Ontological Turn

Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and its relation to metaphysics has been widely accepted in the East. Yet the conception that there is only one—originally Greek—type of technics has been an obstacle to any original critical thinking of technology in modern Chinese thought.

Yuk Hui argues for the urgency of imagining a specifically Chinese philosophy of technology capable of responding to Heidegger’s challenge, while problematizing the affirmation of technics and technologies as anthropologically universal.

This investigation of the historical-metaphysical question of technology, drawing on Lyotard, Simondon, and Stiegler, and introducing a history of modern Eastern philosophical thinking largely unknown to Western readers, including philosophers such as Feng Youlan, Mou Zongsan, and Keiji Nishitani, sheds new light on the obscurity of the question of technology in China. Why was technics never thematized in Chinese thought? Why has time never been a real question for Chinese philosophy? How was the traditional concept of Qi transformed in its relation to Dao as China welcomed technological modernity and westernization?

In The Question Concerning Technology in China, a systematic historical survey of the major concepts of traditional Chinese thinking is followed by a startlingly original investigation of these questions, in order to ask how Chinese thought might today contribute to a renewed, cosmotechnical questioning of globalized technics.

"Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir a emergência da hermenêutica, desde sua versão clássica à virada ontológica que surge a partir do romantismo e idealismo alemão, com foco no debate que se estabeleceu durante uma década entre Hans-Georg Gadamer e Jürgen Habermas. Gadamer nos fala de uma verdade que não pode ser verificada através de uma metodologia científica, a verdade que aparece através da experiência, seja da filosofia, da arte ou da história. Já Habermas tece uma crítica à pretensão de universalidade da hermenêutica gadameriana afirmando que, apesar de a compreensão hermenêutica ser um passo importante para a compreensão, ele não pode ser o último. Teria que haver a possibilidade de crítica, de reflexibilidade.

Hermenêutica clássica; Hermenêutica filosófica; Virada ontológica; Reflexibilidade

This article aims to discuss the emergence of hermeneutics, since its classic version to the ontological turn that arises from the Romanticism and German Idealism, with a focus in the debate that was established over a decade between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas. Gadamer tells us about a truth that cannot be verified by a scientific methodology, the truth that comes through experience, provided by philosophy, art or history. Habermas criticizes the claim to universality of hermeneutics from Gadamer stating that although the hermeneutic understanding is an important step to comprehension it cannot be the last one. Would there be the possibility of critique, of reflexivity.

Keywords: Classic hermeneutics; Philosophical hermeneutics; Ontological turn; Reflectivity."

This detailed and intellectually rigorous text is the fruit of nine years of study by Caroline Gatt, outlining her ethnographic account of the international environmental movement through a study of Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Friends of the Earth International (FoEI).

This paper explores the value of theorising about colonialism that is specific rather than universal, informed by our locations in colonial struggles and driven by engagement with our continuing material colonial relationships with land, place and people. We do this by examining recent scholarly engagements with our contemporary precarious global economic and environmental conditions, particularly within settler colonial theory. We argue that using analogy to think our way out of material colonial and racial relations can obscure the authority of Indigenous peoples and reproduce colonial epistemologies. This attempt to create solidarity through political equivalence risks reifying imperial relationships and resecuring white possession. Rather than seeking to evade our positions as colonisers embedded in violent political systems, we argue it is possible for colonisers to act in solidarity from a position of complicity. Working towards justice from our own locations involves building solidarity across differences, without first needing to reduce these differences to sameness.

Comment on Hodder, I. and Lucas, G. (2017) "The symmetries and asymmetries of human–thing relations. A dialogue"                                             

In this dialogue, Hodder and Lucas skilfully manoeuvre the winding trails of archaeological theory during the last decades and critically juxtapose the discussion of symmetry and asymmetry of relations between entities with that of entanglement. Their provocative dialogue compellingly leads to the conclusion that most entanglements are in fact asymmetrical. Whereas I mostly concur with the conclusions of the dialogue, addressing the authors’ closing statements I would like to highlight the need to equally (in some ways, symmetrically) consider disentanglement as the process opposite to entanglement, along with the consequences of such disentanglement. If we are to understand better the contexts and politics of entanglements – concerns that this dialogue brings to the fore – I furthermore suggest that we more closely scrutinize the density (quantity) and joining (quality) of entanglements, as well as pay closer attention to memory, emotion and affect in entanglements.

