Workshop "Indigenous Ontologies: Reassessing Human and Non-Human Relations"
The Second International MEWSC Workshop "Indigenous Ontologies: Reassessing Human and Non-Human Relations" takes place on July 29-30, 2014 at the University of Tartu Ülikooli 16–212.
The second international MEWSC workshop will address the theme: "Indigenous Ontologies: Reassessing Human and Non-Human Relations". The recent ontological turn in French anthropology (Descola 1992, 2013 [2005], Viveiro de Castro 1998) as well as the discourse on neo-animism (Harvey 2005) question hegemonial anthropocentric perspectives emphasizing the need for understanding ontological alterities and pluralisms, often labeled animism or neo-animism. The second international MEWSC workshop is devoted to the understanding of diverse forms of existence by examining human and non-human relations in indigenous Indian Adivasi contexts, cross-cultural ontological alterities in international folklore and minority religions.
The key-note lecture “New approaches to animism: foregrounding relationality” will be delivered by Dr Graham Harvey – head of the department of Religious Studies at the Open University and President of the British Association for the Study of Religions. His Animism: Respecting the Living World (2005) has contributed significantly to re-thinking animism. His edited Handbook of Contemporary Animism (2013) demonstrates the interdisciplinary reach of these new approaches.
The Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre (MEWSC) has been established at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland, to promote the study of contemporary endangered cultures, religions, worldviews, religious cultures, and minority religions. Cultural expressions – both tangible and intangible – and the worldviews of marginalised, endangered and persecuted peoples, social groups and indigenous communities are the focus of MEWSC. At the heart of the centre’s mission is the desire to encourage counter-hegemonial perspectives on peripheral cultural and religious voices and promote the incorporation of such perspectives into mainstream scholarship.
The workshop is co-organised by the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore, University of Tartu and the Marginalised and Endangered Worldviews Study Centre (MEWSC), University College Cork (UCC) in co-operation with the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (CECT).
See the programme: www.ut.ee/folk/files/MEWSC_symposium_programme_2014.pdf.