Ethnos

Journal of Anthropology

ISSN: 0014-1844 (Print) 1469-588X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/retn20

The Earth Cannot Let Go of Us: Analysing

Ontological Conflicts

Utsa Hazarika

To cite this article: Utsa Hazarika (2016): The Earth Cannot Let Go of Us: Analysing Ontological
Conflicts, Ethnos, DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2016.1171791

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2016.1171791

Published online: 20 Jun 2016.

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 ETHNOS, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2016.1171791

The Earth Cannot Let Go of Us: Analysing Ontological

Conicts
Utsa Hazarika
Independent Scholar, Delhi, India
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ABSTRACT
This paper examines certain key concepts of the ontological turn in anthropology,
with a view to a clearer understanding of its proposed methodology. It situates the
ontological approach within the historical and intellectual conicts through which it
arose, outlining its motivations and the challenges it poses to traditional eldwork
methods and theory. The concepts of radical alterity and incommensurability are
examined as intellectual as well as political concepts, highlighting their historical
contingency on the politics of colonisation. Following from this, the notion of
ontological self-determination is analysed with respect to my eldwork with the
Dongria Kondh in the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha, India; I show how an application of
the ontological methodology allows a better understanding of certain conicts
within current discourses and practices of nationhood and development.

KEYWORDS Alterity; incommensurability; ontological self-determination; Eduardo Viveiros de Castro; Dongria

Kondh

Proponents of the ontological turn1 in anthropology advocate a focus on ontology over

epistemology, and argue that this allows anthropologists to take seriously their infor-
mants or the people they study. The general claim is that this re-orientation of meth-
odology allows us to pursue the decolonisation (Viveiros de Castro 2009) of
anthropology. Conversely, the focus on epistemology, despite the anthropologists
best ideological intentions (Viveiros de Castro 2009), results in the (dismissal of)
informants accounts as imaginative interpretations (Henare et al. 2007: 1)
thereby not taking them seriously enough.
The ontological turn is, therefore, motivated by both an intellectual and a political
challenge to anthropological methodology. These intellectual and political dimensions
are captured in Viveiros de Castros phrase ontological self-determination, a concept
which I examine with reference to my eldwork with the Dongria Kondh in the Niyam-
giri Hills of Odisha, India. In order to do this however, it is necessary to rst make an
attempt to pin down the notions of radical alterity and incommensurability; for
although these are seen as key concepts associated with the ontological turn, there is
little in the work of its advocates that makes explicit what exactly is meant by these terms.
One of the primary aims of this paper then is to clarify and defend certain key con-
cepts of the ontological approach, which have recently attracted signicant critical

CONTACT Utsa Hazarika utsa_mukh@yahoo.com

2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 U. HAZARIKA

attention.2 This theoretical discussion occupies much of the rst half of this paper. Fol-
lowing from this, I turn to an application of these theoretical concepts using an ethno-
graphic example from my eldwork.
To begin with, I examine the central motivations for the ontological approach, situ-
ating them in the political and intellectual conicts from which they rst arose.

The Problem with Epistemology

we remind ourselves that anthropology does not merely apprehend the world in which it is
located, but that the world also determines how anthropology will apprehend it. (Asad 1973: 12)
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In keeping with Viveiros de Castros stated aim of (concluding) the process of the
disciplines decolonisation,3 I will begin with Asads work, who rst made explicit
the connection between anthropology and colonisation. In his introduction to Anthro-
pology and the Colonial Encounter, Asad traces the history of anthropology, rooted as he
nds it in an unequal power encounter between the West and the Third World. The
initial quote above is a remark upon the ways in which post-war changes in the world at
large, structural changes as it were, impacted the discipline itself.
Crucial among these was the decolonisation of the countries in which anthropolo-
gists had traditionally conducted their eldwork. By fundamentally altering the con-
ditions in which ethnographic research was being carried out, that is, the conditions
of the unequal power encounter, decolonisation impacted the discipline by forcing
it to take into account matters of power relations that had previously been set aside.
As a result, Asad notes that the old theories of anthropology which had once seemed
insightful started to seem insufcient and unconvincing.
Asads words the world also determines how anthropology will apprehend it
are also a call to remind ourselves of the need for reexivity in anthropological meth-
odology. At rst glance this seems to refer just to the sociopolitical or structural changes
mentioned above. However, later in the same chapter, Asad provides clues to another
way in which the world might determine how anthropology apprehends it.
Still on the subject of the unequal power relations which gave the anthropologists
access to the primitive societies they were studying, Asad writes that the problem
for the discipline (and other bourgeois disciplines) arises not only from these relations,
or the colonial encounter, but also from the way in which these disciplines objectify
their knowledge (my emphasis).
Linking this epistemological problem to the wider structural one, he writes: It is
because the powerful who support research expect the kind of understanding which
will ultimately conrm them in their world that anthropology has not very easily
turned to the production of radically subversive forms of understanding. He then
stakes a further epistemological claim about the objectication of anthropological
knowledge: It is because anthropological understanding is overwhelmingly objectied
in European languages that it is most easily accommodated to the mode of life, and
hence to the rationality, of the world power which the West represents.
By stating the epistemological side of the problem of the unequal power encounter
that anthropology was rooted in, Asad sets an important precedent for the anthropol-
ogists of the ontological turn and their attempts to decolonise the discipline. Indeed,
the key motivation for this approach has been set out by Asad the need for a reexive
methodology, where anthropologists are mindful of the determining effect the
 ETHNOS 3

structural or sociopolitical circumstances of the world have on the way they apprehend
the world or rather, on their ways of knowing, or epistemology.
Further, the way in which Asad frames this epistemological issue the need to pay
attention to the way in which anthropological knowledge is objectied, and especially to
the rationality of the world power which the West represents is what anthropologists
of the ontological turn claim their method allows them to do. Their approach is seen to
be the one which allows the production of radically subversive forms of understanding
and it is in this sense that Viveiros de Castro claims that a focus on ontology will further
the decolonisation of anthropology.
Before turning to an analysis of this method, however, it is necessary to clarify the
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epistemological issues raised by Asad above how is anthropological knowledge objec-

