhoodconcepts and ecological perceptionare two
still conserves the primaryobjectivist concern with
fruitfulareas fromwhich to reevaluate our theoriesof
classes (humanand other-than-human). I use "superper-
animistpracticesand beliefs.IrvingHallowell's ethnog-
sons" (personswith extrapowers)as a generalreference
raphyof the Ojibwa (fromfieldworkconducted in the
Lake Winnipeg area of northernCanada during the
9. Mauss's workwas firsttranslated
intoEnglishonlyin I9 7 9 (and
see I985). For some recent works on the "self" see Morris (I994),
8. Guthriefocuseson whathe calls "theWest"because"animism Carrithers, Collins, and Lukes (i985), and Shwederand LeVine
is usuallyattributed
to simplesocieties."His examples,takenout (i984).
oftheircontexts,rangefromFrenchand Spanishcave artthrough io. The GirValleyis a fictivenameforone oftheNilgiri-Wynaad's
Greek,Roman,and medievalphilosophyand the artsto modern valleys.
science,socialscience,literature
andadvertisement,
and"dailylife ii. See Durkheim(igiS), Lovejoy (I948), Saler (I77J), Descola
in thecontemporary UnitedStates."His scantreferencesto "sim- (i996).
ple societies"drawnoton therichernew ethnography buton out- I12. See Endicott(I979), Howell (i984), Morris(ig8i), Bird-David
datedsecondarysourcessuch as Thompson(igss) and Ehnmark (iggo), Gardner (iggi), Feit (I994), Povinelli (I9)3), and, fora com-
(' 939 ). parison, Mageo and Howard (i996).
S72 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

and let the local composite meanings grow fromthe terrainwould have allowed their dispersal. They con-
context. tained one, two, or sometimes even threelivingspaces,
barely separated fromeach other,each occupied by a
nuclear family. Weather permitting,families rested,
DEVARU AS OBJECTIFICATIONS OF SHARING
ate, and slept in the open beside outdoorfireplacesonly
RELATIONSHIPS
a few meters apart. They led their domestic lives to-
In her criticallyorientedcomparisonof the Melanesian gether,sharingspace, things,and actions. They experi-
and the Euro-American"person," Strathern(i988) ar- enced simultaneouslywhat happened to them and to
gues that the irreducibilityof the individual is a pecu- theirfellow Nayaka. This was the case with respectto
liarlymodernistnotion.'3It is not everywherethat the most Nayaka in the Gir area, not just the residentsof
individual is regardedas "a single entity," "bounded one's own place, because there was much movement
and integrated,and set contrastingly againstothersuch between sites and people stayed at each other'splaces
wholes and against a natural and social backgrounds" fordays,weeks, and even months at a time.
(CliffordGeertz,quoted in StrathernI988:57). The Mel- The idea that one shared space, things,and actions
anesian "person" is a composite of relationships,a mi- with others was central to the Nayaka view of social
crocosm homologous to society at large (I988:I3, I31). life.A Nayaka was normativelyexpectedto share with
This person objectifiesrelationshipsand makes them everybodyas and when present, especially (but not
known. She calls it a "dividual," in contrastwith the only) large game, irrespectiveof preexistingsocial ties,
(Euro-American)"individual.""4This is a notion well criteria,and entitlement.Sharingwith anyone present
known in South Asian scholarship fromthe work of was as importantas if not more importantthan ef-
McKim Marriottand Ronald Inden (MarriottI976, Mar- fectinga distributionofthingsamongpeople. A Nayaka
riottandIndenI977; see Daniel I984, RahejaI988a, b, was, furthermore, expected to give others what they
and BarnettI976 for ethnographicexplorations),who asked for,whateverthis mightbe, to preemptrefusals
agreewith Dumont (i966) that "the Indian is misrepre- and hence challenges to the felt sense that "all of us
sentedif depictedas an individual,but less because the here share with each other." The idea and practice of
personhas a holistic-collectivistidentitythan because, sharingconstituteda habituswithinwhich agentivene-
according to Indian ways of thinkingand explaining, gotiation,manipulation,and nonconformity took place
each personis a compositeof transferable particlesthat (see Bird-DavidI990). For example,normallypeople
formhis or her personal substance" (Mines I994:6). shared thingsrequested of them,but when exception-
I derivefromStrathern's"dividual" (a person consti- ally they did not want to part with something,rather
tutive of relationships)the verb "to dividuate," which than disruptthe ongoingsense of sharing-the rhythm
is crucial to my analysis. When I individuatea human of everydaysocial life-they hid that thingor avoided
beingI am conscious ofher "in herself"(as a single sep- people. This way, theypreemptedchances ofsharingre-
arate entity);when I dividuate her I am conscious of quests and refusals. Equally, people excessively re-
how she relates with me. This is not to say that I am quested thingsfrompeople theywanted to embarrassor
conscious of the relationshipwith her "in itself,"as a manipulate into persistentgiving.
thing.Rather,I am conscious of the relatedness with As I understandit, this common experienceof shar-
my interlocutoras I engage withher,attentiveto what ing space, things,and actions contextualizedNayaka's
she does in relationto what I do, to how she talks and knowledge of each other: they dividuated each other.
listensto me as I talk and listen to her,to what happens They graduallygot to know not how each talked but
simultaneouslyand mutuallyto me, to her,to us. how each talked withfellows,not how each workedbut
Nayaka, I argue,lived in a social environmentwhich how each worked with fellows,not how each shared
facilitatedand was reproducedby dividuatingfellow but how each shared with fellows, etc. They got to
Nayaka.'5 Numbering in I978-79 fewer than 70 per- know not other Nayaka in themselvesbut Nayaka as
sons, theyoccupied fivesites at a distance of 2-IO km they interrelated with each other, Nayaka-in-relat-
fromeach other.The largestwas made up of fivedwell- edness with fellow Nayaka. Throughcumulative expe-
ings, the others of between one and three.The dwell- riences,theysensed each otheras dividuatedpersonali-
ings (thatched huts with walls made of interwoven ties, each with a relativelypersistingway of engaging
stripsof bamboo) stood close to each other,thoughthe with othersagainstthe relativechangeinvolvedin their
mutual engagement. Nayaka speakers, for example,
commonlydescribedfellowNayaka by theway theybe-
I3. See also Dumont (I966). haved vis-a-vis themselves, for instance, as "Mathen
I4. Ingold(personalcommunication) pointsout that Strathem''s who laughs a lot," "Mathen who listens attentively,"
use oftheconcept"dividual"is unsatisfactory. She arguesfora re-
lationalpersonhood, but the conceptassumes thatthe personis and so on (Mathen being one of a few personal names
some kindof substantiveentity,divisibleor indivisible.Perhaps in circulation)(see Bird-DavidI983).
anothertermis calledfor. Nayaka commonly objectifiedeach othernot as the
i S. ElsewhereI haveexaminedotheraspectsofthissocial environ- Maussian "character"-"the locus [in everydaylife]of
ment,callingit an "immediatesocial environment" (Bird-David
different rights,duties,titlesand kinshipnames within
I994), absorbingSchutz and Luckmann's (I973) sense of "immedi-
acy" andtheearlieruse ofthewordin hunter-gatherer scholarship the clan" (Carrithers,Collins, and Lukes I985 :vii)-but
(esp. Meillassoux I973 and Woodburn I980, i982). as kin, relatives,"ones relatedwith." In everydaysocial

interaction they normally referredto and addressed
each other by kinship terms ("my big-uncle," "my
brother,""my sister-in-law,"etc.). Anyone theypersis-
tentlysharedwith (even a non-Nayaka person like the
anthropologist)they regardedas kin.'6 They reckoned
relationallywhich kinshiptermwas appropriateat each
moment (forexample, calling "my paternaluncle" the
relative "my father" called "my brother" [see Bird-
David I994:59I-93]). Theygenerally
referred
to people
with whom they shared place, things,and actions as
sonta ("relatives,"a termusually used with the prefix
nama, "our"), a notion that correspondswith other
hunter-gatherer notions such as Pintupiwalytja and In-
uit ila (see Myers I986, Guemple I988). Their kinship
was primarilymade and remade by recurringsocial ac-
tions of sharingand relatingwith, not by blood or by
descent,not by biology or by mythor genealogy.
Transcendingidiosyncratic,processual,and multiple
flows of meanings,the Nayaka sense of the person ap-
pears generallyto engagenot the modernistsubject/ob-
ject split or the objectivistconcernwith substancesbut
the above-mentionedsense of kinship. The person is
sensed as "one whom we share with." It is sensed as a
relativeand is normallyobjectifiedas kin, using a kin-
ship term.The phrasenama sonta is used in the gener-
alizing sense oftheproverbialphrase"we, the people."'7
Its use extendsbeyond the Nayaka group(family,kin-
dred,neighbors)to the aggregateoflocal people (Nayaka
and others)with whom Nayaka closely engage. To re-
turnto Strathern'sdividual (a personwhich objectifies
relationshipsand makes them known), in the Nayaka
context the dividual objectifiesrelationshipsof a cer-
tain kind,local kinshiprelationshipswhich are objecti-
ficationsofmutual sharingofspace, things,and actions.
Analyticallyreferring to these relationshipsas "sharing
relationships" (because the term "kinship relation-
ships" inevitablyinvokes associations of biologisticor
rights-and-duties kinship),we can say that the Nayaka
dividual objectifies sharing relationships and makes
them known.This dividual is emergent,constitutedby
relationshipswhich in FredMyers's words "are not to-
tally'given' [but]must be workedout in a varietyof so-
cial processes" (I986:I5 9).
We cannot say-as Tylor did-that Nayaka "think
with" this idea ofpersonhoodabout theirenvironment,
to arriveby projectionat the idea of devaru. The idea
of "person" as a "mental representation"applied to the
worldin pursuitofknowledgeis modernist.I arguethat
Nayaka do not individuatebut, in the sense specified
above, dividuate other beings in their environment.
They are attentiveto, and work towardsmaking,relat-
ednesses. As they move and generallyact in the envi-
ronment,they are attentiveto mutual behaviors and
events. Periodically,they invite local devaru to visit
i6. This is a commonphenomenonamonghunter-gatherers,
havewhatAlanBarnard called"a universalkinshipsystem"(I98I); as relatives,as Durkheim maintains.In one basic sense
Woodburn(I979)describedthissystemas one in whicheverybody
withinthepoliticalcommunity is regardedas kin.
I7. The nameNayakais mostlyused andwas probablyintroduced eral sense of being "that or whom one interrelates
by surrounding people.
BIRD-DAVID "Animism" RevisitedI S73
them and share with them. Their composite per-
sonhood is constitutive of sharing relationships not
only with fellow Nayaka but with members of other
species in the vicinity.They make theirpersonhoodby
producingand reproducingsharingrelationshipswith
surroundingbeings,humans and others.They do not di-
chotomize otherbeings vis-a-visthemselves (see Bird-
David I992a) but regardthem,while differentiated, as
nestedwithineach other.They recognizethatthe other
beings have theirdifferent "affordances"and are of di-
verse sorts,which is indicated among other thingsby
the differentwords by which theyreferto them (hills,
elephants,etc.). However, Nayaka also appreciatethat
theysharethe local environmentwith some ofthesebe-
ings, which overrides these differencesand absorbs
theirsortsinto one "we-ness." Beingswho are absorbed
into this "we-ness" are devaru,and while differentiated
fromavaru (people),theyand avaru, in some contexts,
are absorbed into one "we-ness," which Nayaka also
call nama sonta. The devaru are often objectifiedby
kinshipterms,especially ette and etta(n) (grandmother
and grandfather) and occasionally dodawa and dodappa
("big" motherand father).The use of kinshiptermsfor
superpersons,especially "grandparents,"is common
also among other hunter-gatherers (e.g., see Hallowell
I960:27).
Maintaining relationshipswith fellow Nayaka but
also with other local beings is critical to maintaining
Nayaka identitybecause it is critical to maintaining
personhood.They retain immediate engagementwith
the naturalenvironmentand hold devaruperformances
even when theymake a livingby different means such
as casual labor. This is common among many other
hunter-gatherers, even those well integratedinto their
respective states who live by such diverse means as
state benefitsor jobs in the state bureaucracy(see, e.g.,
Tanner I979, PovinelliI993, Bird-Davidi992b). By
maintaining relationshipswith other local beings to
reproduce their personhood, Nayaka reproduce the
devaru-nessof the otherbeings with whom theyshare.
The otherbeings are drawninto interrelating and shar-
ing with Nayaka and so into Nayaka kinship relation-
ships. These relationshipsconstitutethe particularbe-
ings as devaru.
To summarizethispoint ofthe argument,the devaru
objectifysharing relationships between Nayaka and
otherbeings.A hill devaru,say, objectifiesNayaka rela-
tionshipswith the hill; it makes known the relation-
ships between Nayaka and that hill. Nayaka maintain
social relationshipswith other beings not because, as
Tylorholds,theya priori, considerthempersons.As and
when and because they engage in and maintain rela-
tionships with other beings, they constitute them as
kinds ofperson:theymake them "relatives" by sharing
with them and thus make them persons. They do not
who regardthem as personsand subsequentlysome of them
of this complex notion, devaru are relativesin the lit-
with" (not in the reducedmodernEnglishsense of "hu-
S74 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