Ce chapitre cherche à rendre compte de l’émergence, puis du développement, de la catégorie de « non-humain » dans l’anthropologie et la sociologie contemporaines, entendu comme une alternative à la dichotomie nature/culture. Dans une première partie, nous tentons de recenser l’ensemble des travaux qui ont cherché à accorder un mode d’existence social spécifique aux objets en tentant d’échapper au double écueil du naturalisme réductionniste et du constructiviste culturaliste. Dans une deuxième partie, nous nous focalisons plus précisément sur le cas des acteurs « naturels » ou « environnementaux » pour souligner les théories de l’action et de l’acteur qui y sont liées : l’enjeu est alors de dessiner les contours d’une science sociale non-anthropocentrée. Enfin, dans une troisième partie, nous discutons plus spécifiquement la notion de « collectif », adoptée par Bruno Latour, Philippe Descola ou Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, pour désigner les assemblages sociaux d’humains et de non-humains : nous tentons en conclusion d’interroger les enjeux politiques d’une telle notion.

Este trabajo explora la construcción histórica de un conjunto de comunidades q’eqchi’ fuertemente interrelacionadas entre sí, que ha dado lugar a una comunidad unificada y que, a la vez, ha sido dejada de lado por los estudios regionales del Ixcán, en el departamento de Quiché.  A través del análisis de documentos históricos, entrevistas y trabajo de campo con representantes de las 32 comunidades que actualmente componen Los Copones, ha sido posible reconstruir la historia de la región desde el siglo XVIII hasta la actualidad, así como hacer visibles los diferentes momentos constitutivos de su historia como amaq’.    Dichos momentos han oscilado desde las primeras migraciones de los ch’ol-q’eqchi’ y q’eqchi’ en el siglo XVIII, las migraciones producto de la llegada del sistema finquero a Alta Verapaz y de las concesiones a los milicianos liberales a finales del XIX, hasta la llegada del ejército y la contrainsurgencia como ordenamiento territorial a finales del XX, y en el XXI los megaproyectos y el narcotráfico.  Todos estos momentos se han insertado en las propias dinámicas locales, y no han evitado la consolidación de una amplia organización comunitaria que busca el reconocimiento del territorio que han habitado desde antes de la constitución misma del Estado guatemalteco.

In his oft-cited discussion of the “culturally constituted behavioral environment,” Irving Hallowell argued that any given cultural ontology must be considered to be “real” insofar as people believe in it; and inasmuch as it exist as an object of belief, it becomes an effective constituent of thought, feeling, and action—in short, ethno-ontologies become basic dynamic elements in the psychic economy of individuals. In this paper, I build on the contributions of Hallowell and others (including George Devereux), sketching the outlines of what I have referred to elsewhere as a “cultural psychodynamic” approach—one that integrates contemporary psychoanalytic insights into the dynamics of human subjectivity with a phenomenological and ethno-ontological approach (such as that advocated by Hallowell). Such an approach emphasizes the ways in which local beliefs, social structure, symbolic resources, and the practices of everyday life serve to structuralize the psychic field, encouraging certain culturally specific psychodynamic configurations while discouraging others. It focuses on the importance of framing epistemologies (e.g., locally distinct ethnotheories of experience, emotion, and self) in giving rise to distinct topographies of self-experience, allowing individuals to sidestep certain conflicts and dilemmas, while simultaneously throwing others into high relief. I argue that a sustained interpretive tacking between these fields lends greater dimensionality to ethnographic analyses: Psychoanalytic ideas help to illuminate dynamic intrapsychic and interpersonal processes of meaning making, while ethnographic data emphasize the powerfully constitutive role of ethnotheories and social practices in conditioning the form, function, and expression of basic psychodynamic processes.

