CHAMEL, JEAN and DANSAC, YAEL, 2022, Relating with More-than-Humans. Interbeing
Rituality in a Living World. Cham: Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability, Palgrave
Macmillan. 254 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-10293-6
Keywords: relationships; More-than-Humans; ritual animism; condensed rituals; refracted rituals.
The book is the eighth volume in the Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability series. It
comprises an introductory chapter, three sections each of three chapters and the Epilogue. The
chapters illustrate ritualized relationships between humans and more-than-human beings in a
variety of cultural contexts. They explore condensed rituals or traditional rituals in which the
summoned entities affect the attitudes and beliefs of the participants, and refracted rituals or rituals
invented by alternative spiritual people and movements, which focus on the actions of the
participants rather than their beliefs (Houseman, 2011).
In the introductory chapter, Jean Chamel and Yael Dansac state that the objective of the volume is
to explore how humans in diverse cultural contexts relate in more horizontal ways "with” other
entities, and how life emerges from the interrelationships between “earth beings” (De la Cadena,
2015). They point out that among the many forms of relationality they chose rituality, because it
is an important component of daily life, which allows us to understand the transformations in social
formations.
The first part titled Living with More-than-Humans: The Role of Daily Rites comprises case studies
on everyday relationships between human and non-human beings. In Chapter 2, Théophile
Johnson studies ritual interactions between herders and yaks in Manang, Nepal, to understand how
herders maintain domestication relationships and avoid feralization. Johnson proposes that
domestication and herding comprise a geopolitic of relationships that give rise to certain behaviors
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and emotions among participants. The herders establish a ritual language inspired by their own
communication system but adapted to the yaks and the environment.
Cyndy Margarita Garcia-Weyandt in Chapter 3 proposes rethinking the relationships of the
Wixáricas of the Y+rata community in Nayarit, Mexico, with their more-than-human relatives, the
plants, in ceremonial spaces and everyday ritual interactions. Garcia-Weyandt studies the Our
Mother Corn cycle, in which Wixárica families make pilgrimages, offerings, dances and exchange
energy with Our Mother Corn (make kinship), that is, constant acts of incarnation of the
relationship of reciprocity between beings. In Chapter 4, Bertrande Galfre analyzes the biodynamic
agriculture developed on a neo-peasant farm in Southwestern France. Galfre suggests that
biodynamics seeks to unravel the network of interactional gestures of the universe to understand
them, integrate them, feel them internally and then reproduce them in agricultural practices.
The second part called More-than-Human Politics: Belonging, Identity, Indigeneity and the Rights
of Nature, focuses on the cultural and political dimensions. Anna Varfolomeeva in Chapter 5
explores the effects of large-scale mining in Buryatia, Siberia, on the sense of belonging of the
Oka Buriat and Soiot. For these ethnic groups, minerals are animated elements intertwined with
spirits that own the territory, therefore, their extraction must be carried out in a respectful manner.
However, mining promoted by state agents and companies is threatening this relationality and
evoking complex emotions in inhabitants.
In Chapter 6, Degenhart Brown studies the medicine of animal origin prepared by Awinon healers
in Togo and Benin, and its connection with the network of human and non-human relationships in
the Vodun religion. He argues that in West Africa this type of medicine is helping people
understand contemporary global changes, the pressures of neoliberalism and to cure the spiritual
illnesses caused by globalization. Healers treat patients by restoring balance with the spirit world.
In the last chapter of the second part, Jean Chamel analyzes how the “earth beings” in the global
movement for the rights of nature are constituted as people, beyond a mere cognitive operation
that gives them a legal personality. Based on the study of water and earth ceremonies performed
in different events, he argues that, although their practitioners try to escape Western naturalistic
patterns by imitating the ritual animism of indigenous societies, they fail to conceive other beings
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as people because they defend a relationship monistic with the world focused on ties of
interdependence through analogical means.
The third part titled More-than-Human Spiritualities: Liminality, Embodiment and Intimate
Experiences of Personal Transformation, presents case studies on alternative spiritualities and
ritualities in Western societies. In Chapter 8, Ed Lord and Henrik Ohlsson study therapeutic nature
practices in Wales, Sweden and Finland. They highlight as a common factor among their
practitioners the notion of “escape” from technological and bureaucratic modernity, and the
conception of nature as a refuge. Furthermore, these practices can be understood as a reaction to
the scarcity of well-being in modernity and in everyday life, but from the individual, rather than
social level.
