VIGH - Crítica A Descola

Article
Anthropological Theory
2014, Vol. 14(1) 4973
From essence back to ! The Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permissions:
existence: Anthropology sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1463499614524401
beyond the ontological ant.sagepub.com
turn
Henrik Erdman Vigh
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
David Brehm Sausdal

Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
This article takes a critical look at the ontological turn. Illuminating the turns theor-
etical point of departure, and clarifying its anthropological implications, the article
argues that two key problems arise if the theory is to be taken at face value. It
points, first of all, to the difficulty in studying radical alterity, in the manner proposed
by the new understanding of ontology within anthropology. If anthropology is, as the
ontological turn advocates, not a study of multiple world-views but of essentially
different worlds altogether, how, we ask, does one approach this methodologically?
Put in other words, if we really believe in radically essential, fundamental ontological
difference with what registers can we, then, conceive and describe ontological others in
ways that do them ethnographic justice? Secondly, the article ponders the issues of
radical essentialism and immanence advocated by the ontological turn, and shows how
an anthropological endeavour that advocates incommensurable difference, as an ana-
lytical point of departure, may be problematic in relation to the impact that anthropol-
ogy has outside academia. As history has so vividly shown us, anthropological
constructions of radical alterity and ontological difference offer themselves, in social
terms, all too easily to political constructions of Otherness.
Keywords
C/culture, essentialism, existence, objectification, ontology, world(view)s
Corresponding author:
Henrik Erdman Vigh, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, ster Farigmagsgade 5,
Copenhagen 1358, Denmark.
Email: hv@anthro.ku.dk
Downloaded from ant.sagepub.com at HOWARD UNIV UNDERGRAD LIBRARY on February 18, 2015
50 Anthropological Theory 14(1)
Introduction
Over the last decade or so, the notion of ontology has gained new prominence
within anthropology and related disciplines. In an amalgamation of in vogue the-
orists, such as Labour, Deleuze, and Viveiros de Castro, a body of theory has
emerged that has made it fashionable to positively argue for distinct and incom-
mensurable worlds, and for the merit of reintroducing ideas of radical alterity and
essentialism into anthropology (cf. Henare et al., 2007: 2; Holbraad, 2012: 18.;
Pedersen, 2012: 4). Within this ontological turn, people, perspectives, ideas and
entities are, we are told, not to be understood as merely culturally or socially
dierentiated from one another, but also dierent-in-being; not alter as in alter-
native but as in radical alter ontologically dierent in core and kind. By focusing
on ontology, the turn thus proposes a multi-realist perspective, which, ideally, will
allow anthropologists the possibility of understanding otherness without privile-
ging an occidental (Euro-American ontological) perspective. The ontological turn
strives, thus, to grasp dierence in a manner that truly recognizes i.e. both per-
ceives and accepts alterity and thereby manages to do it ethnographic justice.
The ontological turn is, in this respect, intriguing. Not only does it forcefully
argue for the existence of real, distinct otherness, somehow waiting to be found, it
also privileges anthropology as a discipline that holds the key to understanding the
world in all its multiplicity, and positions the anthropologist as the very intellectual
that is able to access and move between these many incommensurable realities and
theorize the insights gained. The perspective is, accordingly, not only presented as
an innovative analytical position but also as a counterweight to the last 20 years of
nervous post-modern reexivity and epistemological uncertainty within anthropol-
ogy, as it bestows ontological certitude upon a discipline otherwise characterized by
a radical lack of it.
By being simultaneously ethnographically grounded, theoretically playful and
inter-disciplinarily potent, the ontological turn has appealed to and been embraced
by signicant parts of the anthropological community. It has led to some interest-
ing monographs (see Pedersen, 2011; Holbraad, 2012; Kohn, 2013, as the most
obvious examples), and ontology is quickly becoming one of the more popular
terms within the discipline, used to designate everything from ideas, to concepts,
things, groups and peoples.1 Yet, despite its popularity, there is a woeful lack of
critical scrutiny of the ontological turn.2 The advocates of the concept are full of
praise for its merits, but surprisingly few people have focused more fully on its pros
and cons. This article aims to ll this gap by querying the current popularity of the
ontological turn within anthropology and reecting on its positive and negative
consequences.
Immanence and effect

Though this article constitutes a critique of the ontological turn and its
implications, it stays loyal to its spirit by making use of the turns analytical
Vigh and Sausdal 51
modus operandi. By conating the ontic and the ontological, the turn positions
itself as anti-logocentric. What is has no external point of reference, which
means that its meaning should not be sought outside itself but essentially in the
thing itself.
In order to do the ontological turn justice we will, then, seek to understand the
ontological turn in precisely the same way that the theory proposes that anthro-
pologists should conduct their analyses in general. This means, rst of all, taking
what is stated at face value: Things are what they are, the proponents of the
ontological turn state (Henare et al., 2007: 7). This ontic, rather than ontological,
premise is meant to be recursive, and not merely tautological. It is used to specify
that we need to approach our ethnographical data without presuming that they
signify, represent, or stand for something other than what they purport to be, i.e. to
see them as immanence rather than transcendence. Secondly, the article envisages
the consequences that the ontological turns ideas have for the discipline, as well as
the world that they enter into. Mirroring the turns Latourian tendencies we will
look at the eects that the ontological turn generates rather than the (undoubtedly
noble) intentions behind it (cf. Leach, 2007: 169).
It should be made clear from the start that our criticism is not directed at the
ontological turns focus on non-human beings, things or concepts but rather at its
concomitant view of people. There is, as we shall see, a common conceptual slip-
page within the ontological turn, whereby the perceived ontological nature of
things is transferred implicitly or explicitly onto groups and people, consequently
attening social worlds. The article does not, in other words, oer a general cri-
tique of the notion of ontology. It does not engage in a for or against debate of the
concept, which strikes us as being slightly absurd, but looks at the so-called onto-
logical turn as a specic body of theory that seeks to describe what ontologies are
and how being should be studied. In doing so, the article dwells on the signicance
of the turn within the discipline of anthropology and, not least, its wider eects
and potential consequences. More specically, the article progresses by looking at
the primary theoretical points of departure within the ontological turn; the discip-
linary ambitions and methodological complications that dene it; and, as said, its
academic and political implications. While we admire the intellectual ambition and
disciplinary enthusiasm of its proponents, we are less enthusiastic about its meth-
odological and theoretical arguments and their ramications.
Anthropology, ontology and post-humanism

Ontology and the study of being have a long history within anthropology. Ideas
of what is and how to be have constituted valuable elds of investigation. Most
notably, Kapferers work on Australian and Sinhalese nationalism (1988) and
Jacksons work on social being (1989) stand as fruitful and enlightening examples
of the contribution that the perspective on being has made. Though theorizing
and illuminating ontology, both of the above works have, however, a humanistic
anchoring which distinguishes them from the current ontological turn. The notion
of social being is, in Jacksons work, approached with clear emphases on the rela-
tional, inter-subjective and interactional, and grounded in an encompassing
humanism. Similarly, working with a soft post-Heiddeggerian notion of ontology
(see Keane, 2013), Kapferer uses the concept to illuminate politically, historically
and socially situated being. Both authors, thus, beautifully describe and explain the
manifold of being-in-the-world as humans seek to grasp and anchor the way they
are thrown into existence.
The humanism of these earlier debates and perspectives stands in direct oppos-
ition to the current ontological turn. Where the former captures dierence within a
common humanity, the latter moves toward a post-human and post-social inves-
tigation of separate worlds and realities. There is, in the ontological turn, not one
nature (human) and many cultures (people), but many worlds of separate and
incommensurable ontologies, or multiple natures, as Viveiros de Castro terms it
(1998, 2003, 2011). Arguing against a notion of shared humanity, the ontological
turn can thus be seen as part of a larger trend in non-representational theory and
philosophical post-humanism (Hinchlie, 1999; Miah, 2007; Whatmore, 2004;
Haraway, 2004; Latour, 2007). It inscribes itself into a body of theory that is
focused on rethinking the human as well as the social within the social sciences,
and challenges the assumptions that empirical material can or should be under-
stood in relation to ulterior causes, hidden forces or related to overarching spheres
of commonality such as, for example, humanity.
What denes the turn, proclaimed in the ontological turn, is, accordingly, not
the use of the concept of ontology, with its insistence on taking the eld seriously
(as if others do not), its focus on things/materiality, animals, spirits and other non-
human forms, and its desire to study people through their own conceptual universe.
In fact, all of the above are common aspects of anthropology and go back to the
beginnings of the discipline. The main propositions within the ontological turn are
classical anthropological virtues. What sets the turn apart is its fondness for the
adjective radical and its ensuing call for radical essentialism and post-humanism.3
Just as concepts and things cannot be understood through reference to ulterior
spheres of meaning, but should be researched in terms of what they are in situ, so
people and their endeavours, the ontological turn advocates, should not be under-
stood through an underlying, generic notion of what it is to be human or through
reference to social parameters; thus, it mirrors Haraways Latourian paraphrase
we have never been human (2004: 2). The after, in the post-human dimensions, is
a move away from human dierences as sociocultural variations of a common
humanity, and toward a focus on radical alterity; from dierent worldviews to
dierent worlds altogether.
Worlds apart
Exactly the question of whether we inhabit ontologically dierent worlds or not has
recently been the focus of a range of dierent publications, panel debates,
Vigh and Sausdal 53
symposiums and seminars. In publications entitled Ontology Is Just Another

