I am going to be posting a series of ideas about neo-animism and the Anthropocene.
Neo-Animism
Descola (2013) and others (de Castro, 1998; Halbmayer, 2012; Kohn 2013; Rival, 2012; Sprenger, 2021) help us develop a neo-animist ontology. The foundation of neo-animist ontology lies in animist ontology, which is common among globally distributed human populations living primarily through foraging. This way of life dominated most of human history (Sahlins, 1972). On the other hand, neo-animism coalesces at the intersection of deep ecology, ecofeminism, and anthropological studies of ontology (de Castro, 1998; Descola, 2013; Drengson et al., 2011; Oksala, 2018; Salleh, 1984; Sprenger, 2021). Neo-animist thought adopts the animist axiom that circulation of resources (information, energy, and materials) is definitional of life. However, neo-animist thought differs in three ways from animist thought. First, unlike animist thought, neo-animist thought does not attribute transcendent forms of being, i.e., souls, to human and non-human actors. Second, neo-animist thinking acknowledges scientific approaches to understanding non-human actors’ modes of communication, resource integration, and service exchange. Third, neo-animists accept that some animals and plants are “social beings, endowed with interiority and faculties of understanding” (Descola, 2013, 352), but disagrees with animist thought that animal and plant selves and societies are “similar to those of humans” (Ibid).
Neo-Animism & Selfhood
Neo-animism agrees that all living beings have selves, although radically different physical bodies produce these selves. Thus, neo-animism rejects the nature-culture (human) dichotomy, and thus axiomatically “flattens” distinctions between humans, animals, and other members of the biotic community. In contrast to economics generally and marketing specifically, neo-animism proposes to bring the interests of animals and other members of the biotic into consideration within relational ecosystems. The concept of selfhood in neo-snidm refers to the capacity to communicate and exchange resources. The more complex selves are, the more they exhibit capacities for intentional communication, resource recycling, integration, and service exchange. Relational cocreation is inherent in neo-animist ideas of selfhood, as selfhood depends on actors displaying the capacity to “be with others, share a place with them, and responsibly engage with them” within local ecosystems (Bird-David, 2006, 43). Human and other-than-human actors “become themselves through experience, interaction and discourse” (Hill, 2011, 408; Sprenger, 2017). Social acts, especially transitive resource circulation relationships, define an animate being as a person, via a social life emergent from these relationships (Bird-David, 2006; Rival, 2012; Hill, 2011). A neo-animist approach to resource exchange and value cocreation explicitly emphasizes the role of non-humans as actors in ecosystems.
mktganthropology 