mans connected with others by blood or affinity").'8 but they preservesome "information"(picturesmore
They are superrelativeswho both need and can help than words,motion picturesmore than pictures).They
Nayaka in extraordinary ways. "put the viewer into the scene" (p. 282) by inducing
"not an illusion of realitybut an awareness of being in
DEVARU IN-THE-WORLD
the world" (p. 284). They "transmitto the next genera-
tion the tricks of the human trade. The labors of the
Devaru exist in the world, according to Nayaka, and firstperceiversare spared their descendants. The ex-
thisview is comprehensiblein termsof Gibson's (I979) tractingand abstractingof the invariantsthat specify
ecological approach to visual perception (introduced the environmentare made vastlyeasier with these aids
and popularized among anthropologistsby Ingold [e.g., to comprehension"(p. 284).
i992, I996; see Croll and Parkini992]). Gibsoncon- Events are ecologicallyperceivableas "any change of
cerns himselfwith "ambient vision" "obtained as the a substance,place, or object, chemical, mechanical, or
observeris turninghis head and looking around," the biophysical.The change may be slower or fast,revers-
vision by which people (like other animals) perceive ible or nonreversible,repeatingor nonrepeating.Events
theirenvironmentin everydaylife.He reconceptualizes include what happens to objects in general,plus what
the environmentin ecological terms.It is permanentin the animate objects make happen. Events are nested
some respectsand changingin others;"the 'permanent within superordinateevents. . . . Events of different
objects' of the world are actually only objects that per- sortsare perceivedas such.. . ." (p. 242). While Gibson's
sist fora verylong time" (p. I3). It consists of "places, analysis explicitlyfocuses on things(evincingWestern
attached objects, objects and substances . . . together biases), his thesis is concernedwith thingsand events,
with events,which are changesofthese things"(p. 240). and using his languagemy argumentis thatNayaka fo-
People perceive these thingsby registeringtheir"rela- cus on events. Their attentionis educated to dwell on
tive persistence" (or persistence-under-change, or "in- events. They are attentiveto the changes of thingsin
variances") and "relative change" (or change-above- the world in relationto changes in themselves.As they
persistence,or "variances"). Things are perceived in move and act in the forest,they pick up information
terms of what they affordthe actor-perceiverbecause about the relativevariancesin the fluxofthe interrelat-
of what theyare forhim (p. I38).19 Their "affordance," ednessbetweenthemselvesand otherthingsagainstrel-
as Gibson calls it, "cuts across the dichotomyofsubjec- ative invariances.When theypick up a relativelychang-
tive-objective.... It is equally a fact of the environ- ing thingwith theirrelativelychangingselves-and, all
ment as a fact of behavior.It is both physical and psy- the more,when it happens in a relativelyunusual man-
chical, yet neither.An affordancepoints both ways, to ner-they regardas devaru this particularthingwithin
the environmentand to the observer"(p. I23). this particularsituation. This is another sense of the
"Meaning" is not "imposed" on things-it is not pre- complex notion of devaru,and it arises fromthe stories
givenin consciousness-but "discovered"in the course which Nayaka tell.20
of action; it is also "both physical and psychical, yet For example, one Nayaka woman, Devi (age 40),
neither." There is endless "information"in the envi- pointed to a particularstone-standing next to several
ronment,by which Gibson means "the specificationof other similar stones on a small mud platformamong
the observer'senvironment,not . . . of the observer's thehuts-and said thatshe had been diggingdeep down
receptorsor sense organs" (p. 242). People continuously forrootsin the forestwhen suddenly"this devarucame
"pick up" informationin acting within the environ- towards her." Another man, Atti-Mathen (age 70),
ment,by means of "attention." Gibsonian "attention" pointed to a stone standingnext to the aforementioned
is "a skill thatcan be educated" (p. 246) to pick up infor- one and said that his sister-in-lawhad been sittingun-
mation thatis moreand moresubtle,elaborate,and pre- der a tree,restingduringa foray,when suddenly"this
cise (p. 245). Knowingis developingthis skill; knowing devaru jumped onto her lap." The two women had
is continuous with perceiving,of which it is an exten- broughtthe stone devaruback to theirplaces "to live"
sion. with them. The particular stones were devaru as they
Accordingto Gibson,attentionis "educated" through "came towards" and "jumped on" Nayaka. The many
practiceand also by means of "aids to perceiving"such other stones in the area were not devaru but simply
as stories and models of things,words and pictures. stones. Ojibwa approachstones in a similarway: Hallo-
These are "not in themselves knowledge, as we are well recounts how he once asked an old Ojibwa man
temptedto think.All theycan do is facilitateknowing" whether"all the stones we see about us here are alive."
(p. 258). They can never "copy" or "represent"reality, Though stones are grammaticallyanimate in Ojibwa,
the man (Hallowell recalls) "reflecteda long while and
i 8. The ShorterOxfordEnglishDictionary:on historicalprinciples then replied,'No! But some are'" (ig60:24). From the
(I973,emphasisadded).Interestingly,in premodern English"rela- storieswhich Hallowell provides,"alive" stones appear
tive" meant"a thing(orperson)standingin some relationto an-
other."
I9. Gibson oftenlapses into essentializinglanguage-as in this 2o. See Pandya(I993) fora fascinating
studyofAndamanesefocus
case, wherehe refersto "what thingsare" ratherthanto "what on movements.Hunter-gatherers are generallyknownto be con-
thingsare fortheactor-perceiver."
I have addedthelatterqualifi- cernednot withtaxonomiesbut withbehavior(see, e.g.,Blurton
cation. Jonesand Konner I976).
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" Revisited I S75

to be ones which "move" and "open a mouth" towards siveness and engagementbetweenthings,events,more-
Ojibwa (p. 25). over,which prototypicallyinvolve the actor-perceiver.
The same underlyingnarrativerecursas Nayaka re- Discriminatingdevaru is contingenton "affordances"
late to animal devaru in-the-world.The followingfour of environmentalevents and thingsand (as I shall next
anecdotes on elephantsprovideus with a clearerunder- argue)on enhanced attentionto them throughparticu-
standingofthe complexityofNayaka perceptionsofde- lar traditionsof practice.
varu in-the-world.One man, Chathen (age So), whose
home stood next to the one in which I lived, said one
DEVARU AS PERFORMANCE CHARACTERS
morningthat duringthe nighthe had seen an elephant
devaru "walking harmlessly"between our homes, and Devaru performancesare pivotal in developing atten-
this is how he knew,he explained,thatit was a devaru, tion to devaruin-the-world and reproducingconceptsof
not just an elephant. Another man, Chellan (age 35), devaruas objectificationsofrelationships.These perfor-
similarly related, by way of giving another example, mances are complex alf'airswhich, in the modernist
how once an elephant devaru which passed by him as sense, involve "spirit-possession"by devaruibut also a
he was walking in the forest searching for honey greatdeal more,includinga communal social gathering,
"looked straightinto his eyes." Like the stones, these healing,an alteredstate of consciousness,communica-
particularelephantswere devaruas they"walked harm- tion with predecessors,secondaryburial forpeople who
lessly" and "looked straightinto the eyes," that is, as have died since thepreviousevent,and music and danc-
and when theyresponsivelyrelatedto Nayaka. In con- ing. Each affairspans two days and the intervening
trast,Kungan(age So) once took me along on a gathering night.Nayaka hold them everyyear or so in each vil-
expedition,and on hearingan elephantand knowingby lage, one place afterthe other,each attendedby people
its sounds that it was alone and dangerous,he turned fromthe whole area who participatein several events
away and avoided it. He did not engage with this ele- of this sort everyyear. Nayaka do not seem to referto
phant and referredto it not as "elephant devaru" but this eventby any singlename or markit offfromevery-
simply as "elephant." The lack of mutual engagement day experience."Pandalu," the word I apply to the af-
preventedthe kind of relatedness which would have fair,is sometimesused forthe purpose,referring to the
constitutedthis elephant (at this moment) as devaru hut which is specially built forthe event as accommo-
while it might be perceived as devaru on other occa- dation forthe visitingdevaru.2'
sions. In examining one pandalu event, limitingmyselfto
A more complex situation is exemplifiedin an ac- devaru alone, I adopt a perforniance-centered approach
count by Atti-Mathenofhow an elephanttrampledtwo influencedby, among othersTambiah (I970, i985
huts in a neighboringNayaka place, luckilynot injuring [I979]). Unlike the Geertziantradition, this approach
Nayaka, who happened to be away that night. Atti- focuses on what the pandalu does ratherthan what it
Mathen referred to the offending
elephantsimplyas "el- means. It focuses on the pandalu as an event in-the-
ephant." Several months later, duringa devaru perfor- world itself,not a "text." It is concernedwith the ex-
mance, he asked the devaru involved if theyhad "had tent to which such events, instead of referringto or
somethingto do" with the event in question. The de- talkingabout, do somethingin-the-world.I go farther,
varu replied that they had "done it" in response to a as I cast the pandalu (followingNayaka) rightaway as
Nayaka aaita (a fault,deviation fromthe customary). an experience, a performance,a social event in-the-
The devaru did not specifythe nature of the fault on world,which is continuousand coherentwith and even
this occasion-though sometimes they did, men- nested within otherNayaka experiences.(I do not cast
tioning,forinstance,that Nayaka had offeredless food it as "ritual," as opposed to "practice,"and thencorrec-
during the last devaru performancethan in previous tivelyadopta performance-centered approachto it.) The
times or had startedthe performancelater.This particu- examination fills a lacuna in the work of Ingold (e.g.,
lar elephant (in this particularsituation) was neither I996), who, like Gibson, pays inadequate attentionto
avoided nor sharedwith. It was perceivedas an instru- interhuman"action" in-the-worldin favorof "action"
ment,an object,which devaruused in the course of in- towards other species;22clearly,action towards fellow
terrelatingwith Nayaka. In this case, illustratingthe humans constitutesan importantpart of one's "envi-
Nayaka view at its limits,Nayaka still framewhat hap- ronment."
pened in termsof mutuallyresponsiveevents,but they June9, 1979, Kungan's place23 (where I lived at the
are connectednarrativelyin a more complex way. time withhis family):People arrivecasually duringthe
These fourstoriesshow how elephants(as one exam- day, each family at its own time. They engage with
ple among others)may be regardedas persons or as ob- the local residentsin everydayactivities,chatting,shar-
jects, dependingon what happens between them and ing food,goingto the river,fetchingfirewood,etc. Late
Nayaka, which itself depends on the "affordances"of
events involving elephants and people. An important
featureof devaru in-the-worldemerges.Devaru are not 2I. "Pandalu"means"temple"to neighboring Hindupeople.
22. Ingold(I997) questionsthe autonomyofsocial relations.
limited to certain classes of things. They are certain 23. Nayaka have no fixednamesforplaces and referto themby
things-in-situations ofwhateverclass or,better,certain mentioning a prominent landmarkorthenameofa centralperson
situations. They are events involving mutual respon- livingthere.
S76 I CURRENT ANTHROPOT.COGY Volume 4n. S1jnn1lpmp1-7t Pph-r7lnrrV TOOO