Word for Culture (Venkatesan, 2010), Worlds Otherwise (Alberti et al., 2011)
and Comparative Relativism (Jensen et al., 2011), the proponents of the onto-
logical turn propose that anthropology abandon its humanist anchoring and
replace it with a post-social/post-human focus on ontology. Besides the obvious
Latourianism of the motion, the anthropological anchoring of the idea is primarily
found in Viveiros de Castros work on perspectivism, building on his ethno-
graphic work in the Amazon (1998), in which he states:
Anthropology faces a double task. First, it must construct a concept of seriousness (a

way of taking things seriously) that is not tied to the notion of belief or of any other
propositional attitudes that have representations as their object. The anthropolo-
gists idea of seriousness must not be tied to the hermeneutics of allegorical meanings
or to the immediative illusion of discursive echolalia. Anthropologists must allow that
visions are not beliefs, not consensual views, but rather worlds seen objectively: not
worldviews, but worlds of vision. (Viveiros de Castro, 2011: 133)
By moving from worldviews to worlds of vision, Viveiros de Castro promotes a

new anthropological focus, which is to see perspectives not as dierent versions of a
common point of view but as entirely dierent realities; not culturally informed
outlooks but perspectives that constitute their own natural reality.
The main idea in Viveiros de Castros work is intriguing. Focusing on shamans
in the Amazonian jungle, he points out that we need to shift from an understanding
of a shared human nature generating many cultures, to an idea of a common
Culture generating many natures. Culture becomes the common denominator
whereas nature is the dierentiator. This is, as Viveiros de Castro promotes it,
an inversion of the Occidental philosophical bias wherein the human species
(Nature) is the common potentia behind our specic human presentia (culture).
Some may object to the dierentiation and ask if this is not simply a shamanistic
ideal, an occult inversion, and thus a specic perspective that is purposefully dif-
ferentiated from the perceptions of the majority, non-shaman population.4 Or
argue, on a meta-level, that the focus already exists within the Culture/cultures
divide (i.e. Culture as shared and cultures as dierentiated). In any case, Viveiros
de Castros work on Amazonian shamanism has, within the ontological turn, been
elevated to a general anthropological perspective.5 It is taken, in a process of
reverse ethnocentrism, to be applicable to the world at large, with the important
dierence being that the ontological turn appears to be less interested in the mon-
istic Culture, the virtual anity, which Viveiros de Castro mentions as encompass-
ing various perspectives (and which we so desperately need to have properly
explained and unfolded in more than isolated sentences), and more preoccupied
with the naturalization of dierence that is made possible within his perspective
on perspectives.
Viveiros de Castros lead was, in any case, followed by the inuential introduc-
tion to Thinking through Things (Henare et al., 2007), an introduction which is
often promoted as the very point of departure of the ontological turn, in which the
three editors (Henare, Holbraad, and Wastel) in identical manner argue that:
[T]he presumption of natural unity and cultural dierence epitomised in the anthro-
pos is no longer tenable. If we are to take others seriously, instead of reducing their
articulations to mere cultural perspectives or beliefs (i.e. worldviews), we can con-
ceive them as enunciations of dierent worlds or natures. (Henare et al., 2007: 10,
emphasis in original)
The post-humanist dimensions of the ontological turn, mentioned earlier, become

clear in the above proposition. By taking anthropos out of anthropology, the
authors discard the notion of shared humanity, enabling them to move toward a
truly multi-realist perspective where humans (or whatever they should be called in
a post-humanist perspective where the classic foothold of anthropos is no longer
there to stand on) can only be properly fathomed as living in multiple worlds of
natural dierence (Henare et al., 2007: 10). In order to do so we need, according to
the aforementioned authors, to turn anthropology away from a social construct-
ivist, culture-relativist framework and replace it with a radical essentialist one
(2007: 2), in which worlds are seen not as relative to each other but in which
they exist unto themselves, as immanent rather than contingent.
Perspectivism is, in other words, hailed as an analytical point of departure that is
seen to provide the possibility for fully understanding dierent realities in all their
alterity (2007: 10). Where anthropology has traditionally argued for multiple rea-
lities by focusing on dierent cultural worlds, such a view of variance within
unity is not seen as radical enough for the ontological turns idea of dierent
worlds, and is thus criticized for understanding cultures merely as versions of a
predened shared human substance. Such ideas of cultural worlds are seen as
gured on a background of preconceived similarity, i.e. Culture, and the approach
is therefore only capable of creating knowledge of others knowledge, rather than
delving properly into describing essentially dierent worlds and being:
The assumption . . . has always been that anthropology is an episteme indeed, the
episteme of others episteme, which we call cultures . . . [Anthropologists] assume that
both anthropology and its object are epistemic in character. If we are all living in the
same world . . . then the task left to social scientists is to elucidate the various systemic
formulations of knowledge (epistemologies) that oer dierent accounts of that one
world. [Because of this, anthropology] cannot but be a study of the dierent ways the
world (the one world of Nature) is represented by dierent people [i.e. worldviews].
(Henare et al., 2007: 9, emphasis in original)
This perceived episto-centrism of traditional anthropology is not positively

valued by the followers of the ontological turn, but seen as a major limit for the
intellectual potential of the discipline. Consequently, the ontological turn proposes
that anthropology turn its back on its epistemological premise and move instead
Vigh and Sausdal 55
towards a study of ontologies. Within the anthropological history of ideas the

current ontological turn thus presents itself as a kind of radical particularism.
Yet, where particularism (cf. Boas, 1887; Kroeber, 1952) used culture to show
variations of how to be human culture being seen, as mentioned, as both
actual dierence (cultures) and a shared faculty of meaning (Culture) ontology
is currently used to emphasize incommensurable dierence, as it is only by seeing
the other as absolutely dierent that we can approach the ethnographic eld unpre-
judiced and thereby do it justice (Henare et al., 2007: 1).
The plurality of post

This ambition of the unmediated view, where we may perceive dierence without a
predened idea of commonality, becomes even clearer if we look at some of the
other theoretical bedfellows of the ontological turn. Where Viveiros de Castros
multi-naturalist perspectivism stands as a cornerstone in the development of the
perspective, the intellectual baggage of the French sociologist Bruno Latour fea-
tures no less evidently.
Although polemic, and tiresomely focused on disregarding the intellectual
merit of his predecessors, Latours objections to classical sociology are anthro-
pologically interesting as they build on micro-sociological and often core
anthropological insights. His work generally echoes through the ontological
turn, yet perhaps most visibly stands his attempt to counteract what he denes
as a problematic sociological tendency; namely, that sociology, or what he terms
sociologist[s] of the social, have predened their empirical object of study and
work with and through an a priori idea of the concept. The social is, he says, an
object of interest, which has been constructed and dened before sociologists
actually enter into the eld (Latour, 2007). Instead of allowing them to be
caught by surprise and approach the eld eyes-wide-open, so to speak, sociolo-
gists engage in the eld seeking to illuminate variations of predetermined ideas
about sociality and society. They approach the empirical already knowing what
they are looking for, subsequently using their material to exhume predetermined
sociological variables such as race, gender, class, etc., and pondering, in their
analysis, the particular ways in which these core variables relate to each other.
The advance is, in Latours eyes, partial, teleological, and tautological. We
should instead dare, he says, commit ourselves to the eld without believing
that we know what is at stake at all, thereby letting the eld become the principal
raconteur (Latour, 2007).
If we as anthropologists think that this sounds like something we have heard
before we are of course completely right. In Latours own words:
Anthropologists, who had to deal with pre-moderns and were not requested as much
to imitate natural sciences, were more fortunate and allowed their actors to deploy a
much richer world. In many ways, ANT [actor-network theory] is simply an attempt
to allow the members of contemporary society to have as much leeway in dening

