The Ontological Turn

Joanna Horton

In anthropology, the ontological turn refers to, in one basic sense, the reaction
against the writing culture trend of the 1980s onward. In the collection of
essays Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986), scholars of this new
movement advocated for a postmodern anthropology with a new focus on
culture as representation. They emphasized the constructed, artificial nature
of cultural accounts (Clifford 1986: 2) and concentrated on text-making as a
central part of anthropology. As a whole, the writing culture turn was
interested in the discursive aspects of cultural representation (Clifford 1986:
13)

One aspect of this approach was the assumption that anthropologists studied
(and, through their study, interpreted) cultural representations of reality. That
is, in order to capture difference widely recognized as anthropologys main
area of interest cultural anthropologists studied culture as differing
perspectives on an objective and universal reality. This is the conceptual point
at which the ontological turn constitutes itself through distinction. Rather than
acknowledging one world, many worldviews, an ontological approach
recognizes multiples worlds (Venkatesen 2010; Paleek and Risjord 2012).
Ontological anthropologists reject analyses that seek to explain difference by
way of representation, symbolism or belief, instead arguing that difference
is due to existence and participation in alternative realities.

Such an approach opens up conceptual space for a variety of complex

explanations and debates. The issue is further confused or, perhaps,
enhanced by the fact that the various scholars working under the umbrella
of the ontological turn have thus far been extremely diverse, prompting
Course (2010: 248) to label the ontological turn neither a school or even a
movement, but rather a particular commitment to recalibrate the level at
which analysis takes place. Given this broad scope, I have limited my focus
in this paper to general ideas and debates around perspectivism and

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multinaturalism (rather than, for instance, materiality). This is partly because,
in a very abstract field, centering the discussion mainly on beings rather than
objects1 provides perhaps a less abstract way to think about ontology. It is
also because I see these concepts as the best way to articulate a reading of
the ontological turn through the question of difference, which is the main
approach of this paper.

I begin by giving a critical overview of the main principles to consider in such a

reading. With this grounding in the foundations of (one) ontological approach,
I undertake a discussion of the novel way that ontological anthropologists aim
to use difference in their work, followed by an exploration of the main critique
around difference in the ontological turn, presented here as the alterity
problem. By covering the disciplinary dialogue around both basis and
criticism of the ontological turn, I present a clarification of ontological
anthropology as understood through a focus on difference.

Ins and Outs of an Ontological Approach: Language and the Body in the
Ontological Turn

Particularly prominent in the field of ontological anthropology is Eduardo

Viveiros de Castro, whose work on perspectival anthropology has provided a
central point from which much discussion has stemmed. In arguing for the
existence of multiple realities, Viveiros de Castro proposes that
anthropologists draw on the Amerindian idea of perspectivism, which
supposes a constant epistemology and various ontologies, the same
representations and other objects, a single meaning and multiple referents
(2004: 6). To illustrate this idea, he uses the example of the words manioc
beer meaning manioc beer to humans, but blood to jaguars. The
representation (that is, the words) is the same, but the objects (manioc beer,
or blood) are different.

1This is not to ignore arguments that question a distinction between beings and
objects, but rather acknowledge them as part of a slightly different debate.

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This example provides a useful way in to Viveiros de Castros theory in
several respects. Firstly, it reveals his views on the concrete existence and
operation of multiple ontologies. Possessing a different ontology means that
the jaguars do not believe that blood is beer. Neither does blood represent
beer. Rather, the blood is beer for them (Paleek and Risjorn 2012: 19).
Similarly, in his exploration of Cuban diviners relationship with a particular
powder (ache), Holbraad (2007) notably argues that powder far from being
a representation or metaphor for power actually is power. The principle
operating here that concepts are real and reality is conceptual (Henare,
Holbraad and Wastell 2006: 9) forms a key part of ontological anthropology.
Alberti (in Alberti, Fowles, Holbraad, Marshall and Witmore 2011: 905)
agrees, claiming that an ontological approach

by its very nature challenges any attempt to erect barriers between

something that can be called the real, material, or physical world and
something else that can be called thought, discourse, or narrative. There
is no position of externality.

As Viveiros de Castro succinctly explains, there are no points of view onto

things, things and beings are the points of view themselves (2004: 11). This
concept inevitably brings in discussions of materiality, as in the hope
expressed by Henare et al (2006: 6) that an ethnographic focus on objects
may (as in the example of power as powder) lead to a revision of analytical
understandings and an acceptance that other peoples understandings
(including not just their ideas about things but also their assumptions) might
be different from what we take to be our own when writing ethnographically.

