Communications in Humanities Research

- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences


Communications in Humanities Research

Vol. 1, 21 December 2021


Open Access | Article

Boundary Crossing of Animism under Different Cultures

Yi Zhang * 1
1 University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Ave

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Advances in Humanities Research, Vol. 1, 51-56
Published 21 December 2021. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by EWA Publishing
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Citation Yi Zhang. Boundary Crossing of Animism under Different Cultures. CHR (2021) Vol. 1: 51-56. DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/1/ICEIPI_214.

Abstract

Animism has been one set of beliefs that receives increasing attention and popularity in multiple academic fields such as anthropology and philosophy. This article starts with introducing the definition of animism and techno-animism. Then, it will move to talk about the manifestations of the Shinto-Infused animism in Japanese culture. By adducing examples from the Mozambican literature, indigenous beliefs of the Kelabit and the Penan in Southeast Asia, and how children and adults treat and interact with robots and inanimate in the Western society, we will finally reach the conclusion that 1) on the one hand, there are some common interpretations and manifestations of animism shared by people in different cultures, such as tolerance of boundary-crossing and rendering inanimate objects with life forces; and 2) on the other hand, animism is not antithetical to Western conceptions of human-object relation.

Keywords

human-object interaction, Mia Couto, animism, anthropology, boundary-crossing, biosemiotics

References

1. Jensen, Casper Bruun, and Anders Blok. (2013) “Techno-Animism in Japan: Shinto Cosmograms, Actor-Network Theory, and the Enabling Powers of Non-Human Agencies.” Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 84–115,

2. Tanya N. Beran, Alejandro Ramirez-Serrano, Roman Kuzyk, Meghann Fior, Sarah Nugent.(2011) Understanding how children understand robots: Perceived animism in child–robot interaction, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies,Volume 69, Issues 8,2011,Pages 539-550, ISSN 1071-5819,

3. Richardson, Kathleen.(2016) "Technological Animism". Social Analysis 60.1 (2016): 110-128.

4. Kaerlein, T. (2015) The Social Robot as Fetish? Conceptual Affordances and Risks of Neo-Animistic Theory. Int J of Soc Robotics 7, 361–370.

5. Jennifer Robertson (2007) Robo Sapiens Japanicus: Humanoid Robots and the Posthuman Family, Critical Asian Studies, 39:3, 369-398,

6. Klein, Benjamin. (2019) “Animals, Animism, and Biosemiotics: Reimagining the Species Boundary in the Novels of Mia Couto.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, vol. 6, no. 3, 2019, pp. 329–346.,

7. Mathews-Pett, Amelia. (2019) “I Want It to Go to a Good Home: Animism in Western Relationships with Personal Possessions.” Performance research 24.6 (2019): 86–94. Web.

8. Janowski, Monica. (2015) “The dynamics of the cosmic conversation: beliefs about spirits among the Kelabit and Penan of the upper Baram river, Sarawak.”.

9. Bumby, K.E., Dautenhahn, K., 1999. Investigating children’s attitudes towards robots: a case study. In: Proceedings of the Third Cognitive Technology Conference. San Francisco, CA.

10. Melson, G.F., Kahn, P.H., Beck, A.M., Friedman, B., Roberts, T., Garrett, E., 2005. Robots as Dogs? Children’s Interactions with the Robotic Dog AIBO and a Live Australian Shepherd. CHI, ACM Press (1649–1652).

Data Availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Authors who publish this series agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this series.

2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this series.

3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See Open Access Instruction).

Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Educational Innovation and Philosophical Inquiries (ICEIPI 2021), Part 2
ISBN (Print)
978-1-915371-02-7
ISBN (Online)
978-1-915371-03-4
Published Date
21 December 2021
Series
Communications in Humanities Research
ISSN (Print)
2753-7064
ISSN (Online)
2753-7072
DOI
10.54254/2753-7064/1/ICEIPI_214
Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Copyright © 2023 EWA Publishing. Unless Otherwise Stated