Social Anthropology Seminar - Prof Signe Howell (University of Oslo)
| Dates: | 15 February 2016 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Prof Signe Howell |
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Title: ”Seeing, Knowing, Being, Acting: Chewong animism and human anthropomorphizing”
Drawing on ethnographic material from Chewong, a hunting, gathering and shifting cultivating group of people in the Malaysian rain forest, I shall discuss how Chewong ontology and cosmology conflate with a comprehensive understanding of causal processes in ‘nature’ in which every object is a potential subject. Identity is a question of the particular physicality–interiority relationship in each case which is species-specific and which is manifested by the eye through which each perceives reality. I suggest that Chewong do not divide the world into human versus the rest of nature but that they make a distinction between those species who have consciousness (ruwai) and those who do not. My discussion will be linked to a trend in contemporary anthropology that dissolves the division between humanity and nature; a trend that leads one to ask if the anthropos that has given the discipline its name, is destined to become an anachronism. This ethnographic study of animistic ontologies thereby raises important questions about the wider ramifications of our studies. I will intervene in this debate by arguing that despite the fact that Chewong subjectivity cuts across species, this does mean that they are not Chewong-centric. Therefore I am going to argue against the current post-humanist vogue and for human exceptionalism and suggest that to anthropomorphize is a human universal.
2.016/2.017, Second Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building
(Tea and Coffee will be available outside the boardroom at 4pm)
All welcome.
Speaker
Prof Signe Howell
Organisation: University of Oslo
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
2nd floor, Boardroom 2.016 / 017
Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