Furthermore, I argue that the ontological turns removal of the distinction

between meaning and object also provides a way of thinking through another
crucial concept that of the bodys role in ontology. According to the same
principle dictating the collapse of an objects symbolic meaning and the
material object itself, the body and its actions in a given environment are part
of thinking and ontological experience. The example of blood and jaguars can
also be used to illustrate this emphasis on the role of the body in

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perspectivism (as it stands opposed to representation). As Viveiros de Castro
explains, representations are properties of the spirit, while the point of view is
in the body (2009: 39). Our body and its engagement, in other words,
determine the object associated with the words manioc beer. In this sense, it
determines difference. Importantly, as Swancutt (2007: 237) notes,

Bodily affects, in Viveiros de Castros sense of the term, are not just
physical characteristics, such as comportment, mannerisms or tastes
consistently ascribed to a given subject, they are also forces, energies
or talents which are taught, acquired and refined over time.

The body is thus a social entity, with the capacity to engage with other bodies,
affects, and the environment. Relationality between multiple bodies and the
environment is seen as the tool by which multiple realities are unlocked. As
Hage (2012: 299) explains,

In being the site of a multiplicity of forces and energies each body

constitutes a multiplicity of bodily modes of engagement with its
surroundings. It is this multiplicity of bodily engagements which in turn
produces a multiplicity of realities or natures.

While Viveiros de Castro terms this multiplicity multinaturalism, Hage (2012)

argues convincingly that such a term reinforces an ontologically subjective
dichotomy between nature and culture. However, the key concept of multiple
realities as grounded in the relationality of bodies and environments remains
important as a way of rejecting the validity of representation-based concepts
of reality and difference. Viveiros de Castro uses a kinship analogy to argue
this point, claiming that,

If saying that crickets are the fish of the dead or that mud is the
hammock of tapirs is like saying that Isabels son Michael is my nephew,
then there is no relativism involved. Isabel is not a mother for
Michael, from Michaels point of view shes really and objectively
Michaels mother, and I am really Michaels uncle (2004: 110).

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The existence of, for instance, a son (or a jaguar, or a cricket, or mud) relies
on the relation of that object or being to another object or being. This, Viveiros
de Castro argues, is how we know that an objects existence is more than a
point of view onto reality, but a reality in itself. Following from this is the
ontological conception of culture as populations of beings connected through
a dense network of relationships, where different kinds of objects are
produced through networks of human interaction (Paleek and Risjord 2012).

Hopefully it is now possible to draw something of a mental map around some

core concepts of the ontological turn as they relate to difference. Having
covered the theoretical base of an ontological approach, in the next section I
address the implications and possibilities opened up by this theoretical shift in
anthropology.

Data, Deduction and Difference: Transforming Theory Through Alterity

Paleek and Risjorn (2012) claim that in collapsing the distinction between
objects and theories, the ontological turn leaves no space for ethnographic
interpretation. However, ontological anthropologists are in fact uninterested in
ethnographic interpretation, viewing it as unacknowledged misunderstanding
of issues that arise from fundamentally different ontologies (Holbraad 2010).
In dismissing interpretation, ontological anthropologists do not propose to
simply observe what is found in the field and record it as difference. Rather,
they suggest using that difference to inform a reversal of the conventional
relationship between analytical concepts and ethnographic data, allowing the
latter to transform the former where necessary (Holbraad 2010). Fowles (in
Alberti et al 2011) characterizes this as the difference between thinking
differently about things and having different things to think about.

As accepting the latter formula challenges traditional patterns of using and

analyzing ethnographic material, it also allows for the reframing and rethinking
of classic ethnographic questions (Pedersen 2012). Ultimately, allowing data
to act in this way requires returning to the existence of multiple ontologies, by

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accepting that the theoretical and analytical concepts of our particular
ontology are perhaps insufficient to understand certain data where radical
alterity reveals itself. This is what Holbraad (2010: 184) means when he
invokes the famous example of the Nuer statement twins are birds in order to
argue that,

When even our best description of what others think is something as

blatantly absurd as twins are birds then we have grounds to suspect
that there is something wrong with our ability to describe what others are
saying, rather than with what they are actually saying, about which we a
fortiori know nothing other than our own misunderstanding.

