 The Return of the Animists Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies Luiz Costa and Carlos Fausto  ABSTRACT: he ethnography of lowland South American societies has occupied a central place in recent debates concerning what has been called the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology. he concepts of ‘animism’ and ‘perspectivism’, which have been revigorated through studies of Amerindian ontologies, igure increasingly in the ethnographies of non-Amerindian peoples and in anthropological theory more generally. his article traces the theoretical and empirical background of these con- cepts, beginning with the inluence of Lévi-Strauss’s work on the anthropology of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, and proceeding with their impact on Amazonian ethnography. It then investigates the problems that two alternative traditions—one combining a cognitivist with a pragmaticist approach, the other a phenomenological one—pose to recent studies of Amazonian ontologies that rely on the concepts of animism and perspectivism. he article concludes by considering how animism and perspectivism afect our descriptions of Amerindian society and politics, highlighting the new challenges that studies of Amerindian ontologies have begun to address.  KEYWORDS: Amazonia, animism, hunting, ontology, perspectivism, Phenomenol- ogy, pragmatics, shamanism A lingoa de que usam, toda pela costa, … carece de tres letras, convem a saber, nam se acha nella F, nem L, nem R, cousa digna despanto porque assi nam têm Fé, nem Lei, nem Rei, e desta maneira vivem desordenada- mente sem terem alem disto conta, nem peso, nem medida. 1 —Pero de Magalhães Gandavo, História da Província Santa Cruz, a que vulgarmente chamamos Brasil (1576) Since the beginning of European colonization, the people of lowland South America were characterized by a triple absence: they had no faith, no law, and no king. In other words, no religion, society, or state; three things that, at the time, necessarily implied each other. Indig- enous people could therefore only live in total disorder, which was the verdict of the Portu- guese chronicler Pero de Magalhães Gandavo, the irst person to capture this triple absence in a concise formula. To these deiciencies, Gandavo added a fourth: there was no rule, no standard of measurement. Everything was settled on an ad hoc basis in a hic et nunc world. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 1 (2010): 89–109 © Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/arrs.2010.010107