Journal | Lagoonscapes
Monographic journal issue | 2 | 1 | 2022
Research Article | Are Stones Living?
Are Stones Living?
Abstract
The article addresses a new theme in anthropology, focusing on intra-actions among humans and the mineral world. Within an anthropology of the environment, in the context of the Italian Piave river, where water and stones were described by old gatherers as living beings, my ethnography discerns a European form of animism that attributed subjectivity, intentionality, ability and agency to non-humans, revealing an interspecies network of relationships hidden by the western naturalistic worldview. These data contribute to a reflection on Descolian ontological animism, recomposing the discrepancies of perspectives vised as contrasting, as the Ingoldian perception of the living being, De Castro’s perspectivism, and Barad’s new materialism, towards an anthropology of life.
Submitted: March 27, 2022 | Accepted: June 8, 2022 | Published July 27, 2022 | Language: en
Keywords Stones’ gatherers • Animism • Living beings • Ontologies • Mineral and aquatic world
Copyright © 2022 Nadia Breda. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2022/01/008