tied? And what is the problem with Western rationality and its inuence on anthro-
pological discourse?
Proponents of the ontological turn stress that the widespread use of the nature/
culture distinction (cf. Latour 1993, 2013) in anthropological thinking results in an
overemphasis on epistemology. Viveiros de Castro (2012) explains this as the view of
the unity of nature and the multiplicity of cultures that is, the anthropologist
approaches her subject with the view that nature is something that is shared by all,
while the cultures through which people apprehend nature differ. The natural world
thus acts as a given, while culture comes to mean the ways of knowing or seeing
that world, or rather, representations of that world.
The task of ethnography then, and of anthropological explanation more generally,
becomes to learn and understand the representations of the peoples studied, and
then present these in a comprehensible way to the anthropologists audience those
of her own society or culture. Anthropologists of the ontological turn charge that
this approach to ethnography results in simply expanding familiar categories to unfa-
miliar instances (Henare et al. 2007: 6).
According to this view, when an anthropologist encounters something unfamiliar in
the eld, which challenges the concepts through which she operates, she tends to nd
some way of interpreting the phenomenon to t her familiar categories. And this
interpretation is then presented as the representation or culture of the people she
studies. The informants explanations are shoehorned into a representation that ts
with our analytical categories, even when their explanations challenge these very
categories.
The issue at hand thus goes deeper to power relations on the plane of knowledge
(where) the anthropologist typically enjoys an epistemological advantage over the
native (Viveiros de Castro 2003). It is on this epistemological plane that the inuence
of Western rationality on the anthropologists discourse becomes an issue. For it is
Western rationality and its accompanying philosophical traditions that largely deter-
mine the concepts through which the anthropologist operates, and to which the anthro-
pologist (perhaps unwittingly) attempts to t native discourse, even when this discourse
proposes its own, radically opposed, concepts.
The ontological turn thus advocates a fundamentally different approach to native
discourse, one that not only takes it seriously, but which also allows for its concepts
to inuence our own analytical categories. By denying the anthropologists epistemo-
logical advantage over native discourse, it posits an equality between the discourses
(Viveiros de Castro 2003). For a discipline which originated in the unequal power
encounter with those it deemed savages and primitives at the bottom of the
 4 U. HAZARIKA

evolutionary ladder, it offers a radically subversive methodology which create(s) the

conditions for the ontological self-determination of people(s) (Viveiros de Castro
2003).

Radical Alterity
Alterity is just a relational indicator of the contradiction between the ethnography and the initial
assumptions the analyst brings to it If alterity is just a tag for phenomena that do not make
sense to us, then mana-terms are alter in the most literal way. (Holbraad 2007: 190191)
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In order to show how the focus on ontology fulls these aims, I now turn to an analy-
sis of radical alterity through Holbraads ethnography of If, a Cuban diviners cult.
This work is an attempt to understand ach, which he takes to be a mana-term
after Lvi-Strausss introduction of mana and the protracted anthropological debate
which followed. Noting the lack of success that these debates had in successfully
accounting for mana, Holbraad takes mana-terms to be those which challenge the
initial assumptions or familiar categories (above) of the anthropologist, such that
they present themselves as puzzles which do not make sense. The point is,
however, that the assumptions or categories of the anthropologist are not up to the
task of solving these puzzles thus, Holbraad sets out his vision of how this task
might be successfully undertaken.
Ach, then, is both thing and concept, a mana-term bound to present itself as a con-
tradiction to the anthropologist because it transgresses her categories, which keep
things and concepts apart as separate entities. The term is used widely to refer to
both abstract and concrete; for example, it is both the divinatory power of If initiates,
deities and ancestors, and also the secret powders used by the initiates in sances.
During these sances, diviners typically use a divining board and sixteen palm nuts,
and proceed as follows:
by clutching all sixteen nuts with both hands, and then separating most of them off with the
right hand so as to leave either one or two nuts in the left. If only one remains, the babalawo
marks two lines with his middle and ring nger on a layer of ach-powder which is spread
on the surface of his divining board. If two nuts are left, he marks a single line with his
middle nger. The process is repeated until eight (single or double) marks are made on the
board, arranged in two columns of four. In what we might call a random way, this yields one
of 256 possible divinatory congurations, referred to as oddu Each oddu is connected to
a series of myths that are interpreted in various ways to give pertinent advice to consultants.
(Holbraad 2007: 202)

For an anthropology that focuses on the epistemology of its informants, the aim will
be to explain why it is that they represent ach as both concept and thing. There are thus
two approaches that look plausible. The rst is to look for the causal explanation
Why might Cuban diviners posit (a) relationship between their power and their
powder, given that no causal efcacy seems actually to be involved? (Holbraad
2007: 204). This approach begins with the presumption that ach-powers and ach-
powders are a priori separate and independent of each other, and then attempts to
connect them by an external logical causality. It thus contradicts what practitioners
say about ach: not only that the power or capacity to divine comes from the ach-
powders, but also that these powders can only be made and used by practitioners
who possess the secret knowledge and the ach-power to do so in the rst place.
 ETHNOS 5