themselves as that oered by ethnographers [. . . whereby] sociology could nally
become as good as anthropology. (Latour, 2007: 41)
The above statement manages, within a few lines, both to elevate the anthropo-
logical endeavour to a stellar position as well as to portray it as a strange study of
the remote, anachronistic and exotic. Latour has found his pre-modern in the
history of the discipline, and is using the insight to advocate an inductive point of
departure for sociology. Given this, it is somewhat telling that so many anthro-
pologists have thrown themselves (uncritically) at the feet of a social theorist whose
aim seems to be to explain (very old-hat) anthropology and ethnography to soci-
ologists; the reason being, one presumes, that we are easily charmed by regurgita-
tions of our own insights. However, where Latour becomes post-social
(deconstructing the social in a similar manner as anthropology deconstructed the
concept of culture some 20 years ago), his critique of the social does not seem
applicable to anthropology, as it has never been appropriate for us to write up the
eld in predened variables. Most anthropologists are taught and strive to
approach it with a reexive awareness of our own perspective and an aim to
grasp the perspectives of the people we study.6 Latours critique of the social
may be interesting, insightful and beautifully phrased, but anthropologically his
straw-man dissolves indicated in the fact, of course, that it is exactly where he
seeks advice.
In relation to the ontological turn the connection should, however, be clear.
Where Latour argues against the social as a predened, shared condition, the
ontological turn argues, in identical ways, against the human, in what we may
call paraphrasing Latour himself, a translation without transformation. In both
cases the argument boils down to a classical anthropological ambition viz. to
secure that the knowledge one gains from the eld does not merely reect ones
implicit presumptions. This is, of course, a pivotal anthropological point of depart-
ure and accordingly not where the ontological turn separates itself from ordinary
anthropology. It does so in its idea of the degree of the Other and otherness: by not
being merely a study of alterity, but of radical alterity.
However, the question remains, what is won or lost with this re-emergent focus
on radical essentialism and radical alterity? The ideas may, at rst, appear fruitful
and the focus on dierent realities or worlds alluring, yet, as we shall see, a range of
methodological and political complications emerge when undertaking an analysis
that is both post-social and post-human led via notions of exotic, essentialist and
radical dierence and ltered through non-representational theory. Where the
methodological problems centre on the very possibility of carrying out the
project proposed, the political problems are of a more potential nature, focused
on the possible eects of radically post-human anthropology. Both are, however,
heightened by the ontological turns fetishization of otherness and lack of
reexivity.
Vigh and Sausdal 57
Incommensurability and methodological aporia

First and foremost, the anthropological project, dressed in new ontological gar-
ments, appears to run into a number of methodological problems. The radicalizing
of dierences, rather than the more encompassing dierence that makes a dier-
ence, as Gregory Bateson would have phrased it (2000: 459), forces the ontological
turn down a methodological dead end. It leads us to a problem of translation or
what we may, in broader Batesonian terms, call communication. Being both post-
human and post-social, the other is, as said, radically so within the ontological
turn. It is of another world and kind, making somewhat dicult any act of inter-
ontological translation or interpretation. If we are to accept the claim that the
worlds we study are of an ontological and incommensurable nature, then we
need a convincing description of the trans-specic similarity (Viveiros de
Castro, 2012: 114) that will enable us to mediate them, and allow us to engage
ethnographically in these radically singular realms at all.
The problem is that the dicult discussion of what we actually share (as well as
when and how we share it) is dwarfed in both Viveiros de Castros and the onto-
logical turns highlighting of dierence. It is mentioned in passing, yet generally left
out of the picture as radical dierence is granted theoretical and analytical primacy.
While the main idea behind the ontological turn may, thus, be fascinating, and the
focus on radically other realities or worlds enticing, it appears, upon closer inspec-
tion, to pose a range of methodological and analytical problems that actually rob
us of the possibility of grasping radical, post-humanist otherness at all. The turn
provokes one to ask: with what register can we anthropologically perceive and
describe such dierence when we have rejected any notions of commonality? In
Jacksons words (1989: 5),7 how does one connect with these ontologically distinct
and separate worlds? By diminishing the possibility of a shared ontology the
proponents of the turn, Geismar rightly states, diminish the possibility of equal
cross-cultural exegetical exchange (2011: 7). Rather than doing the eld justice,
which is one of the declared goals of the turn, such a theoretical point of departure
appears to negate the necessary element of mutuality that is a premise for doing
ethnography at all, making the ontological endeavour fundamentally a tale about
the observing anthropologist postulating a radical alterity he/she has no possibility
of grasping. In short, where it becomes tremendously hard to take their idea about
taking the eld seriously seriously is in the very diculties in carrying out a
radical essentialist, post-social and post-humanist ethnography.
How the proponents of the ontological turn are able to connect to incommen-
surable worlds, and translate them into understandable anthropological text,
remains a mystery. The anthropological proponents of strong ontology seem
unproblematically to understand the radical alterity they describe just as their
readers [seem] unsurprised at this (Keane, 2012: 188), yet how does anthropology
connect, how and why did we acquire the ability and, not least, why do all ontol-
ogies apparently converge in and resonate with the theories of Deleuze the turns
philosopher par excellence? The idea of multiple worlds instead of world-views

obviously and purposely negates the notion of common humanity, yet is a certain
commonality not a methodological precondition for our research?8
If a lion could speak

How will anthropology study the radical other, if the ontological turns post-
humanism and post-social radical essentialism is to be taken at face value? The
possibility of doing so is not clearly explained within the body of work that con-
stitutes the theoretical movement, as the ontological turn merely touches upon
mutuality and commonality in passing (Viveiros de Castro, 2012: 114). What con-
nects ontologies is relegated to the shadows of the theorys focus on dierence. It
gures as a theoretical position rather than something that merits theoretical
elaboration.
The most common answer, when posing the question directly to the spokesmen
for the ontological turn, is via classical ethnographic, participatory observational-
based eldwork (cf. Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011: 908). But there are quite a few
problems in the idea that one can turn to classical ethnography when studying
radical alterity in a post-humanist manner. Fieldwork builds precisely upon the
idea that we can approach each other, communicate our dierences and understand
them (more or less successfully) in a way that enable us to meaningfully compre-
hend Otherness thus, that we at the end of the road do share a communicative
register or empathic nexus of some kind by which we are able to connect. It does
not seem very post-human to think that our possibility of understanding the onto-
logically dierent can be found in a shared communicative ability in language, the
bedrock of humanism. And even if we share a communicative ability would we not
then, if we take the ontological turns analytical claims seriously, quickly land at
Wittgensteins famous assertion that if a Lion could talk, we would not understand
him (1953: II: xi, 223)?
Viveiros de Castro seems to be aware of the diculty and engages directly with
the Wittgensteinian problem (2012: 3). The solution to it lies, for Viveiros de
Castro, in a Deleuzian installation of a common monist culture from where dier-
ent perspectives arise, and which the anthropologist, just like the shaman, is able to
move within. The turn then places the anthropologist on a par with shamans
(whom they also study) as the type of people who are able to mediate and trans-
late dierent perspectives and ontologies. Though this may at rst strike us as
attering, and at second thought as somewhat presumptuous, the connection logic-
ally rests on an underlying idea of similitude rather than incommensurability. Yet
sadly this dimension of mutuality is, as said, the part of Viveiros de Castros work
that is relatively unexplored within the ontological turn, and directly negated in its
post-humanist argument.
The dicult argument has, as such, been left unmade. By forcefully emphasizing
dissimilarity, without articulating commonality, the ontological turn leaves a range
of questions unanswered. Indeed, radical dierence, of the very ontological kind, is
Vigh and Sausdal 59
dicult to imagine as shared, and if it can be shared, it does not seem all that
radically dierent, nor post-humanist, but perhaps just dierent . . . ? It appears
dicult to have it both ways. The perspectives representatives are themselves
aware of the possible problem; however, they do not, we think, succeed in solving
the puzzle:
An ontological turn in anthropological analysis . . . [and its] mysterious-sounding