Contemporary debates around the ontological turn have pitted efforts to take indigenous ontologies seriously against demands to make visible the forms of dispossession and environmental suffering that characterize the (post)colonial and capitalist present. Meanwhile, a growing array of governmental projects seeks to identify and protect indigenous ontologies in the face of capitalist development processes, including through forms of collective tenure. How can we make sense of such initiatives, and what kind of territories do they encounter and produce? This paper engages this question ethnographically through an examination of everyday life in a legally recognized Native Community Land in the Bolivian Chaco. Drawing on Bolivian Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's notion of ch'ixi, I argue that indigenous territories are neither ontologically separate from, nor entirely subsumed by, capitalist development processes. Rather, they are subject to multiple land values, ontologies, and investments. A contested indigenous land titling process, capitalist labor relations, hydrocarbon compensation money, and efforts to maintain relations with spirit beings are all interwoven in the fabric of Guaraní everyday life. Such ch'ixi landscapes emerge at the confluence of capitalist efforts at rendering territories investable, governmental efforts at managing dispossession, and Guaraní efforts to maintain life and exercise territorial sovereignty amidst contradictory processes of (post)colonial governmentality.

El presente trabajo emerge desde un territorio de asombro etnográfico en el que
tecnologías multiculturales, en este caso píldoras para dormir, inadvertidamente
obscurecen y amenazan la alteridad. Esto último es examinado a través del poderoso
carácter relacional de mundos y prácticas –humanas y no-humanas–, que se resisten a
ser clasificados. En particular, reflexionaré sobre cómo ciertas “cuestiones médicas”
actúan en situaciones controvertidas para configurar lo que yo llamo “trastornos
ontológicos”. A lo largo de este escrito, he intentado respetar cuidadosa y seriamente la
lucha concreta por la vida -en toda su inclasificable intensidad- librada por una de mis
interactuantes en el sur de Chile. En su honor, este trabajo indaga territorios
etnográficos donde el mundo indígena es llevado al límite, y donde tomar una postura
onto-ética es la única manera de escapar de una equivocación casi fatal.

ProtoSociology occupies an important position in the European intellectual scene, bridging philosophy, economics, sociology and related disciplines. Its volumes on rationality bring together concerns in all these topics, and present an important challenge to the cognitive sciences. Donald Davidson ProtoSociology is a truly premier interdisciplinary journal that publishes articles and reviews on timely topics written by and for a wide range of international scholars.

Roger Gibson

Resumen En el contexto de los colectivos sociales modernos, colocar a los animales en el ámbito de la naturaleza y a los humanos en el de la cultura parece moneda corriente. Sin embargo, otros colectivos claman por la incorporación de los no-humanos al devenir social diluyendo a su paso toda forma posible de naturaleza y es precisamente en un escenario así, en el que nos situaremos. Particularmente nos concentraremos en aspectos de la zoología de los indígenas qom (o tobas) del Gran Chaco argentino; un grupo de las llamadas 'tierras bajas' que antiguamente se dedicaba a la caza, la pesca y la recolección como forma de subsistencia. Sustentándonos en trabajo etnográfico, nos centraremos en analizar un libro sobre animales que, producido en conjunto con los indígenas, suscitó innumerables equívocos e interrogantes. Así, el objetivo de esta contribución es analizar dos casos particulares-el de la personalidad de los animales y el de su orden taxonómico-y las reflexiones reversas acerca de éstos mismos. El fin último es mostrar que "otra zoología", habitante de otro mundo, desea dialogar con la académica multiplicando su espacio epistémico, su posibilidad teórica. Abstract In the context of modern social collectives, placing animals in the field of nature and humans in that of culture seems to be common currency. However, other groups cry out for the incorporation of non-humans into the social becoming, diluting in their path every possible form of nature and it is precisely in such scenario, in which we will situate ourselves. Particularly we will concentrate on aspects of the zoology of the indigenous qom (or tobas) of the Argentine Gran Chaco; a group of so-called "lowlands" that formerly engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering as a form of subsistence. Based on ethnographic work, we will focus on analyzing a book about animals that, produced in conjunction with the natives, raised innumerable equivocations and questions. Thus, the objective of this contribution is to analyze two particular cases-that of the personality of the animals and that of their taxonomic order-and the reverse reflections on them. The ultimate goal is to show that "another zoology", inhabitant of another world, wishes to dialogue with the academic multiplying its epistemic space, its theoretical possibility.

