An epistemology of animism through a study of tracking: How Maniq hunter-gatherers read the forest

万物有灵论的研究描述了非人类的人格和多物种的社会性，但忽略了人们发现和监控非人类交流的方式。Kohn(2013)对物种间符号学的方法在非人类的具体例子中很少。动物追踪的艺术是一个强大的、人种学上未被探索的镜头，用来理解人们如何与非人类建立联系。对狩猎采集者如何解释热带雨林中的痕迹和标志的调查尤其被忽视。我在跟踪方面的培训和经验使我能够在Maniq狩猎-采集者中进行跟踪的人种学研究，研究物种间交流的具体感觉成分，并分析他们的解释所揭示的认识论。

Studies of animism describe nonhuman personhood and multispecies sociality but neglect the ways people detect and monitor nonhuman communications. Kohn's (2013) approach to interspecies semiotics is sparse in concrete examples from nonhuman beings. The art of animal tracking is a powerful, ethnographically unexplored lens to understand how people relate with nonhumans. Investigation of how hunter-gatherers interpret tracks and signs in tropical rainforests is especially neglected. My training and experience in tracking position me uniquely to conduct this ethnography of tracking among Maniq hunter-gatherers, to research the concrete, sensory components of interspecies communications and analyse the epistemology revealed by their interpretation.