Having failed to nd an explanation for ach using the category of thing, we turn to
the category of concept instead. The synonymous nature of powder and power in If
divination leads us to postulate the possibility of powder is power being an analytic
truth for practitioners, in the way that all bachelors are unmarried men is for us (cf.
Quine 1951). However, this conceptual identity does not take into account the real
transference (Holbraad 2007: 204) of power which practitioners get from ach-
powders. A bachelor is an unmarried man by virtue of meaning alone, whereas
powder is power not just because of what it means, but because of what it is in
other words, the problem is ontological, rather than conceptual.
What Holbraad is trying to show here is that when the focus is on epistemology
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alone, the ethnographic phenomena are automatically ltered through the anthropolo-
gists categories. But mana-terms like ach cannot be accounted for by either concept
or thing. Both these lines of explanation run aground when we take what our infor-
mants tell us seriously.
In response to this epistemological bind (Henare et al. 2007: 10), the ontological
turn proposes to take difcult alter phenomena like ach and use them to reect
back on to our own conceptual shortcomings. Returning to the divinatory sance
described above, Holbraad writes: the constitution of deities as displacement of
powder tells us something pretty important about the premises of If cosmology:
that these deities are to be thought of neither as individual entities nor as relations,
but rather as motions (Holbraad 2007: 209).
Thus what earlier appeared as separate ontological domains ach-powder and
ach-power, thing and concept now appear to be instances of the same thing in a
logical universe where motion is primitive. Motility for ach-powder is its partibility
the particles of the powder as they allow for the hand of the practitioner to bring
Orula into immanence; motility for ach-power is its ability to bring Orula from a
place of distance to one of proximity.
Ach, as power and powder, is thus revealed as the ability to bring or draw Orula out
from transcendence to immanence. Ach-powder, when it is spread over the divining
board, is the space in which ontological transformations happen oddu is not an
ex post facto representation of an already pertaining state of affairs, but rather an act
of ontological transformation in its own right, for it is in this act that the oddu is sub-
stituted as an immanent presence in the sance (Holbraad 2007: 211). It is the power
of the practitioner, who uses his secret knowledge to bring the deity into proximity, and
it is the consecrated space provided by the powder, in which and through which the
deity reveals itself on the divinatory board.
Going back to Holbraads explanation of alterity which began this section, we can
now roughly pin down alterity in the following way phenomena are instances of alter-
ity when they contradict the assumptions or categories of the analyst. However, the onto-
logical turn also gives us the methodology required to overcome this contradiction by
allowing us to transgress our own categories. By refusing to give our concepts or cat-
egories a higher epistemological status (than those of the native), we see their shortcom-
ings and the ways in which they can be subverted. Alterity therefore need not be
permanent for the anthropologist, and could probably be taken as a kind of epistemo-
logical culture shock (cf. Wagner 1981: 6), lasting for as long as it takes the anthropol-
ogist to pinpoint the contradiction and account for it by reexively challenging her own
assumptions.
 6 U. HAZARIKA

There seems, however, to be no indication in the literature of weaker or stronger

forms of alterity that is, at what point does alterity become radical? And if its
radical nature is not to be found in its conceptual formulation, might we be better
off looking for it in its political aims? Rather than looking for degrees of alterity, the
question is instead reframed what is radical about alterity? I return to this latter ques-
tion in the discussion on ontological self-determination later in this essay.

Incommensurability
Philosophical discussions on incommensurability tend to focus on language; the
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general idea is that language provides a scheme through which its speakers interpret
the world (cf. Davidson 19731974; Quine 19571958). The resulting denition of
incommensurability therefore rests on a schemecontent dualism, where the
content is a common world which speakers of different languages interpret according
to the grammatical categories of their language or scheme. Incommensurability
occurs when two languages are so dissimilar that their speakers see the world in com-
pletely different ways.
Accordingly, anthropological work on the subject also bases its denition on these
terms. The most prominent and recent discussion on incommensurability comes
from Povinelli (2001), whose denition of incommensurability is grounded in linguistic
indeterminacy, putting her directly at odds with the methodological aims of the onto-
logical turn.
Povinelli (2001: 320) writes:
Indeterminacy is also used in a more narrow sense to refer to the condition in which two incom-
patible translations (or, readings) are equally true interpretations of the same text. In other
words, if indeterminacy refers to the possibility of describing a phenomenon in two or more
equally true ways, then incommensurability refers to a state in which two phenomena (or
worlds) cannot be compared by a third without producing serious distortion.

The schemecontent dualism here features as one of text and interpretation, and
from the point of view of the ontological turn, this denition is immediately proble-
matic. For Povinelli, positing indeterminacy requires an ontological commitment to
the existence of a text4 which is read or interpreted in two different ways. This
holds a striking parallel to the nature/culture distinction, with its implication of the
unity of nature and the multiplicity of cultures (Viveiros de Castro 2012: 46). Thus,
from her denition we have one text many readings; one phenomenon many
descriptions; and from the nature/culture distinction, one nature many cultures or
representations.
Povinellis denition thus relies on the epistemological view of anthropology that
proponents of the ontological turn have rejected, and cannot therefore constitute
incommensurability in a way that would be applicable to their work. Moreover, it
would put the anthropologist who studies perspectivist societies (Swancutt 2007; Will-
erslev 2004) in an untenable position, since these societies reject the very categories on
which the incommensurability of their views is meant to be based.
For example, in his analysis of Amazonian perspectivism, Viveiros de Castro (2012)
discusses the widespread belief among indigenous peoples of Amazonia (and elsewhere)
that the natural world is populated by subjectivities, that is, by beings that have points
of view or perspectives like humans do. Animals and spirits, supposedly part of the
 ETHNOS 7

natural world, have (human) culture thus transgressing the nature/culture distinc-
tion of the anthropologist and forcing her to account for perspectivism by subverting
her categories.5 There is thus no common text or unity of nature for an anthropolo-
gist studying such perspectivist societies.
It therefore seems clear that the rst part of the conditional if indeterminacy
refers to the possibility of describing a phenomenon in two or more equally true
ways does not hold for the ontological approach to ethnography, and as a result the
second part of the conditional then incommensurability refers to a state in which
two phenomena (or worlds) cannot be compared by a third without producing
serious distortion cannot logically stand as a denition for incommensurability here.
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It is worth noting, however, that the latter in itself is a somewhat mysterious formu-
lation, given the denition of linguistic indeterminacy that precedes it.
We began the conditional by positing a single text (or phenomena or nature) and
two incompatible translations, readings or descriptions. The second half of the con-
ditional, however, posits three phenomena or worlds with no real indication of how
this third world or phenomena might compare the other two surely any comparison
will have to be done on the level of readings or translations and not on the level of
phenomena. Clearly the nature/culture distinction implied by the rst half of the con-
ditional entails that natures6 cannot compare themselves, but descriptions or represen-
tations of the natural world can be compared.
The entry of a third world in this denition of incommensurability also runs counter
to the anthropological enterprise as conceived by the ontological approach. Wagner
(1981: 3), an important antecedent and inspiration for authors of this approach,
describes this enterprise in the terms of a one-to-one relationship: the understand-
ing of another culture involves the relationship between two varieties of the human
phenomenon; it aims at the creation of an intellectual relation between them, an under-
standing that includes both of them.
Building on this, Viveiros de Castro (2003) writes: The essential factor is that the
discourse of the anthropologist establishes a certain relationship with the discourse
of the native. This relationship is a relation of meaning, or a relation of
knowledge.
A denition of incommensurability which will be applicable to the ontological turn
in anthropology will, therefore, have to be posited on a one-to-one relation which, going
by Viveiros de Castro and Wagners comments above, should be an epistemic relation.
This is a good point at which to return to the previous discussion of alterity. I showed
there what such an epistemic relation, one that created an understanding that included
both (native and anthropologist), would look like. This relation was shown to consist
primarily in the methodology employed during eldwork and analysis.
I would reiterate that the focus on ontology is methodological; that is, it is an orien-
tation or approach not only to eldwork in particular, but also to the formulation of
anthropological knowledge more generally. Thus, the impact of this approach on
anthropology can be purely epistemological. What is being advocated is a focus on
the ontology of the people being studied and not on the ontology of the anthropologist
(and her culture).
The confusion surrounding this accounts for a good deal of the criticism the propo-
nents of this method have faced, much of which challenges its plausibility. Laidlaw
(2012) expresses some of these concerns as follows:
 8 U. HAZARIKA