Sergei Prozorov’s two-volume magnum opus, Void Universalism, is one of those works that appear on the intellectual firmament with the distinctive purpose not simply to cause a stir, but rather to trigger a revolution in the way we approach and theorise world politics. The fact that Prozorov’s project has not yet generated the debate that it deserves is revealing not only of the nature of disciplinary hierarchies, even within critical circles, but also of the philosophical poverty (with some exceptions, of course) that characterises meta-theoretical debates in the field. Void Universalism bears the potential to change all this and set us on an ambitious track to address urgent issues surrounding the interpretation of pluralism in a global era. Indeed, its expressed goal is to challenge us to reconceptualize world politics from the perspective of an ontology of the void that its author synthesises from the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancièreand, above all, Alain Badiou, who casts his shadow over the entire project.

What is existential anthropology, and how would you define it? What has been gained by using existential perspectives in your fieldwork and writing? Editors Michael Jackson and Albert Piette each invited anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic to address these questions and explore how various approaches to the human condition might be brought together on the levels of method and of theory. Both editors also bring their own perspective: while Jackson has drawn on phenomenology, deploying the concepts of intersubjectivity, lifeworld, experience, existential mobility, and event, Piette has drawn on Heidegger’s Dasein-analysis, and developed a phenomenographical method for the observation and description of human beings in their singularity and ever-changing situations.

I use the Deleuze and Guattari geo-philosophical “Plateau 11. 1837: Of the Refrain” in order to map the conditions of the emergence of a particular territorial refrain: a backflip. Using a research encounter that involved a cheerleading dance, I position the backflip as a refrain that draws from the rhythms of various milieus to mark a territory. I follow the backflip along a line of flight to describe its ontological force of creation and newness.

This essay examines climatic and ontological change within the Anthropocene among the Makushi in Guyana. During fieldwork in the Makushi village of Surama, the author was frequently told how the wet and dry seasons have become irregular, the temperature has increased, and ecological changes have occurred in the forests and savannas. These perceived changes impact Makushi subsistence practices and have emerged concurrent with the local development of eco-tourism and increased interactions with outside entities in Surama. The author examines local ontological shifts related to these expanded interactions with outsiders, who advocate concepts of ‘climate change’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘conservation’. Recent encounters with climate change and outside entities in Guyana provide an ethnographic case of the broader climatic and related changes occurring in Amazonia. This case is analysed herein through an ontological approach. Based on fieldwork data, the author examines how local transformations are situated within the greater dimensions of the Anthropocene.

Parece existir una afinidad impresionante entre los poderes de la magia y de los perfumes. Sobre la base de una fenomenología de la experiencia olfativa y una etnología de la magia, la eficacia atribuida a la oculta, un saquito maloliente de magia para el éxito en la caza en Nueva Guinea, se compara con la de los perfumes en nuestra cultura. Lo que el lenguaje de la magia y el lenguaje silencioso del perfume tienen en común es que hacen posible sustituir el mundo aquí abajo, donde el contingente y el reino particular, otro mundo, libre de peligros y singularidades, un mundo de orden y armonía.

Hällbildsforskningen har av tradition fokuserat på bildernas föreställande och symboliska egenskaper. Motiven har därmed främst setts som representationer av något annat – kosmologi, ideologi, reella eller föreställda världar – man har sällan sett dem som materiella uttryck i sig.
I denna bok utforskas en delvis annan utgångspunkt som betonar produktion och bildernas effekter. Perspektivet förskjuts därmed från människans bruk av bilder som symboler till vad bilder i sin fysiska form gör och hur de kan sägas bidra till utvecklingen på en plats.

