Part IV - DWELLING WITH(OUT) THINGS

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Previous sections have approached one major aspect of animism's contribution or challenge to the dichotomy “nature–culture”. They have illustrated various ways in which other-than-human species (especially animals) can be understood to be cultural or to live culturally. Having revisited the term “totemism” as a subspecies of animism in which different species cooperate in local, mutually beneficial clans, the chapters in Part IV are concerned with versions of what can be called “fetishism”. They debate the animation, agency or relational liveliness of things, especially “made things”.

Considering what it might mean to “be alive to a world without objects” Tim Ingold advances his always provocative thinking about the nature of the world. He builds on his definition of animism as “a way not of thinking about the world but of being alive to it, characterised by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is in perpetual flux, never the same from one moment to the next” (Ingold 2006: 10). This being so, Ingold seeks to overthrow the dominant “hylomorphic” model of the relation of matter (hyle) and form (morphe) in which matter is deemed inert until formed into something cultural and, therefore, alive and meaningful. His objection to the objectification of things is an excellent place to rethink human-thing relations.