Paper short abstract:

Some people in Madagascar call a human skeleton 'the eight bones'. Taking the entanglements of the living, the dead and the sky-land as example, I explain the perception of organisms, phenomena, places and things, as being dynamic open systems shaping a relational world.

Paper long abstract:

Taking the entanglements of the living, the dead and the sky-land as example, I explain a Malagasy perception of organisms, phenomena, places and things, as being dynamic open systems shaping a relational world.

When a family in Central East Madagascar moves to a new place, people build villages and work the land. A deceased person will be returned to the family tomb in the place of origin. Only when people have faith in the new place, they will construct a local tomb. By this process, the living become 'children of the land' and the dead part of its strength.

The land gives, while the people work or move it. People make mobile what is immobile, they transport, carry and place, and they kill, but they do not generate until they are dead, having become ancestors in the land.

Limbs and head of a living body are the directions that convey the intentionality of the body-center where the vital organs take form. They allow the body to grow, move, act, think, perceive, bind and develop as an open system in a relational world. A human skeleton is called 'the eight bones' referring to the limb-bones. This perception reveals that the dead also have directions that convey a certain intentionality. The shape the dead take on, and also their place and role they have in the living community will become apparent when I describe the life-path of human bones and their entanglements in the body and the land.