what on earth happens at the boundaries between these different ontologies, and when things
or people cross from one to another? What kind of meta-ontology does one have to postulate to
make sense of the thought that the world could be made up of different stuff in different places?

Laidlaws challenge here hints at a notion of incommensurability, since this is pre-

sumably what happens at the boundaries of different ontologies. Ontology here is
thought of as some bounded entity jostling for space in a bloated universe (Quine
in Heywood 2012) of similar entities. In his response to this charge of an untenable
meta-ontology, Pedersen (2012) dismisses the idea that a reexive anthropology
needs to posit a meta-ontology in order to take its informants seriously. Quoting Hol-
braad (2011: 263264), he writes: At issue are not the categories of those we purport
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to describe, but rather our own when our attempts to do so fail.

As I mentioned earlier, the methodological move proposed by the ontological
approach is to use the ontology of those we study to reect upon and transgress our
categories in our analysis of those we purport to describe. Thus, we do not have to
force ourselves into the untenable position of actually believing that powder is
power, or that animals and spirits live and perceive as humans do,7 or, in broader
terms, that the world is made up of different stuff in different places (Laidlaw
2012). But we do need to give ourselves the conceptual means by which we can
account for these views in our attempts to understand the people we study, and we
do this by rendering our categories contingent upon the phenomena, especially those
difcult mana-terms we encounter in the eld.
Notions of incommensurability thus seem to rely on the commitment to the exist-
ence of bounded worlds. But as I hope I have shown, the only commitment the onto-
logical approach requires from the anthropologist is reexivity on the epistemological
level. It therefore seems that neither the incommensurability proposed by Povinelli,
nor that hinted at by Laidlaw, is applicable to this approach.

Ontological Self-determination
Viveiros De Castros work on alterity has been a key inuence on the ontological turn in
anthropology. His view that anthropology should work to create the conditions for the
ontological self-determination of people(s) (2003) should be seen in the context of
the social and political zeitgeist surrounding the indigenous rights movements in Brazil
which inuenced his work:
The start of the 1970s saw the indigenous minorities in my country begin to establish themselves
as political agents. Our aim as anthropologists was to assist this process by providing it with a
radical intellectual dimension, enabling the thought of American peoples to escape the ghetto in
which it had been enclosed since the sixteenth century our world had yet to wake up to the
now pervasive sentiment against difference and alterity All difference seems nowadays to be
read as an opposition, while alterity is conceived as the absence of a relation: to oppose is taken
to be synonymous with to exclude Theres no need to remind you that othering is not the
same kind of politico-metaphysical swindle everywhere. And come to think of it, why should
saming be such a better thing to do to others? (Viveiros de Castro 2003)

Alterity or difference here appears to signify a kind of independence in the case of

the indigenous activists he mentions, independence from the state. It is a statement of
political struggle, of the colonised against the coloniser. As I briey indicated in the pre-
vious discussion on radical alterity, it is in this political aim of the methodology that its
radical nature might be found.
 ETHNOS 9

Incommensurability here would have the same import as alterity or difference a

statement of opposition to the power which seeks to bring the other under its
control in an act of saming or commensuration. This act of commensuration does
not incorporate the other as an equal, however. The other is enclosed in a ghetto, in
a space that is politically and intellectually inferior.
We may note that this conception of alterity is proposed as a kind of opposition or
insurrection as Viveiros de Castro (2003) would have it, against the unequal power
encounter between the West and the Third World (cf. Asad above). The ghetto in
which the thought of the American people was enclosed was imposed upon them
since the sixteenth century in other words, since the colonisation of the Americas
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by European powers. An apposite example of commensuration would then be the evol-

utionist paradigm where indigenous peoples and their cultures were savage or primi-
tive and occupied the lowest rung of the evolutionary ladder inferior humans, and for
some, not even human at all.
Povinellis (historical) ethnographic studies of Aboriginal communities in Australia
provide an insight into how these practices of saming and commensuration played
out through anthropological discourse during colonisation. And although, as men-
tioned above, her denition of incommensurability is grounded in linguistic indetermi-
nacy, it is still possible to apply her ethnographic studies to the aims of the ontological
approach, since, as I will show, they do not seem to require a commitment to the idea of
a common text or nature.
In Povinellis analysis, incommensurability is displaced from a logical problem
into a social problem (Povinelli 2001: 325), and enables the anthropologist to
counter the ethnocentric practices of commensuration it is a means to the ontological
self-determination of peoples. Whereas alterity sought to dismantle the power relations
of colonisation on the epistemological plane of anthropological analysis in that it used
the structural issue of colonial power to address the epistemic issue of the objectication
of anthropological knowledge incommensurability takes the epistemic project of alter-
ity and resituates it in the political.
Povinellis analysis of Spencer and Gillens study of ritual sex during the engwura
initiation of Arrente men shows one such instance of incommensurability. Engwura
initiation was of signicance to the settler population of Australia not only because
they superanimated liberal reection (and) caused a crisis of reason in Australian
non-Aboriginal citizens (Povinelli 2002: 75), but also because
how the indigenous was situated within extant discourses of the wild and reasonable and the
civil and savage would affect the formulation of state policy Did the lack of a common
language or shared moral universe between settler and indigenous groups threaten the very
notion of an Australian nation ? (Povinelli 2002: 77)