notion of many worlds is so dissimilar to the familiar idea of a plurality of world-
views precisely because it turns on the humble . . . admission that our concepts (not our
representations) must, by denition, be inadequate to translate dierent ones.
(Henare et al., 2007: 12)
It seems, then, that there is an acknowledgement of the methodological challenge

embedded in the ontological turn, a realization that perhaps we do not have the
conceptual or methodological means to intellectually capture or communicate the
radically alter that we are invited to study, in whatever way he, she or it might
actually exist. Furthermore, though we greatly commend and encourage the practice
of thinking and theorizing through concepts and things from the eld (see Vigh,
2006a, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2011), this does not seem to solve the problem, as our
explanation of them would, once again, lead back to our own; nor does it acknow-
ledge our, conscious or unconscious, selective choosing of research interests, obser-
vation and analysis. As Weber pointed out, very early on, we may be unaware of the
role our values play in what we see as dening a site of study (1949: 122).
Ontography and the dearth of reflexivity

In spite or perhaps because of this key problematic, Holbraad has actually
tailored a methodological toolbox to t the perspective, although one is forced to
do a bit of digging in order to unearth it. What is most striking about it is its
dierent take on the ethnographic project, which becomes, once again, radically
particularist (Boas without Bastian?). It is called ontography (cf. Viveiros de
Castro, 2003; Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011, 2012), and in it, the focus is no
longer on people, ethnos, or humans, anthropos (Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011:
908) even though every proponent of the ontological turn mentioned so far
unproblematically talks about people, both individuals and groups, when doing
their [ethno]graphies and going about their [anthropo]logies. The focus is instead
strictly on ontology. According to Holbraad, such a study should be carried out in
the following fashion (which we have shortened):
Step 1. Describe your ethnographic and archaeological material as well as you

can, using all the concepts at your disposal to represent it as accurately as
possible.
Step 2. Scan your descriptions for logical contradictions. Occasions in which your
descriptions tempt you to say that your informants are being irrational are good
candidates for logical scrutiny. When you can show the contradictions involved,
you have identied alterity.
Step 3. Specify the conceptual conicts that generate the contradictions. Which
concepts are involved? What are the associated assumptions, corollaries, con-
comitants, consequences, and so on? How do they relate to the more transparent
and logically unproblematic parts of your description?
Step 4. Experiment with redening in dierent ways the concepts that generate
contradictions. Your criterion of truth is the logical cogency of your redenitions.
This involves two minimum requirements: (a) that your redenitions remove the
contradictions that motivate them and (b) that they do not generate new ones in
relation to other parts of your descriptions of your material. NB. While the
concepts that you are redening in these ways are derived from your (variously
[un]successful) descriptions of the ethnographic or archaeological materials,
responsibility for your acts of reconceptualization is your own. Your material
will not give you the answers[!].
Step 5. The litmus test for gauging the success of your ontographic analytical
experiment is its transparency with respect to your material. This means that,
while your claim to truth regarding your conceptualizations resides in their logi-
cal cogency, the nal test they have to pass is representational (which is not
equivalent to saying that the nal goal of the exercise is an act of representation,
as per the above): if and only if your conceptual redenitions allow you to articu-
late true representations of the phenomena whose description initially mired you
in contradiction is your work done. (Holbraad in Alberti et al., 2011: 908, empha-
sis added)
Holbraads detailed approach is skilfully thought through and provides a useful

sequence applicable for generating theoretical innovation through local concepts.
However, it reveals two common aspects of the ontological turn that seem to be in
need of elaboration.
First of all, we may ask what a true representation is and what denes the
underlying logic that the method apparently works through. Who does the talking
and description, and what does it say about radical alterity or the Other with a
capital O? In many ways the ontological turn, and its ontic claim that things are
what they are, seems almost like positivist empiricism, supposing that ontologies
are out there to be grasped in their proper state. Second, this becomes clearer still
when we note that what appears to be sacriced at the altar of the ontological turn
is the issue of reexivity and the methodological nuance that followed in the wake
of the reexive turn. Granted, the focus on reexivity at times became a bit nar-
cissistic, if not solipsistic, focusing more on the ethnographer than the informants.
Yet the move toward ontology, as presented in the ontological turn, leads us back
to a notion of empirical material as pre-existing entities for the ethnographer to
discover via eldwork and expeditions (Bunkenborg and Pedersen, 2012). The
ontological turn, thus, drifts into a pre-quantum theory empiricism where the
many insights of the reexive turn are omitted and more nuance is lost than
Vigh and Sausdal 61
found9 a loss that is not only methodologically problematic but also politically
so, which we will return to later in the article. The notion of some representations
being true seems as problematic as the idea of eliminating contradiction.
Doubt?
The underlying idea of truth and certainty (see also Holbraad, 2012) leads us to
another area of unease with the theoretical premises of the ontological turn. The
recursive point of departure is, as mentioned, founded upon the idea that what
people tell us about their world and its constitution should not be interpreted
with reference to other spheres of meaning but accepted as stated. The ontological
turn becomes an argument for pure indexicality with an almost one-to-one relation-
ship between signies and signiants or rather, between what is meant and what is
expressed. This is dicult to imagine, and probably even more dicult to nd
empirically, if only because uncertainty and ambivalence are such common parts
of life exactly because language is not exhaustive of reality (Grue, 2012: 9;
Wittgenstein, 1999) and thus, that things are never only what they are stated to
be. The turns ontic argument, that things are what they are and that they can be
conceptually grasped without the need for representational mediation, appears fun-
damentally undermined by peoples frequently expressed doubt and ambivalence
about the nature of the real they inhabit.10 Stating what is may, on the contrary, be
seen as an imposition of singularity, an act of power dening the state of what is,
which is why such speech acts are so often contested and debated. The ontic argu-
ment that things are what they are amounts in the ontological turn to a fallacy of
misplaced concreteness leaving little room for such common sentiments as doubt,
ambivalence and ambiguity. Yet are exactly these phenomena not common com-
panions of articulation of faith, singularity, and certainty (cf. Kierkegaard, 1895), as
attempts to dene what is are commonly haunted by what if, extrapolated into its
multitude potentialities, negotiated and contested from without or within, intro-
spectly or extrospectly, via our imagination (Vigh, 2006a, 2006b)?
Statements and denitions of what is are not met with blind faith in our own
work (Vigh, 2011). Rather, such impositions of meaning are questioned, called into
doubt and investigated for hidden intentions and interests. They are interpreted (!)
as a calling into being that is judged in relation to the elds of interest that they are
seen to stem from investigated for the intentions within them. This, consequently,
brings perspectives back to the etymology of the concept as per specere, looking
through or into rather than Viveiro de Castros version of tunnel vision.
Perspectives, in our eldwork, thus, commonly take the form of suspicion (liter-
ally looking underneath), probes (a searching and wandering vision), and
inspection, as what is stated or dened are regularly seen as attempts at ontolo-
gizing rather than accepted as ontologies. We may, in other words, object to the
recursive credo of things being what they are by pointing out that such worlds of
pure iconicity would leave little room for skepticism and ambiguity, and seem to
nullify the need for tropes, metaphor and metonymy.
Furthermore, the methodological modus operandi, described above, solves none

