Antropologia kulturowa A. Irvinga Hallowella. Teoria, praktyka, konsekwencje

Abstract

From a modern perspective, Alfred Irving Hallowell (1892–1974), a seasoned researcher of the Ojibwe culture, proved to be one of the most interesting cultural anthropologists of the 20th century. His works on the indigenous taxonomy prefigured the achievements of ethnoscience and cognitive anthropology, while those on the evolution of human behavior heralded to some extent the future turn within the anthropological community towards sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. Moreover, his interest in the cultural definition of a person, indigenous psychological concepts, religious behavior, and environmental adaptations preceded the rise and development of (accordingly) interpretative anthropology, ethnopsychology, contemporary anthropology of religion, and cultural ecology. Today, however, Hallowell is best known for coining the term “other-than-human persons,” which was intended to provide an explanation of the behavior and worldview of the Ojibwe people. His ontological approach was both innovative in relation to the existing anthropological tradition (related to the concepts of animism and animatism) and ethnographically justified in its intentions. In recent decades, the concept of “other-than-human persons” and its derivatives have become some of the hallmarks of interpretations developed not only in cultural anthropology and religious studies but also in ethnohistory, archaeology, indigenous studies, and throughout posthumanist thought. The dissertation is an attempt to present Hallowell’s biographical profile and to situate his achievements within the history of cultural anthropology. It also aims to review Hallowell’s ethnographic material and to discuss the ideas presented in his works—the ideas with their own genealogies resulting from the aforementioned intricate contexts in which they originated.