We have the indications here of both alterity the crisis of reason that Arrente
ritual sex caused for the white population; and commensurability the notion of an
Australian nation which encompassed both settler and indigenous communities
under the unity notion of we the people (Povinelli 2002). Both nation and
notion were of course a paradigm and a discourse that were the prerogative of
the coloniser and not of the indigenous subject. Being incorporated into these as
the savage and wild native is necessarily a ghettoisation of the Aboriginal
subject enclosing her in a politics and a discourse where she is subordinated to
the settler.
 10 U. HAZARIKA

Povinelli writes:
I have little doubt that Spencer (and) Gillen took it to be self-evident that what they saw
was sex between men and women; that when they and the Arrente pointed to a sex act they
were pointing to the same act and eld of action (but) for their Victorian sensibilities, these
rough rituals bled into the brutish, (and) bordered on the traumatic, thus reinforcing them as
savage and wild. (2002: 82)

Povinelli challenges the ethnographers presumption of a shared act and eld of

action through descriptions of Arrente myths and rituals, which:
foreground the corporeal and ontological transformations that occur when a body is under a
heightened state of physical and mental stress or stimulation Trauma may well have been the
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necessary condition for the production of an engwura orientation the interiority and exter-
iority of the initiates body was remade in rituals In this economy of the body, sex may
have been just another form of attachment a subjective restructuring based on some
engwura operation other than sex. (Povinelli 2002: 99106)

Arrente ritual sex acts were thus likely in the same category as other corporeal practices
such as massages, incisions, burning, soaking, rubbing, etc. (Povinelli 2002: 102103),
which induced trauma during rituals in order to generate the corporeal and ontological
transformations which tied Arrente individuals to their land by giving them an engwura
orientation. Spencer and Gillens approach to ethnography resulted in separating sex acts
from other corporeal practices because they ltered these phenomena through their fam-
iliar Victorian category of sex. In so doing, they conrmed themselves in the world (cf.
Asad above) by making Arrente sexual practices commensurate with their own, and thus
subordinating them into the ghetto of the wild and savage native in colonial discourse.
Commensurability is thus the possibility of comparison but in the context of the
colonial encounter in which the anthropologist was embedded, it is a comparison that
necessarily renders the native as inferior. It is against this historical contingency that
incommensurability has been posited; it is the possibility of considering native prac-
tices on their own terms terms which, crucially, cannot be compared with the cat-
egories of the coloniser, except to say that they are different: that Victorian sex is
not Arrente ritual sex.
This study shows that Povinellis analysis of the intellectual and political dimensions
of incommensurability need not require a commitment to a common text. Her meth-
odology in revealing the ontological differences in Arrente ritual sex is parallel to those
of Viveiros de Castro and Holbraad she reects upon the categories through which
Arrente ritual sex was understood by Spencer and Gillen; she then returns to an exam-
ination of the phenomena to nd an explanation in terms of Arrente categories. Indeed,
it is unclear what the text here would actually be for our understanding of what the
phenomenon is changes according to the categories it is ltered through.
These paradigms of commensuration, as highlighted by Povinelli and Viveiros de
Castro, continue to play out in current discourses on development and nationhood.
An example from my eldwork will illustrate what incommensurability and ontologi-
cal self-determination under these circumstances would look like. The Dongria Kondh,
who live in the Niyamgiri Hills in the east Indian state of Odisha could be called an
indigenous community, were it not for the Indian governments insistence that it
regards the entire population of India at Independence, and their successors, to be
indigenous,8 thus circumventing the need to apply the special protections for indigen-
ous land rights under UNDRIP and other UN conventions. This gloss on the word
 ETHNOS 11

indigenous, homogenising (or commensurating) the entire population of India at the

time of decolonisation, obscures the divisions along which the colonial encounter
continues.
The Dongria Kondh are thus one of many such communities pitted against the tota-
lising logic of the Indian state. For the past decade or so, they have fought off Vedanta
Resources, a London-based Indian-owned, multinational mining company listed on the
Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index, which planned to turn one of their sacred
hills into a billion-dollar bauxite mine.9 The company collaborated with a state-owned
mining company, the Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC),10 and accordingly it was an
arm of the state pushing for the mine. In 2013, Indias Ministry of Environment and
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Forests rejected their proposal;11 my research, carried out in the years before this
decision was made, focuses on the Dongria Kondhs understanding of their sacred hill.
An analysis of the conict over the hill illuminates the shortcomings of ethnographic
explanation that focuses solely on epistemology or representation. While the company
takes the hill to be a large, lifeless deposit of bauxite, the Dongria Kondh contend that
their god, Niyamraja, resides in the hill. To hold that this conict is one of represen-
tation, one would have to proceed rst by positing the hill as xed and given
nature, which the company and the community apprehend differently according to
their representations.
In her study of sacred mountains in South America, de la Cadena (2010) outlines
several reasons why an analysis like the one above is problematic. Phenomena such as
Niyamraja and, in South America, Ausangate and Quilish mountains which similarly
became protagonists in anti-mining movements comprise a kind of culture-nature
entity (de la Cadena 2010: 350). These earth-beings (as christened by de la Cadena)
and their accompanying earth-practices12 are contentious because their presence in poli-
tics disavows the separation between Nature and Humanity (de la Cadena 2010: 342).
This separation underpins the political theory our world abides by (de la Cadena 2010),
and also, in its guise as the nature/culture distinction, forms the basis for the focus on rep-
resentations or epistemology that the ontological turn seeks to refute.13
Much like the anthropologists previously discussed in this paper, de la Cadena also
advocates rejecting these traditional distinctions, and adopting instead the mountains
multiple and heterogeneous ontologies (2010: 362). Differences are therefore to be
found (or sought) between these multiple ontologies, rather than between represen-
tations of a xed and external natural entity. One feature of such culture-nature enti-
ties, therefore, is that the differences are found in nature itself that is, in the
phenomena under consideration and not between two representations of it.
In other words, the personhood of earth-beings, which renders them dually culture-
nature, requires us to focus our attention on the nature part of the nature/culture dis-
tinction. In so doing, however, we undermine the characterisation of nature and the
place it is given under this dichotomy, splintering its unity and questioning its univers-
ality. The ontological approach, which is based on the rejection of a nature that is
common to everyone, therefore allows an analysis of conicts over what there is.
For example, in one of my conversations with the head bejun14 of a Dongria village, I
struggled to understand how it was that a hill could seat a god. My informant drew me a
picture15 which I have reproduced in Figure 1. This cross section is a depiction of the
Dongria Kondhs understanding of their hill. Contrasting this diagram with a cross
section in the form of a bauxite mine, as shown in Figure 2, brings into relief the
issues at stake in the conict over the mine.
 12 U. HAZARIKA

Figure 1. Cross-section of Niyamraja, 2010.