Köp ett tryckt exemplar här: https://widget.publit.com/webbshop_4180/page/1

En este artículo propongo leer “La agonía Rasu-Ñiti” de José María Arguedas como un texto cosmopolítico. Es decir, que expresa una política Quechua basada en una lógica relacional no-humana. El danzante de tijeras Rasu-Ñiti afirma que es el hijo de un wamani, o dios montaña. Esta afirmación no solo problematiza la noción occidental de humano, sino que
resalta la presencia de otros mundos, tales como el mundo de las montañas, los animales, las plantas, los ríos, y objetos sagrados usados en rituales. De esta manera, el texto arguediano enfatiza una concepción onto-epistémica Quechua y nos invita a reconocer que los mundos andinos están constituidos por relaciones entre colectivos humanos y múltiples agentes nohumanos.

The entry begins with a definition of geography and with a description of what the discipline shares with the other social sciences and what makes it distinctive among them. Terminological clarifications are provided with regard to the relationship between human geography and physical geography, and between human geography and urban geography. After a brief history and overview of human geography’s engagement with social theory, the entry offers a discussion of the politicization of contemporary human geography and of how this phenomenon is reflected in theory building and concept development.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0464

O artigo propõe uma articulação entre os conceitos de devir e de literatura menor, de Deleuze & Guattari, e certos desenvolvimentos da antropologia contemporânea, sobretudo a de Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, a fim de elucidar como estes conceitos podem ser frutíferos para pensarmos a produção etnológica contemporânea e os caminhos políticos que ela pode abrir. Para tanto, partimos de uma apresentação básica dos desenvolvimentos de Viveiros de Castro sobre o perspectivismo e o xamanismo ameríndios, juntamente com a noção de devir que os acompanha, para então afirmar o quanto a própria antropologia sai transformada após a “descoberta” desses elementos. Ao afirmar o próprio antropólogo enquanto um xamã (ou um diplomata) que passa por um devir-outro analisamos como a obra conjunta de Davi Kopenawa e Bruce Albert, A queda do céu, pode ser considerada um exemplo de literatura e antropologia menores e como o conceito de devir perpassa a elaboração do texto e o agenciamento dos autores para, por fim, intuir como o livro antropológico pode ser o catalizador do devir-outro inclusive para o não antropólogo.

In his first editorial as new editor of Childhood—a flagship journal for academics and scholars interested in childhood studies—Spyros Spyrou (2017) strongly argued for the necessity to reconsider some key notions and categories that, for a long time, have been central for our current understanding of children and childhood. Mainly, he aimed at “decentering” childhood by incorporating, in a braver fashion, insights from emerging fields and theories that have been sensitive to the transformations carried on by the “ontological turn” in social sciences. This, as the need to “engage with real-life emerging concerns which escape the narrow confines of a ‘child-centered’ field of study” has become increasingly evident (Spyrou, p. 433).
The concerns and propositions made by Spyrou are not unknown for the field of psychosocial studies and social psychology. Attempts have been made by key scholars in this field to search for inspiration in other areas of expertise (Brown & Stenner, 2009; O’Doherty et al., 2019; Nichterlein 2021; Stenner, 2017), inasmuch they have perceived the urgent need to reconfigure these field’s methods and subjects of study. In the midst of a social world that is constantly changing, it becomes imperative to create renewed approaches, able to grasp the complexities of our current modes of existence, where the borders between the social, the natural, and the technological are becoming increasingly blurred (Prout, 2005). After all, as Stenner (2014, p. 206) has argued, “questions of psychology can be very poorly posed when abstracted from their cultural, societal and historical settings, and (…) these settings are poorly understood in abstraction
from the living, experiencing human beings whose actions make their reproduction and transformation possible.”
Although these new foundations for psychology and psychosocial studies have managed to inspire interesting alternatives to think about traditional topics in psychology (Brown, 2018; Brown & Reavey, 2015; Brown & Stenner, 2009; Cromby, 2015; Rojas, 2017; Tucker, 2012), its impact in reimagining childhood still requires further developing. Despite attempts made to reframe childhood (Lee & Motzkau, 2012; Rojas Navarro, 2018), “childhood” and “children” continue to be categories strongly embedded in modernist ideas about the human subject, which end up acting as shortcomings that prevent the development of a new theoretically and empirically informed imagination about childhood.
This chapter advances in the wake of the latter. To fully grasp the complexities and multiplicities (Law & Mol, 2002) of current children’s lives, we resign traditional conceptualizations of childhood that have pervaded child and social psychology during most of the twentieth century, offering an alternative port of departure. Inspired by current theoretical debates in social sciences and the humanities, and particularly on debates about posthumanism, the ontological turn, and the urgencies of the Anthropocene, we argue for the need to reconceptualize childhood in terms of entanglements, fragile assemblages produced in encounters that are open-ended and dependent on the heterogeneity of human and nonhuman agents (Prout, 2019; Savransky, 2016).
Such a post-essentialist approach demands us to be aware of the fundamental relationality of childhood. It also requests researchers to be attentive to the constant component of novelty in which children’s lives are enacted in different locations, times, and spaces.

