From ‘Other Worlds’ and ‘Multiple Ontologies’ to ‘a Methodological Project That Poses Ontological Questions to Solve Epistemological Problems’. What Happened toThinking Through Things?

Abstract

This Bookmark uses the publication of Martin Holbraad and Morten Pedersen's The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition in 2017 as an opportunity to re–assess what has happened to anthropology's so–called ‘ontological turn’. It asks: what happened to the core arguments first aired in Thinking Through Things (Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad & Sari Wastell. 2007. Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London: Routledge.), between its publication and that of The Ontological Turn a decade later? Outlining the controversies the first book provoked, it examines how some of these core arguments are clarified, refined, and modified in the more recent publication. It suggests that while anthropology has been enriched by the debates these books provoked – offering a glimpse at the subjunctive possibilities derived from taking ethnography and things (i.e. the world in all of its excessive potentialities) seriously – many will sense a loss of ambition and relevance since Thinking Through Things was published over a decade ago.

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