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Do these pictures show two different things? Or just two different representations of
the same thing? In other words, is the difference here ontological or epistemological? To
hold that the conict is purely one of representation would be to ignore the very real
ontological transformation that a bauxite mine would have on the Dongria Kondhs
mountain; that is, it could no longer be the seat of their god. The mine would thus fore-
close any possibility of the Dongrias ontological self-determination because it would
reconstitute the phenomena itself.
The sense that nature is being remade through human actions, and the ontological
matters that this brings into play, has been brought to the fore by Latour (2013) in his
discussions on climate change. The idea of the anthropocene (Latour 2013: 910) an
era where nature (as we have known it) is increasingly shaped by human actions (or
culture) is reected in the transformation that the mine would have on the mountain.
The undermining of the nature/culture dichotomy by these transformations suggests
that ontologies are determined, at least in part, by the practices of their communities
or collectives. And following from this, when these practices such as worshipping

Figure 2. Cross-section of a bauxite mine. Source: Saving Iceland (2010).

 ETHNOS 13

the mountain, or mining it and their ontologies come into conict, it is apparent that
the so-called common text of nature itself is under debate, and not merely our under-
standing (or representation) of it.
The role of the anthropologist in these situations has been suggested by authors such
as Latour (2013) and Stengers (2005) to be one of diplomacy, where
diplomats are there to provide a voice for those whose practice, whose mode of existence and
whose identity are threatened by a decision. If you decide that, youll destroy us. Diplomats
role is therefore above all to remove the anesthesia produced by the reference to progress or
the general interest, to give a voice to those who dene themselves as threatened. (Stengers
2005: 10021003)
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These concerns animate the analyses of not just Viveiros de Castro, but Povinelli and
de la Cadena as well; for these authors, it is the potential loss of worlds, or modes of
existence, that forms the impetus for an ontological self-determination. As I men-
tioned earlier, the notion of ontological self-determination was closely linked to
Viveiros de Castros own involvement with indigenous movements in Brazil; many
of these movements emerged to ght against the state and industrial takeover of indi-
genous lands and the ontologies that went with them.
De la Cadena, in her focus on similar movements in other Latin American countries,
advocates bringing culture-nature entities to the political arena,16 where they serve as
protagonists for indigenous movements against land acquisition; that is, earth-beings
which are normally considered natural phenomena should be allowed to participate in
culture.17 Povinelli, in her study of the colonisation of the Aboriginal communities of
Australia, similarly situates her study of Spencer and Gillens ethnography within the
colonial expropriation of Aboriginal lands; her concerns focus on how the denial of
indigenous ontologies relegated them to an inferior status of wild and savage in
the emerging Australian nation a process that repeats itself in Niyamgiri.
As noted above, the Arrente study highlights the parallels between commensuration
in (Australian) colonial discourse and in (Indian) nationhood. This is especially true
given that the practices of development and industrialisation are being conducted
through extant discourses of the wild and reasonable and the civil and savage
(which) affect the formulation of state policy as it did for the Arrente. Similarly, the
unity notion of we the people as described by the Indian state to the UN works in
effect to commensurate communities like the Dongria Kondh and incorporate them
into this discourse as the wild and savage. For example, in 2009, the Home Minister,
P. Chidambaram, had a crisis of reason of his own:
no country can develop unless it uses its natural and human resources. Mineral wealth is
wealth that must be harvested and used for the people. And why not? Do you want the
tribals to remain hunters and gatherers? Are we trying to preserve them in some sort of anthro-
pological museum? Yes, we can allow the minerals to remain in the ground for another 10,000
years, but will that bring development to these people? We can respect the fact that they worship
the Niyamgirhi [sic] hill, but will that put shoes on their feet or their children in school?
(Chaudhury 2009)

The discourse of development and industrialisation thus seeks to set the terms of
what is real and what is not mineral wealth here is taken to be ontologically privi-
leged in comparison to the Dongrias god and in practice, as documented by the pic-
tures above, does succeed in determining what there is. The certainty that such a
 14 U. HAZARIKA

discourse relies upon is, of course, that of the unity of nature exemplied by the nature/
culture distinction.
This certainty is outlined by proponents of the ontological turn, who point out that,
Differences between peoples representations can be explained (or even, more evange-
lically, settled) by appeal to our most privileged representations, whose chief difference
from others is that they are true true, that is, to the world (Henare et al. 2007: 13).
Mineral wealth is accorded the status of nature, where it objectively exists, and the
representations or cultures that accord with this ontology are therefore privileged.
The Dongria Kondhs god, on the other hand, is a fact of culture, which is polymor-
phous and contentious, and of an inferior ontological status.
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This ontological status accorded to mineral wealth, which also extends to the prac-
tices and processes required to transform minerals into wealth, points to the wider
implications of how the sense of being true to the world operates in this conict.
Some of these implications are revealed in the Ministers comments on the productivity
or yield of the hill in question. His defence of the project, in terms of the monetary yield
expected from the mine, indicates a link between the ethnocentric practices of commen-
suration the disparaging references to the tribals remain(ing) hunters and gath-
erers and relegating their culture to a thing of the past and the ontological
privileging of monetary yield.
This narrative is brought into question by the Dongria Kondh themselves, many of
whom advance ontological claims in explicit opposition to this privileging of monetary
wealth. When questioned about accepting monetary compensation in exchange for
Niyamraja, members of the community often phrase their responses in ways that are
similar to each other, and which echo Stengers assertion that money does not
balance the account (2005: 1003).
Their explanations emphasise the ephemeral quality of money, as opposed to the
sustenance they receive from their land, which, they claim, will last them for generations
to come. Claims such as I can spend two crores18 in two days (no doubt exaggerated)
are common, and are usually followed by a list of the many varieties of produce the
Dongria Kondh receive year-round from their forests. While this kind of straightfor-
ward economic calculation likely plays a role in the Dongria Kondhs refusal of the com-
panys offer, a closer look also reveals other accounts that need to be balanced.
One of these is indicated by the widespread use of kinship terms for their hill and
god, Niyamraja. Lodu Sikaka, a well-known Dongria leader, epitomises the way in
which many Dongria Kondh community members respond to questions about giving
up their land: We wont give up Niyamgiri for any price Niyamgiri is not a pile of
money. That mountain is our life. It is our mother. It is our father It seems like
some ancient demon has returned. I have this axe here ready for them19
(My emphasis).
Lodus words articulate a kind of ontological self-determination, with the ontologi-
cal and political intertwined in his defence of the communitys kin-like relationship
with the hill, as against the states desire to turn it into a pile of money. By refuting
the idea that the hill is a pile of money in other words, that it is mineral wealth
he issues a challenge to the kind of defence put up by the Home Minister, where this
wealth is ontologically privileged. His use of kinship terms to refer to the hill, on the
other hand, points to a different ontology of the hill, one which is in competition
with its existence as mineral wealth, and must be given an equal ontological footing
(cf. Holbraad 2011) in the conict.
 ETHNOS 15