in the afternoon,amidst the action, Kungan (age S) occasionallyby names; sometimesonlyby theirdividu-
standsin frontofthe devaruhut and bows in fourdirec- ated characters(as "the one who always requests wild
tions,invitingthe area's devaru to come. A few people fowl forfood" or "waves a knife,"etc.) and sometimes
shift the devaru stones-originally broughtfrom the just as devaru in general.The most vivid and generally
forest-from their regular place on a mud platform known devaruare hill devaru,whose existence appears
among the houses to the area in frontof the hut. They to go farback into thepast. (Amongneighboringhunter-
put next to themvarious otherdevaruthings(including gathererPandaramand Paliyan,hill chavu and hill devi
knives,bells, bracelets,cups, and elephant-and human- are also singledout [MorrisI98I, Gardneri99I].) Other
shaped figurinesof Hindu origin),taking these things vivid devaru are elephant devaru,minor Hindu deities
out of a box in which theyare kept forsafetybetween worshipedlocally, and a deity of the Kurumba people
these events.Food and betel-nutsare laid in frontof all who lived in the locality several decades before.Gener-
these devaru, as well as Hindu puja items purchased ally, the more devaru appear year afteryear and are re-
with money collected in advance from the partici- lated with,the morevividlytheyare invoked,the more
pants.24 they are known, the more, in a sense, they "exist."
As nightfalls,several men startgoingon and offinto Hardly anythingis said about devaru in mythor other
trances,usually one at a time,which theywill continue oral traditioneitherwithin the performanceor outside
doingthroughoutthe nightand the followingday. Each it (Morris reportsthe same for Hill Pandaram [i98I:
one wraps himselfwith a special cloth, liftsbranches 2o8]).
and waves them in the air in fourdirections,bows in The devaru evoked oftenimproviseon the same re-
four directions inviting devaru to come, and shakes petitivephrases. The saying,the voicing,the gesturing
himselfinto a trance. Intermittently, rhythmicdrum- are important.These principalaspects of theirbehavior
ming, flute-and-drum music, and dances help set the are, in Bateson's term (I979), meta-communication,
mood. As the performers fallinto trance,they"bringto namely, communicatingthat devaru are communicat-
life" a varietyof devaru.25The performers are evaluated ing,because the devaru are presentas theymove, talk,
in termsof how skillfullythey "bring" the devaru "to make gestures,etc. They are presentas theycommuni-
life" at the same time as attendantpeople engage with cate and socially interactwith Nayaka. At peak times,
the devaruwhich the performers evoke. everyonegathersaround the visitingdevaru,takingan
Devaru of all sortscan "come to life" duringthe de- active part in the conversationor just closely listening
varu performance.Nayaka extendthem an open invita- to it. At othertimes,only a fewpeople do thiswhile the
tion by the recurringbows in the fourdirections.Na- othersbusy themselveswith theirown domesticaffairs.
yaka engage with the devaru-characterswho appear, The conversationhas to be kept going at all times.
who are devaruas theyappearand engagewith Nayaka. When it slackens, the devaru complain and urge more
Nayaka identifyeach visitingdevaru by its dividuated people to join in. At the extreme,at dull moments in
personality: by how it idiosyncraticallyinterrelates the heat of the day and deep in the night,this or that
with Nayaka (how it laughs with,talks with,getsangry Nayaka grudginglycomes forwardand engages the de-
at, responds to Nayaka, etc.). Sometimes, various de- varu in conversation.(I became helpfulat variouspoints
varu come togetherin a gang,evoked by the same per- in this event,lettingNayaka go about theirbusiness as
former,who then switches gestures,speech styles,dia- I recordedand listened to the devaruby myself.)Keep-
lects, and even languages (Nayaka, Malayalam, and ingthe conversationgoingis importantbecause it keeps
Tamil) fromone sentenceto the next.26Some devaruare the Nayaka-devaruinteractionand in a sense the de-
vivifiedby the performers with greatfinesse,and they varu themselves"alive."
are recognizedby most or all Nayaka. Other devaruare Conversationwith the devaru is highlypersonal,in-
so crudelyspecifiedthattheyare barelydistinguishable, formal, and friendly,including joking, teasing, bar-
and theyare identifiedby few Nayaka, and sometimes gaining,etc. In its idiomatic structureit resemblesthe
differently.The devaruare objectifiedby kinshipterms; demand-sharingdiscourse which is characteristicof
Nayaka and hunter-gatherers generally(see Bird-David
24. See Bird-David (i996) fora detaildd-examination ofhowNayaka I990). Withnumerousrepetitions
or minorvariations
incorporate Hinduinfluencesintotheirpandalutradition. on a theme, Nayaka and devaru nag and tease, praise
25. Theyalso "bring to life"predecessors,whoforlack ofspaceare
not discussedhere. and flatter,blame and cajole each other,expressingand
26. Similarly,Brightman (I993:I72) describesthe Rock Cree's demanding care and concern. For example, Nayaka
"shakinglodgeritual"as follows:"[It]features a recurring
stockof stressthat theyare takingpropercare of the devaru (or
characters,variableto some degreeamongdifferent operatorsand apologizingfornot givingmore or moaning about not
differentperformances bythesameoperator. Manycharacters pos-
sess individuating speechcharacteristics, familiarto theaudience being able to give more,etc.) and complain thatthe de-
fromhearsayandfromotherperformances....Today,mostspirits varu, in turn,do not take care of them (or not enough
speakin Cree,and othersuse English,French,Saulteaux,and Chi- or not as in previousyears,etc.). The devarustresshow
pewyan,or unknownhuman languages"(p. I72). "During the much theycare forNayaka and requestbetterhospital-
course of the performance, they [the spirits]conversedamong ity (more offerings,an earlierstartforthe event,more
themselves, withtheoperator, and withmembersoftheaudience
outside,responding to questionseitherin knownlanguagesor in dancing,etc.). The Nayaka requestcures fromillnesses.
unintelligiblespeechrequiring translation
byotherspiritsorbythe The ordinaryroundof everydayaffairscontinuesdur-
operator"(p. I71). ing the two days of the pandalu. Domestic chores are
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" Revisited I S77

not marginalizedon account ofthe occasion but consti- to pursue individual interestswithin the confinesof a
tute a significantpart of its structure.Throughoutthe relatedness-to negotiateforwhat theyneed while si-
two days, Nayaka families go on with their domestic multaneouslytaking care to reproducethe framingre-
activities, frequentlysharingwith each other and, in latednesswithinwhich theydo so. Fromyearupon year
some ways, with theirdevaruvisitors,too. The devaru of conversations,which in part repeat themselves and
hut resembles ordinaryNayaka dwellings. Some men in part change,participantsare increasinglysensitized
occasionally take naps there,sharingthe hut with the to pick up informationon the emergent,processive,his-
devaru.In the morning,when people go to wash in the torical,and reciprocalqualities ofrelatednesses.In sum,
riverand bringback water,theybow in the fourdirec- we can say that the pandalu involves "making [devaru]
tions, invitinglocal devaru to join them. Women on alive," that is, raisingpeople's awareness of theirexis-
theirway back sprinklewater fromtheirvessels in the tence in-the-worldand, dialectically,producingand be-
fourdirections,sharingthe water with devaru around. ing producedby this, socializing with them.
In the course of conversationdevarurequestbetel-nuts
from their Nayaka interlocutor.One elderly Nayaka
woman falls into a trance.She does not uttercoherent Animism as Relational Epistemology
words;in her frenzyshe only sweeps the groundaround
the devaruhut and startsto undress(which bystanders Withinthe objectivistparadigminformingpreviousat-
stop her fromdoing). A joint meal of rice, cooked by temptsto resolve the "animism" problem,it is hard to
Kungan's daughterand herhusband,bringsthe eventto make sense of people's "talkingwith" things,or sing-
a close. The foodis sharedequally amongthose present, ing, dancing, or socializing in other ways for which
and some food is spreadin the fourdirections. "talking" is used here as shorthand.Accordingto this
The pandalu makes known the Nayaka-devarurelat- paradigm, learning involves acquiring knowledge of
ednesses and at the same time reproducesthem. Ob- thingsthroughthe separationofknowerand knownand
jectifiedas kinship relationships,the relatednessesre- often,furthermore, by breakingthe known down into
constituteall theparticipantsas sonta and each ofthem its partsin orderto know it. To study,say, the tropical
as a person (Nayaka person,hill person,stone person, forest-the kind of forestin which Nayaka live and
etc.). Furthermore, the pandalu constitutes(in the Gib- with which they "talk"-botanists of this persuasion
sonian sense) "aids to perceiving"that "put the viewer cut down a stripof trees with machetes, sort out the
intothescene"(GibsonI979: 282, citedabove).It "edu- fallen vegetation into kinds, place characteristicbits
cates the attention"to perceiveand specifythe environ- and pieces of each kind in small bags, and take them
ment (while engagingwith it) in a relationalway. The out of the forestto a herbariumforbotanical classifica-
pandalu "preserves information" (as effectivelyas tion (see Richards i952). Compared with theirmethod,
books and even motion pictures);moreover,it encour- "talking with" trees seems a ritual with no possible
ages the learnerto engageinteractivelywith this infor- connectionto the serious business of acquiringknowl-
mation and so to experience it socially. The engage- edge of trees.
ment with devaru characters"educates the attention" If "cuttingtreesinto parts" epitomizesthe modernist
to notice devaru as they interact with oneself. It im- epistemology,"talkingwith trees,"I argue,epitomizes
provesthe skill ofpickingup informationabout the en- Nayaka animistic epistemology. "Talking" is short-
gagementitself,within its confines,froman engaged hand fora two-wayresponsiverelatednesswith a tree-
viewpoint. ratherthan "speaking" one-wayto it, as if it could lis-
IfNayaka only subsisted by huntingand gatheringin ten and understand."Talking with" stands for atten-
theirenvironment,theymightperceiveonlyits utilitar- tiveness to variances and invariances in behavior and
ian affordances:an animal as somethingedible; a stone response of thingsin states of relatednessand forget-
as somethingthrowable;a rock as somethingone can ting to know such thingsas they change throughthe
shelterunder.Withinthe practiceof engagingwith de- vicissitudesovertime ofthe engagementwith them.To
varu charactersin the pandalu theyare educated to per- "talk with a tree"-rather than "cut it down"-is to
ceive that animals, stones, rocks, etc., are things one perceivewhat it does as one acts towardsit,beingaware
can relate with-that theyhave relational affordances, concurrentlyof changesin oneselfand the tree.It is ex-
thatis, what happens to them (orhow theychange)can pectingresponse and responding,growinginto mutual
affectand be affectedby what happensto people (orhow responsivenessand, furthermore, possibly into mutual
theychange):an animal-avoiding-mein relationto me- responsibility.
upsetting-the-animal, a stone-coming-towards-me in re- Ifthe object ofmodernistepistemologyis a totalizing
lation to me-reaching-for-the-stone,a rock-securing-me scheme of separatedessences, approachedideally from
in relation to me-seeking-a-shelter. Participantslearn a separated viewpoint, the object of this animistic
fromconversingand sharingwith devaru charactersto knowledgeis understandingrelatednessfroma related
discriminate mutually responsive changes in them- point ofview withinthe shiftinghorizonsofthe related
selves and thingstheyrelatewith; theybecome increas- viewer.Knowledgein the firstcase is having,acquiring,
ingly aware of the webs of relatednessbetween them- applying,and improvingrepresentationsof things in-
selves and what is around them. From the bargaining the-world(see Rorty I980). Knowledge in the second
and demand-sharingwith devaru characterstheylearn case is developingthe skills of being in-the-worldwith
S78 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

otherthings,makingone's awareness of one's environ- utilizing and respectinganimated "things," self-inter-

