Summary: Animism refers to the belief that souls exist not only in humans, but potentially in animals, in plants, in mountains and even natural forces like the wind. It was of central importance in early anthropological conceptions of religion, most notably in the work of E. B. Tylor. More recently, however, Graham Harvey has challenged the traditional conception of animism, seeking to understand it as "relational epistemologies and ontologies"; in other words, it is a way of living in a community of persons, most of whom are other-than-human.
