This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed ‘the ontological turn’ within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions.

Chapter 1: Recalibrating Alterity, Difference, Ontology. Anthropological Engagements with Human and Non-Human Worlds.- Part I: Worldviews.- Chapter 2: Seeing, Being, and Knowing: The Relationality of Species in Chewong Animistic Ontology.- Chapter 3:  Alterity, Predation, and Questions of Representation: The Problem of the Kharisiri in the Andes.- Chapter 4: False Prophets: Blasphemy and Ontological Contests in Indonesian Courts.- Chapter 5: Chronically Unstable Ontologies: Ontological Dynamics and the "Difference Within".- Part II: Materialities.- Chapter 6: The Hold Life Has in a Warao Village: Assembling Household and the Practicalities of Everyday Life.- Chapter 7: Disrupting School Smartness: Critical Ethnography of Schooling and the "Ontological Turn" in Anthropology and Educational Studies.- Chapter 8: Beyond Cultural Relativism? Tim Ingold's “Ontology of Dwelling” Revisited.- Part III: Politics.- Chapter 9: Ontological Turns within the Visual Arts: Ontic Violence and the Politics of Anticipation.- Chapter 10: Alter-Politics Reconsidered: From Different Worlds to Osmotic Worlding.- Chapter 11: “It Seems Like a Lie": Opening up the Political to World-Making Practices in Contemporary Peru.- Chapter 12: Reading Holbraad: Truth and Doubt in the Context of Ontological Inquiry.- Postscript: Taking the Ontological Turn Personally. 

This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed ‘the ontological turn’ within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions. In doing so, the book explores the turn’s empirical and theoretical limits, accomplishments, and potential. The book distinguishes between three central strands of the ontological turn, namely worldviews, materialities, and politics. It presents empirically rich case studies, which help to elaborate on the potentiality and challenges which the ontological turn’s perspectives and approaches may have to offer.

“‘The ontological turn’ has been celebrated as a Copernican revolution and a full realisation of the critical potentials of anthropology, but it is simultaneously being dismissed as a kind of ahistorical, misguided, self-defeating narcissism. This excellent volume is something of a landmark in that it avoids polarisation in its nuanced discussions of the possible implications of ‘ontology’ for anthropology, encouraging their readers to expand their intellectual horizons rather than patrolling the borders.” (Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway) “This volume is, as it were, an ‘ontology of the ontological turn’ in a time when we are discussing what, indeed, ontology offers anthropology: is it a methodology, a heuristics, a theory, a philosophy—everything, or actually none of the above? Bertelsen and Bendixsen tackle this issue head on, choosing one specific angle: the classic, foundational concepts of alterity and difference and perform a grounded discussion of some of the main protagonists of the turn.” (Ruy Llera Blanes, Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spain)

"'The ontological turn' has been celebrated as a Copernican revolution and a full realisation of the critical potentials of anthropology, but it is simultaneously being dismissed as a kind of ahistorical, misguided, self-defeating narcissism. This excellent volume is something of a landmark in that it avoids polarisation in its nuanced discussions of the possible implications of 'ontology' for anthropology, encouraging their readers to expand their intellectual horizons rather than patrolling the borders." (Thomas Hylland Eriksen, University of Oslo, Norway) "This volume is, as it were, an 'ontology of the ontological turn' in a time when we are discussing what, indeed, ontology offers anthropology: is it a methodology, a heuristics, a theory, a philosophy-everything, or actually none of the above? Bertelsen and Bendixsen tackle this issue head on, choosing one specific angle: the classic, foundational concepts of alterity and difference and perform a grounded discussion of some of the main protagonists of the turn." (Ruy Llera Blanes, Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spain)

First anthology to assess the "ontological turn" in anthropology Brings together a range of empirical contexts spanning India, Brazil, Norway, Peru, Indonesia, and the Philippines Features distinguished scholars in the field of social anthropology