of the problems of connecting that can be found in the belief in a radically post-
humanist anthropology, but rather seems to rearm them. It does, however, reveal
another general characteristic of the ontological turn; a trait that is directly relat-
able to our next objection to the ontographic anthropological project, namely the
aim of the anthropological endeavour. It becomes clear, when reading through the
works of the proponents of the ontological turn, that the epitome of taking the
eld seriously seems primarily to amount to using the eld as a conceptual tram-
poline in order to generate new theory. The ontological turn has, without doubt,
spurred an abundance of interesting theoretical perceptions and the body of theory
is ripe with examples of how ethnographic material can be used to further our
philosophical insights, yet it is also clear that exactly this is what drives empirical
engagement. The empirical material serves a theoretical purpose, and claiming that
we live in many separate worlds enables the proponents of the ontological turn to
approach the eld in a classical Strathernian manner, which takes the eld seriously
as a theoretical/conceptual arsenal: a pool of alternative ideas for building theory.
Taking the eld seriously is not directed toward the world around us, or the
needs of the people we study, but to the academic needs of ontographers (cf.
Geismar, 2011).
Within the ontological turn dierence is used as a theoretical font, a potential
source of creative theorizing that serves as an instrument for destabilizing our own
ways of thinking. Ethnography primarily performs, it seems, the task of strengthen-
ing our theory building. As Casper Bruun Jensen states, in his embrace of the
ontological turn, what its proponents search for is an ethnographical golden
event from which innovative thinking can arise (Jensen et al., 2011: 4). The ethno-
graphic epiphany that Jensen argues for, is once again a classical anthropo-
logical endeavour. Building on Levi-Strauss, we may approach the Other or
alterity as a possibility of discovering conceptual insights; allowing emic ideas,
concepts and denitions to unfold themselves enables the empirical material to
serve as a point of departure for destabilizing the philosophical ground that we
stand on. The ambition is not specic to the ontological turn, but characterizes the
way that anthropology has traditionally furthered its analytical apparatus and
developed its theoretical tool-box. To a certain extent, we all search for golden
ethnographical events, and wish to make the most of them when we nd them. Yet,
in much anthropology these ethnographic insights are put to more use as they feed
back into our surroundings in various ways. The point is that the way we, as
anthropologists, use ethnographic material matters as it enters back into the
larger world that we are part of. Is our only aspiration to cry out Eureka! to
other anthropologists, or do we aspire to have a wider eld of intervention and
use(fulness)? Whichever way we choose to answer the question, anthropology
engages in and is engaged by the surrounding world and becomes part of our
surroundings in intended or unintended ways, which means that we need, perhaps,
to take our empirical material and elds more seriously than merely seeing them as
vehicles for advancing theoretical innovation.
Vigh and Sausdal 63
Ontology, othering and political practice

It should be clear by now that although we recognize the theoretical ambitions of
the ontological turn, we are wary of its theoretical premises, practicalities and
consequences. What we propose to do in the rest of the article is to further explore
the turns positivist inclinations and ponder its eects in terms of politics, power,
and reexivity. By attening social reality, bounding and rendering worlds intern-
ally commensurate yet externally incommensurable, the turn raises a number of
concerns that we have struggled with before in anthropology, some of which are
more than merely theoretical or methodological but also potentially political.
While we may question the theorys premises, it appears equally important to
question its possible eects. First of all, we may note that it is puzzling that such a
large part of our discipline is currently theoretically arguing for worlds apart,
when the political world, relating to the global distribution of ideas, resources
and power, is becoming increasingly interconnected. However, it is even more
perplexing that radical essentialism and radical alterity are treated as neutral ana-
lytical perspectives and techniques despite their history as socio-political phenom-
ena, and their devastating eect within a shared political world. From a historical
perspective essentialism, radical alterity and exotication are not benign theoretical
stances. They constitute, on the contrary, some of the primary ways that anthro-
pology has been put to use outside of the academy for all the wrong reasons and in
all the wrong ways.
Reading through the turn, ontologies, of whatever kind, are somewhat vaguely
described as specks of being congured from a Deleuzian soup of virtuality, a non-
hierarchized plane of pure possibility. Yet though we may argue, speculatively,11
that being and essence sprout from a plane of virtuality, our academically sanctied
and empowered constructions of Others and ontologies enter into social reality
with sometimes unfortunate and destructive eect. The attening of social worlds
that is achieved by the removal of intentionality and transcendence causes the
ontological turn to lose sight of the power routinized, habituated or directly
imposed at play in dening what is. Yet it equally seems to leave them blind
to how anthropological constructions of essential being and otherness in them-
selves denitions of what is are constantly at risk of adding to radical othering,
exoticism and essentialization. For political anthropologists some of the key con-
ceptual elements within the ontological turn do not evoke images of intellectual
gain and theoretical play but of well-worn and oft-used political technologies.
Arguing for essential dierence and naturalized worlds has troublesome political
histories, as being rarely just is, but is part of a larger struggle to dene. In other
words, the ontological turn may assist us in taking seriously the political ideas and
claims of people, but doing so by emphasizing immanence and essence puts it at
risk of contributing to, rather than solving, processes of ontologizing and othering.
This, however, does not seem to worry the ontographers; partly because the focus
on ontology is seen as a specic way of gaining theoretical insight, and partly
because such potentially negative eects are related to the shared human world,
which the perspective struggles to deconstruct in its theoretical constitution. Either

way, it seems important to recognize that the knowledge we as anthropologists
produce (even if it is seen to refer to dierent realities, natures or worlds) enters
into our world(s) in unintended and uncontrollable ways. In other words, while
naturalizing dierence may playfully further our anthropological theories, and we
can rejoice at the analytical potential that notions of radical alterity may bring
about, we may add that academically striving to dene something as exotic
(Holbraad in Venkatesan, 2010: 185), can forcefully introduce distance into a
world shared by the very people deemed ontologically and incommensurably
dierent.
We often lament the lack of inuence that anthropology has in the world, yet, at
a closer look, exactly this creation of distance and otherness is one of the most
forceful ways that anthropology has been put to political use in ways we do not
necessarily wish to support. If we look at colonialism, racism, and xenophobic
culturalism, anthropology has been, and still has the potential to be, tremendously
inuential. As Rapport and Overing phrase it:
Exoticism plays into the politicians hand by reinforcing and contributing to . . . anti-
pathies toward other peoples of the world. Culture and dierence have become the
most powerful political paradigms fuelling action, such as terrorism and counter-
terrorism, in the modern world. We know all to well the dangers of these notions of
ethnic purity and ethnic separation, where a common strategy of nation-states and
anti-state movements alike is the xing of ethnic identities . . . within territorial and
other categorical boundaries. (Rapport and Overing, 2000: 118, emphasis in original)
It follows that deliberately naturalizing and essentializing dierence under the

banner of ontology can, no matter how great the intellectual gain, be problematic
and generate unwanted eects: consequences we need to think through, if for no
other reason than because non-malecence needs also to be pondered in terms of
potentiality. If we start masking our symbolic understandings by ontologizing
them and relating them to nature instead of culture, essence rather than existence,
we risk creating a cover for, well, essentialist, naturalistic, and often patronizing
political arguments.
Ontologically dumped
The ontological turn, it seems, runs the risk of doing the work of the culturalism
that its proponents claim it wishes to be distinguished from. Where the concept of
culture was originally presented as a way to describe dierences between people,
with a shared human cultural faculty as its cornerstone, we have over the last 20
years of culturalism seen how cultures have become naturalized and understood
as distinct and incompatible worlds in themselves, thus designating more than
mere representations. Putting it dierently, culture has gone from epistemology
to ontology. It has become ontologically dumped (cf. Hastrup, 2004: 11) changed
Vigh and Sausdal 65
from its relativistic, epistemological starting point to being a way of positioning