The mission, then, is to give a genuine voice to difference that goes beyond
our ontological understandings; to insist on taking it only on its own terms.
However, critics such as Heywood (2012: 146) claim that ontological
anthropologists fail to live up to this ambition, because they neglect to
acknowledge that insisting on the reality of multiple worlds commits you to a
meta-ontology in which such worlds exist. Holbraad answers this critique with
the assertion that the ontological turn avoids this trap by its very nature, as it
render[s] all analytical forms contingent upon the vagaries of ethnographically
driven aporia (2012: 263). Pedersen (2012) critiques Heywoods statement
from a different angle, arguing that the possession of a meta-ontology is (with
the right level of reflexivity) a beneficial necessity of anthropological analysis,
while accusations such as Heywoods in fact fail to recognize their own
theoretical ground.

This debate, while perhaps originally founded on a substantial disagreement,

appears to me to become redundant as it moves in ever-shrinking circles,
focusing on a question that is at once too big and too small to matter. As each
critic accuses their opponent of ignoring their inherent meta-ontology, the
debate moves away from any kind of meaningful position on difference. It
seems, furthermore, that the debate is taking place on several different and
incompatible planes for instance, Holbraad rejects out of hand the very idea

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that ontological critics could ever possess a meta-ontology, which renders
further critiques on this basis rather meaningless.

Far more rich and significant, in my view, is another matter raised by the
inversion of the relationship between data and analytical concepts that is,
recognition of our own ontology. Acknowledgment of the particular standpoint
from which we theorise others difference allows us to go beyond them and
arrive at us. We can view their subjectivities while simultaneously viewing our
own, ultimately recognizing that we are natives too; our judgments about
what is real or natural involves our own ontological categorizations (Harris
and Robb 2012: 668). Hage (2012) agrees, arguing that the ontological turn
represents critical anthropological thought, which enables us to reflexively
move outside of ourselves such that we can start seeing ourselves in ways we
could not have possibly seen ourselves, our culture or our society before
(2012: 287). The critical awareness that ours is not the only way of being will
logically give rise to awareness of other possible ways of being in Hages
words, the prospect that we can be radically other than what we are (2012:
289).

In turn, this provides groundwork for the realm of radical politics, where, as
Hage points out, catch cries such as the Seattle anti-globalization movements
Another world is possible draw explicitly on the concepts of radical alterity
that critical anthropology seeks to engage with. Importantly, however, this way
of proposing alternative ontologies draws not only on difference, but also on
similarity. In engaging with other ways of being, we simultaneously recognize
their difference and feel haunted by their familiarity. Thus, Fowles (in Alberti
et al 2011) is not entirely correct in asserting that the ontological turns
dismissal of interpretation only makes unfamiliarity more unfamiliar. Accepting
difference on its own terms, rather than trying to fit it into our terms, can also
lead to recognizing a degree of genuine similarity. Through this recognition,
we can realize the possibility of shifting between realities, a potential that
holds great implications for the quest of radical politics to find the ever-
possible other world.

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The Alterity Problem

In merging ontological anthropology with the real world, Hages paper

clarifies the meaning of the ontological turn while making a useful proposal for
its application. However, a more controversial aspect of Hages argument
stems from his insistence on a primitivist/alterist ethos as a central part of
ontological anthropology (and, as he proposes it, the discipline as a whole).
This argument touches upon a major debate surrounding the ontological turn
that is, whether it dichotomizes us and them and serves to widen the gaps
of difference. Harris and Robb (2012: 668) sum up this point of debate:

[ontological] analyses tend both to see ontological beliefs as normatively

shared uniformly among members of a group and to dichotomize the
gap between Westerners and non-Westerners in terms of opposed,
heuristic ideal types.

The problem, then, is twofold, encompassing allegations of both essentialism

and dichotomization in the ontological attempt to capture difference. Candea
(2010) pertinently notes that these two interrelated problems are not unique to
ontological anthropology, but have become more apparent with the
disciplinary shift from culture to ontology. Ontological anthropologys inherent
focus on radical and definitive alterity is often construed as a return to the
primitivist philosophy that marked (or to our contemporary eyes, scarred)
colonial-era anthropology. However, critiquing a focus on difference for its
own sake runs the risk of ignoring subtler, more nuanced ways of using such
notions. For instance, as Strathern writes in The Gender of the Gift,

I wish to draw out a certain set of ideas about the nature of social life in
Melanesia by pitting them against ideas presented as Western
orthodoxy. My account does not require that the latter are orthodox
among all Western thinkers; the place they hold is as a strategic position
internal to the structure of the present account.

