Knowra Animism Animism Animism is a broad, contested term for beliefs that attribute spiritual presence or agency to animals, plants, objects, or places. It also names a major anthropological framework for understanding relations between humans and a more-than-human world.
Personhood : The status of being recognized as a person, with associated capacities, rights, or social relations. Animist accounts may extend personhood beyond humans to animals, spirits, places, or things.
Edward Burnett Tylor : An English anthropologist whose comparative studies helped establish anthropology as an academic discipline. Tylor defined animism as belief in spiritual beings and made it central to an evolutionary theory of religion.
Animatism : A proposed belief in an impersonal supernatural force that can inhabit people, objects, or places. Early theorists distinguished this diffuse power from animism’s spiritual beings.
Irving Hallowell : An American anthropologist known for research on Ojibwe society and ideas of personhood. His work showed how Ojibwe understandings of persons could include animals and other beings.
Ojibwe religion : The diverse spiritual traditions and practices of Ojibwe communities. Hallowell’s account of Ojibwe persons helped reshape anthropological understandings of animism.
Nature–culture divide : A conceptual separation between the human-made, social world and the nonhuman, natural world. Animist worlds often unsettle this division by describing humans and nonhumans as relational participants.
Primitive Culture : Edward Burnett Tylor’s 1871 book proposing an influential evolutionary account of culture and religion. The book introduced Tylor’s influential definition of animism.
Animism (philosophy of mind) : The philosophical view that mind or a mind-like principle is fundamental to reality. This philosophical doctrine shares the name but is distinct from anthropological animism.
Nurit Bird-David : An anthropologist whose work developed a relational approach to animism. Her 1999 essay recast animism as a way of knowing through relationships.
Aché people : An Indigenous people of Paraguay whose social and subsistence life has been studied by anthropologists. Ethnographies of Aché relations with animals have informed debates about animism and personhood.
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