Paper short abstract:

In this paper I present the most salient traditions in the ontological turn (the English, the French and the North American one) highlighting differences and similarities between them. I reflect on the scope and limitations of the methodological approach that this turn proposes.

Paper long abstract:

The interest for the Self, for what exists, and for the ontological properties of the Cosmos is not a new concern in the history of Anthropology. However, only in the last two decades the discipline has undertaken an "Ontological Turn". This perspective focuses on how different societies define the entities that inhabit the world and the relationships between them. The ontological turn is built on the critiques made to what is named as the Great Division (Nature/Culture), and to Western Naturalism as Modernity's dominant ontology. The turn is also a reaction to the linguistic turn dominating during the 1980s. In this paper I present the most salient traditions in the ontological turn, the English, the French and the North American one, highlighting differences and similarities between them. I reflect on the scope and limitations of the methodological approach that this turn proposes, in order to discuss the possibilities opened by this approach in the analysis of an ethnographic situation in Argentina that I work with.