Divination and Ontologies

IF 1 3区社会学 Q2 ANTHROPOLOGY

Social Analysis Pub Date : 2021-06-01 DOI:10.3167/sa.2021.650208

D. Zeitlyn

引用次数: 1

Abstract

The way types of divination move round the planet means it is not helpful to simply attribute one unitary ontology to specific techniques or to groups of practitioners. Explaining divination in terms of ‘ontology’ homogenizes cognitive and conceptual multiplicity, and pre-empts the possible outcomes of divination. Moreover, this contradicts the fundamentally open nature of divination, and the fact that in many forms of divination the reformulation of questions helps keep futures open. With examples drawn from Mambila spider divination, I suggest what an epidemiology of beliefs and ontologies that gather around divination could look like. On this account, divination acts as a ‘boundary object’, mediating both the cognitive differences among clients and the conceptual differences between clients and diviners.

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占卜和本体

占卜的类型在地球上移动的方式意味着简单地将一个单一的本体归因于特定的技术或从业者群体是没有帮助的。用“本体论”来解释占卜，使认知和概念的多样性同质化，并预先确定了占卜的可能结果。此外，这与占卜本质上的开放性相矛盾，在许多形式的占卜中，问题的重新表述有助于保持未来的开放性。以曼比拉蜘蛛占卜为例，我提出了围绕占卜的信仰和本体论的流行病学。因此，占卜作为一个“边界对象”，既调解了来访者之间的认知差异，也调解了来访者与占卜者之间的概念差异。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Analysis ANTHROPOLOGY-

CiteScore

2.20

自引率

7.10%

发文量

审稿时长

16 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Analysis is an international peer-reviewed journal devoted to exploring the analytical potentials of anthropological research. It encourages contributions grounded in original empirical research that critically probe established paradigms of social and cultural analysis. The journal expresses the best that anthropology has to offer by exploring in original ways the relationship between ethnographic materials and theoretical insight. By forging creative and critical engagements with cultural, political, and social processes, it also opens new avenues of communication between anthropology and the humanities as well as other social sciences. The journal publishes four issues per year, including regular Special Issues on particular themes. The Editors welcome individual articles that focus on diverse topics and regions, reflect varied theoretical approaches and methods, and aim to appeal widely within anthropology and beyond. Proposals for Special Issues are selected by the Editorial Board through an annual competitive call.