ment and one's self finer,broader,deeper,richer,etc. est and the cooperationwithinwhich that self-interest
Knowing,in the second case, growsfromand is main- can be achieved.29
tainingrelatednesswith neighboringothers.It involves Furthermore,relational epistemologies function in
dividuatingthe environmentratherthan dichotomizing diverse contextswhere other epistemologiesenjoy au-
it and turningattentionto "we-ness," which absorbs thority,includingWesterncontexts(to a much greater
differences,rather than to "otherness," which high- extentthan the authoritativestatus ofscience permits).
lights differencesand eclipses commonalities. Against When (goingback to Guthrie's examples) we animate
"I think,therefore I am" stand "I relate,thereforeI am" the computerswe use, the plants we grow,and the cars
and "I know as I relate." Against materialisticframing we drive,we relationallyframethem. We learn what
of the environment as discrete things stands rela- theydo in relationto what we do, how theyrespondto
tionally framing the environment as nested relat- ourbehavior,how theyact towardsus, what theirsitua-
ednesses. Bothways are real and valid. Each has its lim- tional and emergentbehavior (ratherthan theirconsti-
its and its strengths. tutive matter)is. As Nayaka get to know animated as-
Framingthe environmentrelationallydoes not con- pects of their environment,so we get to know these
stitute Nayaka's only way of knowing their environ- animated things by focusing on our relatedness with
ment,thoughin my understandingtheyregardit as au- them within the confinesof that relatednessfroma re-
thoritativeamong theirothorways. Nor is it unique to lational viewpoint.This sortofrelationalframingis ar-
Nayaka. I would hypothesizethatrelationalepistemol- ticulated with other epistemologies in complex, vari-
ogies of this kind enjoy authoritativestatus in cultures able, and shifting ways that deserve study. (The
of peoples we call hunter-gatherers. These peoples nor- example of ethologistsmentioned earlier is a case in
malize sharingwith fellow persons. They engage inti- point: in regardingas persons the study animals with
mately with their environment(if only periodically which they live, they framethem relationallyin addi-
while on a break fromother economic pursuits [Bird- tion to making them the objects of their scientific
David i992b]). They celebrateanimistic performances. study.)
Their performancetraditions-for example, the Cree As a hypothesis,furthermore, I am willing to agree
"shakingtentritual"(e.g.,Hallowell I960, Feit I994, with Tylor, not least because Guthrie goes some way
BrightmanI993), the !Kung "medicine dance" (e.g., towardssubstantiatingthe point, that the tendencyto
Marshall i962, Katz--982), the Hadza "sacred epeme animate things is shared by humans. However, this
dance" (see Woodburn i982), the Batek "fruit-season's common tendency,I suggest,is engenderedby human
singing session" (see Endicott I979), and Paliyan and socially biased cognitive skills, not by "survival" of
Pandaram"spiritpossession" (see GardnerI99I, Morris mental confusion (Tylor) or by wrong perceptual
I98I)- are functionallysimilarto the Nayaka pandalu. guesses (Guthrie).Recent work relates the evolution of
These performancesinvolve the visiting of superper- human cognitionto social interactionwith fellow hu-
sons who appear throughtrance and dance or make mans. Its underlyingargument is that interpersonal
theirvoices heard.27The people regardthese superper- dealings, requiringstrategicplanning and anticipation
sons as friendsand relativesand oftenaddressand refer of action-response-reaction, are more demanding and
to themby kinshipterms.They approachthemin a per- challengingthan problems of physical survival (Hum-
sonal, friendly,and immediate way. These events are phreyI976). Cognitive skills have accordinglyevolved
the centralcommunal affairsofthese communitiesand withinand fora social kind of engagementand are "so-
oftenthe main celebrationalmeans by which theysus- cially biased" (Goody I995). We spontaneouslyemploy
tain theirsenses of identity.28 Each event constitutesa these skills in situationswhen we cannot controlor to-
"participationframe" (Lave and Wenger I99I) which, tally predict our interlocutor'sbehavior,when its be-
togetherwith the participationframeofhunting-gather- havioris not predeterminedbut in "conversation"with
ing practice itself,nurturesa complex articulationof our own. We employthese skills in these situations,ir-
skills, a double-bind engagementwhich co-privileges respectiveofwhethertheyinvolve humans or otherbe-
ings (the respective classification of which is some-
27. In some cases devaruare additionally
times part of reflectiveknowing,followingratherthan
invokedbyobjects,with
whichone talks,eats,sings,dances,etc.This is less commonthan preceding the engagementsituation). We do not first
theirinvocationbyperformance butofconsiderable im- personifyother entities and then socialize with them
theoretical
portance. but personifythem as, when, and because we socialize
28. At theirrespective
timesofstudy,theseeventswerefrequently with them. Recognizing a "conversation" with a
held,forexample,weeklyamong !Kung,monthlyamongHadza,
and "wheneverneedarises"amongPandaram.Theyspanneda sig- counter-being-whichamounts to acceptingit into fel-
nificantstretchof time,forexample,"the whole night"among lowship ratherthan recognizinga common essence-
!Kung,"two to threenightsin succession"among Hadza, and makes that being a self in relationwith ourselves.
"fromeveningintothenight"amongPaliyan.The eventsinvolved
theentirecommunity as activespectatorsand a considerable
pro-
portionas performers,
forexample,"one-third ofthemen" among 29. CompareBriggs(i982) and Guemple(I988) on theteachingof
!Kung,"one-eighthofthemen"amongPandaram, and"28% ofthe Inuitchildrento relatewithotherpeoplein a double-binding
way
adults" amongPaliyan.In the case of Nayaka,aboutone-fifth of andMyers'sstudy(I986) oftenuousarticulation
ofpersonalauton-
themen actedas performers. omyand relatednessamongtheAustralianPintupi.
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" Revisited I S79

Finally, the common human disposition to frame ernist personhood concepts and perceptions of the
thingsrelationallyin these situationsis culturallyme- environmentas universal,have grosslymisunderstood
diated and contextualizedin historicallyspecificways animism as simple religionand a failed epistemology.
(not least in relationwith cultural concepts of the per-
son). A diversityof animisms exists, each animistic
projectwith its local status, history,and structure(in
Sahlins's [i985] sense). There follow intriguingques- Comments
tions deservingstudy,forexample: How does hunter-
gathereranimism comparewith the currentradical en-
vironmentaldiscourses (e.g., Kovel I988, Leahy I99I, EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO
ReganI983, TesterI99I) thatsome scholarshave de- King's College, Cambridge CB2 IST, U.K. io iv 98
scribedas the "new animism" (Bouissac I989; see also
Kennedy's "new anthropomorphism"[i992])? What Bird-Davidrejects modernistunderstandingsbut holds
otherformsofanimism are there?30 How do theyarticu- fast to the quintessentially modernist concern with
late in each case with othercosmologies and epistemol- epistemology.The massive conversion of ontological
ogies?3 How do animisticprojectsrelate to fetishprac- questions into epistemologicalones is the hallmark of
tices? Surely,however,the most intriguingquestion is modernistphilosophy.She does not accept the modern-
why and how the modernist project estrangeditself ist answers, but the question how we come to know
fromthe tendencyto animate things,ifit is indeed uni- thingsis taken as a naturalone to be put with reference
versal. How and why did it stigmatize"animistic lan- to the Nayaka, who are thus encompassed by this am-
guage" as a child's practice,against massive evidence biguous "we" and expected to provide an answer for
(see Guthrie I993) to the contrary?How did it succeed "us." The answer is that knowing is relatingand the
in delegitimatinganimism as a valid means to knowl- cogito is relational. The problem remains framedin
edge,constantlyfendingoffthe impulse to deployit and terms of knowledge even though the answer could be
regardingit as an "incurabledisease" (see Kennedyi992 taken to implythatknowledge,let alone the cogito,has
and Masson and McCarthy i995)? The answers are little to do with it. Anthropologistspersistin thinking
bound to be complex. ErnestGellner (I988) arguedthat that in order to explain a non-Westernontology we
nothingless than "a near-miraculousconcatenationof must derive it from(or reduce it to) an epistemology.
circumstances"can explain the cognitiveshiftthat oc- Animism is surely an ontology,concernedwith being
curred in Western Europe around the I7th century. and not with how we come to know it. Bird-Davidfalls
Ironically,historyhas it that Descartes-a reclusive into the Tyloriantrapand feelscompelled to assess the
man-was once accidentallylocked in a steam room, validityof this epistemologyand to justifyit on the ba-
where underhallucinationhe had the dualist vision on sis of its cognitivenaturalness.
which the modernprojectis founded(see Morris i99I: The authorhas a fondnessforscare quotes, but I am
6). Can it be that a Tylorian kind of "dream thesis" afraid this sort of pocket deconstruction is hardly
helps explain not the emergenceof primitiveanimism enoughto keep one safefromessentializationand mod-
but, to the contrary,the modernistbreak fromit? ernistprojection.The notion of "hunter-gatherers" is a
case in point. Bird-Davidfindsthe concept suspicious,
but all the same she attributesto hunter-gatherers a
Conclusions numberof characteristicsalso to be foundin manyhor-
ticulturalsocieties. There is then a suggestionthat the
How we getto know thingsis nestedwithincultureand prevalence of epistemologiesof the kind describedfor
practiceand takes multiple forms.Nayaka relationally the Nayaka is somehow (causally?) derived fromthe
framewhat theyare concernedabout as theirauthorita- factthat"[hunter-gatherers] normalizesharingwith fel-
tive (but not only)way ofgettingto know things.They low persons";in otherwords,sharingis taken as the es-
seek to understandrelatednessesfroma relatedpoint of sence of hunter-gatherers' social life. This seems close
view withinthe shiftinghorizonsofthe relatedviewer. to the traditionalnotion of a metaphoricprojectionof
Their relational epistemology, their study of how human relationsonto the environment-an idea which
things-in-situations relate to the actor-perceiverand, has been cogentlycriticizedbyIngold.Also, she dislikes
fromthe actor-perceiver's point of view, to each other, dualisms and dichotomies,but this does not preventher
is embodied in the practices which Tylor christened fromposing a dichotomybetween a dichotomousmod-
"primitiveanimism," articulatedwith a relationalper- ernistepistemologyand a non-dichotomousrelational
sonhood concept and a relationalperceptionof the en- one. She objects,in particular,to the conceptsofsubject
vironment.Previous theoriesof animism, takingmod- and object-but whence comes the notion of "objecti-
fication"?
30. Forexample,comparehunter-gatherer animismwithpremod- I findthe attemptto combine Strathern'sand Ingold's
em Western"animism"as describedin Merchant(i980) andBurke theoriesveryproblematic.The "dividual" of
the former
(I972).
3I. I owe the formulation forth- shares only its name with Bird-David's,among other
of thisquestionto IngridJordt's
comingworkon the articulationof Buddhistand animistepiste- thingsbecause Strathern'snotionofrelation,as I under-
mologiesin Burma. stand it, has littlein common with Bird-David'snotion
S8o I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

of relatedness. Strathernianrelations separate, while strengthsof the materialisticand the relationalviews.

