"If the object of modernist epistemology is a totalizing scheme of separated essences, approached ideally from a separated viewpoint, the object of this animistic knowledge is understanding relatedness from a related point of view within the shifting horizons of the related viewer. Knowledge in the first case is having, acquiring, applying, and improving representations of things in-the-world. Knowledge in the second case is developping the skills of being in-the-world with other things, making one’s environment and one’s self finer, broader, deeper, richer, etc. Knowing, in the second case, grows from and is maintaining relatedness with neighboring others."

Bird-David, Nurit (1999) "Animism" revisited: On personhood, environment and relational epistemology, with CA* Comment. Current Anthropology 40s: S67-S91.