dierence between people and groups as naturally, geographically or religiously
bounded entities (cf. Malkki, 1992).
The ontological turn can, in this perspective, be seen as the most recent stage in a
longer process of the ontologization of culture. Though ontology, as is glides from
dening things, concepts and ideas to denoting people, groups and entire civiliza-
tions, is not necessarily articulated as rooted and territorialized (Pedersen, 2013), it
is nonetheless theoretically constructed as naturalized and essentialized, internally
coherent and bounded, as incommensurable worlds. In this perspective the current
turn seems to be an academic example of exactly the process Hastrup described a
few years ago. It is not a move away from this process, but an intensication of it.
Ontology may not be just another word for culture (Venkatesan, 2010), yet all the
critical questions raised in relation to the reied concept of culture seem to be
pertinent and unanswered in relation to the ontographers use of the concept.
Most obviously, stands the critique of reied culture as incommensurable,
bounded, essential and undierentiated, all of which happen to be part and
parcel of the very denition of ontology within the turn. However, the more
nuanced questions of power, posed to the reied concept of culture, can equally
be posed to the turns understanding of ontology (cf. Ortner, 1984; Nader, 1997;
Wright, 1998). The turn, as a theory that attens social reality and renders it
internally consistent and transparent, runs, as said, the risk of being blind to the
political nature of what is and overlooking its unvoiced or silenced contest-
ations.12 Perspectivism and ontologies may, as Viveiros de Castro argues, be
aimed at working to create the conditions for the . . . ontological self-determination
of people (2003: 3) and strive to let people themselves articulate and determine
their being (once again a traditional anthropological project dressed in ontological
garments). Yet who denes the people or the given perspective or ontology, and
how are such denitions socially dierentiated, distributed and legitimated; in
short, what are the power issues in such denitional practices?
The answers are not easily found within the turn itself. Perhaps because power
is, in itself, an ontology within the turns perspective, or perhaps because just what
an ontology is, is generally loosely dened (or even undened), leaving us with very
little insight into its constitution. Pedersen, for instance, denes ontology, in a
great book squarely focused on the term, in a footnote, as any theories or concepts
of what exists (2011: 35). One could ask what the distinctive dierence between
worldviews and views-of-being is, in this perspective, as the denition appears to
pull ontology toward something it wants not to be by dening it as that which
is recognized as existing by a given theory. However, the denition goes on to
declare that it is crucial not to see these ontologies as simply linguistic or mental
(ideational) phenomena (p. 35), as they also constitute concrete sizes things,
shapes, and practices in their own right (p. 35). The movement from non-human
to humans, things to thoughts, concepts to communities, within the turns use of
the concept of ontology, leaves us in doubt about the concepts boundaries and
applicability. While the expansive signicance of the concept may be seen as a sign
of its capability by the proponents of the turn, such totality of meaning somewhat
causes the concept to lose its analytical potency, as it diminishes its ability to
dierentiate and discriminate, and, once again like the reied concept of culture,
puts it at risk of imploding under the weight of its omnisignicance (cf. Baumann,
1996).
The problem with the denition is that it becomes tremendously unclear what
the concept covers, as it is stretched along a gamut including things, practices,
concepts, ideas, perspectives and, not least, the relations between them, as well
as being constantly evoked when referring to the various people who think all
of these. Much as with the reied concept of culture, there seems to be a conceptual
slippage at play where ontology glides from denoting non-humans, things and
concepts to denoting groups or people such as, for example, shamans, magicians,
protesters and migrants, etc., who are seen to have a unique perspective on the
world, and thus a certain ontology, to ever larger groups, such as religious and
ethnic communities and strange, and strangely unproblematized, wider regional
delineations such as Euro-American and Amerindian.13 The latter appears, in
Tylorian ways, to delineate civilizational ways of being: delineations that mostly
seem to exist inside the ontographers worldview, yet which are articulated as
empirical entities in their own right. This is vividly portrayed in Viveiros de
Castros notion of the Amerindian (a term which leaves us uncertain about the
aspect of ontological self-determination that is proclaimed as central to his
work), used to refer to both a people and a way of thought. And it is just as
clear in the ever-present Euro-American background, which seems to provide the
contra-identicatory ontological bedrock from where alterity is gured within the
ontological turn.14 The notion of the Euro-American appears to be essential for
the ontological turn as it frames the ontographers object of study by providing the
background against which ontology and alterity can be dened.
Ob-iacere
Interestingly, the noun object stems from Latin ob, meaning against, and iacere,
meaning thrown. The noun, in other words, contains a verb directing our atten-
tion to how dierence is produced and dierentiated. In relation to the ontological
turn, otherness can, in this respect, be seen as constructed by being thrown against
a background of predened Euro-Americanness. This means that the object of
research is dened not just by what it is but by being mirrored against, or
refracted through, an implicit idea of what it is alter to (Laidlaw, 2012;
Heywood and Laidlaw, 2013). The problem is that the non-reexivity of the onto-
logical turn prevents it from seeking awareness of the eyes through which it sees.
This is not meant to belittle the call for letting other peoples concepts and ideas
destabilize and further anthropological theory, but merely to state that the things
investigated by the turn are not just what they are but stand forth in relation to an
(unproblematized) pre-given background. Rather than analysing ontologies, via a
conventional eidetic analysis, where one imaginatively translocates being in order to
Vigh and Sausdal 67
shed light on its boundaries, the proponents of the ontological turn implicitly
highlight dierence by framing it in relation to a Euro-American background.
As a result, the goal of approaching things with an idea that they are what they
are, immanently rather than contingently, clouds not just the dominance and
resistance encompassed in dening what is but equally silences its specic
coming-into-being as empirical material, leading us, once again, back to a
pre-reexive empiricism that constantly seems to lurk in the shadows that the
theory casts.
As said, the very point of departure in things being what they are appears to
obscure the struggle and disparities in dening what is. As Herzfeld put it, those
deceptively short words be and exist cannot be separated from questions of
power and control (1998: 74). In a similar vein, Carrithers points at how an epis-
temological analytical approach to anthropology (criticized by the ontographers)
does not necessarily have to reignite the post-modern representation debate and
all its possible disciplinary uncertainty. Rather, the anthropological/epistemo-
logical perspective comprises a useful point of departure for the study of lived
life, as it gives humans an epistemological liberation from totalitarianism
(Carrithers in Venkatesan, 2010: 159). In short, an epistemological focus entails
multiple human horizons of possibility via an insistence on exactly the opposite of
the ontological turn shared heterogeneity.
Putting it dierently, in lived life both inside and outside of anthropology
keeping the world epistemological and semantically exible, and not ontologically
dened or closed, is of vital importance in so far as it allows people emancipatory
possibilities and therapeutic mobility (Carrithers in Venkatesan, 2010: 159). As
Levi-Strauss (1987) has argued, semantic exibility, and thus the potentiality for
change, is not to be found in the inelastic ontologically signied but in the sign
itself. It is, we propose, precisely the signs semantic exibility that makes an inter-
active meeting between anthropologists and informants possible. In this way, part
of the dynamism of the humanistic, epistemological concept of culture can be
found in it ability to encompass both dierences and similarities. We are basically
all creators of culture, all thoughtful human beings, but our ways of being so can,
of course, be remarkably dierent. To share the cultural that is Culture means
sharing an ability, if not an urge or need, to fathom social life as it unfolds around
us. Culture is, in this understanding of the term, une saisie du monde (cf. Ulrich,
2002) a grasp (both as a practical grip and as an conceptual understanding) that is
unfolded and refolded into the world, not as demarcated entity but as intensity.
What should be clear by now is that we see shared being as central to lived life.
Essentialism and Othering are common features of social life, related to the
politicization of dierence, yet even in such situations people are often able to
engage with dierence as a matter of degree, not essence. They recognize the
other as a potential self and the self as a potential other, meaning that dierent
worlds essentialized, ontologized, or made incommensurable are haunted by a
sense of mutuality. It is, as Sartre states, when viewing the other that we become
aware that we ourselves may constitute the centre of other peoples views. This
creates perspectival interactivity, an interactivity that is further highlighted by the

fact that we, as a way of gaining an idea of our surroundings, constantly seek to
imagine what things look like from other peoples points of view, as well as to
realize our being through the gaze turned upon us (cf. Sartre, 1958). It seems, in
this ickering existential landscape of dierent yet mutually constitutive views,
hard to sustain an idea of radical and essential ontological dierence.
Closure
Though we recognize and admire the disciplinary ambitions and aspirations of the
ontological turn, this article has raised a number of critical questions in regards to
the turns theoretical points of departure, methodological possibilities and analyt-
ical consequences. We have, over the course of the article, strived to illuminate the
ontological turn in a way that does it justice, by staying loyal to its own analytical
modus operandi, taking its statements at face value and looking at the eects it
produces rather than the intentions behind it. The article, nonetheless, falls short of
encompassing the nuance of the work that can be labelled under its banner. This
may be indicative of the awed nature of the premises that dene the turn. It is not,
in any event, the product of any ill-will, but of two primary reasons. First of all, it
becomes clear, when reading through the work that aligns itself with the theory,
that its theoretical points of departure and analytical guidelines stand as trajec-
tories that are not fully travelled by its creators or followers, making it dicult to
describe their analytical merit and potential. Second, proponents of the theory
seem to nuance their theoretical positions in ways that, at times, contradict their
initial positions and perspectives what Heywood and Laidlaw have termed the
ontological u-turn (2013) making it dicult to encompass the (at times contra-
dictory) complexity of the turn within the scope of an article.
Despite having voiced a number of concerns of a more philosophical nature, it
should be clear by now that our discomfort with the ontological turn is primarily
related to the theorys essentialist bend and slide into a radically post-human study
of groups and peoples. While we may appreciate the common anthropological aim
to learn from alterity, we are weary of the way that social reality is reduced to
ontology be it in the shape of people, groups, ideas, concept-objects or things
within the turn, and of the specic version of post-humanism that this reduction
helps promote. We do not think that the merit of anthropology lies in translating
ethnography into arcane philosophy, but in crafting accounts that are able to
describe, make sense of, and educe themes from a world that is multiple, entangled,
yet shared. The constant installation of radical, as a distancing mechanism
between various perspectives and beings, leaves us uncertain about the analytical
applicability and consequences of the ontological standpoint.
By re-articulating many of the traditional strengths of anthropology, the onto-
logical turn carries with it many well-worn yet wonderful insights. However, its
insistence on radicalizing the same standard anthropological perspectives seems to
foundationally distort them in negative ways. As we have aimed to show, an
Vigh and Sausdal 69
approach that sees dierence as radical, whilst deconstructing human commonal-