Bird-David'srelatednessesare predicatedon the absorp- What are the limits of a relationalepistemology?
tion ofdifferenceby commonalitiesand togethernesses. In orderto provethatanimismis not a (mistaken)cul-
There is here,then,in contrastto Strathern'susage, an tural epistemology,Bird-Davidmust argue that it is a
implicitassumptionthat the fundamentalor prototypi- natural human attitude. In so doing, she manages to
cal mode of relationis "we-ness" as sameness. culturalize and particularizethe "modernist project"
Bird-David'sis yetanothervoicingofthe recentwide- but only at the price of a priornaturalizationand uni-
spreadsentimentagainst difference which sees it as in- versalizationof the animist stance. Thus the relational
imical to immanence,as if difference were a stigma of epistemologyis ontologizedbut in termsof a concept
transcendenceand alteritya harbingerof oppression.Is of human nature which is firmlysituated within the
not this sentiment being here projected onto what modernistprivilegingof epistemology.
hunter-gatherers are supposed to experience?All differ-
ence is read as oppositionand all oppositionas the ab-
sence ofa relation:"to oppose" is taken as synonymous ALF HORNBORG
with "to exclude"-.a strangeidea which I can only at- Human Ecology Division, Lund University,Finngatan
tributeto the guilty supposition that others conceive i6, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden. ii iv 98
othernessas we do. Well, theydon't: othersare "other"
preciselybecause theyhave,other"others." This is a welcome contributionin several respects:it
I find Bird-David's idea that devaru are situational readdressesthe differencebetween the "pre-modern"
and event-determinedappearances inspiring,and the and the "modern" in an age when such polarities are
point that devaru are persons insofaras they engage in increasinglybrushedaside as modernconstructions;it
relationshipswith people rather than the other way arguesfora connectionbetween studiesofhuman-envi-
aroundis extremelywell taken. But I also have several ronmentalrelationsand the more recentlyconstituted
questions here. anthropologicaldiscourseon personhood;finally,in se-
Bird-David objects to Hallowell's usage of "other- riouslyconsideringthe validityofpre-Cartesianepiste-
than-humanpersons" on the ground that it betraysa mologies it shows how anthropologymightresuscitate
concernwith classes (human/non-human), and she pre- its now founderingcritique of modernity.In all these
fersto call devaru"superpersons."But what is the "per- respectsI am fundamentallyin agreementwith the au-
son" that makes devaru "super"persons-the human thor(see HornborgI994, I996, I998). My remarkswill
person?By the same token,the idea that devaruhoodis ratherfocus on some points which she mighthave car-
a context-bound,situationalascriptionseems to relyon ried further.
an implicitcontrastwith context-free avaruhood. To begin with,I would have liked to see a distinction
The idea thatdevaruare objectificationsofsharingre- between "relatedness"or "relationalepistemology,"on
lationshipsseems to flyin the face of the "more com- the one hand, and ritualizedanimism such as pandalu,
plex situation" (more complex forwhom?) of the ele- on the other.Bird-Davidconflatesthe two ratherthan
phant devarurelatedto the animal which trampledthe problematizingtheirrelationship.The formerevokes a
huts. Bird-David says that this case illustrates "the verygeneralhuman experiencethathas inspired,forin-
Nayaka view at its limits,"but this sounds like blaming stance, the long-standingphenomenologicalcritiqueof
the Nayaka forthe limits of her own theoreticalview. Cartesian objectivismfromwithinmodernWesternso-
Bird-David emphasizes the particularistic,event-de- cietyitself;the latteris a specificculturalexpressionin
rived nature of the devaru but also says that many of certainpre-modernsocieties thatmay tell us something
those who appear in the performanceare verycrudely about "relatedness"but cannot qualifyas simplyan in-
specifiedand that some are recognized only as "'de- dex of it. A relevantquestion would have been under
varu' in general." But what is a devaru in general?And what conditions "relatedness" must be objectifiedin
if interactionwith devaruis a way of "educating atten- ritual.Bird-David'sown datum that the Nayaka engage
tion" to discriminatechanges in the relationshipsbe- intimatelywith their environment"only periodically
tween humans and the environment,then the sketchy while on a break fromother economic pursuits" sug-
specificationof some devaru would make them quite gests that pandalu may be an attemptto revitalize an
useless. everydayrelatednessthat is threateningto dissolve or
In herconclusion,Bird-Davidsays thatour human so- slip away.
cially biased cognitive skills would be spontaneously Ifthepresenceor absence of"relatedness"is a general
(naturally)applied in situations"when we cannot con- existentialproblem,Bird-Davidhas addressednothing
trol or totallypredictour interlocutor'sbehavior." Ap- less than the problemof modernityitself.Yet thereare
plied to non-humanbeings,however,these skills would few indications that the argumentbelongs within a
give us somethingquite similar to the theoryof magic wider traditionthan a ratherparochial,anthropological
as a counter-anxietydevice. In like manner,the men- concern with animism. There is no mention, for in-
tion of the devaru-ization of unusual relatednesses stance, of Weber's "disenchantment,"Merleau-Ponty's
strikesme as similar to the old idea that "primitives" "being-in-the-world,"or Buber's "I-Thou" relation-
attributea spirit to anythingout of the ordinary.We ships. These are connectionswhich deserveto be elabo-
might also inquire about the respective limits and rated.It is curioushow the phenomenologicaljargonon

being "in-the-world"has infiltratedecological anthro-
pology (see also Ingold i996) without any mention of
the sources of these concepts (see Gooch i998).
The example of the ethologists'comingto view their
animal objects as subjectsillustrateshow "relatedness"
is somethingthatpeople are capable ofachievingin par-
ticularexperientialcontextsof some minimal duration.
It is undoubtedlyeverywherefundamentalto the local
and embeddeddimensionsofhuman life.Whyexoticize
it into somethingthat "they"-"the Nayaka"-have?
Once again, the anthropologicalgaze risks reducingit-
self to the class perspective of urban cosmopolitans
making careers out of objectifyingthe rural and the
local.
There is a contradictionbetween Bird-David's con-
cluding assumption that "the modernist project es-
trangeditselffromthe tendencyto animate things"and
her earlierobservationthat we may animate our com-
puters and cars. "Animation" is one of Ellen's (i988)
criteriaof fetishism,and fetishismto Marx was central
to moderncapitalism. It is indeed relevantto ask how
animism relates to fetishism. There is a difference
between representingrelations between people as if
theywere relationsbetween things(Marxianfetishism)
and experiencingrelations to things as if they were
relations to people (animation). The former is a
cognitive/ideologicalillusion, the lattera condition of
phenomenological/experiential resonance. I have sug-
gested (Hornborgi992) that "machine fetishism,"at
the ideological level, is as crucial to capitalism as
money or commodity fetishism. Machines can un-
doubtedly also be animated in a phenomenological
sense, as Bird-Davidsuggests.We probablyneed to dis-
tinguishbetween the animationoflivingthingssuch as
trees(animism,morenarrowlydefined)and thatofnon-
living things such as stones or machines (fetishism).
Cartesian objectivism and fetishismhere emerge as
structuralinversionsof one another:the formerdenies
agency and subjectivityin living beings, whereas the
latter attributessuch qualities to dead objects. In this
framework, a more strictlydefinedcategoryof animism
would be reservedforthe intermediateand quite rea-
sonable assumption that all living thingsare subjects.
The epistemological predicament codified by Des-
carteswas not so much an innovative,"cognitiveshift"
fromanimism to objectivismas the emergence-or un-
precedented generalization-of a social condition of
alienation. Rather than a cerebralinnovation that has
since diffused,it is a reflectionof a set of social circum-
stances that is continually being reproducedand ex-
panded. Bird-David's programmaticambition to artic-
ulate environmental relations and personhood is
supremelyworthwhile,but where in this text are the
insightson personhoodthat she wishes to employ? A
highlyrelevantaspect ofpersonhoodwhich mighthave
illuminated the relationist/objectivistcontrastis the
tendency of "non-Western" (local?) people to anchor
theirselves in concreteratherthan abstractreference-
points (see Shwederand Bourne I984, HornborgI994).
It is the long immersionin the concreteand experien-
BIRD -DAVID Animism" Revisited I S8i
tial specificsof place that yields conditions conducive
to "relatedness." If this has been stigmatized as "a
child's practice,"as does indeed Piaget's bourgeoiscon-
cept ofmaturity,is this not because we are all bornpre-
modern?Abstraction,detachment,and objectification
are productsof modern,disembeddingmiddle-and up-
per-classbiographies.
Bird-David observes that relational epistemologies
are performative, as their significancehinges on what
they do ratherthan on what theyrepresent.Ironically,
at anotherlogical level, so is objectivistknowledge,but
preciselyby not admittingit. By posing as mere repre-
sentation, it performsan act of alienation, a relin-
quishment of responsibility,throughwhich a disem-
bodied, instrumentalrationalityis set freeto go about
its business in the world.
Finally,it may restrictour fieldofvision to conclude
that the human tendencyto animate thingsis engen-
dered by "socially biased cognitive skills." If human
cognition has evolved to equip us for "interpersonal
dealings" with unpredictableinterlocutors,it may just
as well have been because ecological relationshipsare
fundamentally communicative (von Uexkull i982
[I940]). Ingold(i996) arguesthatsocial relationsare a
subset of ecological relationsand that thereis a sense
in which non-humancreaturesare also "persons." We
could thus turnthe evolutionaryargumentaround and
suggestthathuman sociabilitywas engenderedby cog-
nitive skills that were ecologically biased. This would
providean even strongercase forthe essential validity
of animism.
TIM INGOLD
Departmentof Social Anthropology,Universityof
Manchester,OxfordRoad, ManchesterM13 9PL,
England (Tim.Ingold@man.ac.uk). i5 iv 98
I am in broadsympathywith the argumentofthis admi-
rable paper and confinemy comment to the one point
on which I have a substantivedisagreement.The point
is relativelytangentialto the argumentas a whole but
has importantimplicationsforthe directionsin which
it mightbe further pursued.Bird-Davidis right,I think,
to point out that the differencebetween hunter-gather-
ers and citizens of modernWesternnations is not that
the formerhave a relationalepistemologywhile the lat-
ter have signed up forthe modernistproject.Afterall,
a great many contemporaryhunter-gatherers are citi-
zens of Westernnation-states.The differenceis rather
that withinthe contextof the modernstate and its po-
litical, economic, and educational institutions,rela-
tional ways of knowinghave lost much of theirauthor-
ity. But they continue to operate nonetheless and
remain deeply embeddedin the experienceof everyday
life. As a speculative hypothesis,Bird-David suggests
that such ways of knowingare, indeed,common to hu-
man beings everywhere.I am inclined to agree.I do not
believe, however,that the explanationforthis is to be
foundin theoriesof the evolution of social intelligence
S82 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999
of the kind originallypropoundedby Humphrey(I976)
and subsequently developed by, inter alia, Goody
(i985). These theoriesrestfairand square on a modern-
ist conceptionof mind and behaviorwhich fliesin the
face of the relational view of personal being and envi-
ronmentalperceptionto which Bird-David and I sub-
scribe. To follow the explanatoryroute along which
theybeckon would lead us inevitablyto the veryfalla-
cies that she correctlyidentifiesin the workof scholars
suchas Guthrie
(jI993).
What Humphreyargued,in essence,was thatthe cog-
nitivedemandsforan individualofstrategicallymanag-
ing interactionswith conspecificsfaroutweighedthose
of dealing with other componentsof the environment
in the procurementofsubsistence,and thereforethe se-
lective pressuresthat drovethe evolution of human in-
telligence were above all social ratherthan technical.
This distinctionbetween the social and technicalfunc-
tions of intellect is based, however,on a more funda-
mental divisionbetween the domains ofsocietyand na-
ture. Social partners are beings with whom an
individual interacts,whereas in nature there are only
things that one can act upon. Yet precisely because
theirintelligencehas been designedby naturalselection
specificallyforhandling social interaction,human be-
ings are predisposedto treatobjects of nature,too, as if
theywere social partners.And in doing so, says Hum-
phrey,"they are sure to make mistakes." One of the
most obvious ofthese mistakes,typicalof "primitive-
and not so primitive-peoples," is the "resortto ani-
mistic thinkingabout naturalphenomena." People who
think in this way attemptto interactwith nature as
theywould with one another.Such attemptsare quite
understandable but nonetheless fallacious. "Nature
will not transactwith men; she goes her own way re-
gardless" (HumphreyI976:3I3).
Thus forHumphrey,just as forGuthrie,animism is
foundedin error:the attributionofsocial characteristics
to objectsofthe naturalworld.And forboth authorsthe
prevalenceof the erroris put down to evolved predispo-
sitions that have a rational foundationin the calculus
of selective costs and benefits.However, as Bird-David
convincinglyshows,a relationalepistemologyturnsthe
tables on such arguments.The error,it seems, lies with
theiroriginators,in theirassumptionthat the world is
divided, a priori,between the inanimate and the ani-
mate, between the non-humanand the human, and be-
tween the natural and the social. But above all, they
make the mistake of assuming that life and mind are
interiorpropertiesof individuals that are given, inde-
pendentlyand in advance of theirinvolvementin the
world.Perception,then,is understoodto be a matterof
constructinginternalrepresentationsofwhat the world
mightbe like on the basis of the limited information
available throughthe senses, while action is regardedas
the execution of plans arrivedat throughthe strategic
manipulationof such representations.In social interac-
tion, it is supposed, each partyhas to be able to repre-
sent the likely response of the otherto his or her own
intendedactions: thisis what Goody (i995) calls "antic-
ipatoryinteractiveplanning" (AIP).
The kind of responsivenessenvisagedin anticipatory
interactiveplanning,however,is fundamentallydiffer-
ent fromwhat Bird-Davidhas in mind when she speaks
ofthe "two-wayresponsiverelatedness"to components
ofthe environmentsuch as treesthatcomes froma his-
toryof intimateengagementwith them. To "talk with
a tree," as she points out, is a question not of (mistak-
enly) attributingto it an inner intelligence and then
configuringhow it might decide to react to what one
does but ofperceiving"what it does as one acts towards
it, being aware concurrentlyof changes in oneself and
the tree." Responsiveness,in this view, amounts to a
kind of sensoryparticipation,a coupling of the move-
ment of one's attentionto the movementof aspects of
the world. If thereis intelligenceat work here,it does
not lie inside the head of the human actor,let alone in-
side the fabricof the tree.Rather,it is immanentin the
total systemofperceptionand action constitutedby the
co-presenceof the human and the tree within a wider
environment.To develop this idea further,the first
thingwe shall have to jettisonis the cognitivistconcep-
tion of intelligenceas a mental computationaldevice
responsible for processing the data of perception and
pullingthestringsofaction(see IngoldI993:43i). Hu-
man beings everywhereperceivetheirenvironmentsin
the responsive mode not because of innate cognitive
predispositionbut because to perceive at all theymust
alreadybe situatedin a worldand committedto the re-
lationshipsthis entails.
BRIAN MORRIS
Goldsmiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW,
England. 7 III 98
I have read Bird-David'slucid and valuable paper with
greatinterestand offerthe followingcriticalreflections
in the spiritof friendship:
"Modernism,"as Bird-Daviddefinesit, implies a con-
ception of the human person as involving a radical
body/spirit(soul, mind?) split, a radical dualism be-
tween humans and nature,and the notion that the hu-
man personis an individualthing,a bounded asocial en-
tity (organism).These conceptions, of course, largely
came out of Cartesian metaphysicsand the bourgeois
liberal theoryof the I7th centuryand were intrinsicas
ideologies to the rise of capitalism. A critique of these
conceptions-which Bird-Davidlinks to "current"the-
ory in ecology and personhood-goes back two cen-
turies to the time of Goethe, Hegel, and Marx. Phi-
losophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists,
socialists, romanticpoets, evolutionarybiologists,and
naturalistshave long since concluded that humans are
a partof natureand thatpeople everywhereare neither
disembodied egos (Descartes) nor abstract individuals
(the asocial organismsofbourgeoisliberalism)nor sim-
ply a reflectionof the commoditymetaphor(Strathern)

