Are Stones Living?

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_8794
dc.title	Are Stones Living?
dc.contributor.author	Breda Nadia
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Venice University Press, Fondazione Università Ca’ Foscari
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/the-venice-journal-of-environmental-humanities/2022/1/are-stones-living/
dc.description.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.
dc.relation.ispartof	Lagoonscapes
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 2 \| Issue 1 \| June 2022
dc.issued	2022-07-27
dc.dateAccepted	2022-06-08
dc.dateSubmitted	2022-03-27
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2785-2709
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2022/01/008
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Animism
dc.subject	Living beings
dc.subject	Mineral and aquatic world
dc.subject	Ontologies
dc.subject	Stones’ gatherers

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Are Stones Living?

Nadia Breda Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italia

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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.

Published

July 27, 2022

Accepted

June 8, 2022

Submitted

March 27, 2022

Language

Keywords: Mineral and aquatic world • Ontologies • Living beings • Animism • Stones’ gatherers

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2022/01/008

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.

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