The lack of ontological pluralism in International Relations has been a strong determinant of the general scope of the discipline and its objects of study, as well as all that is rendered irrelevant to the study of the " international ". IR has marginalized difference not only by disciplining epistemologies, but also by rejecting other ontologies, particularly those which belong to indigenous peoples, by relegating them to the realm of myths, legends and beliefs. The roots of ontological marginalization are deeply seeded, so much so that they are present in virtually every field of science (social or not). In order to understand this concern with ontology, we need to refer to the modern age, specifically its Western and now liberal manifestations. The main objective of this article is to put the ontological question on the table. It is argued that the " truth " of one-world, one reality and one universe is also a myth, showing how it has hidden many worlds and many realities. The concept of the pluriverse is used to show how – from different ontological positions, particularly relational cosmovisions like the Andean worldview –, alternatives actually appear. The text is divided into three parts: the first one depicts the pluriverse and what it implies and enables, the second describes how the pluriverse has been occulted by the myth of modernity, and the third part is an attempt to illustrate how relational ontologies contribute to the theoretical constitution of the global.

Given current interests in indigenous ontologies and multiple worldviews, archaeologists drawing on textual evidence must more fully contextualize ancient texts according to how they were perceived and experienced, and understood as capable, in the cultures that created them. This endeavour has methodological impacts for modern interpretations, shifting how we interpret textual evidence as a result of how written realities and histories might have been conceptualized in the past. I examine these topics through the case study of the Classic Maya (250-900 AD, Mexico and Central America), using imagery on painted ceramic vessels. I examine how the Classic Maya understood text and writing, asking: how were texts perceived? How did people relate to them? What capabilities were texts understood to have? Based on observations gleaned from the ways in which glyphs are shown, the ways people are shown interacting with them and the work that glyphs apparently accomplish, I argue that the Classic Maya understood texts to be real, relational and persistent. This article suggests a new direction for archaeological thinking about ancient written sources, complementary to other interpretive approaches to texts, by exploring productive possibilities that emerge when we take ancient experiential perspectives into account.