but intrinsicallysocial, that is, relational,beings. The
notion that human persons are dividuals has thus long
been established.But,of course,people are also individ-
uals, actual entitiesor unities,and must be so logically
and dialecticallyin orderto be dividual. Settingup the
individualand the dividual as iftheywere opposed cate-
gories,as Bird-Davidseems to do(?),is quite misleading.
Indeed,as Fitz Poole and myselfhave both stressed,in-
dividuality is a definingfeature of personhood and
ought not to be conflatedwith individualism(the cul-
tural notion that we are asocial organismsbounded by
the skin). People in Westerncultures,like the Nayaka
and people everywhere,are dividual personsand recog-
nize themselves as such. Even the much-abusedDes-
cartesacknowledgedthis in his letters,but the best ac-
count of the dividual person was given long ago by
anothermuch-malignedscholar,Radcliffe-Brown (i 9 5.2:
I94): "The human being as a personis a complex of so-
cial relationships.He is a citizen of England,a husband
and a father,a bricklayer,a member of a particular
Methodist congregation,a voter in a certain constitu-
ency, a memberof his tradeunion, an adherentof the
Labour Party,and so on. Note thateach ofthese descrip-
tions refersto a social relationship."Thus "dividual"
seems to be just a fashionableand ratherscholastic syn-
onym forthe person?
Bird-Davidseems to conveythe idea thatcertaincon-
cepts, such as spirit,thing,religion,possession, imply
a dualistic metaphysic.She thus overlooks the simple
fact that all concepts are relational and that any
distinction-male/female,humans/nature, body/mind,
spirit/world,us/them-can be interpretedin various
ways. For example, the distinctionmany people make
between god (spirit)and the finiteworld can eitherbe
interpreted in dualistic fashion(as in Platonism,gnosti-
cism, deism, and the more stridentformsof theism)or
viewed as a relationaldiscontinuity(as in the Christian
NeoplatonismofEriugenaand Eckhart,Hegel's philoso-
phy,esotericism,hermeticism,and the Creation-based
spiritualityofMatthew Fox) or by completelyrepudiat-
ing dualism (as in the pantheismofBruno,Spinoza, and
Heine, the identityphilosophy of Schelling, and the
spiritualmonism of Parmenidesand Advaita Vedanta).
It is the same with everyotherconcept. To suggestas
many postmodernistsdo-and Bird-Davidseems to be
followingthis trail-that certainconcepts (reason,cul-
ture, mind, religion,spirit,nature,or what have you)
imply a "modernist"perspectiveand a dualistic meta-
physic is rathersimplistic.It all depends on how they
are interpreted and used in analysis.Read in his seminal
article (i 955) on the Gahuku-Gama sees the concept of
person as "modernist,"implyingan individuatedsub-
ject, and thus rejectsit.
Bird-Davidherselfseems to be locked into a dualistic
perspective,forwe have not only a dichotomybetween
individualand dividual but also one between thingand
relation.The notion that "thing" is a "modernist"con-
cept is also rathermisleading,and settingup a dichot-
omy between "thing" and "relation" as iftheywere op-
BIRD-DAVID 'Animism" RevisitedI S83
posingconceptsor theoriesis not onlyundialecticalbut
obfuscating.All relations(whethercausal or social) im-
ply things,actual entitiesthat are constitutedthrough
relations; all affordancesin the environmentimply
something-person, observer, or frog-that is envi-
roned; all differenceentails at the same time a unity,
just as all unities (individuals)are at the same time di-
vidual. Bird-David'spaper conveys the impressionthat
talking about "things" implies a negative,instrumen-
tal, objectivistattitudeto the world. This is not only
contrastedwith but opposed to "relations," identified
with the personaland the social, which are positiveand
good, and reflectedin Nayaka religiousbeliefs,which
in turnreflectthe "relational epistemology"that Bird-
David herselfembraces.The paper is thus pervadedby
MartinBuber'sdistinctionbetweenI-thou(relation)and
I-it (thing).But just as social relationscan be hierarchic
and exploitative,so our relationshipto things(indepen-
dentofreligion)can be what Heideggerdescribedas pri-
mordialand poetic. The close relationshipthatthe Nay-
aka have with the forestis surelynot dependentupon
the fact that theyperceive the devaru as immanentin
the world and as persons. All people recognize things
in the world,and this is expressedin language;the peo-
ple I know well-the Hill Pandaram and the peasant
communitiesof Malawi-not only assertbut celebrate
the singularityof things,recognizingthat individual
things as genera have their own unique powers and
value.
GISLI PALSSON
Departmentof Anthropology,Universityof Iceland,
ioi Reykjavik,Iceland. a2I iv 98
The thesis under discussion is an intriguingone. The
realities of the phenomena classically describedby an-
thropologistsby means of the conceptof animism may,
afterall, have been seriously misconstrued.Bird-Da-
vid's attempt to "solve" the problem of animism by
combiningenvironmenttheoryand personhoodtheory
is, in my view, a promisingone. Such an approachreso-
nates withpowerfulthemesin social theory-including
the pragmatismof JohnDewey, the Marxian constitu-
tive view of the individual as an "ensemble" of social
relations,and the Bakhtiniannotion of dialogue. One
ofBird-David'simportantachievementsis to show that
once we abandon the dualism ofnatureand society,ani-
mism acquires a new meaningwhich seems more fun-
damental and more ethnographicallyauthentic than
earlier,intellectualistperspectivesimplied. Extending
to the nonhumandomain the perspectiveof socially bi-
ased cognition (a perspectiveusually restrictedto the
world of conspecifics),she is able to rethinkanimism
as a ''conversation" with the environment-as a kind
of phatic communion in the Malinowskian sense. Ani-
mism, then, is just one more manifestationof a basic
human capacity,here extendedto the totalityofhuman
experience.
S841 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999
Bird-Davidsuggeststhat her perspectiveis "one now
needed in studiesofthe complexphenomenawhich Ty-
lor denoted as 'animism.'" She does not elaborate on
the "now," although she does indicate a connection
with "currentradical environmentaldiscourses." Simi-
lar themeshave, indeed,been developedwithincurrent
environmentalthought.Plumwood,forinstance,argues
fora "relationalaccount"(I99I:I4) ofhumansand the
environment,pointingout that such an approach ap-
plies "to caring for other species and for the natural
world as much as . . . to caringforour own species.'"
The practicalimplicationsofthe relationalperspective,
however,are a matterofsome debate.Forsome scholars
the notion of unbrokenwholeness-the Nayakan no-
tion of "we-ness"-is antitheticalto the idea of caring
forthe environment.One cannot care forsomething,it
is argued,unless it is separated fromoneself. On the
otherhand, the extendednotion of the embodied self-
of being a body and not simply having it-does not
seem to preclude the idea of bodily concern.And if for
many people the incorporationof the body into their
notion of self signifies intensive bodily care, why
should they neglect the environmentonce they reject
the dualism of natureand society?I wonderif Bird-Da-
vid's thesis of animism suggestsa particularstance on
this question.
Bird-David rightlyargues in her discussion of the
modernistperspectivethat "the most intriguingques-
tion is why and how the modernistprojectestrangedit-
selffromthe tendencyto animate things."She does not
pursue the issue but concludes with an ironic fable
about Descartes. It is important,however,to situate (to
"dividuate," if you like) the theoristswho have passed
on to us the conversationsof the past. Apparently,the
fragmenting of the medieval world and the otheringof
natureit entailedtook shape in the Renaissance period,
duringwhich the Western attitude to knowledge and
the environmentwas transformed. There alreadyexists
a massive literatureon this history.It seems that the
"anlthropocracy" (to borrowI. Panofsky'sterm)central
to the dualist,modernistprojectwas the cumulativere-
sult ofa seriesofeconomic and cognitivedevelopments
(see Palsson I995:3-5). In the process, the phenomena
labeled "animism" were suppressed,relegated to the
wild.
While Bird-David's characterizationof earlier writ-
ings is generallycorrect,I wQnderif it assumes more
uniformityin the literaturethan there actually is. In
I930, forinstance,Luria and Vygotskyattackedthe Ty-
loriannotion of animism. "This naive view," theysaid,
"has been abandoned long ago by psychology"(i992:
43). Instead they suggestedan emphasis on the "mate-
rial" constraintsand emotional reactionsof "primitive
man,' an emphasis which to some degree resonates
with Bird-David'sconcerns.Also, I have problemswith
the term "dividual" which Bird-Davidadopts to chal-
lenge modernindividualismand the intellectualistthe-
sis of animism. The meaning of the now-suspect En-
glish term "individual" has undergone fundamental
changes in the course of history.In the Middle Ages it
referredto an "indivisible" relational whole-some-
thingthatcannot be divided,like the unityof the Trin-
ity.As Gurevichargues(I992:297), in medievaltimes
"man thought of himself as an integral part of the
world.... His interrelationwith nature was so inten-
sive and thoroughthat he could not look at it from
without." Nowadays, in contrast,the conceptof the in-
dividual suggests the very opposite, namely, distinc-
tions and discontinuities.The changein the meaningof
the concept, Williams points out, "is a recordin lan-
guage of an extraordinary social and political history"
(1976:I33). Given this history,referencesto the "divid-
ual" personare not particularlyilluminating.If"dividu-
alism" existed in medieval Europe, it probablywas an
inversion of the relational view which Bird-David is
suggesting.
It would be wrong,however,to reduce the issue to
etymology.Bird-David,in my view, has not only con-
structedan eclectic and highlyusefultheoreticalframe-
work but also skilfullyapplied it to both the general
phenomenon of animism and her Nayakan ethnog-
raphy.
LAURA M. RIVAL
Eliot College, Departmentof Social Anthropology
and Sociology, Universityof Kent, Canterbury,Kent
CT2 7NS, England (L.M.Rival@iukc.ac.uk).28 Iv 98
Bird-David's call for revisiting animism is timely.
While challengingTylor's embrace of the Westernob-
jectivistview of reality,she rightlypoints to the con-
temporaryrelevanceof his seminal studyof "the belief
that life is producedby a spiritualforce." She opposes
Durkheimian, structuralist(Levi-Straussand Descola),
and cognitiveevolutionist(Guthrie)explanationsof an-
imism and offersan originalcontributionto the debate
by focusingon the sociality,religiousideas, and ritual
practices of egalitarian hunter-gatherers whose ten-
dency to attributelife to inanimate objects or mental
states to non-humansstems,she asserts,froma distinc-
tive "relational epistemology."
One ofthe greatestproblemswithTylor'sview ofani-
mism, accordingto Bird-David,is its monolithicchar-
acter.She arguesinsteadfora pluralityof animisms,on
the groundthat different belief systems conceptualise
"life," "non-living," and "human" in fundamentally
different ways. She goes on to show thatNayaka nature
spirits(devaru)and spiritpossession riteshave much in
common with those of the Hadza, Hill Pandaram,and
!Kung. Hunting-and-gathering populations seem to at-
tribute similar meanings to nature, life, and per-
sonhood. They do not dichotomise the person into
spirit and body or the environmentinto the physical
and the social but envisage instead a social environ-
ment based on the immediate, intimate,and engaged
experience of relatednessbetween "dividual" persons.
People like the Nayaka definea personas someone with
whom one shares.Spiritualforcesare treatedas persons
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" Revisited I S8s