ity, runs, rst of all, into methodological problems; second, into the problem of
silencing issues of disagreement, dominance, and doubt in both the academic and
emic denitions of being; and thirdly, into a range of negative unintended conse-
quences when entering into the surrounding world.
Perhaps we worry too much. However, though ontologizing human dierence
can be used analytically, we need to ponder at what risk and cost? Our diculties
with the ontological turn are, thus, not related to their view on, and interest in,
non-human matters such as things, which can be ontologized indenitely: we do
not doubt that people can think through things (Henare et al., 2007), as material
culture studies have capably demonstrated, and we are full of respect for the way
that the proponents of the ontological turn show how they do so. Yet anthro-
pology seems currently, with theoretical arsenal from Latours call for a at
analysis, to slip into seeing things as people and people as things. The focus
on things being what they are, immanence not transcendence, allows the turn to
deal with being in its specic articulation, understood literally as its spoken def-
inition. Such articulations are, subsequently, extrapolated into dierent worlds
and incommensurable ontologies, in a fallacy of treating a part or moment as a
whole. The consequence is that the turn attens and bounds social reality in a
manner that obscures the doubt, ambiguity and contestation of the articulations
of truth and impositions of being that it evokes, and this is both methodologic-
ally and politically problematic.
Finally, it seems that proponents of the ontological turn are able to highlight
dierence only by implicitly framing it in relation to overarching entities such as
Euro-American cosmologies, ontologies or ways of thought, as they constitute the
backdrop on which alter is postulated and dierence identied. In this way, it
seems that the radical alterity it wishes to capture is a self-created nebula somewhat
similar to a spot on the cornea.
Notes
1. For the few critical voices see Turner (2009), a critique of de Castros perspectivism,
ontological essentialism and multi-naturalism; Lloyd (2011); Keane (2012); Laidlaw
(2012); Heywood and Laidlaw (2013); Sausdal and Vigh (2013).
2. It may be argued that the very coming into being of anthropology, and the concomitant
broadening of the scale of what it means to be human, constitutes the point of departure
for philosophical post-humanism. The emergence of anthropology as a discipline entailed
a broadening of the idea of humanity to include more than an enlightenment idea of the
rational agent.
3. See Terence Turners elaborate critique of de Castros perspectivism (2009) or Carla
Stangs wonderful monograph on the Mehinaku (2011).
4. Moving from a specific shamanism to broad-spectrum anthropology, and thereby, iron-
ically, from the particular to the general.
5. If anthropology is guilty of conceptualizing the field in predefined variables, and so is a
possible target for Latours critique, it is, interestingly, through the exact variables that
figure so prominently within the ontological turn. The standard approach of much
anthropology is to automatically inscribe the empirical into variables such as exotic,
magic, shamanistic, ritual, and alterity, etc. This need not be a problem but calls for a
level of reflexivity that does not seem present within the turn.
6. The nexus of empirical data is to be found, in Jacksons view, in the encounter, and
not in isolated things themselves. For Jackson the world emerges inter-subjectively,
drawing our focus toward mutual becoming, variability and relationality rather than
ontology (Jackson, 1998: 7).
7. With their focus on materiality and things, the proponents of the ontological turn
strive to enter the others world through object-concepts. Yet how exactly such entities
function as connectors or portals, in a manner that may allow us to analytically travel
through them, remains unclear. Ontologically, we end up with the same problem of
translation; an incommensurability which appears to logically negate connection and
comparison. It leaves us with the proverbial apples and pears, and comparing via other
object-concept appears only to install what must be another ontology into the picture.
8. The turns relation to reflexivity is somewhat unclear or opportunistic. In an instance of
what Heywood and Laidlaw (2013) have called the ontological u-turn, it is argued that
the turn is characterized by heightened levels of reflexivity (Pedersen, 2012), yet the
general argument is one of moving away from reflexivity toward a clearer focus on
things as they are.
9. Verbal communication, M. Carey, May 2013.
10. Virtuality is inherently speculative. Even if we embrace the concept, any coming
into being necessarily dissolves the virtual as it entails a move into potentiality or
actuality.
11. Such contentions are, obviously, not approachable through the articulated but found in
silences, invisibilizations, practice and habitus.
12. The post-humanist ontological turn and its essentialism comes to resemble politico-
philosophical ideas about the clash of civilizations (Huntington, 1993, 1996) a simi-
larity which is also noticeable in Latours post-human contribution to peace and conflict
studies in War of the Worlds: What about Peace? (2002).
13. A quick search reveals that the concept of Euro-American is tremendously popular
among most of the authors who have embraced the ontological turn. The inspiration
seems to stem from Strathern.
References
Alberti B, Fowles S, Holbraad M, Marshall Y and Witmore C (2011) Worlds otherwise:
Archaeology, anthropology, and ontological difference. Current Anthropology 52(6):
896912.
Bateson G (2000) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baumann G (1996) Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-ethnic London.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Boas F (1887) The occurrence of similar inventions in areas widely apart. Science 9:
48586.
Bunkenborg M and Pedersen MA (2012) The ethnographic expedition 2.0: Resurrecting the
expedition as a social scientific research method. In: Nielsen KH, Harbsmeier M and Ries
CJ (eds) Scientists and Scholars in the Field: Studies in the History of Fieldwork and
Expeditions. Arhus: Aar hus Universitetsforlag.
Vigh and Sausdal 71
Fontein J (2011) Graves, ruins, and belonging: Towards an anthropology of proximity.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(4): 706727.
Geismar H (2011) Material culture studies and other ways to theorize objects: A primer to a
regional debate. Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(1): 19.
Grue A (2012) On Contradiction and the Ontological Turn. Unpublished manuscript,
University of Copenhagen.
Haraway D (2004) The Haraway Reader. NewYork: Routledge.
Hastrup K (2004) Forskningsbegreber og vidensformer: kulturarvens udfordring [Research
concepts and forms of knowledge: The challenge of cultural heritage]. Forskningsbe
greber og vidensformer: kulturarv, samlinger og kunstuddannelser. Kulturministeriets
Forskning sudvalg 920.
Heywood P and Laidlaw J (2013) One more turn and youre there. Anthropology of This
Century 4(May). Available at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/turn/ (accessed 4 February
2014).
Henare A, Holbraad M and Wastell S (2007) Thinking through Things: Theorizing Artefacts
Ethnographically. New York: Routledge.
Herzfeld M (1998) Factual fissures: Claims and contexts. Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science 560: 6982.
Hinchliffe S (1999) Cities and natures: Intimate strangers. In: Allen J and Pryke M (eds)
Unsettling Cities: Movement/Settlement. London: Routledge.
Holbraad M (2007) The power of powder: Multiplicity and motion in the divinatory cos-
mology of Cuban Ifa (or mana, again). In: Henare A, Holbraad M and Wastell S (eds)
Thinking through Things: Theorizing Artefacts Ethnographically. New York: Routledge.
Holbraad M (2012) Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Huntington SP (1993) The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72(3): 2249.
Huntington SP (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jackson M (1989) Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jensen CB, Herrnstein Smith B, Lloyd GER, et al. (2011) Comparative relativism.
Symposium: Comparative Relativism: Common Knowledge 17(1). Durham: Duke
University Press.
Kapferer B (1988) Legends of People, Myths of State. Washington, DC: Smithsonian.
Keane W (2013) Ontologies, anthropologists, and ethical life. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic
Theory 3(1): 186191.
Kierkegaard S (1895) Frygt og bven: dialektisk lyric [Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric].
Kbenhavn: Reitzel.
Kohn E (2013) How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Kroeber AL (1952 [1987]) The Nature of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laidlaw J (2012) Ontologically challenged. Anthropology of This Century 4(May). Available
at: http://aotcpress.com/articles/ontologically-challenged/ (accessed 4 February 2014).
Latour B (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. London: Harvard University Press.
Latour B (2002) War of the Worlds: What about Peace? Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Latour B (2007) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Latour B (2010) On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods. Durham: Duke University Press.
Leach J (2007) Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gells theory of

