Managing alterity from within: the ontological turn in anthropology and indigenous efforts to shape shamanism

The ontological turn is gaining momentum among many anthropologists today, evidenced by multiple debates and symposia in recent years addressing the role of ontological approaches within the discipline. Equal to the force of the ontological turn are the growing number of passionate critiques that question everything from the ethnographic and historical integrity of this body of work to its intellectual motivations and political effects. This article commends ontologists for bringing greater attention to the crucial role of spirits in many people's lives and for their efforts to gain deeper understandings of different realities. Yet we also agree with critics in their identification of various troubling tendencies in prominent ontologists’ analyses. We highlight how many of these disturbing inclinations emerge through ontologists’ attempts to connect their ethnographic analyses to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's theory of multinaturalist perspectivism. Finally, we analyse one of the favourite research topics of those associated with the ontological turn – shamanism – in one of the regions most often heralded as an oasis of radical alterity – the Amazon – in a way that specifically aims to avoid the problematic orientations we identify. Specifically, we describe a series of historical changes in the relationships between shamans and indigenous leaders to draw attention to how relationships to shamanic power/knowledge are unevenly distributed, actively debated, and co‐constructed through changing historical and political contexts.