Customer Reviews

Animism: Respecting the Living World

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"Animism" has a rather shady history, having been often used as a pejorative label for beliefs regarded as simple or primitive. Properly, it refers to those religions based on attributing spirits, or spiritual nature, to some or all beings in the environment: animals, trees, rocks, mountains, and so on. Most traditional religions of small-scale societies do this. However, these religions differ enormously among themselves. Harvey, a religious studies professor, compares the Ojibwe (Anishinabe) with the Central Desert Australian Aborigines, giving brief (all too brief) accounts of both. These religions are as different from each other as either one is from Christianity or Islam, making "animism" a problematic category. Harvey also uses the term "shamanism" very broadly--much more broadly than I would care for; I prefer to limit the term to its original meaning, i.e. the religion of the indigenous peoples of Siberia ("shaman" is a Tungus word, from east Siberia) and such religions as are clearly very closely related thereto. Talking about "shamans" among South American Indians or San is really stretching the term. However, a case can still be made for using the term in its classic broad sense, to refer to any religion in which the officiants send their souls to the lands of the gods and dead, and this is how Harvey uses it. Still, I wonder what is served by generalizing about very disparate traditions.

Harvey gives a very good short history and discussion of the concept of animism, with full attention to its pejorative uses in the past. He makes a very good case for rehabilitating it (as have Eugene Hunn and several other anthropologists). He also discusses its use by modern individuals seeking to reconnect with a more immanent, environmental spirituality. [...]I hope that Harvey's all too brief, but really intelligent and thought-provoking, discussion makes such seekers go more deeply into the wonderful variety and incredible depth and power of the thousands of worldviews and religions lumped (for better or worse) as "animist."

I am a professional anthropologist, with a specialization in anthropology of religion and the author of a forthcoming text on anthropology of religion from Routledge. Like the previous review, I was skeptical when I saw that Harvey included discussions of wiccans, feminists, and eco-spiritualists. However, the concern was ill-founded. Harvey has actually given us a very intelligent book on the latest research into "animism" or more properly the agent-centered view of nature and supernature. Truly, early commentators like Tylor considered animism to be an inferior type of religion, one based on false notions of intelligence or will in non-human beings (of course one could criticize all religions for false notions about non-human intelligence). However, as Harvey shows, not only is animism not inferior at all, but it is actually the essence of ALL religion--that there are non-human agents in the world, and that we humans interact socially with them. The contemporary sources that Harvey cites are a valuable library on their own.

There are some shortcomings of the book. It does not include some of the best new work on agency in religion, like Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran, and Paul Bloom. The discussion of Hallowell and the Ojibwe is valuable, but the chapter on Australian Aboriginals is very deficient, relying on two main sources, one worthwhile (Deborah Bird Rose) and one not worthwhile (Michael Jackson). There is much literature he could and should have referenced, as I know, having done my fieldwork among the Warlpiri of Central Australia. Even the discussion of eco-spiritualism and such shows that these religions are as authentic as any "traditional" belief system, and in fact all belief systems are of course invented and constructed, and all are as affected by modernity as these new ones.

Harvey's conclusion, that animism has been a concept invented by moderns to achieve modern intellectual goals is a good one, and he rightly points out that not all cultures share our Western dualistic approach to mind and body or to humans and "nature." It is a book very worth reading.

I am impressed with this book for at least a few reasons. One, it goes to the heart of indigenous/shamanic/animist/pagan/earthy worldviews by placing the emphasis on relationships and learning how to relate well with diverse other kinds of beings. Two, it does so with language that is honoring of diversity and non-divisive, no small task considering the history of English-speaking cultures. And three, Harvey is playful. He's fun to read and gets that most animists are not uptight curmudgeons.

I teach shamanism to spiritual seekers as part of my day-job and see how this IS something that is learned (or not), just as Harvey asserts, by indigenous and non-indigenous folks alike. I also work as a professional counselor and see how most folks at least in this area of the US only see other living humans as full persons and that the major task before Western cultures (in my opinion) is to restore personhood to our other-than-human relations and to allow our ethical frameworks and conduct to follow suit from this shift in attention and worldview. You can call this a reclamation of Indigenous Mind, an animist revival, or survival. In any case, it's time.

Big thanks to Harvey for such a well-crafted text!

Daniel Foor /[...]

An important addition to the renewal and re-examination of animist philosophy, as begun by other authors such as Daniel Quinn (Ishmael) and David Abram (Spell of the Sensuous).

One strength of this book appears when the author finds the connection between what some readers may consider certain "fake" or "new age" religions like neo-paganism, and ancient indigenous traditions. They both embrace a certain relationship towards the world to one extent or another, a relationship that the book endeavors to illuminate.

If you consider yourself an animist, add this to your library; if you seek to further understand animism, do the same. An important work.

It was wonderful to find a book on the topic of Animism that didn't try to simply appropriate another culture's view on spirituality. Harvey's view of Animism strips out the mystical aspect of the practice, and simply lays the subject out on the table to examine plainly. Far too many people get caught up within the details of what Tribe X or Tribe Y believes in, and miss the point entirely: Animism is about forming healthy relationships with the world around you. Animism is not "a belief in spirits" -- though it is often accompanied by it -- but rather it is relating to the world around you, and the realization that you are only one person on the face of this planet that is filled with persons, both human and 'other-than-human'. Harvey spells this out plainly, and backs up his claims with decades and centuries of philosophy and science.

This book is quite dense, however, and at times it can be difficult to slog through quotations from other works. All-in-all though, it has been a remarkable read.

i minored in anthropology and was interested in this title when the library that i work in acquired it; it begins promisingly enough and in scholarly enough fashion. the main problem (and it's a big one) that i have with this work is that it puts self-titled witches, wiccans, neo-pagans, eco-feminists, etc., on equal grounds with native belief systems -- perhaps the author suffers from such quasi-spiritual delusions himself, or, for some reason, would think it politically incorrect not to include the "beliefs" of such attention-seekers. whatever the reasons, i found it disconcerting to have to continually skip through sizable sections of what seems to be an otherwise serious examination of the matter. a secondary, lesser complaint is about the writing style; the author seems to feel a constant need to explicitly announce his transitions from one idea to the next... it gets old and is not really necessary for the assumed reading audience of an academic work.