broughtto lifewith whom space, things,actions, expe- cannot be adequately settledwithoutpayingserious at-
rience,and conversationscan be shared. tention to the mechanisms that connect the intuitive
I findBird-David'sthesis that the animisticbeliefsof assumptionsof everydaycognitionor "common sense"
egalitarianhunter-gatherers objectifyrelationsof shar- (as used by Atran i990) and the counterintuitiverepre-
ing insightful.In the same way as she was able to recog- sentationsthat make up the core of complex religious
nise somethingunique in the economic activities of beliefs such as those informingNayaka ritual perfor-
nomadic hunters,gatherers,and some swidden horti- mances(BoyerI994).
culturistswho "procure"ratherthanproduce,as well as
in theirsocial organisation(they"demand-share"rather
than exchange),she has now identifiedsomethingdis- ALAN R. SANDSTROM
tinctivein theircultures:the principlethat to relate is Departmentof Anthropology,Indiana University-
to know and that to bringto lifeis to impersonate.Fol- Purdue UniversityFort Wayne,210I Coliseum Blvd.
lowingthisprinciple,and dependingon the context,an- East, Fort Wayne,Ind., 4i6805,U.S.A. 5 iv 98
imals may be turnedinto mere objects,into people, or
into divinities. And when natural kinds or natural Bird-Davidis to be congratulatedforwritingon an in-
forces are "made alive" as persons, people relate to terestingtopic,a reevaluationofTylor's concept ofani-
them and communicate and socialise with them ex- mism. Unfortunately,in my view her postmodernist
actly as if theywere fellow human beings. stance robsthe articleofmuch ofits potentialvalue not
Unfortunately, the ethnographicmaterialshe cites in only in clarifyinganimism as an analyticalconceptbut
support of her thesis is not sufficientlydeveloped or also in evaluating anthropologicalcontributionsto an
clear (I foundthe examples of elephant devaruparticu- understandingof animistic thought.Although careful
larly obscure and ambiguous). Moreover, too little is to avoid complete dismissal of science, she apparently
said about local perceptionsand experiencesof trances rejectsits uniqueness as a way of knowing.
and possession by animal spiritsforthe readerto decide Bird-David discusses the work of Tylor, Durkheim,
whetherto agree or not with the authorabout the dis- and Levi-Straussas scientificor modernistbut can offer
tinctivenessofhunter-gatherer animisticperformances. nothingto replace it but an antiobjectivist,relational
I found even more problematicthe theoreticalground epistemologysupposedly practiced by the Nayaka of
on which Bird-Davidbases some ofher most perceptive southernIndia. She seems to propose a radical relativ-
ideas, forexample,the idea thatstones are givenlifeand ism in which each group's conceptions of personhood
personifiedas, when, and because of the desire to so- replace or at least stand beside scientificattemptsto
cialise with them. To reject Kennedy's distinctionbe- understandthis difficultaspect of culture. Bird-David
tween animation and anthropomorphisationon the uses Tylor's igth-centurywork as an example of how
groundthat Gibson's ecological psychologybetterex- science can lead researchersastray,but no contempo-
plains why the affordancesofnaturalobjects are not es- raryanthropologistfollows Tylor's programof cultural
sential propertiesbut context-dependent is not, in my evolution. It has been made obsolete by the very
view, satisfactory.Far fromsayingthat ethologistsfeel science Bird-David discounts. Moreover,she is forced
empathyfor,hence relate to, the animals they are ex- to admit that as empirical scientificresearch has in-
perimentingupon, Kennedypoints to the intrinsically creased knowledgeof the world's cultures the concept
anthropomorphic naturenot only of everydaylanguage ofanimismitselfhas falleninto disuse amongethnogra-
(which could simplybe brushedaside as a metaphoric phers.
property)but also of scientificthought.Scientists,like She attemptsto explain animisticthinkingsimplyby
all of us, and like the "primitives"Tylor was tryingto placing it in the context of the Nayaka worldview,in
understand,tend to ascribe feelingsand cognitivepro- which, not surprisingly, it makes complete sense. The
cesses to livingorganisms,especiallyhigherones. What Nayaka "talk" with superpersonsbecause theyhave an
concernsKennedy(I992:93-94) is that by thinking animistic worldview. But the question of what leads
about animals as if they had minds like ours-that is, people to develop such a worldviewin the firstplace is
as if they were conscious and self-aware,as if they not addressed,and so no real explanationof animism is
thought,and as if they had purposes and used mental offeredand no advance is made over the work of Hallo-
images-we confusefunctionsand causes and wrongly well. Is Bird-Davidimplyingthat Nayaka animism is
projectthe exclusivelyhuman mind-bodyproblemonto somehow naturaland thereforenot in need of explana-
otherspecies(Kennedyi992:i68). tion?
The question whyhumans tendto use human experi- She suggeststhatrelationalepistemologiescharacter-
ence to interpretbiological processes,in particularani- ize huntingand gatheringpeoples everywherebut shies
mal behaviour,is so fundamentalthat anthropologists away fromfurtherexplorationof this intriguingpropo-
cannot answer it without enteringinto dialogue with sition-undoubtedly because it suggests techno-envi-
other disciplines, including cognitive psychology. I ronmentalcausation, a concept fromcultural ecology
agreewithBird-Davidthatthe main issue at stake is the derivedfromthe scientifictraditionwithin anthropol-
attributionof life to the non-livingand how such attri- ogy. The interestinghypothesisthat animism may be
butionrelatesto the conferrring ofhuman traitson non- an extension of human cognitiveskills to nonhuman
humanentities(see RivalI998: 20-27). Butthematter "persons" remains largelyunexplored. Nowhere is it
S86 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,FebruaryI999

made clear how anthropologistscould use the notion of reason that they are evaluated by distinctcriteria.Sci-
a relational epistemology to generate new or better ence is a way ofpubliclypresentingand evaluatingevi-
knowledge. dence and contains withinits practicea self-correcting
Accordingto Bird-David,the Nayaka both do and do mechanism that addressesthe critiquesleveled at it by
not distinguishthe body fromthe spirit,the subjective postmodernistslike Bird-David. The spectacular suc-
from the objective, environmentfrom behavior, the cesses of scientific anthropologyin expanding our
physical fromthe psychical, ritual frompractice,and knowledge of the human condition,of "making one's
humans fromthe physicalworldas well as animals,but awareness of one's environmentand one's self finer,
these distinctions and other modernist assumptions broader,deeper, [and] richer,"since the days of Tylor
have been unthinkinglyimposed on themby purveyors should be acknowledgedbeforebeing replaced by the
of science. Somehow the Nayaka do not dichotomize relativistic,antiobjectivistapproach suggestedin this
like modernistsbut instead view apparentopposites as article.
nested within each other,part of an overall "we-ness"
that at the same time retains internaldifferentiation.
What can thismean? If,as statedthroughoutthe article,
the Nayaka concept of devaru serves primarilyto con- Reply
vey informationabout the social and natural worlds,
Bird-Davidshould be able to specifywhat information
is being conveyed.The implicationis that beliefin de- NURIT BIRD-DAVID
varuunderscoreshuman beings'meaningfulinteraction Haifa,Israel.27 VI 98
with objects, animals, and otherhumans. I do not see
how this analysis representsan advance over scientific Critical or supportive,the commentatorshave taken a
anthropology. close interestin this paper's thesis, and I appreciate
The fourstoriesdiscussed by Bird-Davidpresentpre- theirreciprocityforthe workI put intowritingit. I shall
cious little ethnographicevidence for the interpreta- firstaddress critiquesand misunderstandingsand then
tions of Nayaka personhood,and the analysis demon- the suggestionsofferedby commentatorsforpursuing
strates no clear improvementover the work of Levi- the argumentfurther.
Strauss and Durkheim. In addition,she speaks forthe "Science" is needlessly defendedby Sandstrom.The
Nayaka as iftheywere of one mind on this complex is- spectacular achievements of science are not under-
sue. Does no one among them contest the accepted mined at all. A graduatein economics and mathemat-
view? That Nayaka conceptionsofthe personare differ- ics, I have myselfworkedwith "hard" data in the objec-
ent fromWesternconceptionsposes no threatto scien- tivist traditionand continue to do so whenever it is
tificanthropology.In fact,the differencesare to be ex- possible and advantageous. Yet, powerfulas it is, the
pected. Furthermore,scientificanthropologyneed not scientificway is neithergood forstudyingeverything
be blind to such otherperspectives.To identifyuncon- nor the only way of studying everything.This-no
scious assumptionsthat obstructanalysis is to practice more,no less-is the broadestframewithinwhich the
good science and does not justifythe call forits equa- argumentcan be situated. The paper does not "reject
tion with alternativeways of knowing.What Bird-Da- [science's]uniqueness as a way of knowing"but on the
vid demonstratesin discussingearlierapproachesto an- contrarystresses its being unique among other ways,
imism is the continuous subversionof orthodoxythat which makes it more-not less-intriguing for study
is a primarystrengthof the scientificapproach to the (comparative,sociological, and historical)and precious
problem of knowledge. Animism is essentially a reli- as a studytool. PresentingNayaka animistic practices
gious perspective,and the attempthere to blur the dif- as a way of knowingis not to "blur the differencebe-
ferencebetween religious and scientificknowledge is tween religiousand scientificknowledge"but ratherto
not only shortsighted but dangerous.Is Bird-Davidwill- rescue these practicesfromour pigeon-hole"religion,"
ing to admit creationistassertions(or otherfaith-based in which theywere formerlyplaced.
beliefs)on an equal footingwith scientificknowledge? The analytic use of dualisms and dichotomies is
Few contemporaryanthropologistswould deny that forcefullydefendedby Viveiros de Castro. I argue that
differingcultural systems produce equally authentic in animistic perceptions of the environmentopposi-
ways ofbeinghuman and manydifferent ways ofknow- tions are of secondaryimportance.Therefore,in order
ing. This is a fundamentalinsightderivingfromscien- to interpret,to tryto get closer to, and to make sense
tificanthropologyearlyin this century.The Nayaka, for of theirperspectives,the language of dualisms and di-
example, appear to have a complex epistemologybased chotomies is an obstacle. In no way does this imply
on interactionand transaction.However, it would be "dislike fordualisms and dichotomies" in general.In-
foolish to deny the power of science to produce inter- deed, to view this culture within a broaderframeand
subjectiveknowledgeofhigh validityand reliabilityby tryto compareit with othercultures-which is equally
placing it on an equal footingwith all otherapproaches partofthe anthropologist'swork-I myselfuse dichoto-
to the problemof knowledge.Etic formulationsdo not mies, includingthe one between "a dichotomousmod-
invalidate emic systems of knowledge for the simple ernist epistemologyand a non-dichotomousrelational
 BIRD-DAVID "Animism" Revisited I S87