the abduction of creativity. In: Henare A, Holbraad M and Wastell S (eds) Thinking
through Things: Theorizing Artefacts Ethnographically. New York: Routledge,
pp. 167188.
Levi-Strauss C (1987 [1950]) Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss. London: Routledge
Kegan Paul.
Lloyd GER (1990) Demystifying Mentalities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lloyd GER (2011) Humanity between gods and beasts? Ontologies in question. Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute 17(4): 829845.
Malkki L (1992) National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of
national identity among scholars and refugees. Cultural Anthropology 7(1): 2444.
Miah A (2007) Posthumanism: A critical history. In: Gordijn B and Chadwick R (eds)
Medical Enhancements & Posthumanity. New York: Routledge.
Nader L (1997) Controlling processes: Tracing the dynamic components of power. Current
Anthropology 38(5): 711723.
Ortner SB (1984) Theory in anthropology since the sixties. Comparative Studies in Society and
HistoryAn International Quarterly 26: 126166.
Pedersen MA (2007) Talisman of thought: Shamanist ontologies and extended cognition in
northern Mongolia. In: Henare A, Holbraad M and Wastell S (eds) Thinking Through
Things: Theorizing Artefacts Ethnographically. New York: Routledge.
Pedersen MA (2011) Not Quite Shamans. New York: Cornell University Press.
Pedersen MA (2012) Common nonsense: A review of certain recent reviews of the onto-
logical turn. In: Anthropology of This century, 5 (October). Available at: http://aotcpress.
com/articles/common_nonsense/ (accessed 29 January 2013).
Pedersen MA (2013) Vi Bebor Mangfoldige Verdener [We live in multiple worlds].
Tidsskriftet Antropologi 67.
Rapport N and Overing J (2000) Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts.
London: Routledge.
Sartre J-P (1948) The Emotions: Outline of a Theory. New York: Citadel.
Sartre J-P (1958 [1943]) Being and Nothingness. London: Routledge.
Sausdal DB and Vigh H (2013) Den Ontologiske Blnding: om den ontologiske vendings
metodiske og politiske problemer [The ontological blinding: On the ontological turns
methodological and political problems]. Tidsskrift Antropologi 67: 101119.
Stang C (2011) A Walk to the River in Amazonia: Ordinary Reality for the Mehinaku Indians.
New York: Berghahn Books.
Strathern M (2004) Partial Connections. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
Turner T (2009) The crisis of late structuralism, perspectivism and animism: Rethinking
culture, nature, spirit, and bodiliness. Tipiti: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of
Lowland South America 7(1).
Ulrich J (2002) Identitetsdannelse set i et eksistensfilosofisk perspektiv at gribe det sociale
[Identity formation seen in an existential philosophical perspective to grasp the social].
Moderne demokratiteori kunsten at ga pa to ben: s. 201240. Aalborg: Institut for
Historie Internationale Studier og Samfundsudvikling, Aalborg Universitet.
Venkatesan S (ed.) (2010) Ontology is just another word for culture. Motion tabled at the
2008 meeting of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), University
of Manchester. Ontology is just another word for culture. Motion tabled at the 2008
meeting of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), University of
Manchester. Critique of Anthropology 30(2): 152200.
Vigh and Sausdal 73
Vigh H (2006a [2003]) Navigating Terrains of War: Youth and Soldiering in Guinea-Bissau.
Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Vigh H (2006b) The colour of destruction: On racialization, geno-globality and the social
imaginary in Bissau. Anthropological Theory 6(4): 481500.
Vigh H (2008) Crisis and chronicity: Anthropological perspectives on continuous crisis and
decline. Ethnos 73(1): 425.
Vigh H (2009a) Motion squared: A second look at the concept of social navigation.
Anthropological Theory 9(4): 419438.
Vigh H (2009b) Conflictual motion and political inertia: On rebellions and revolutions in
Bissau and beyond. African Studies Review 52(2): 143164.
Vigh H (2011) Vigilance: on negative potentiality and social invisibility. Social Analysis
55(3): 93114.
Viveiros de Castro E (1998) Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. The Journal
of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4(3): s. 469488.
Viveiros de Castro E (2003) (anthropology) AND (science). Dinner speech at Anthropology
and Science, the 5th Decennial Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists
of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, 14 July 2003. Published in Manchester Papers
in Social Anthropology 7.
Viveiros de Castro E (2011) Zeno and the art of anthropology: Of lies, beliefs, paradoxes, and
other truths. Symposium: Comparative Relativism: Common Knowledge 17(1). Durham:
Duke University Press.
Viveiros de Castro E (2012) Cosmological perspectivism in Amazonia and elsewhere.
Masterclass Series 1. Manchester: HAU Network of Ethnographic Theory, pp. 44168.
Weber M (1949) The Methodology of the Social sciences. New York: Free Press.
Whatmore S (2004) Humanisms excess: Some thoughts on the post-human/ist agenda.
Environment and Planning A 36(8): 13601363.
Wittgenstein L (1953) Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan Company.
Wittgenstein L (1999) Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mineola: Dover Publications.
Wright S (1998) The politicisation of culture. Anthropology Today 14(1): 715.i.
Henrik Erdman Vigh is Professor of Anthropology at the University of

Copenhagen. He has researched issues of youth and conict in both Europe and
Africa and written extensively on issues of social crisis, militant organizations and
mobilization.
David Brehm Sausdal is PhD Fellow in Criminology at Stockholm University with

an MSc in Social Anthropology from the University of Copenhagen. His research
is focused on transnational, itinerant crime and the apprehensions hereof.

VIGH - Crítica A Descola

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

VIGH - Crítica A Descola

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Article

existence: Anthropology sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

beyond the ontological ant.sagepub.com

David Brehm Sausdal

Immanence and effect

Anthropology, ontology and post-humanism

symposiums and seminars. In publications entitled Ontology Is Just Another

Anthropology faces a double task. First, it must construct a concept of seriousness (a

By moving from worldviews to worlds of vision, Viveiros de Castro promotes a

The post-humanist dimensions of the ontological turn, mentioned earlier, become

This perceived episto-centrism of traditional anthropology is not positively

towards a study of ontologies. Within the anthropological history of ideas the

The plurality of post

to allow the members of contemporary society to have as much leeway in dening

Incommensurability and methodological aporia

philosopher par excellence? The idea of multiple worlds instead of world-views

If a lion could speak

An ontological turn in anthropological analysis . . . [and its] mysterious-sounding

It seems, then, that there is an acknowledgement of the methodological challenge

Ontography and the dearth of reflexivity

Step 1. Describe your ethnographic and archaeological material as well as you

Holbraads detailed approach is skilfully thought through and provides a useful

Furthermore, the methodological modus operandi, described above, solves none

Ontology, othering and political practice

which the perspective struggles to deconstruct in its theoretical constitution. Either

It follows that deliberately naturalizing and essentializing dierence under the

from its relativistic, epistemological starting point to being a way of positioning

creates perspectival interactivity, an interactivity that is further highlighted by the

approach that sees dierence as radical, whilst deconstructing human commonal-

Fontein J (2011) Graves, ruins, and belonging: Towards an anthropology of proximity.

Leach J (2007) Differentiation and encompassment: A critique of Alfred Gells theory of

Henrik Erdman Vigh is Professor of Anthropology at the University of

David Brehm Sausdal is PhD Fellow in Criminology at Stockholm University with

You might also like