Soul, body and spirituality from Toba and Ranquel perspectives, between religion and animisms

Abstract

In this text we will explore how concepts with a long tradition in anthropology, such
as animism or ontology, have been mobilized to explain the relationships that the Toba and Ranquel indigenous peoples of Argentina establish with certain non-human beings, and with the environment. We seek to show that, although using the
same term (animism), ethnographies of these peoples have been shifting in recent
years from concerns with religious phenomena and the distinction between body and soul, or transcendence and immanence, towards approaches interested in the ways in which these indigenous peoples have, for centuries, composed their world in relation to various non-indigenous agents. We will argue that this particularity leads us to make minor modifications to theories of animisms and ontologies —which have tended to perpetuate the distinction between the modern West and the indigenous worlds, both conceived as homogeneous collectives— so that they can also account for the ways in which Toba and Ranqueles compose their in-between worlds with hybridity and contradictions.