ABSTRACT
Animism refers to ontologies or worldviews which assign agency and personhood to human and non-human beings alike. Recent years have seen a revival of this concept in anthropology, where it is now discussed as an alternative to modern-Western naturalistic notions of human-environment relations.
Based on original fieldwork, this book presents a number of case studies of animism from insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and offers a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon – its diversity and underlying commonalities and its resilience in the face of powerful forces of change. Critically engaging with the current standard notion of animism, based on hunter-gatherer and horticulturalist societies in other regions, it examines the roles of life forces, souls and spirits in local cosmologies and indigenous religion. It proposes an expansion of the concept to societies featuring mixed farming, sacrifice and hierarchy and explores the question of how non-human agents are created through acts of attention and communication, touching upon the relationship between animist ontologies, world religion, and the state.
Shedding new light on Southeast Asian religious ethnographic research, the book is a significant contribution to anthropological theory and the revitalization of the concept of animism in the humanities and social sciences.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|52 pages
Introductory
part II|102 pages
Case Studies – Mainland and the Philippines
chapter 3|18 pages
Seeing and Knowing
chapter 5|23 pages
Animism and the Hunter's Dilemma
chapter 6|24 pages
Wrestling with Spirits, Escaping the State
part III|122 pages
Case Studies – Insular Southeast Asia
chapter 9|24 pages
The Dynamics of the Cosmic Conversation
chapter 11|17 pages
Boundaries of Humanity
part IV|34 pages
Concluding