one." The latter dichotomyis made within our own our ordinarydistinctionsto focus our attentionnot
knowledge-producingpractices, which favor knowing upon individual objects and theircasual connec-
throughdichotomies.Vivierosde Castro confuseslocal tions but upon the relationsbetween things,the
and students'perspectives,while a pluralityofperspec- dazwischen (there-in-between).
tives and ways ofknowingdemandskeepingthemsepa-
ratein mind and carefullyshiftingbetweenthemto suit I startedan earlydraftwith this excerptas the epigraph
contextand purpose. but later decided to give Nayaka words this honor.
Similarly,Viveiros de Castro rises to the defenseof I do not share Hornborg'sview that to situate the ar-
"modernistunderstandings"against an imaginary"en- gument within the anthropologicaldiscussion of ani-
emy." I do not "reject modernistunderstandings"to- mism is parochial.The mission and powerofanthropol-
tally, only previous modernistunderstandingsof ani- ogy,in my view, lie in exploring"wide traditions"in
mistic practices that involve implicit a priori theirmultiplelocal embeddednesses,avoidinggrandre-
attributionofmodernistideas of "nature" and "person" ifications.This includes in this case, studyinghow an-
to animistic people. He argues that while rejecting thropologistsas modernistagentstryto understandani-
"modernistunderstandings"I address"quintessentially mism. Hornborg concludes from the argumentas it
modernist"questions of epistemology,but modernity stands that it addresses"nothingless than the problem
has no monopoly over such questions. Other peoples of modernityitself,"which surelyspeaks forsufficient
concernthemselveswith ways of knowing,albeit with effectiveness.
(and in) other ways. JohnDewey and ArthurBentley The paperfocuseson Nayaka while expandingits ho-
(I949:5o) arguedthat"knowings arealwaysand every- rizons to hunter-gatherers (or egalitarianhunter-gather-
where inseparablefromthe knowns." If we accept this, ers, accordingto Rival). "Hunter-gatherers"as a cate-
we cannot separateontologyfromepistemologyin any gory has its roots in cultural ecology, where it was
successfulway at all. Viveirosde Castro rightlyempha- originallyconceptualized in opposition to horticultur-
sizes that forhunter-gatherers animism is an ontology. alists, pastoralists,and peasants. However, the expres-
Yet it is not ontologyalone, and, moreover,we cannot sion is used nowadays in softerways. We know that
describeit as just an ontology.To describe,say,kindsof thereare no society-things spreadacross the world fall-
devaru,wheretheylive, and what theyare like without ing neatly into this or that kind of society,each with
describinghow Nayaka get to know them is not to its own exclusive attributes.There are diverseparticu-
describe their ontology freed from modernist con- lar communities (Nayaka, !Kung,Hill Pandaram,Pin-
cerns with epistemology.Rather,it is to describetheir tupi, Hadza) among which we ethnographers, by com-
ontologycrossedwith our favoredepistemology,which paringour studies,perceivecommon features."Hunter-
claims disengagementofknown,knower,and knowing. gatherers"is a name, our name, by which formultiple
My intentionwas to presentNayaka animisticprac- reasons (historical,ideological, phenomenological)we
tices as a specific cultural expression of a relational referto the pluralityof these specific groups. To say
epistemology,itselfa generalhuman experience.If the that "hunter-gatherers normalize sharingwith fellow
point is not made clearlyenough,Hornborgstressesit persons" is not to say thatsharingis absent in otherso-
further.Relational epistemologyhas of course been ex- cieties, as Viveiros de Castro would have it, but only
pressedin many otherspecificcultural-historical ways, that the pluralityof specificcommunitieswe know as
notablyin scholarlycritiques of Cartesian objectivism hunter-gatherers normalizes sharing.
going back two centuries.In their comments, Morris Enoughof the theoreticaland ethnographicsettingof
and Hornborg effectivelygive these traditionsmore the argument;the argumentitselfis twofold,a point
space than I could in a paper focusing on animism. lost on some commentators.Relational epistemology
However,farfromignoringthese traditions,I could not enjoys authorityin Nayaka culture. Concurrently(as
have writtenthe paper withoutthem. To some degree, Ingold clearlysums it up), "within the contextof mod-
nothingbut sensitivitiescultivatedby these traditions ernstateand its political,economic,and educationalin-
of thoughtcould have enabled me to take a freshview stitutions,relationalways of knowinghave lost much
of Nayaka animistic practicesby providingan alterna- of theirauthority.But they continue to operate none-
tive startingpoint forthe analysis. I foundMartin Bu- theless and remain deeply embeddedin the experience
ber's "I-Thou" concept particularlyinsightful,a con- of everydaylife." Hornborgsees a contradictionwhere
cept which his studentFriedman(I995:57) summed up thereis none (betweenthe concludingassumptionthat
in these words: the modernist project estrangeditself from the ten-
dencyto animate thingsand the earlierobservationthat
I-Thou is the primaryword of relation.It is charac- we do animate, forexample, computersand cars). The
terisedby mutuality,directness,presentness,inten- issue is one ofauthority-whetherauthorityis givento
sity,and ineffability.Althoughit is only within this relational ways of knowing (how, where, when, how
relationthat personalityand the personal reallyex- much, by whom, etc.) in particular cultures/times/
ist, the Thou of the I-Thou is not limited to men places. The paper suggests that these ways rank very
but may include animals, trees,objects of nature high in certain hunter-gatherers' cultures,where they
and God.... I-Thou ... cut[s] across the lines of constitute the mainstream dogma, lying at the core-
S88 I CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Supplement,February1999

junction of religious, economic, and social life. This The question is what a people becomes attentiveto and
cannot be said formodernsocieties, althoughpeople in elaborateson and throughwhat culturalpractices.
them do animate. At the same time, hunter-gatherers We must not muddle (i) generalclaims ("this is how
are not exoticizedby thisargument,which ratherdraws human beings are"), claims which reinforceor change
a complex patternof common featuresand differences our structure of attention, (2) ethnographic claims
between them and us. ("this is how for the X-people human beings are"),
Connected with the argumentthat Nayaka give au- claims about others' structuresof attention,and (3) re-
thorityto relationalways ofknowing,anotherhas been flexive claims ("this is how human beings are forus,
made concerning"otherness." I could not agree more only by knowing and compensatingforwhich can we
with Viveiros de Castro's point that "others are 'other' startperceivingwhat theyare forthe X-people"),claims
preciselybecause theyhave other 'others.'" However, which expose alternativeviews withoutpredicatingthe
I thinkhe is unwilling to pursue the point farenough truth of one and the falsity of the other. Radcliffe-
and accept the Nayaka "other" for an other "other," Brown's statement(cited by Morris as an example of
perhapsbecause, limitedby space, I did not sufficiently early concern with the "dividual") is of the firstkind,
develop the point. Anthropologistsusually concern arguingthat human beings are constitutiveof relation-
themselveswith "other" as different and separate and ships to which we anthropologistsshould be attentive.
in some cases to define"Us" as "not Them." Nayaka (Note, however,that a "relationship,"reifiedand con-
give authority to another "other," an "other" also structed as an entity itself, is differentfrom "relat-
deeply embedded in our experience of everydaylife edness," meaning two beings/thingsmutually respon-
(though enjoying little authority),an "other" as in sive to each other.) Ingold (e.g., i996) interestingly
"each other" and "this hand, and the other"-a part of makes all three claims togetherin exposing the mod-
a pair,existingbeside, in proximity,in interaction,and ernists'attentionstructureand thatof the hunter-gath-
in interexchangewith one. "Other" is in the firstcase erersand arguingthat we ourselves should shiftto the
a mental construct,an object of reflection,and in the latter,which is how human beings reallyare. Marriott
second case a fellow-member withwhom one lives. "To and Inden, Strathern,and I make claims of the third
other" is in the firstcase to constructsomeone as so- kind. Assuming predominant contemporaryWestern
cially separate,somethingelse, and in the second case attentivenessto humans as individualisticindividuals
to drawhim or herinto mutuality.The Nayaka's princi- ("bounded by the skin"), we depict other attention
pal way of"othering"makes the formerkind of "other" structures(Indian, Melanesian, and hunter-gatherers')
scarce in theirculture.Piccacio constitutethe main ex- by the compensatoryuse of the "dividual" notion. We
ceptionI can thinkof.These are the souls ofpeople who show different dividuals-this is not a fault,as Viveiros
died alone in the forestby accident and have not yet de Castro intimates,but preciselythe object-each as-
been helped by ritualto coalesce with others(predeces- sociated with a differenttype of social relations: the
sors, ancestors, and devaru). It is believed that they Melanesians separating-while-connecting and the Nay-
roam the forestand are dangerous.In the pandalu they aka absorbing,as Viveiros de Castro nicely contrasts
are played by two male actors,dressedup grotesquely them. In harmonywith Hornborg'scomment that ob-
as male and female,who in theiracts reversenormal jectivist epistemologyis itselfperformativeat another
socializing-grabbing food from each other, charging logical level, it may be said thatin a sense the Western
bystanderswith sticks,etc., to the delightand laughter "individual" is another,fourth,"dividual" associated
ofthe spectators.The contrastbetweensuch an "other" with social relationscenteredon alienation.
and the devaru-other, who is drawninto conversations Counterintuitiveto our own perception,the argu-
and sharing,is telling. ment (neatly summed up by Viveiros de Castro) that
The use of the "dividual" notion attractedvarious "devaru are persons insofaras they engage in relation-
comments.Interestingis Pa'lsson's on the fundamental ships with people, ratherthan the otherway around,"
change of the term"individual" fromthe Middle Ages has been well accepted, but occasional slips back into
(indivisiblkfromthe world) to the present(indivisible our intuitions have generated unnecessary concerns.
part of a divisibleworld).Ha4 the formerbeen the cur- For example, Rival has several times got the argument
rentmeaning,therewould have been no need to intro- reversed(e.g.,"when naturalkinds or naturalforcesare
duce the notion ofthe "dividual," which I use-as, I be- 'made alive' as persons, people relate to them," or
lieve, Marriottand Inden and Stratherndid-simply to "stones are given life and personifiedas, when, and be-
reduce the labor of gettingto understandanothersense cause of the desire to socialize with them"), and it is
of person in the shadow of the contemporary"individ- this reversalthathas generatedher dissatisfactionwith
ual." Morrismisreadsthe argumentfora claim of "dis- the way I read Kennedy'swork.Similarly,Hornborgfor-
covery"ofa phenomenological"dividual" when it is an gets this point when he discusses fetishismversus ani-
inquiryinto the attentionstructurethat causes a Nay- mism. The distinctionhe suggestsbetween the anima-
aka to pick up this and not anotheraspect of the phe- tion of living things (animism) and that of non-living
nomenologicalhuman being. Of course,as Morrissays, things (fetishism)is, all over again, a distinctionbe-
human beingsare bothrelationaland "actual entitiesor tween thingsin termsofwhat each inherentlyis rather
unities"; thereis no refutingthisor thatit has longbeen than in termsof relatednesses(or dazwischen). Fetish-
established.(Human beingsare also manyotherthings.) ism, rather,involves constructingconcepts and rela-
 BIRD -DAVID Animism" Revisited I S89

tions as things,then(withanthropomorphism) attribut- consistentqualities transcendingtime, space, and the

ing human qualities to them,then engagingwith them dynamics of actual relationships.In the Nayaka case,
as with persons. Animism (as I conceptualize it) in- hills were personifiedas grandparents.But "grandpar-
volves responsivelyengagingwith beings/things,then ents" were beingsone socially interactedwith,arguing,
perceivingthem as persons. negotiating,etc. In the firstcase, "mother"was used as
Several ethnographicqueries have been raised by Vi- a metaphor,and the animistic projectinvolved "a sys-
veiros de Castro, in supportof his general critique,of (BurkeI972:I72),
temofcorrespondences" parallelsbe-
which forlack of space I respondto only two. He reads tween humans and nonhumans,and thereforea height-
into Nayaka culture an oppositionhe sees as unavoid- ened awareness of theirseparation.In the second case,
able between"superpersons"and human persons,while "grandparent"was used as a synecdoche;the animistic
Nayaka, I suggest,primarilyperceive both as persons projectinvolved-and heightened-interconnectedness
and the superpersonas a person-plus,a person like between humans and theirenvironment.
the human but with somethingadded. He sees a con- Last but not least is the issue ofanimism's universal-
tradictionbetween the descriptionof some devaru as ity: Ingold convinces me that theoriesof the evolution
"devaru in general" and the argumentfor their par- of social intelligenceare inadequate forexploringthis
ticularistic,event-derivednature,which may be due to question. I welcome his theoryas one to workwith fur-
the awkwardnessofmy expression"devaru in general." ther: "Human beings everywhereperceive their envi-
Appearancesin the pandalu are always particular:each ronmentin the responsivemode, not because of innate
is enacted by a particular performerat a particular cognitivepredispositionbut because to perceive at all
time/place. As they come and engage with Nayaka theymust alreadybe situatedin a worldand committed
in the pandalu, they are devaru,thoughin some cases to the relationshipsthis entails."
(the ones I call "devaru in general") the particularap-
pearances are not immediately recognized as this or
that particular devaru by habitual ways of engaging
with Nayaka (e.g., gestures and sayings) remembered
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