Animism / New Animism

Animism, in its classical anthropological sense, describes worldviews in which non-human beings—animals, plants, objects, or natural phenomena—are endowed with agency or spirit. Once dismissed as a “primitive” belief system in contrast to modern Western “naturalism,” animism has been reinterpreted in recent decades under the rubric of new animism. This perspective does not focus on projecting human qualities onto things, but on recognizing relational ontologies in which humans and non-humans participate as subjects. New animism thus resonates with posthumanist and ecological thought, suggesting that Western dualisms of subject/object and culture/nature obscure other viable modes of world-making. In landscape and environmental design, methodological animism provides a framework to acknowledge plants, animals, soils, and waters as active participants rather than passive resources. It opens space for rethinking ethics, aesthetics, and design practices in ways that destabilize human exceptionalism.

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