ABSTRACT
This chapter sheds some light on relationship between body and consciousness by drawing on ethnographic material from the Chewong, a hunting, gathering and shifting cultivating group of people in the Malaysian rainforest. It considers the author's interpretation of Chewong animism with reference to some recent contributions to the topic, in particular those made by Descola and Viveiros de Castro. As Chewong sociality extends beyond humans into the wider worlds of consciousness, practice is never neutral, but embedded in and constituted upon ontological and cosmological understanding that emphasize the mutuality of relations. The chapter talks about person and personhood and speculated about the meaning of consciousness as it was manifested throughout the animated forest environment in which the Chewong lived. It examines in some detail what Chewong understanding of metamorphosis entails and asks how this affects personhood and sociality. The chapter uses Chewong cosmo-rules as sources for my interpretation of the relationship between humans and non-human conscious beings in their environment.