In Chapter 9, Yael Dansac discusses spiritual practices performed at the Carnac megaliths in
France. She points out that practitioners experience bodily and emotional connections with the
spirits of the megaliths, which in some cases allow for intense self-examinations that can lead to
turning their lives around. Tenno Tedearu, in the last chapter of the third part, studies the practice
of using crystals in Estonia, as an everyday aspect of New Age spirituality in that country. He
argues that crystals matter because of their materiality and their possibility of relationality and
phenomenological communication, but not because of the deities they represent or possess.
The volume closes with the afterword by Michael Houseman, who highlights several aspects and
connections between the different chapters: first, he highlights the continuity between the
extraordinary and everyday character of the documented rituals, and the role of ritual in bringing
more-than-human beings to the body (produce emotions, feelings) and the mind. Second, he
expresses that the chapters advocate treating relationships between humans as comparable to those
weaved with non-human beings.
Third, he says that in the book there is a generalized use of the word “connection” as a synonym
for “relationship,” which for him is problematic, given that “relationship” consists of special
interactions of humans with more than specific human beings, that is, interactions in which the
parties are involved, there is mutual responsibility and continuous negotiation. This happens in the
condensed rituals analyzed in Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 6. For their part, the refracted rituals do not
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establish a relationship but rather a connection, because one of the parts is shown to be absent or
subsumed by the other, reduced to a felt presence (Chapters 4, 7, 8, 9 and 10).
In this sense, the volume shows that not all ritual practices and approaches to beings imply
relationships with more-than-humans. Although alternative spiritual movements criticize the
disenchanted and materialistic mentality of the modern world and are inspired by the ritual
animism of indigenous societies, their ritual practices do not necessarily establish relationships,
they continue to operate under the modern naturalistic ontological framework (Descola, 2005),
that is, the separation between nature and society, individualism and instrumentalization. “Earth
beings” are not recognized in their complexity and their “positive” qualities can be turned into
another commodity. A subject that is not explored or criticized in depth in the book.
Finally, we would like to note that the chapters referring to condensed rituals show that horizontal
relationships with beings more than human are not necessarily harmonious or stable, there is also
conflict and negotiation. Furthermore, its practitioners have a great capacity for adaptation and
innovation, aspects necessary to resist neoliberal logic.
In sum, the volume provides several case studies on the importance of non-human beings in
contemporary ceremonial and the different relationalities and connections that can be created
between them. Also, the challenges that come with establishing non-instrumentalist relationships
in Western societies, disenchanted with the modern materialist world, but trapped in naturalistic
logic. Each chapter provides complex theoretical and analytical frameworks that help think about
novel approaches to address an old phenomenon in anthropology that still continues to fascinate
us: ritual.
Works Cited:
Cadena, Marisol de la, 2015, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Descola, Philippe, 2005, Par-delà nature et culture. Paris: Gallimard.
Houseman, Michael, 2011, “Refracting Ritual: An Upside-down Perspective on Ritual, Media and
Conflict”. In Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, Udo Simon, Eric Venbrux (eds.), Ritual, Media, and
Conflict, 255–284. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Alessandro Questa Rebolledo is an Ethnologist from the National School of Anthropology and
History (Mexico), a master's in social Anthropology from the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM), and a master and doctor in Anthropology from the University of Virginia (UVA,
USA). Interested in understanding the different transformations and imaginaries around the
uncertain future posed by the so-called Anthropocene. He explores traditional dances as native
technologies for visualization and intervention in socio-environmental relationships.
Solange Bonilla Valencia is a Sociologist from the Universidad del Valle (Colombia) and a master
in Peace Construction from the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). She is currently a doctoral
student in Social Anthropology at the Universidad Iberoamericana de México. Her research deals
with Afro-indigenous dances of the Oaxacan coast (Mexico) as spaces that produce alterity and
ritual memory between human beings and more than human beings.
© 2023 Alessandro Questa Rebolledo and Solange Bonilla Valencia
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