"I think that almost imitative aspect,

where we try and shape our own tone

to meet the calls and cries of other creatures,

was at one time a very basic survival skill."

This interview with David Abram is an excerpt from The Insurrection Interviews podcast, part of Magic and Ecology.

David Abram – cultural ecologist and geophilosopher – is the author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Described as "revolutionary" by the Los Angeles Times, as “daring” and “truly original” by the journal Science, David’s work has helped catalyze the emergence of several new disciplines, including the burgeoning field of ecopsychology. His essays on the cultural causes and consequences of environmental disarray are published in numerous magazines, scholarly journals, and anthologies. A recipient of various fellowships and awards, including the international Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, David recently held the international Arne Naess Chair in Global Justice and Ecology at the University of Oslo. 

Dr. Abram's work engages the ecological depths of the imagination, exploring the ways in which sensory perception, language, and wonder inform the relation between the human body and the breathing earth. In 1996, David coined the phrase "the more-than-human world" to speak of nature as a realm that thoroughly includes humankind and all our culture and technology, but always necessarily exceeds humankind; the phrase has now been taken up as part of the lingua franca of the broad movement for ecological sanity.