Animism
The view that animals, plants, places and objects have spirit or personhood, and a word that has changed meaning more than once.
Also: animist, relational ontology, new animism
Edward Burnett Tylor used animism in Primitive Culture (1871) to describe a belief in souls and spirits that he took to be the earliest form of religion. That evolutionary claim is now widely rejected, and the word itself was often used with condescension. Anthropologists since the 1990s, such as Nurit Bird-David and Tim Ingold, revived it as a description of relationships: in many Indigenous communities, rivers, animals and mountains are treated as persons to whom obligations are owed. Some communities use their own terms and do not accept animism as a name for their faith. Others use it themselves, and the word now also describes some modern pagan paths.