In their use of kinship terms to refer to Niyamraja, the Dongria Kondh often stress
an ancient familial relationship with Niyamraja, extending into the past as a kind of cre-
ation myth for the Dongria Kondh, and posited into the future as an enduring respon-
sibility to the well-being of their land and god:
In the old days, our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers were here. We have
been here for many generations, in Niyamgiris forests. At the time Niyamraja was born here
in Niyamgiri, our parents and grandparents were also born they were born holding Niyamraja.
Because we were born holding Niyamraja, we cannot let go of him, and Niyamraja cannot let go
of us.
Because of the jungle, the earth, the wind, the water, all the animals and birds, men and women
were all born and survived. We cannot let go of this earth, and the earth cannot let go of us.
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For this earth, in 12 months, we give 13 pujas, to bring the land peace, to protect the forests, to
protect the water, to protect Niyamraja.20

The kind of reciprocal relationship described here, and the role it plays in indigenous
communities defence of their land have been explored by Andean ethnographies (de la
Cadena 2010: 354). Here I would like to explore a slightly different approach to these
mutual relations of care (de la Cadena 2010) in Niyamgiri, that of a kind of reciprocal
dependence (Gregory 1982: 19) characteristic of gift exchange. The idea of a mutual
embrace exemplies this kind of relationship, as do the suggestion of the pujas as a
kind of obligation to reciprocate Niyamrajas initial offering which enabled the birth
and survival of Dongria men and women. It is in this offering the jungle, the
earth, the wind, the water that we might nd an indication of the kind of yield the
Dongria Kondh are getting at when they stress a familial relationship with their land.
As a hill which epitomises the material sustenance the Dongria Kondh receive from
their forests, and which also houses their highest god, it appears that any analysis of
Niyamraja, and the conict surrounding it, would have to transcend the usual bound-
aries between economic, religious and political categories. These indications of a total
concept (Sahlins 1972: 168), as well as the indications of a reciprocal and familial
relationship with their land and god, point to the possibility of looking at the
Dongria Kondhs hill and its conict in terms of its hau. Lodus emphasis on the
jungle, the earth, the wind, the water suggests an understanding of hau not unlike
the two intertwined forms isolated by Sahlins, both belonging to a broad concept, a
general principle of productiveness (Sahlins 1972: 168).
One more secular concept pertains to the hau of the gift, where it is simply a
material yield (Sahlins 1972). A second type of hau is that of the forest, where it is
its fecundity. Quoting Best, Sahlins writes:
The hau of this land is its vitality, fertility and so forth (pertaining) not only to man, but also
to animals, land, forests and even to a village home. Thus the hau or vitality, or productiveness, of
a forest has to be very carefully protected by means of certain very peculiar rites. (Best in Sahlins
1972: 167168)

The constant pujas, rites or earth-practices mentioned by Lodu, by which the

Dongria Kondh protect their land and the source of its abundance, Niyamraja,21
suggest that it is also this second type of yield or productiveness that the Dongria
Kondh are trying to protect when they speak out against the mine; not just a straight-
forward economic calculation as supposed at rst glance, but rather a yield much like
the hau of the forest, where as a spiritual quality hau is the principle of fertility (Sahlins
1972: 168). The yield or productiveness the hau given by Niyamraja, allowed the
 16 U. HAZARIKA

birth and survival of the Dongria Kondh, and so they in turn carry out the constant
pujas to enable his protection and survival as well as that of the forest hau or
fecundity.
The protection of their source, from which they receive an enduring sustenance, and
with which they continue an enduring familial relationship through exchange, is there-
fore constantly contrasted with the perceived ephemeral quality of money or compen-
sation, which is seen as a nite offering from a limited one-time transaction. These
comments therefore indicate that the conict is also one of differing conceptions of
yield those of mineral wealth and the hau of the forest stemming from two differ-
ent ontologies.
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It appears that a focus on ontology, utilising a method that claims to provide radi-
cally subversive forms of understanding, has brought us back in fact to an established
body of anthropological thought. This, however, should not be surprising when one
considers that the proponents of the ontological turn hold Mauss work on the gift to
be a predecessor to their approach:
Mauss seminal contribution, in terms of the issues explored here, was to take seriously the
primitive identication of aspects of personhood with the things that he collectively described
as gifts. Instead of dismissing ancestor-artefacts and objects imbued with the personality of
former owners as evidence of primitive animism or superstition, he embraced these unfamiliar
entities, marshalling them in a critique of assumptions that prevailed within his own society.
(Henare et al. 2007: 16)

