ELi5: This sentence from a journal article; “…posthumanism in symbolic ontological turns when referring to relations with more-than-human beings such as rivers, mountains, animals, and plants.”
In: 5
TL;dr: See last paragraph.
As others have noted, the sentence is incomplete. The full sentence can be found [here](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Disrupting_and_Countering_Deficits_in_Ea/mHatDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA137&dq=%22posthumanism+in+symbolic+ontological+turns+when+referring%22) (“Disrupting and Countering Deficits in Early Childhood Education”, pg. 137, last paragraph):
>Because we have written extensively elsewhere about the turns toward posthumanisms, in this chapter we take seriously Todd’s (2016) provocation not to think with “meta-categories” (p. 6), such as posthumanism in symbolic ontological turns when referring to relations with more-than-human beings such as rivers, mountains, animals, and plants.
Even with this added context the sentence is a bit of a brain-bender. Basically what’s being discussed here is how people think about the world around us.
An “[ontological turn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontological_turn)” is a change in how scientists and academics think about their field of study. I.e. a “turning” away from the status quo, towards some new way of thinking. An example of this might be how Christopher Columbus used to be described as a brave explorer conquering new lands but, in recent years, is now seen more as an invader who exploited the native people already living in the places he visited. Our way of thinking has “turned”.
In the sentence above, “Todd (2016)” refers to a paper written by Zoe Todd, a social anthropologist (a scientist who studies human societies and cultures) in Canada. I don’t have access to the original paper, but did find [her blog post discussing the paper](https://zoestodd.com/2014/10/24/an-indigenous-feminists-take-on-the-ontological-turn-ontology-is-just-another-word-for-colonialism/). One of the ideas she puts forth is that when it comes to the study of the climate (“rivers, mountains, animals, and plants”), there are a lot of [white, male] researchers out there claiming to have discovered new ways of thinking (Ontological Turns?!? ) that have, in fact, been known to native people for eons, but who are rarely if ever credited for that fact.
**To really ELI5 this quote**, we need to consider that the book it’s from is a collection of work from “[researchers across the globe](https://www.routledge.com/Disrupting-and-Countering-Deficits-in-Early-Childhood-Education/Nxumalo-Brown/p/book/9781138103542)”, many of whom have been embracing “posthumanism” which, simply put, is the idea that (*gasp*) humans aren’t actually the center of the universe. This is something that’s been known by various native people around the world for a long time. But that fact isn’t always reflected in the research scientists present. So what the author of this quote is really saying, when all is said and done, is this:
>***White, male scientists are assholes who sometimes forget to credit the native tribes and people who came before them. We don’t want to overlook that fact, so we’re going to make a special effort to think carefully about how those people may have influenced all the other work we’ve discussed in this book.***
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