1.1 Decolonizing Ontologies
We can define ontology as the knowledge or understanding of being or reality . I prefer these terms over discourse , science , study, and many other alternatives, because in general these alternatives imply formalized approaches to reality . Understanding is a more inclusive, down-to-earth, dynamic notion, which captures the implications of ontology , its capacity to make worlds. Understanding and being are imbricated. Understanding a reality , we articulate what is known about it, what we perceive, and what we infer from those perceptions into something coherent, which we can act upon. On the other hand, quite literally understanding fundaments being, and becomes the basis for reality .
Like the God of Christians , reality , science , and ontology used to be employed solely in the singular and capitalized . While Christianity was thought to convey the ‘true knowledge’ of the ‘one true God’, so Science (singular and capitalized) was thought to be the rational, incremental process of acquiring knowledge: the understanding of the ‘true’ and ‘universal’ nature of Reality (again singular and capitalized)—a process originating in Europe, enabling the progress of the West and, implicitly or explicitly, justifying its colonization of the rest of the world.
Anthropology , as part of this enterprise, would recognize isolated achievements of non-Westerners, such as the botanical knowledge of some Amerindian shamans . Nevertheless, these were frequently downplayed as local or situated forms of knowledge and contrasted with the ‘universal’ character of Western Science . Moreover, the understandings of reality of shamans were frequently dismissed, because they included entities such as ‘souls’ and ‘spirits’ , which modernity had banished from Nature or Reality. To make matters worse, shamans attributed these entities to non-humans, even to inert or inanimate things like rocks . As remarked by Descola (1996), these entities and their characteristics still remain ever-perplexing.
Over the past 50 years, anthropology has been conducting a profound critique of its position, its relation to its subjects of study, and its relations to power. Through this reflexive process, anthropology has come to recognize its own role in colonial and neo-colonial processes and to question its methods, and scientific pretentions, as well as the scientific enterprise and the process of development as such.
Post-colonial intellectuals have revealed that colonialism involves the authoritative deployment of artistic, literary, academic, and scientific discourses, including anthropological discourses of the Other, as forms of epistemic violence , undermining how non-Western peoples perceive and understand themselves and reality . This colonization of thought underlays the control, suppression, and exploitation of non-Westerners even after they become politically emancipated.1 Real emancipation requires a decolonization of thought, a re-evaluation of non-Western forms of art, of telling stories, of thinking, and understanding the world.2
On the other hand, applying to natural scientists the methods anthropology developed to understand ethnoscience, science and technology studies (STS) have observed that the claims of natural scientists are substantiated, and they derive their strength from highly situated practices, articulating human and non-human actors through arduous processes of negotiated translation . These practices are possible under specific historical contingencies; they are embedded in social dynamics, such as the politics of the academy, and diverse conjunctures with finance, industry, and religion .3 Moreover, when different disciplines address ‘the same reality’, they define and articulate it differently, often reaching dissimilar conclusions.4 Science stands for a plurality of different practices, views, and voices, which are frequently in disagreement. Thus, the universality, and even the unity, of Science has been an idealistic aim rather than an actual achievement.
Examining the history of science in colonial and neocolonial settings, postcolonial historians of science have demonstrated how Western scientific models and projects of development are frequently founded on ethnocentric assumptions, which cannot be generalized to conditions far removed from the working parameters in which the models were developed, leading to scientific stagnation and disastrous developmental failures. Like any other system of knowledge , Western sciences have a limited grip on reality. Furthermore, distant allegiances frequently draw the interests of scientists and developers, aligning them with those of the Western metropolis , to the detriment of the ‘peripheries ,’ and of knowledge itself. The recognition of these inadequacies and limitations resulted in the call for cognitive justice , for the recognition that there is a plurality of sciences , that other forms of knowledge may lay better claims to understanding the true nature of reality ,5 thereby opening another path for the decolonization of thought. Western sciences cannot be the yardstick to judge the validity of non-Western ontologies , that is, the way non-Western realities are understood and constituted.
1.2 The Ontological Turn and Its Challenges
In the past years, these insights have led anthropology into the ontological turn —the realization that our interlocutors not only have different cultures but also often dwell in radically different realities . Consequently, there are multiple ontologies , which mig...