This article has two objectives. In the first part, I present a critical overview of the extensive anthropological literature that may be deemed “phenomenological.” Following this critique, which is built up around a classification into four different varieties of phenomenological anthropology, I discuss the relationship between phenomenological anthropology and the ontological turn (OT). Contrary to received wisdom within the anthropological discipline, I suggest that OT has several things in common with the phenomenological project. For the same reason, I argue, it (...) is not accurate to posit OT and phenomenology as opposing or antagonistic projects, as they are often depicted among critics and advocates of OT alike. On the contrary, I go as far as suggesting, OT may be understood as one of the most concerted attempts anthropology has produced to realize a distinctly anthropological version of Husserl’s method of phenomenological bracketing, namely what could be called the ontological epoché. (shrink)

This article begins by examining the status of “difference” in representations of perspectivist cosmologies, which are themselves often represented as radically different to Euro-American cosmologi...

Este artículo propone la necesidad de realizar una revisión teórica sobre la actual asunción epistemológica que establece a la dicotomía naturaleza-sociedad como piedra angular de una cosmovisión amplia para contextos occidentales. Se rebaten aquellas perspectivas antropológicas que dan por sentado que, en estos espacios, de manera genérica y sin matices, la práctica social y las ideas no se construyen de forma vinculada al medio, cayendo bajo la creencia de que la naturaleza existe ajena a la voluntad humana. Discutiremos el ingenuo (...) esencialismo etnológico que posiciona al naturalismo como modelo central de la cosmovisión socio-europea, el cual es caracterizado por patrones dualistas que han permitido configurar, al mismo tiempo y por contraposición a este, paradigmas monistas de relaciones socioecológicas en otras partes del mundo. (shrink)

What do we mean when we refer to world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does world mean for an ethnographer or an anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but do we really know what we mean by these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, and how these shed light on the (...) relationship between humans and the world in the midst of which they find themselves. As Pina-Cabral shows, recent decades have seen important shifts in the way we relate human thought to human embodiment—the relation between how we think and what we are. The book proposes a novel approach to the human condition: an anthropological outlook that is centered around the notions of personhood and sociality. Through a rich confrontation with ethnographic and historical material, this work contributes to the ongoing task of overcoming the theoretical constraints that have hindered anthropological thinking over the past century. (shrink)