0. EINFÜHRUNG

„Welt“, „Universum“, „All“, „Totalität“, etc. sind Begriffe, die uns suggerieren, es gebe ein allumfassendes Ganzes, eine maximal abstrakte Situation, an der wir als Subjekte teilhaben. Die hier skizzierte Problematik soll genau von jener Frage handeln: Gibt es dieses Ganze? Gibt es das „Welt-All“? Die vorliegende Arbeit soll deutlich machen, dass die Frage nach der Existenz der Welt eine aus ontologischer Sicht besondere ist. Existiert die Welt, nimmt sie eine Sonderstellung unter den Dingen ein. Als ein „Ding, das alles ist“ fällt sie nicht so unter Dinge, die sie subsumiert – ist außerhalb aller Relation. Doch was bedeutet es jenseits aller Relation zu sein, und käme demselben Objekt ontologisches Gewicht zu? Die Frage lässt sich nicht unabhängig von der ontologischen Kardinalfrage, d.i. „Was bedeutet Sein?“ denken. Diese Arbeit geht davon aus, dass Ontologien, die die Existenzbedingung eines Gegenstandes an Relationsverhältnisse binden (ich nenne diese Position „ontologischer Relationismus“), notwendig, implizit oder explizit, Keine-Welt-Anschauungen vertreten, d.i. die Position, dass es die Welt nicht gibt. Die Haltung, dass es die Welt nicht gibt, orientiert sich insbesondere an jene Argumentationsstränge, die seit jüngerer Vergangenheit unter dem Namen des von Markus Gabriel vertretenen Neuen Realismus bekannt sind. Jener soll paradigmatisch zur Verdeutlichung relationistischer Positionen herangezogen werden. In seiner Theorie gibt es schlichtweg keine Welt.  Grundsätzlich zu unterscheiden ist die Keine-Welt-These von einem metaphysischen Nihilismus, also der Ansicht, dass es überhaupt nichts gibt. Die Theorie vertritt vielmehr einen metametaphysischen Nihilismus, der sich auf die These beschränkt, dass Bezugnahmen auf eine Welt, verstanden als allumfassendes ontisches Einzelding  oder grundlegende Realitätsstruktur, auf nichts referieren. Bezugnahmen auf die Welt sind nicht wahrheitsfähig, weil es ex hypothesi die Welt nicht gibt.  Was es gibt, unterliegt lokal-gebundenen Erscheinungen in Kontexten – Gabriel spricht von Objekten, die in Sinnfeldern erscheinen.  Man kann, aber muss Gabriel nicht in allem folgen, um zu sehen, dass es sich beim Weltbegriff um eine grundlegende ontologische Problemstellung handelt, die es verdient, behandelt zu werden. Seine Reichweite geht weit über die Ontologie hinaus, denn die Antworten auf dieses zunächst theoretische Problem betreffen unser grundlegendstes Verständnis von Mensch-sein und intellektuellem Schaffen. Ist einmal der sichere Boden aller metaphysischen Einheit entzogen, bedarf es unweigerlich einer Neuausrichtung aller Verhältnisbestimmungen in Bezug auf die eigenen Überzeugungen. Zuvor als uneingeschränkt allgemeine Wahrheiten geglaubte Einsichten müssen nun lokalisiert werden. Sie stehen fortan nicht mehr in Bezug zu einem Ganzen, sondern zu einem bestimmten, jeweils lokal-restringierten Bereich, dessen Strukturen die Gültigkeit aller wahrheitsfähigen Sätze bestimmen. Was wahr ist und was falsch ist, ist niemals allgemein wahr oder allgemein falsch, sondern hängt immer von den spezifischen Zugangsbestimmungen, die den Bereich des Diskurses festlegen, ab. Diesem Verständnis folgt insbesondere der Neue Realismus: Gegen den radikalen Relativismus, der alles zur Meinung degradiert, und gegen übergeneralisierte Beschreibungen, die zur unkritischen Ideologie – zur Weltbeschreibung – werden. Der Neue Realismus dreht das Diktum des Relativismus um: „Alles ist relativ“ wird zu einem „Alles ist relativ“. Das heißt erst einmal nur, dass Objektivität kontextabhängig ist. Zwar gibt es Wahrheit niemals im Allgemeinen und in Bezug auf einen Weltbegriff, doch aber im Spezifischen.  Ich möchte mich in diesem Beitrag darauf beschränken, auf die von Gabriel vertretene These, die Keine-Welt-Anschauung, näher einzugehen. Vor allem aber geht es mir im Folgenden darum, sie in einen Kontext allgemeiner Gedanken zum Problem des Weltbegriffs zu stellen. Ich möchte eine These (ontologische Relationsthese) festhalten, die meines Erachtens grundlegend für Keine-Welt-Anschauungen im Sinne Gabriels ist. Abschließend soll die Keine-Welt-Anschauung selbst kritisch befragt werden.

