It should be noted here that the many internal debates within phenomenology and the ontological turn will not be included here, as the aim will be to compare the two modes of inquiry. In the paper, I will first present the central anthropological debate of the crisis of representation by using Clifford’s “Writing Culture” and Marcus and Fischer’s Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Hereafter I will present the two theories phenomenology using mainly Michael Jackson and Tim Ingold and the ontological turn using Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Martin Holbraad. Next I will analyze the Ethnography and book When God Talks Back – Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (2012) by Tanya Luhrmann will be central ethnography.
The debate of the crisis of representation
Some of the most profound participants and figures of the debate in the 1980’s was as mentioned in the introduction Marcus and Fischer who were discussing in what way it is possible to write about others and represent them (Clifford 1986: 22). Marcus and Fisher argued how the crisis of representation not only was found in the discipline of anthropology but also in many other social sciences. They furthermore argued that there was a tendency in the social sciences to resist the grand theories and trying to avoid them in best possible way to avoid generalizing (Marcus & Fischer 1999a: 7-8). Marcus and Fischer argued that social science’s theories were highly related to other historical events that inspired the thinking of the social scientists. According to them the fall of political ideas and shifting power balance between countries and the change of trust in grand theories (Marcus & Fisher 1999a: 8-9, Marcus & Fisher 1999b: xxv-xxvi). In Marcus and Fischer’s view there seemed to be a pattern in in the history of theory that demonstrated how specific problems were emphasized in the academic debates where they were discussed until possible solutions have been found. The problem then was just put contemporarily aside but would remerge after a period. Next time the debate would be called something else and while there would be more knowledge added each time, the basic problem would still be inherent in the discipline (Marcus & Fisher 1999a: 9-10). The crisis of representation of the 1980s could be understood as a period of self-criticism of the discipline, which is later was readdressed by the ontologists in the starting from the 1990s and later with the socalled ontological turn in the 2010’s. The debate of representation could be said to be interlinked with another central debate that arose in 1988 as a respond to the crisis; namely whether anthropology is a generalizing science or it is nothing which was published in Key debates in Anthropology in 1996 edited by Tim Ingold (more). The people that was for the motion argue that there seems to have been (especially in British social anthropology) with internal affairs and not so much about making larger conceptions about the purpose of knowledge (Keith Hart 1996: 18).
James Clifford argued that reflexivity must be an answer to the crisis of representation. In other words, anthropologists had to show more self-consciousness and be made transparent in their writings (Clifford 1986: 7-17). The anthropologist must therefore write in non-authoritative way, with a specification of discourses in ethnography and had to clarify: “Who speaks? Who writes? When and where? With or to whom? Under what institutional and historical constraints?” (Clifford 1986: 13). As a way to try to ‘heal’ the wound of the crisis of representation phenomenology and later the ontological turn arose, both in different ways trying to find better methods to get more truthful accounts of the other.
Phenomenology – the anthropology of experience
Phenomenology was founded by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl, and was later developed by Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Phenomenology tried to overcome the dualism and dichotomy between subject and object that was set by the philosopher Descartes. Merleau-Ponty is the scholar that has had most influence on the discipline of anthropology. Whereas Heidegger added a hermeneutic and existential dimension to Husserls phenomenology Merleau-Ponty emphasized bodily experience. There can be drawn a similarity in Husserls development of the phenomenological approach to Marcus and Fischer’s resistance to the dominant theoretical ideas in a time where the ideologies were challenged (Marcus & Fisher 1999a: 9-10; Jackson 1996: 13-14).
Husserl posed the idea that a phenomenological reduction which he called the phenomenological epoché was necessary. This meant that what we should study is how phenomena are experienced in the consciousness, in order to avoid abstract theories of philosophy and to get back to what we actually, though subjectively, experience (Eagleton 1983: 55-58). With the use of Husserl’s own concepts, we ought to focus on Lebenswelt rather than Weltanschaungen (Jackson 1996: 6; 13). Husserl’s phenomenological reduction is what Jackson argues for when arguing that was is crucial in our understanding of human experience is the “direct understanding” and that “ideological trappings” should be avoided: “The phenomenological method is above all one of direct understanding and in-depth description a way of according equal weight to all modalities of human experience, however they are named, and deconstructing the ideological trappings they take on, when they are theorized” (Jackson 1996: 2).
According to Jackson the concept of life world is what exactly connects the phenomenology and anthropology. phenomenology is applied as a theoretical approach in the field of anthropology the methods consists in focusing on the subject’s being-in-the world in order to grasp the direct understanding and to do in-depth descriptions of the experienced phenomena (ibid.). The phrase being-in-the-world came from Heidegger, and was developed to describe mankind’s position of dwelling and experiences of his lifeworld (Jackson 1996: 16-20). With the phenomenological approach, Jackson developed his theory from what was the foundation of the crisis of representation namely that truth is not an objective external fact, but is something that is constructed. Furthermore, this approach implies the idea that all human beings have something in common as we inhabit the same world. This differs a lot from the ontological turn’s point of view as we shall see.
The ontological turn – to live in multiple worlds
The word ontology comes from the Greek word ont which means being (kilde). Ontology has always had a significant place in the field of anthropology (Marilyn Strathern) but it is roughly since 1990s that a growing number of anthropologist has begun to concentrate on it (Scott 2014). Within the anthropology of ontology there has been a long running and ongoing realism/nominalism that goes back to a debate about the super organic presented by Kroeber and Sabir. More recently ontology has been in the center of a new intensified debate within anthropology, and this debate has led further to the so called ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Bialecki 2014: 34). In a way, anthropology has always been interested in examining local ontologies in the various cultures they seek to understand. The new that is presented from the ontological turn is their focus on object and artifacts themselves in contrast to their meanings as they argue that the division of signifier and signified is misleading. The aim of the method as Bialecki sites Henare, Holbraad, and Vastell (2007, 2) for saying: […] to take things encountered in the field as they present themselves, rather than immediately assuming that they signify, represent, or stand for something else” (Scott 2014).
The profound figure of the ontological turn is as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo Kohn, and furthermore Morten Axel Pedersen and Martin Holbraad. I will mainly use Eduardo de Castro and Martin Holbraad throughout this paper. The ontological turn’s approach within anthropology can be defined as followed:
“Ontology, as far as anthropology in our understanding is concerned, is the comparative, ethnographically-grounded transcendental deduction of Being (the oxymoron is deliberate) as that which differs from itself (ditto) being-as-other as immanent to being-as-such” (Holbraad et al. 2014).
The definition here emphasizes what is also emphasized in the phenomenological approach, it namely dedicates itself to an investigation of peoples lived experience, how they sense the world. The approach uses a so-called “transcendental deduction of being” which implies a fundamental philosophical questioning about the nature of the being of humans which is investigated by means of ethnographic data.