For Mauss then, the hau of a gift was not simply a representation of the object,
but was thought to consist in the object itself, thereby challenging conventional
(Western) distinctions between people and things. By taking seriously the gifts he
encountered, he allowed for an analysis of total concept where the economic,
social, political and religious are indiscriminately organised by the same relations
and intermixed in the same activities (Sahlins 1972: 168); and in allowing these cat-
egories to intersect with one another, he challenged the mode of life, and ration-
ality, of the world power which the West represents (cf. Asad 1973). Far from
producing a form of understanding that conrmed the powerful in their world
(Asad 1973), the kind of analysis begun by Mauss unsettled many of its fundamental
distinctions.
Like Mauss, ontological analyses operate by situating alterity at the level of phenom-
ena rather than representation. The methodology of the ontological approach requires
us to discard the idea of unity of nature and its place in the nature/culture distinction;
instead, a more fragmented and contentious view of nature emerges.
Ontological self-determination is a form of analysis that seeks to challenge the sep-
aration of the ontological and the political that resulted from the nature/culture dis-
tinction, where ontology would be understood in reference to a xed nature that is
common to all, and politics would belong in the realm of culture. It allows for compet-
ing ontologies, each of which can bring other familiar distinctions and categories into
question. In the case of the Arrente, for example, it was the distinction separating sex
from other corporeal acts, while with de la Cadenas earth beings it was the category of
politics.
With the Dongria Kondh, it is the separation of the political, religious and economic
phenomena, which appear interconnected in their worship and defence of their moun-
tain and provide indications of a total concept. The simultaneous expression of these
 ETHNOS 17

(apparently) discrete social phenomena (Mauss 1967: 1) is therefore aided by drawing

on Mauss theoretical manoeuvres.

Conclusion
I began this paper by situating the challenge posed to anthropology by the ontological
approach in the context in which it rst arose. The following discussions on radical
alterity and incommensurability were an attempt to pin down these concepts as they
appear in the work of anthropologists concerned with ontology.
My analysis of alterity showed how the methodology of the ontological turn could be
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applied to phenomena encountered in the eld that could not be adequately explained
using traditional methods. I then showed that incommensurability, as it is convention-
ally applied in discussions of philosophy and anthropology, is not applicable to the
methodology proposed by the ontological approach. Both the ideas of incommensur-
ability and radical alterity are better understood as political concepts, historically and
socially contingent on the practices and discourses of colonisation, and more recently,
of nationhood and development.
Ontological self-determination as a concept is a result of these intellectual and
political issues. In order to understand conicts such as those between the
Dongria Kondh and the mining companies, between Brazils indigenous commu-
nities and the state, or between the Arrente and the emerging Australian nation,
one needs to turn to the methodology proposed by the ontological approach.
This is because what is at stake here goes beyond issues of representation or epis-
temology; as was shown by the culture-nature status of earth-beings like Niyam-
raja, these are conicts over what there is that is, they are in large part
ontological, and therefore undermine the unity of nature on which representational
analyses are based.
Following this thread of analysis also leads to a better understanding of the conten-
tious phenomena themselves, because a focus on ontology allows us to challenge our
own categories and distinctions. This enables us to evolve new forms of analysis, and
opens the methodology of anthropology up to the production of radically subversive,
or at least more equitable, forms of understanding.

Notes
1. The phrase ontological turn is often used to refer to Viveiros de Castro, Holbraad and related
authors. While many of the specic issues and terminology I address in this paper come directly
from these works, I do not limit the discussion to these authors, but draw instead on ontological
thought within anthropology and science studies more widely.
2. See, for example, Laidlaw (2012) and Heywood (2012).
3. Viveiros De Castro, Anti-Narcissus: the idea of anthropology as a minor science.
4. While it might seem that this view will also be susceptible to the same criticisms that were
applied to Geertzs notion of culture as text, the text here appears to refer to the nature
side of the nature/culture distinction, rather than to culture. One text many readings; one
nature many cultures or representations (Viveiros de Castro 2012). For Geertz, it is the
culture that is text.
5. Viveiros De Castros methodology is in general parallel to Holbraads.
6. Or texts or phenomena (from Povinellis denition above).
7. This would be going native something that neither Viveiros de Castro nor Wagner advocates.
8. As cited in Aufschnaiter (2007: 34).
 18 U. HAZARIKA

9. http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/dongria
10. It is illegal for tribal land, which is protected under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, to be
transferred to a private company. Collaboration with state-owned companies is therefore
required for industrial projects.
11. Although with a subsequent change in government at the centre, recent events suggest
that the communitys future looks increasingly precarious once again (see e.g. Choudhury
2014 and 2016).
12. Earth-practices are human interactions with earth-beings, including offerings (de la Cadena
2010: 337).
13. In her 2010 paper, de la Cadenas aim is to open up the category of politics currently
populated by rational human beings disputing the power to represent others vis--vis the
state to include other-than-humans or earth-beings. While her argument runs parallel
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to mine in many ways, my aim is to examine the debate surrounding epistemology and rep-
resentation in anthropological inquiry, and to address a different body of work in thinking
ontologically.
14. Bejun are responsible for carrying out the village rituals. They connect with the spirits
and gods through their dreams and it appears that it is this ability that gives them bejun
status.
15. Which the bejun conrmed was a correct representation. I have added the labels to explain what
I was told by her.
16. For de la Cadena, an example of such participation in politics is

Chapter 7 of the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, (which) reads: Nature or
Pachamama, where life becomes real and reproduces itself, has the right to be integrally
respected in its existence, and to the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, struc-
tures, functions, and evolutionary processes. (2010: 335)
17. While analyses of, say, earth beings requires situating the cultural aspects of personhood in
nature, de la Cadena challenges the nature/culture distinction on a second front by advocat-
ing for such natural phenomena to be brought into the cultural arena of politics.
18. One crore is equal to 10 million.
19. http://vimeo.com/11183545#.
20. Personal translation, veried by my informant during the interview.
21. Lodus description of these practices reects the Maori rituals described by Sahlins: the benets
taken by man ought to be returned to their source, that it may be maintained as a source (1972:
168).

Acknowledgement
Fieldwork visits were conducted in AugustSeptember 2010 with the help of Living Farms, an NGO
working on issues of land and food in Odisha, India, and in July 2012 as an employee of Survival Inter-
national, where, from 2011 to 2012, I also conducted research through legal documents, news reports,
meetings and phone conversations. I am grateful to Dr Richard Irvine for his many helpful suggestions
and discussions on this paper, two anonymous Cambridge examiners for their comments on an earlier
draft and the reviewers for Ethnos.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.

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 ETHNOS 19

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