David Abram, 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 and as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times, David’s work explores the ecology of experience, examining the ways in which sensory perception, language, and wonder inform the relation between the human animal and the animate earth.
David was the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a reappraisal of indigenous “animism” as a complexly nuanced, pragmatic, and uniquely viable worldview — a broad reassessment that is now underway in many disciplines. In the early-1990s, David coined the phrase “the more-than-human-world” in order to speak of nature as a realm that thoroughly includes humankind (with all our culture and technology) yet also necessarily exceeds humankind; the phrase has now been taken up worldwide within the broad movement for ecological sanity.
Recently the Senior Visiting Scholar in Ecology and Natural Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Abram has also held the international Arne Næss Chair of Global Justice and Ecology in Norway. He has received numerous awards, including the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, as well as fellowships from the Rockefeller and Watson Foundations. David is co-founder and Director of the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE) and was for many years a distinguished teaching Fellow at Schumacher College in Devon, England. He lives in the foothills of the southern Rockies.
Contributions to Humans & Nature Press:
- On Being Human in a More-Than-Human World
A response to “What does it mean to be human?”
Noteworthy Links:
- Alliance for Wild Ethics
Learn about David Abram’s work with the Alliance for Wild Ethics (AWE). - How To Think About Science
Listen to David Abram speak as part of the series from the Canadian Broadcasting Company. - Honoring the Wild Proliferation of Earthly Perspectives — David Abram and Merlin Sheldrake in Emergence Magazine
- Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet — David Abram in Emergence Magazine
- Magic and the Machine — David Abram in Emergence Magazine
- Interbreathing Ecocultural Identity in the Humilocene — An Interview with David Abram
