A movement known as “new animism,” which seeks to secure personhood rights for nonhuman beings through legal means, is gaining a following around the globe.
New animist environmental activists are not the only ones using the term. Animism itself has become fashionable. Some spirituality bloggers talk about animism as a way to deepen one’s spiritual relationship to nature. Scholars – from anthropologists to philosophers – have taken a renewed interest in the concept.
Most of these people are using animism in a very general, and inaccurate, way, to mean the belief that everything in nature has a soul. The renewed interest in animism stems from the hope that people will behave in more ecologically sustainable ways if they believe that the natural world around them is alive.
However, as an anthropologist of religion who works with people whose religious practices were traditionally described as animist, I believe the reality is both more interesting and more complicated. Animism is not a religion or even a set of beliefs about nature having a soul. It’s a term used by scholars to classify religious practices through which human beings cultivate relationships with more powerful beings that reside in the world around us.
Read more at: theconversation.com