Animism

Animism is the belief that objects, places, living beings, and natural phenomena possess a distinct spiritual essence or agency. Rooted in the idea that the world is alive and interconnected, it views humans, animals, plants, landscapes, and even crafted objects or spoken words as animated and capable of intention or will. Although every culture expresses such ideas in its own way, animism is widely regarded as a foundational worldview among many Indigenous societies. It emphasises the continuity between the spiritual and material realms, rejecting sharp categorical distinctions between persons and things.

Concept and Characteristics

Animism posits that spirit, consciousness, or life-force permeates the natural world. Mountains, rivers, forests, animals, and weather systems are seen as possessing agency or sentience. In some traditions, abstract concepts such as names or words also carry power. This worldview acknowledges relationships between humans and other-than-human beings that require respect, reciprocity, and appropriate behaviour.
Animism functions less as a codified religion than as a pervasive metaphysical orientation. Many Indigenous languages do not have a word for “religion” or “animism” because the perspective is embedded in daily life and social practice. For this reason, scholars note that the term serves both emic and etic roles: it can reflect Indigenous self-understandings and also provide an analytical category in anthropology.

Etymology

The term derives from the Latin anima, meaning “life” or “soul.” It was introduced into European scholarship by Georg Ernst Stahl in 1708 in a biological context, referring to a vital principle governing living organisms. English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor adopted the term in 1871 to describe the belief in souls and spiritual beings among early human societies. Earlier writers, including Tylor himself, sometimes used “spiritualism,” but this risked confusion with the contemporary Spiritualist movement, and “animism” gained preference.

Early Anthropological Interpretations

In the late nineteenth century, animism became central to theoretical anthropology. Tylor defined it as the “doctrine of souls” and viewed it as the earliest stage in the evolution of religion. He argued that it emerged from attempts to interpret dreams, visions, and natural events by attributing life and will to non-human entities. Although he regarded it as rational within its context, he believed that scientific reasoning would eventually supersede such beliefs.
This “old animism” assumed a simple distinction between living persons and inert objects, suggesting that animistic thought reflected an inability to tell them apart. Critics have since viewed this interpretation as ethnocentric, dualistic, and grounded in colonial assumptions about cultural hierarchy. Later scholars rejected the notion of a single universal primitive religion and criticised evolutionary schemes that ranked societies according to perceived intellectual development.

Totemism, Evolutionism, and Early Debates

Late nineteenth-century theorists debated whether animism or totemism represented the earliest form of religion. John Ferguson McLennan claimed that animistic tendencies in fetishism evolved into totemism, in which groups believed themselves descended from animals or plants. Thinkers such as Bachofen, Durkheim, and Freud focused intensively on totemism, often leaving Tylor’s animist model unchallenged.
Jean Piaget suggested that children naturally adopt an animistic worldview, attributing life to inanimate objects unless educated otherwise. Margaret Mead argued the opposite, proposing that children learn animistic ideas through cultural transmission. Stewart Guthrie viewed animism as an adaptive cognitive strategy: perceiving potential agency in ambiguous stimuli helps humans identify threats. He later described animism as the attribution of spirits to natural phenomena.

New Animism

By the late twentieth century, anthropologists sought to move beyond earlier assumptions. Many Indigenous communities, environmental thinkers, and nature spiritualities embraced the label “animist,” prompting scholars to revisit the concept. The “new animism,” influenced by the work of A. Irving Hallowell among the Ojibwe, rejects the idea that animism is a mistaken belief about non-living objects. Instead, it frames animism as a relational ontology: a way of knowing and behaving in a world inhabited by many kinds of persons, human and non-human.
For the Ojibwe and many other communities, the notion of “person” applies broadly to animals, plants, landscapes, and even tools, each capable of interaction and moral reciprocity. Animism thus describes ethical and practical relations rather than abstract metaphysics. Scholars such as Graham Harvey emphasise that animism is best understood as learning how to live respectfully with beings who may respond, communicate, or act with intention.

Relationships with Other Concepts

Animism shares affinities with, but remains distinct from, totemism, shamanism, and fetishism. Totemism often centres on ancestral or land-based sources of life, while animism focuses on distributed individual agencies. Some cultures blend these orientations; for example, many Australian Aboriginal communities express strongly totemic worldviews, whereas Arctic Indigenous groups such as the Inuit are often described as predominantly animistic.
Animistic ideas appear across global mythologies, including water deities, vegetation spirits, and tree spirits. Modern practitioners of various pagan and eco-spiritual movements also identify with animistic perspectives.

Contemporary Significance

Animism remains a key concept in anthropology, religious studies, and environmental humanities. It provides a framework for understanding Indigenous cosmologies, ecological ethics, and the cultural dimensions of human–nature relationships. Its renewed usage highlights the intellectual sophistication of worldviews that emphasise connection, reciprocity, and the agency of the non-human world.