David Abram
David Abram, Ph.D. -- cultural ecologist and geophilosopher -- is the author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Described as “daring” and “truly original” by the journal Science, David’s work has helped catalyze the emergence of several new disciplines, including the steadily growing field of ecopsychology (in both its clinical and research branches). His essays on the cultural causes and consequences of environmental disarray are published in numerous scholarly journals and anthologies, while his books are translated into many languages. Dr. Abram's work engages the ecological depths of the imagination, exploring the ways in which sensory perception, language, and wonder inform the relation between the human body and the breathing earth. A close student of the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of diverse indigenous peoples, David was the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a reappraisal of "animism" as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable worldview. A Distinguished Fellow of Schumacher College in England, David lectures and teaches widely around the world; he recently held the international Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and Ecology at the University of Oslo. Dr. Abram is a recipient of the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, as well as research fellowships from the Rockefeller and Watson foundations; his work was the runner-up for the inaugural PEN E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing. David is founder and creative director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE). He usually lives with his family in the foothills of the southern Rockies, although for the 2022—2023 academic year, David is the Senior Visiting Professor of Ecology and Natural Philosophy at the Harvard Divinity School.
Address: New Mexico
Address: New Mexico
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David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.
Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.
David Abram is a cultural ecologist and geophilosopher whose work helped catalyze the emergence of several fields of study. He is author of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (Vintage, 1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (Vintage, 2011). Abram’s work explores, first and foremost, the ecology of perception, the manifold ways that sensory experience binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. This ongoing exploration leads him to engage, ever more deeply, with the ecology of language – the manner in which our ways of speaking profoundly influence and constrain what we see, hear, and even taste of the Earth around us. Through the weave of his own words, David's writing brings the world alive in ways that nourish both sensual and spiritual earthly engagements and identifications. For instance, while writing in the mid-1990s, he found himself frustrated by problematic terminology within environmentalist movements that reinforced the dominant culturally-constructed divide between humankind and what commonly is referred to as ‘nature’ or ‘the environment.’ In response, in 1996 Abram coined the phrase ‘the more-than-human world’ to signify the broad commonwealth of earthly life, a realm that both contains humankind and yet also, necessarily, exceeds humankind and human culture. The term has been gradually adopted by many other scholars and theorists (you will see ‘more-than-human world’ informing the discussion of ecocultural identity throughout this Handbook) and has crossed into the practitioner realm to become a key term within the paradigm-shifting phrasing of activists, theorists, and practitioners within the broad ecological movement.
Abram’s work is deeply resonant with the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity’s intention of understanding and addressing contemporary ecocultures and ecocultural identities, offering alternative ways of thinking and feeling at once ancient and strangely new. As a pivotal contemporary thinker who lectures and teaches around the world, both within and outside academia, we asked Abram to join and help frame the ecocultural identity conversation. The following is a transcript of a conversation with the Handbook’s editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, in Abram’s home in the southern foothills of the North American Rocky Mountains.
Abram, D. & Jardine, D. (2001). Afterword: All knowledge is carnal knowledge: A conversation. In Hocking, B., Linds, W., & Haskell, J., eds., Unfolding Bodymind: Exploring Possibility Through Education. Brandon, VT: Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press, 325-333.
Finalist for the inaugural PEN E. O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing
For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and earthly elements (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth?
In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. This book is a major work of ecological philosophy, one that startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception.
Winner of the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Paperback out June 2022: 20% cost of hardback +20% off w/ code FLE22 ordering through Routledge.
Introduction chapter, table of contents, and endorsements are posted here. More, including editor bios and authors, can be found at this Routledge link: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Ecocultural-Identity/Milstein-Castro-Sotomayor/p/book/9781138478411. Please help share the Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity among your networks. And please ask your libraries to purchase the book (or put it on their to-buy lists if budgets have been temporarily frozen due to Covid). The Handbook is an important resource for our times for scholars, teachers, students, protectors, policy-makers, and practitioners. The editors, Tema Milstein and José Castro-Sotomayor, are available for Q&A, interviews, guest commentary, talks, etc. Thanks for your interest and for helping to spread word!
What has been said about the Handbook:
“Intricately transdisciplinary and cross-geographical, it is the first volume of its kind to caringly craft a gathering concept, that of ecocultural identities, bringing together the social, political, and ecological dimensions of identity. What results is a treasure of insights on the politics of life, broadly speaking, and a novel toolbox for tackling effectively the damages caused by modern capitalist modes of extraction and the urgent task of Earth’s ontological repair and renewal.”
Arturo Escobar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Too often mislabelled an ‘issue,’ the environment is in fact integral not just to everything we do but to who we are. This link between our identity and our ecology has long been recognised in many societies, but others seem to have forgotten its signal importance. This superb collection shows why all identities are ecocultural ones, and why full recognition of this is essential to all our political futures.”
Noel Castree, University of Manchester
“A smart, provocative, and original collection, the Handbook of Ecocultural Identity provides a definitive introduction to the constraints upon, and the contexts, formations, and impacts of, our diverse – but often unexamined – ecological selves.”
Robert Cox, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and three-time national president of the Sierra Club
“I am in complete solidarity with this book.”
Donna Haraway, University of California, Santa Cruz