Abstract
We address the cultural and socio-religious role of animism by focusing on different forms of human-tree relationship in distinct religious systems. Rather than drawing on explanations that concentrate on human actions, meanings, and interpretations of animism, such as those informed by representational, interpretive, and hermeneutic approaches to human thought and practice, we offer to explore the relationships between humans and those who could be defined as “non-human subjects”. In this panel we offer new approaches to go beyond the “ontological turn” in the study of animism that challenged the category of “subjects” as humans. The ontological turn led scholars to explore the definition of “non-humans” subjects, especially plants and trees, as possessing their own self, mind and immanent agency. We wish to expand on this and examine the ways by which the relationships with them are forged, and the field of interactions between human and vegetal subjects that such relationships open. This will enable to detect the interpersonal dimension that animism establishes between society and the natural environment. Most of the scholarship about animism focused on beliefs in nature spirits as a static system. We wish to go beyond such premise and examine animism as a religious experience which offers opportunities of change. Natural subjects thus function as social agents, which we term here “new challenges in the study of animism”. By forging relationships with trees, we suggest, society opens ways to make its structures dynamic and flexible.
Presenters
Eliran AraziPhD candidate, Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales\Hebrew University of Jerusalem, France Miguel Astor-Aguilera
Professor, Arizona State University, United Kingdom Elizabeth Oriel
Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark Youval Rotman
Professor, Jewish History, Tel Aviv University, Israel Guido Sprenger
Professor, Institute of Anthropology, Heidelberg University, Germany Nurit Stadler
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Religion in the Public Sphere: From the Ancient Years to the Post-Modern Era
KEYWORDS
Animism, Humans, Trees, Environment
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