La queja es comúnmente escuchada, actualmente el arte es un tema descuidado en la antropología social, especialmente en Gran Bretaña. La  marginación de los estudios de arte primitivo, en contraste con el inmenso volumen de estudios de política, ritual, intercambio, etc., es demasiada, es un fenómeno obvio que se puede perder, especialmente si se dibuja un contraste con la situación anterior a la llegada de Malinowski y Radcliffe-Brown.

Focusing on the efforts of Nairobi’s water utility to reduce leakage in the city’s expansion of water infrastructure, this study offers an organizational assemblage perspective on infrastructure. Drawing on the concept of assemblage and its uptake in science and technology studies and cultural anthropology, infrastructure is the material form of emergent systems through which the flow of nature, goods, ideas, people and finance is organized over space and time. Nairobi’s water infrastructure brings together a diverse set of features, including pipes, meters, GPS technologies, smartphones, engineering reports, Excel spreadsheets, landlords, plumbers, African chiefs, thieves, foreign experts, politicians, accountants, engineers, the everyday lives and ethnicities of the people of Nairobi, climate conditions, hydraulics, urban topographies and the fluids sludge and water.
Based on a thick performative description of three praxiographic studies, condensed from a four-year ethnographic case study that included eight months of onsite fieldwork in Nairobi, I describe the engagement of Nairobi’s water utility in three technoscientific practices of water leakage and loss management: measuring, tracking, and demarcating water flow and leakage. Through a creative non-fictional writing process, including ficto-critical storytelling, inspired by a postcolonial and feminist understanding in science and technology studies, I empirically and politically account for how a technoscientific intervention enacts the pacification, visibility, and formalization of infrastructure.
My practical ontology framework helps me to understand how the organizing of infrastructure enacts the recursive dynamic of ontological multiplicity and stabilizing, a key concern in assemblage thinking and actor-network-theory. This dynamic is not only experimental, but entangled in organizing practices of governing fluidity, managing invisibility, and operating messiness. I also give the uptake of the concept of assemblage thinking in the turn to infrastructure in social theory empirical depth. This study suggests an empirical and conceptual way forward for organizational research to deploy infrastructure thinking.

Posthumanist or new materialist tools, positions and conversations contain some useful ideas for archaeologists to think with, but others that I find deeply problematic. In this opinion piece, I organize my thoughts around three posthumanist 'turns' to objects and materials, relations and assemblages, and non-human animacy. I appreciate how some strands of Posthumanism can help us think more creatively and thoughtfully about relations between humans and non-humans, but I argue against non-anthropocentrism, flat ontology and symmetrical archaeology. Animacy and perspectivism can help remedy colonialist and late-stage capitalist destructive forces, but archaeologists should take care not simply to appropriate, patronize, or re-colonize non-western thinkers. Ultimately, I argue, we should not need continental philosophy to remind us to care about one other, all living creatures and the well-being of our shared planet. What is needed today are ethics, not convoluted turns toward objects.

Este trabajo presenta elementos conceptuales para elaborar una aproximacion existencial a a etnografia. Las principales influencias de esta propuesta se relacionan con el pensamiento filosófico de Heidegger y Sartre, asi como de las ideas desarrolladas
por la antropologia critica y reflexiva, la antropologia de la experiencia de Victor Turner, y el posmodernismo antropologico. Se discuten las vinculaciones existentes entre el Ser, la Existencia y el lenguaje para la descripcion y analisis de la practica etnografica en el mundo contemporaneo. Se pasa revista a la constitucion ontologica del sujeto-etnografo desde los inicios de la disciplina hasta el presents. Asimismo, se brinda una definición existencial de la antropologia y de su momento experiencia.1, la etrnograiia, como un desplazamiento ontologico por el espacio del Mundo. Esta practica supone la posibilidad  de concretar una praxis no alienada, donde la estructura dual del sujeto-etnografo (un
individuo historico y un 'espacio metodologico'), se unifique en lo que Bob Scholte denomina ‘reconciIiaci6n existencial’. Finalmente, se postula la necesidad de un nuevo espacio intersubjetivo que supere al individuo autonomo y cerrado de la etnografía tradicional.