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Strathern demonstrates how ideas of difference are used not as literal
statements, but rather analytical tools to draw out certain points within a
conceptual structure. Furthermore, using axes of differentiation to
conceptualize difference between social groups may lead to the recognition
that such axes also apply within social groups (Godelier and Strathern 1991:
xiv). Using alterity in this flexible manner actually allows for a move away from
the notion (often found in culturalist accounts) of bounded, coherent cultural
packages of difference (Candea 2010). Thus, difference can be a useful
conceptual tool that neither assumes nor proves notions of essentialism.

Some scholars, such as Candea (2010), suggest using difference in this way
in order to conceptualise different ontologies while avoiding meta-contrasts
grounded in essentialism. However, Hage approaches a defense of
essentialism on its own terms, seeming to accept it as perhaps necessary to
the comparison of difference that forms a crucial part of critical anthropology
(Viveiros de Castro 2004). He argues that the ethos of primitivist anthropology
(that is, looking for examples of difference that are useful to think with) is
necessary for the critical anthropology associated with the ontological turn, as
the critical anthropologist seeks out the minor and invisible spaces or realities
that are increasingly showing up in the cracks of western modernity (2012:
305). In making this argument, he does not seek to defend himself within the
generally established standards of the debate, but proposes a radical change
to those standards. It is thus not particularly useful to compare his solution to
the alterity problem to that of Stratherns, as his is not a solution so much as
a denial of the problem. In responding to the essentialist criticism thus, Hage
initiates a new sub-debate around the ways in which ontological
anthropologists should approach difference. However, he also opens himself
to further criticism, as he fails to substantially address the arguments of those
opposed to essentialism.

Critiquing the ontological turn on the grounds of essentialism gives rise to a

related criticism, also springing from conceptions of difference that of
communication. As Harris and Robb (2012: 668) note, casting ontologies into
polarized, hermetically sealed factions makes it difficult to understand how

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people from different cultures can understand each other and communicate.
Similarly to Hages defense of essentialism, the ontological turns response to
this criticism reframes the terms of the question rather than directly answering
it.

The most notable instance of this is Viveiros de Castros (2004: 9) proposal of

controlled equivocation as a type of communicative disjuncture where the
interlocutors are not talking about the same thing, and know this. This is the
process underway when humans and jaguars talk about manioc beer.
Bearing in mind Walter Benjamins assertion that a good translation will
always betray the destination language, equivocation is a way to
communicate the difference between ontologies, rather than a way to distort
meanings into forms recognizable for a different ontology. Instead of taking
cross-ontological understanding and communication as the implicit aim,
Viveiros de Castro suggests that equivocation fulfils a better aim in pointing to
difference as a condition of signification and not a hindrance (2004: 20).
Benjamins influence is present once again here, as one is reminded of his
claim that, all translation is only a somewhat provisional way of coming to
terms with the foreignness of languages (1969: 75). In this rethinking of
translation, ontological anthropology again presents a new way to think
through difference.

Conclusion

The ontological turn, as a reaction against the popular writing culture trend in
anthropology, represents a radical reframing of multiple anthropological
concepts. This reframing is based largely on the ontological focus and
conception of difference, which has been the main exploratory basis of this
paper. By putting forth the idea of multiple ontological spaces (as opposed to
multiple worldviews on a single reality), the ontological turn conceptualizes
alterity as ultimate and definitive. This leads to a critical rethinking of the
anthropological use of ethnographic data, where accepting instances of
difference on their own terms allows the anthropologist to use this difference
in transforming insufficient analytical concepts.

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Critiques of the ontological turn are also often framed around the issue of
difference. In seeking useful comparisons of alterity, the ontological
anthropologist is accused of a return to essentialist notions that dichotomize
people according to ontology. While some scholars suggest avoiding
essentialism and dichotomization by using difference in less literal terms,
Hage (2012) proposes a disciplinary reconsideration of a primitivist ethos that
privileges difference. Essentialism and dichotomization may be a part of this,
but, Hage seems to suggest, this is not the unforgivable sin that it is imagined
to be. Similarly, Viveiros de Castro questions the assumed value of cross-
ontological communication, arguing instead for equivocation as a way of
indicating difference rather than overcoming it. In both instances, the
ontological turn queries the implicit assumptions the ontological
suppositions, perhaps in the critiques leveled at it. This suggests a kind of
correspondence between medium and message where ontological
anthropologists propose an acceptance of difference on its own terms, so too
do they advocate for a similar acceptance of the concepts used to draw out
that difference. By rethinking heuristic devices in a way that proposes a new
way of doing anthropology, the ontological turn proves its worth as a new
school of thought within the discipline.

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